Bloodborne - The Lovecraft Loveletter

Warning: Spoilers of the ending and some of the bosses throughout.

See my first post on the non-Lovecraft Gothic Horror influences here.

“Ah Kos, or some say Kosm... Do you hear our prayers? ...As you once did for the Vaccuous Rom, grant us eyes... Plant eyes in our brains, to cleanse our beastly idiocy.” - Micolash, Host of the Nightmare.

     Bloodborne's development takes a lot of its influence from Victorian, Gothic, Japanese myths, and eldritch literary horror fiction, which is notable for a few major reasons. Firstly is because Bloodborne being a 'Souls game' lends itself greatly to this genre. This is because much of the horror style is based on confusion and second-hand storytelling, which is often seen throughout the Souls series having a rich lore but never being properly explored on the surface of the game or observed directly. All of the information we get of what has happened is from unreliable narrators or small snippets of text alongside items, or even just events that lead us to make assumptions of connections [1]. More on this below.

     Secondly, it adds to the genre as a whole; a game that is interesting and enjoyable as well as quite scary in ways that avoid the modern tropes of jump-scares and solitary murderers. This is because it focuses on story, situation and particular events happening within the world, rather than a simple meta-desire to terrify the player. Thirdly, is the transition between general Gothic horror and uncovering the deeper cosmic terrors underlying everything. This is done well in Bloodborne as it is reminiscent of Lovecraft's transition between writing Gothic horror and his eldritch mythos, as well as the transition of many of his characters. Going from sane human investigating some odd phenomenon to developing an understanding of something so unfathomably beyond them that they lose grasp of that sanity. More on this below, also.

     With that in mind, let us look at some of what makes Bloodborne such a great example of eldritch lore done correctly, with a slight focus on The Old Hunters DLC as main examples.

The Works of Lovecraft

     Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in 1890, toward the end of the peek popularity of Gothic Horror, particularly in Victorian London, and had an interest in horror from an early age. Apparently his father read him Gothic Horror stories as a child and thus Lovecraft himself began writing in this genre when he took up the pen. While maintaining many of the core Gothic Horror tropes, his direction, over time took on a slightly differing form to his predecessors - that of eldritch. His major influences with regard to Gothic Horror was Edgar Allen Poe [2] while his most notable influence to the eldritch influence was a book by the name of The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers in 1895.

     Some of the stories of Lovecraft can be seen within Bloodborne, such as The Shadows Over Innsmouth notably being about cult figures worshipping bizarre Gods and creatures that come from the sea. This can be seen in the early parts of the game when you first uncover the strange statues showing what kinds of beings of worship there are in Yarnham, but can particularly be seen in The Fishing Hamlet segment of The Old Hunters DLC, which can almost directly be seen as a kind of aftermath of an Innsmouth type village.[3]

     Other examples of translation from Lovecraft are beings such as the Amygdalla and the Brain of Mensis being full of eyes and tentacles; they appear to be directly something out of the unfathomable Cthulhu mythos - of things that if you knew about them it would ruin everything you thought you knew about the world. While there are many examples of particular things that seem like they could have come from the pages, it is the themes of the style that persist through the whole game.

Existential Crisis

     As mentioned in the introduction, there is a heavy importance on the style of storytelling being through things like letters and unreliable narrators. This works particularly well with influence from Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos as one of the major themes of this is of forbidden knowledge; things that could be easily missed or ignored by any sane person not specifically seeking it out. This leads our character (and us) into a situation where we are specifically looking further into the forbidden depths of the 'Great Ones' for both intrigue and to reach our goal.

     How this is approached in Bloodborne is similar to how it is approached in tabletop RPGs of Cthulhu lore, and is also something that many games or adaptations get wrong. The transition towards the ever-expanding ever-confusing scale of things needs to be a slow transition, but a permanent one. Rather than hiding the subtlety throughout the story and having the character forget his knowledge to progress as is done in many insanity based mechanics, Bloodborne tackles it differently. Once the character knows of things that they ought not know, they need to find a way to deal with that knowledge or use it to their advantage without being overwhelmed by it. Often, you need to keep your sanity lowered in certain ways or risk death. Bloodborne, however, treats it as a necessary mechanic that really ties in well to the approach. The whole point of forbidden knowledge is that it is both incredibly important as it holds truths and keys to the universe, but also carries with it understanding of things that we are not capable of understanding, as well as deep existential understanding of exactly how pointless and tiny we are. This is a very important part of the Lovecraft lore as a lot of the fear comes from the sheer extent of how unimportant humans are.

     Our character in Bloodborne uses this to their advantage, by carrying a balancing act of knowing enough to keep them aware and powerful, but not having so much that it harms us greatly. The more 'insight' we have in the game, the more danger we are in from certain things like Frenzy, as with more insight comes a weak mind susceptible to insanity. This allows our character to have a necessary way of handling the knowledge that ought to kill them as a way of increasing their power as well as making it threaten them at the very core.

     In Bloodborne, we start out as a newcomer to a town (like many investigators in stories before us, typical of a Lovecraft story) on the night of the hunt where the story is simply focused on seeking a certain kind of blood to cure a disease; there are a few supernatural elements and scientific experiments gone wrong also, as is typical of Gothic horror stories. [4] Then, it transitions at an increasing rate towards the power of cosmic entities and existential disturbance. The only reason we don't immediately die of insanity when gaining 'madman's knowledge' is that slower transition of only finding out little bit at a time as the insight trickles in and we are capable of using it as it comes. Also it can be said that there is so much that we do not know. Our character gains insight only enough to deal with the threats in front of them, just like the player, the character is still clouded in speculation and confusion rather than fully understanding any of what is going on. They are simply dealing with only what is necessary. There is also suggestion of a higher power guiding us as the character, too, which would help with that and it brings us to the next point.

Fighting Elder Things

     It only seems natural, with the Great Ones and those touched by unknowable entities beyond our comprehension, that we ought not be able to fight these things. This should be the weakest link between any progressable combat-based game in an eldritch mythos. However, Bloodborne tackles this well, in my opinion, and it even leads to one of the most Lovecraft-y things in the whole game.

     The Great Ones that are bosses in Bloodborne are closer in reminiscence to 'Elder Things' in Lovecraftian lore, as they are seen entities that generally have no care for humans unless they can be used for something more important. An example of this is Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos, who completely ignores the player until they actually attack her. In Lovecraft's lore, Cthulhu itself is an Elder thing, for a similar example. Cthulhu is thought to be the 'high priest' of the Great Ones in the lore – so is connected to them in a similar way the Pope might be to God, to give you an idea of the scale being discussed. That being said, while incredibly powerful and ancient, they are still essentially mortal and potentially killable under the right circumstances.

     The playable character in Bloodborne is certainly strong. They are strong because they have help and are augmented by blood and have influence from powerful things. It is also worthy of note that the character dips in an out of dreams such as the Nightmare Frontier which is where they fight the Amygdala. This includes The Hunter's Dream where the character is influenced by some important figures on the main game. This takes the edge off of the potential for the character to fight Great Ones, as they are not actually fighting them, they are fighting an aspect of them as an aspect of themselves (within the dream / nightmare). This, of course still has an impact outside of the dream, but it still takes some of the edge off of the possibility of killing a Great One.

     Furthermore, there are some other fights with huge creatures that can be considered not on par with a natural Great One, as they were people who have turned into something greater (Such as Rom, Ludwig, or many of the Chalice Dungeon bosses) – so not as powerful as a Great One could be. [6] Then there are Great Ones that are experienced outside of dreams and are very powerful. This circumstance that aid us in those fights (Ebrietas being the most powerful) possibly being that we have access and influence from a Great One ourself – the Moon Presence.[7] I say possibly, here, because we don't fully understand the intentions of the Moon Presence and probably never could. It does, however, give us some possibility of justification for our actions. It is also of consideration that while powerful, the Great Ones we fight are potentially some of the least powerful possible Great Ones. That being said, for the game to be the game it is and not actually within the Lovecraft lore, I'll admit that it is acceptable that killing some of these things is to be accepted for purposes of epicness and gameplay.

The Orphan of Kos

     With the relative power of our main character, one thing is worthy of note. None of the Great Ones we kill are unkillable and they certainly put up an incredible fight, but this it true of the Orphan of Kos more than any other. Generally accepted to be the most difficult fight in the game – this is probably the most powerful 'thing' our character ever fights and it isn't even that powerful, in a twist that leaves practically the last thing our character does in the game to leave us with the most Lovecraftian feeling of all.

     When we approach the Orphan of Kos, there is a deflated dead thing on the floor that is being worshipped from the cave we exit. This dead thing could be Kos, though is more likely to be the surrogate of Kos's child as Kos is suggested to be a being of much higher power than the Great Ones. Then, the Orphan of Kos climbs out of the thing on the floor and immediately takes a disliking to you. While most Great Ones do not care for you at all until you threaten them, the Orphan does care. The Orphan is a being of anger, showing it's naive state as far as Great Ones go – as like the others it is of something higher than humans, so probably shouldn't care about them.This newborn proceeds to aggressively attack the character in a fight to the death. As previously mentioned, this is likely to be the most powerful thing in the game and, once we finally do beat it, nothing in particular happens. It just dies and we are left staring out into the infinitely expanding abyss. We just fought possibly the toughest thing we could fight and though that makes us feel good about our power – it also emphasises what infinitely higher powers are out there.

     The empty abyss that extends from that fight is essentially the last message of the game. An existential belittlement directly after we overcome the toughest challenge we have faced. That, in my opinion, is why Bloodborne is the most successful homage to Lovecraft found in a video game.

1. One of my favourites of this style of storytelling is that when you use the Tiny Music Box - that you get from a little girl who wants to locate her mother - against Father Gascoigne and it stuns him. Then you find evidence for the little girl's mother having died nearby the area after the fight, leading you to believe that Gascoigne himself is the father and you can put the story of what happened together. With the disease changing the Hunter and him probably having killed her - and without any dialogue to explain as such.
2. A notable link to this is Poe's belief that all stories should be readable in one session, so had a disposition toward short stories. While Lovecraft dabbles in some longer works, all of them can be read in a rather short time overall. Edger Allen Poe writes the reasons for his doing this in an essay called 'Philosophy of Composition' which I thoroughly recommend for anyone interested in general fiction.
3. While there is no obvious evidence that the inhabitants of the village 'fornicated' with the fish people... let's not kid ourselves, it definitely happened!
4. Van Helsing the hunter from Bram Stoker's Dracula was originally just a doctor who had a bit more knowledge of supernatural things rather than just his medical profession, as he was a man of science who did not ignore the world's stranger occurrences. Thus he does what he does because of his scientific knowledge.
5. It could be suggested that the Brain of Mensis is the form of a Great One, though it becomes somewhat apparent according to the method by which we bathe it in darkness where it loses it's main power, and then we are capable of killing of it, or at least this form of it.
6. The Celestial Emissary is essentially just a powerful alien, so reasonably killable and Mergo's Wet Nurse is a relatively weak Great One with only one purpose, to protect Mergo. This basically leaves Ebrietas and the Moon Presence itself. The Moon Presence is also inside of a dream and most endings have you not fighting it at all.
7. There is a theory that there is rivalry between the Moon Presence and Ebrietas, owing to Ebrietas influencing the worship of the Healing Church who are some of the people undoing the Moon Presence's work of creating Beasts in a Blood Moon. If this is true, then it explains why it would aid us in doing some of the things we do from The Hunter's Dream. However, there is another theory of the Moon Presence being created by the Healing Church, which would ruin this idea, so the possibility is tenuous at best.

Bloodborne - The Gothic Horror Influence

Minor Spoiler Warning: I'll be talking a little bit about some of the events of Bloodborne even though I won't be addressing most of the story or 'twists' directly.

     Bloodborne is a horror game. To clarify, I do not claim it is a 'survival horror' in the classic sense of a horror game – but it draws upon the very core of what horror is[1]. Now, the fact that Bloodborne is heavily involved with Lovecraftian style lore is something that is particularly commonly known and discussed at this stage. So, I would like, here, to have a closer look at some of the other horror influences of Bloodborne – the 'Gothic fiction'.

The Popularity of Victorian Horror

     Victorian Gothic horror is something that has had repeated surges of popularity ever since they first arrived with tales such as Horace Walpole's 'The Castle of Otranto' (1764); continuing with stories such as Frankenstien (1818), by Mary Shelly; The Tell-Tale Heart (1843), by Edgar Allen Poe; and Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker. The main part of the popularity of this kind of fiction appeared during the Victorian era, and thus the Gothic and Victorian styles became synonymous.[2]

     As a testament to the popularity of this style of story in Victorian London, it wasn't just the wealthier folk who were able to enjoy the high literature of Gothic horror. The 'Penny Dreadful' serials (1830 – 1890) were cheap and often unimpressive stories that could be bought in instalments as quick as they were churned out. Some Penny Dreadfuls proved significantly more popular than others, introducing us to stories such as 'Sweeney Todd' (Originally 'String of Pearls') – but the style remained and many of them were copied stories of previous Gothic horror tales, or a stylised retelling of old folklore stories such as Witches, Highwaymen, Werewolves, and Hunters. This Victorian approach to Gothic horror is the core aesthetic of Bloodborne's characters and the setting of Yarnham, as is the basis for which it was inspired. From top-hats and cloaks to canes that become serrated whips to a medieval fear of witches – Penny Dreadfuls and Gothic fiction has them all.

     Let us have a look at some particular examples of Gothic fiction in Bloodborne.[3][4]

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

     Experimentation, for education purposes or otherwise, plays a common role in Bloodborne owing largely to diseases that need to be cured and some folk's beliefs that they can become improved beings by infusing some part of themselves with other beings. These 'experiments' often incur some kind of transmogrification, often into some kind of beastly or violent form. A popular tale this rings true to is that of 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886. In this story there is a Doctor who wished to hide some of his darker indulgences so found a way to transform himself in a way that would hide his identity when doing so. However, the alter-ego was dangerous and uncaring and eventually could not be controlled, causing murder and destruction in his wake.

Frankenstein

     Similarly: quite a heavy fear for people during the Victorian era was the weirdness of medical practices and that, with speedy advances in medicine, they may have gone 'too far'. Bloodborne also uses similar themes such as the main character getting a blood-transfusions from the man in Yharnam as a way of opening the story. Specifically, getting a blood transfusion extends the player's lifespan until they can find an actual cure to their disease, as well as many of the other medical experiments being toward the goal of things such as immortality and thereby 'playing with life and death'. Frankenstien by Mary Shelley has themes of worries about scientific advances at the time, such as 'galvanisation', which was a feared practice within the Victorian era that people thought could re-vitalise the dead thereby 'playing with life and death'.

     Another link to Frankenstein is that the game starts with a man muttering that what you will experience will seem like a “bad dream” to frame the entire story. The main hub in the game that we return to often is 'The Hunter's Dream' and, at many parts throughout the game, the character dips in and out of other people's dreams. Each dream frames its own little parts of the story, making the whole narrative both unreliable, uncertain to have actually happened, and somewhat confusing. In Frankenstein, the tale happens as a series of letters as a prelude to someone telling the story which is a frame of a story which at some point is further framed by another layer of story – leaving the whole narrative just as unreliable, uncertain and confusing.

Dracula

     Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, used a series of letters and second-hand accounts to make up the story of the people surrounding the vampire in his castle. This adds to the speculative aspect of the story in having to figure out a lot of what is happening otherwise than what is seen, as one does in Bloodborne. Dracula, being written and set heavily into the Victorian period suggests a lot of the imagery for the characters, also. While clothes are not specifically mentioned much in the book, it is not beyond reason to suggest, owing to the time period, there would have been, depending on character social status: canes, top hats, suits with long tailcoats, capes and cloaks, and other such garbs that can be seen in Bloodborne.

     The main link between Bloodborne and Dracula, however, is the social factor. Toward the start of the game the player is contracted to participate in a night of the hunt, where people go out and kill any monsters or diseased folk. One thing to note about this situation is the status of the people involved. Most of the hunters outside are poor to middle classed men, and we sometimes have the option to talk to the people secure inside their houses. Of which, those are the safe folks who have the social status to not participate and not only that, they have the gall to mock you rather than offer shelter. Meanwhile we later find the higher-ups and important folk, such as leaders of the healing church, are not only safe and remote from the hunt but are also corrupt in their own ways. This kind of thing is a running theme throughout Dracula, where much of the power of Dracula is in his social status and stands as commentary on the social power people have.

     The 'good guys', then, are not anyone of status. They are simply workers who desire not to die by the hand of the corrupt. Whether this is a direct link or something that happens to be a common suggestion or theme owing to the style and setting of both Bloodborne and Dracula is to be seen – though it is certainly something to consider and gives a bit of an understanding as to why people consider the first half of the game to be something 'straight out of a Bram Stoker novel'.

To Be Continued...

     As the risk of repeating myself, I would like to clarify further that I do not think these links are strong or directly influential to the game. My goal is to merely give insight to the kinds of themes that are prevalent in the Victorian and Gothic horror setting which Bloodborne in some kind of way either falls prey to or pays homage to; I personally think that is something to be respected. Bloodborne does not simply copy these styles of story – it adds to them. It is part of the fiction of Gothic horror genre which is something people pay attention to less than the more obvious connection with Bloodborne... Lovecraft.
     The links with Lovecraft in Bloodborne are not subtle and the works of Lovecraft came a decade or so after and were slightly inspired by the kind of horror works that popped up in the Victorian period. With this in mind, as a huge fan of Lovecraftian horror, I will chip in with my thoughts and links next time...

     Until then - thanks for reading.

1. Horror only need to play upon things that people are not okay with, it can be scary and based on our fears, but it can also just be unsettling, disturbing, suspenseful, nightmarish or plainly weird.
2. It is a common theme amongst this genre to be told as if it were true, through letters or second hand stories suggesting the possibility of this strange thing that happened rather than addressing it as a narrated fiction. This is one reason a 'Souls' series game owes itself greatly to this genre, as most of the lore is found out through stories or second-hand writings.
3. Less specific, though still a link: Werewolves have been popular in folklore since ancient Greece, though Lycanthropy in horror fiction was very much popularised by the Gothic horror in the early 19^th century with stories such as 'The Man-Wolf' in 1831 and 'Hughes, Wer-Wolf' in 1838. Popular themes involved similar tales to the Scourge Beasts in Bloodborne with it being some kind of disease or curse that transforms them, often permanently, into a murderous wolf-beast.
4. While some of these links may be tenuous as oppose to direct influence, it they will still ring true as tropes of the stories with Bloodborne being reminiscent of them due to being part of the genre as a whole.