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.

Mimi Says

           Mimi stands in the doorway at night. She knocks three times in the silhouette bright. My mum is unaware and Mimi says this is good. She compliments my hair and tells me I'm rare and I believe Mimi because she tells me I should. Mimi wears a plain white mask with big red curls and rosy red cheeks. She speaks quietly and calm wearing the innocent smile of the meek, and at this point she's visited me for weeks.

           Mimi says I should be her friend. And I do want to be her friend, saying that our friendship should never end. She's asking for proof. Proof that I am her friend by giving me tasks to perform, offerings of food, like bread or fruit or corn. The food must be simple, she says. No food from a lady, as that would be crazy. Women are the precious and taking their food is malicious. I now avoid milk and eggs or meat made from cow's legs.

           Mimi says I should wear white in bed. She says I should do this to accentuate the red. So I do. She says I should wear white gowns and never carry frowns so that I can look like her from toe to paw, every time I open that door. That way, when she knocks, I can look like her. “White and pure with a face of allure.” My feet as bare as hers and our hips both jut. When I grow, I shall keep my figure and never indulge in smut.

           Mimi says I should buy her a flower with thorns on it. Thorny flowers are the best because they can protect themselves. They smell to attract only certain things and avoid others. They are completely in control of their life.

           Mimi says flowers prove my friendship and that friends do things for each other. Mimi says I should not eat sweets and tell this to my mummy. Sweets use energy much needed for making babies and they turn boys into rapists with rabies. My mummy should know of the habits I intend to end and she still thinks I have an imaginary friend.

           Mimi says I should avoid boys at school to protect my womb. Avoid dark alleys where they might loom. Mimi says my womb is special and the white gown, once a month, should show off my red. She says it's because of my hair being red, and because my hair is curly shows why I'm special to have it so early. The other girls are not deserving. Not of my friendship, they are all immature bullies and meanies. They're not like my good friend Mimi.

           Mimi says she needs to know about my mummy. Mimi says I should tell her everything into her core. Whether she's had any more children or has ever been a whore. Whether her hair is dark as a midnight shore. Whether her conversations are a bore and everything more. She's happy with my answers and hates that mummy wears fur. She says it's horrid and that I should avoid her.

           Mimi says my mummy is special for having made me and no other. If she had she would not be a special mother. For all I am worth she should have no more girls. None to take over me with my shiny red curls.

           Mimi says I should not talk to my mum, to ignore her and keep up an act. She says I should not care how her days went and that I should avoid eye contact. She says that my mum thinks she knows best and will try to influence my life. But Mimi says she drinks alcohol and couldn't make a good wife.

           Mimi says I shouldn't let anyone influence my life and I should fulfil my greatest potentials on my own. I like Mimi. When she's with me I trust her the most. She is my friend and I'm happy to boast. Mimi says Lauren from school is selfish and is trying to hold me back. Mimi says to see the truth in people is what she has as a knack and that Lauren's friendship is something I should lack.

Mimi says when I grow up, my breasts will be small like hers. She says this is good as it is modest and that's something I deserve. Mimi let me touch her breasts so I could imagine mine. She says it's not a problem and that to feel like I do is fine.

           Mimi says I should kill a creature and keep it as my proudest feature. She says I should catch a male and preferably something with a tail. Mimi says that I should burn the filthy animal which turned out to be a rat; I squished the rat very flat. So with a box of matches I made the rat a cinder and from inside something hatches because it went “POP”. And all this liquid just wouldn't stop. I took a hammer and nailed him on my bedroom wall. Mimi says this should make me feel womanly and powerful and really very tall.

           Mimi says I should not feel bad and that what I am doing is good. I tell Mimi I do feel bad and she said she understood. But Mimi says she likes me and I like her too. And that she wouldn't like me if she told me and I did not do. So I feel less bad and Mimi isn't mad. Everyone's happy.

           Mimi says she wants a knife. I should find one soon. For her and for myself to use and protect my life. She says it should be sharp and that I should sharpen it more. I need to show Mimi the knife and hide it away. What happens next she wouldn't yet say and yet I have an idea. I get Mimi, I like Mimi. She's been my friend for a year.

           Mimi says I should use the knife tonight. She knocked on my door pale in the moonlight and told me it is fine. She walked into my house for the very first time and told me to use the knife. She walked with my upstairs, slowly but sure and we both stopped, standing at the bedroom door. Mimi didn't look at me, but I looked at her. The door swung open, the room lined with fur and empty glasses of wine and Mimi whispered that it's time.

           Mimi prepared me for this little act and that I was special was just a fact but I couldn't risk my mummy ruining that. So her bed was there and I stood with my eyes shut; then I plunged the knife right into her gut. She woke with a startle and I told her everything will be okay. Her eyes were full of shock and she wasn't okay. On my feet I rocked and I brushed my blood-soaked hand through her hair, telling her to shush – twisting the knife with an extra push. I smiled up at her and she didn't make a sound, but she struggled and gargled until she was a weight on the ground.

           When I turned around. Mimi couldn't be found, she was gone from the room and not on the stairs. I walked with my gown covered with thick wet hairs and oozing, dripping down my head was the red. Mimi stood in the doorway with her mask so big. I waited for her to tell me what I did and she pointed to me, pointed to my belly. I nodded, knowing what to do but my legs went to jelly. I was a special girl with red curls and I was more than this.

           I turned the knife inside my hand and stabbed myself where I stand and pangs of pain were met with pleasure as I felt the blood pour out of me with no regrets because Mimi said. Mimi smiles in the doorway dimly lit by the shadow and moon. I like Mimi, Mimi is by friend. Everything will be okay soon and I lull my feint head. Everything will be okay because Mimi said.