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