#i am so in love with the bloodborne lore and aesthetic

[gingerbreadmonsters]

sticking my head in the doorway once again to remind u of my aesthetic obsession with micolash

[heraldofcrow]

Whew yeah, okay for this one I feel truly shooketh by how quick ten years went by. Feels like Bloodborne came out yesterday, but no, here we all are….ten years later….still in love….still obsessing over this absolutely bizarre game that used to baffle me beyond belief, but after meeting Katy and Fantomette, feels like an old friend I understand on a spiritual level.

Admittedly, our past few years of more intense “Lore Council” loredigging, which have slowed down a bit for me recently, have gutted Bloodborne to the point where a lot of that old first-time mystery feels as if it waned. I’ve had days where I didn’t like that and I wanted to go back to experiencing that earth-shattering awe I felt when I played it through with new eyes, but the majority of the time, I’ve actually decided that Bloodborne gets even better when you have a grasp on what’s going on.

There is commentary on humanity in this game that I am genuinely impressed by. There are so many symbolic parts and pieces. There are countless historical references. This game is a work of art. It’s wine that gets better with age. Frankly, I think every Soulsborne game is like this, but Bloodborne still stands out because of the concepts and themes it plays with. The unique aesthetic gives it a boost, too.

Yes, it’s a masterpiece and after years of being a Soulsborne fandom vagabond, Bloodborne reared its head in this corner of tumblr and gave me some of the dearest friends I’ve ever had.

So with all that said-

HAPPY TENTH ANNIVERSARY BLOODBORNE!!!

[pritong-baboy]

someone just asked me what inspired me to write and come up with the stuff that i do, and i literally just have one answer for that person.

im a fromsoftware fan.

my first ever exposure of fromsoftware wasnt dark souls like many other people, but it was sekiro.

sekiro was the easiest to get into because of its more obvious storyline and characters. but holy damn, did it change everything. as soon as i saw this story and these characters i just wondered why arent more games like this??

but sekiro was only the start of it. i got into the dark souls series after a while, and i immediately got sucked in because i live for dark fantasy aesthetics and also...because the character designs and general art direction of the game was so unapologetically scary at certain times despite not being labeled as "horror."

i cannot express the amount of love that i have for these games. the amount of passion and love that was put into the lore just tells you how much this was just...made because hidetaka miyazaki wanted to share an experience he had a child. down to the way lore is told and the way the world is built, all of that is said in the games he creates.

it says a lot that dark souls was the only game that could make me cry with ONLY music, visuals, and not a single line of dialog in a boss fight. it says a lot that bloodborne was the only game that horrified me by making me think of the simple implications of its story. it says a lot that elden ring was the only game that challenged what i thought was the normal formula for gaming.

i am glad that miyazaki is being appreciated for simply being creative and wanting to give people an experience. fromsoftware has inspired me like no other, and i wish more people get the same opportunities that miyazaki had to be able to share their own vision.

[pyro-madder]

Coucou! So for the ask game :

1.Favorite boss fight? 28.Least favorite boss fight?

4.Favorite weapon? 19.Favorite Old Hunter?

24.What do you think of Cainhurst?

25.Upper Cathedral Ward Y/N (je déteste cet endroit du démon 💀 j'ai legit perdu toute ma lucidité la première fois. 20-30 points!!!)

39.Hot takes on any Bloodborne lore?

Coucouuu :} let's get to it... it got long because I can't help but ramble, so I put it under a readmore :')

1. Favorite boss fight ? Micolaaash i am a bad no good fromsofter and prefer gimmick bosses over hit-and-roll-and-pray LOL

But really, between the chase, the insane OST (it's my favorite in the game, really), and his voicelines over it all... it's such An Atmosphere !! The downside is that once you've figured a) which path to follow and b) that he won't Call Beyond you if you stay close to him, it becomes terribly short and easy 😔 this said I'm obligated to say that I did not go in fully blind, so I understand those who struggled, and remember witnessing my brother raging as the man jumped into yet another mirror 😅

Special mention to when he starts monologuing just as you're about to pick up an item in his arena. *mashes X*

28. Least favorite boss ? Celestial Emmissaries. ON S'EMMERDE

They're not *difficult*, but they still hit hard and will get you if you're not careful. Music is nice, of course, but not particularly memorable to me. Glorified mobs... though I understand it's probably on purpose, given what lies after them. X)

4. Favorite weapon ? Tough one ! I love the concept of trick weapons as a whole, seeing the mechanisms and hearing the satisfying click when they change shape. There are several that stand out for different reasons, but no overall favorite :

Saw Spear : simple yet deadly efficient, I picked it up on my first playthrough and never put it down. But aesthetically, that's not quite it...

Threaded Cane : i'm a simple person. whip sexy. looks twice as badass when said whip is made of tiny blades chained together. extremely satisfying to hit several enemies mobbing you in one hit, and beautiful when you infuse it with an element.

Stake Driver, Whirligig Saw : i don't use them a lot (the former especially is tricky) but i adore their design and brutality. i tell you, i'm a Powder Keg at heart...

19. Favorite Old Hunter ? depends on how you define those ;

overall, if Djura counts, he wins by default of being my favorite character for many reasons : cool design, cool dialogue, cool weapons, very reasonable motives. i love how collected he is in all his interactions, he's seen it all and knows his stuff. also "uncommonly kind but dreadfully foolish" my kind of man fr /joke

if we're referring to hunters of Gehrman's era, then Simon. his hobo swag and needless dramatics have bewitched me body and soul. cool weapon also :)

if we're talking about summons : again Gascoigne wins by default of being my second favorite character (for less noble and nuanced reasons than Djura - he's just hot and badass). Closely followed by Damian for saving my ass against Ebrietas and the myriad of headcanons his title and gear alone enable.

24. What do you think of Cainhurst ? Welcome to the house of fun /sarcasm

The scenery's cool, the level and boss are... bearable once you've grown acquainted with them, but I don't like the Vilebloods (I say this light-heartedly), so meh tier overall. Stylish clothes and weapons though. 👀

25. Upper Cathedral Ward Y/N ? Yeah no. Pain 🤝

I also lost quite the insight here on my first run, and those damned buffed werewolves... for a boring boss and then a horribly hard one, for a chalice and a revival spot for a character i don't particularly want to do anything with...

The atmosphere is great tho. Loved the werewolves crashing in and swinging on the chandelier. Also, Damian is here. 🙏

39. Any hot takes on Bloodborne lore ? I'm just gonna repaste my "older sister rant" (which i had to dig up my archive thanks to tungle's super functional search function, and has since been pacified by Katy's theory that the girl in question was dead before the game started, thank you again for putting my soul to rest)

vraiment les premiers jours dans leur tag c'était je deviene fol.exe

[fantomette22]

I just KNOW that I can't be the first one to send you Gehrman because someone is ALWAYS one step ahead of me -_-" So I won't bother and just ask for Laurence himself for the ask meme

Ask game here

So Gehrman is not taken YET but it shouldn't be too long so Let's go with Laurence XD

First impression

Really intriguing and wanting to know more about him. I wasn't sure how to feel yet (the skull/flashback scene)

Impression now

I have so many thoughts on him it's crazy. He's really so interesting ! I love and dislike what he did at the same time. Laurence must be one of the most important bloodborne characters in the lore. What a tragic character.

Favorite moment

Well I wanna say his boss fight for the tragedy aesthetic & music & emotion but it wasn't a really good time to live it either XD

Idea for a story (centered really around 1 character because most of the story I imagined are based around a few each time)

After thinking about it I actually have actually a few story ideas 😂 centered around him or featuring only Laurence :

-His childhood (when he was taken in by Willem)

-His scholarship at Byrgenwerth/his harsh time as a student and how he become friend with Gehrman. (Also he was kinda a clown class too)

-His little clerical adventure away from Yharnam to be trained as a Cleric

-I guess his point of view during a hunt could be interesting/when he heal patient in the grand cathedral.

-After the dream was established and his ultimate downfall...

Unpopular opinion

I think Laurence is a really nuanced/ gray character. I don't think he's the ultimate devil (like all the time especially from the beginning, but I don't think he's just a victim of everything either. Yes he screw up really bad. And find out the hard way.

I think at the beginning he really wanted to help people. Then to achieve his goals, that it should do whatever it takes. Be ready to make sacrifice, and really bad thing. I think his ego became way ti huge too. Then... then... at the end he realized he screw up. But it was too late to fix everything, to make things right.

Favorite relationship

Oh that one is interesting. Actually I will talk about a few ok? XD

Well of course his relationship with Gehrman is so interesting to me. They seems to had a long, close and common history. In his nightmares Gehrman call for him and Willem after all. I really wish we knew more, what happened so he trust him and rely on him that much ? How they became friends? I am normal about this 2

Of course his relationship with Willem and the other scholars of Byrgenwerth. Wish we knew more

His relationship with Ludwig of course ! ahhh

Depend the interpretations but hm if Brador did knew Laurence (likewise with Amelia) I wish we knew more

Also we have 0 proof in canon but I like to imagined his relationship with Caryll and Maria. Caryll seems to have work with the church closely and Maria even more.

Favorite headcanon

Hm ok that one is tricky... hm...

I wanna hc his beast form actually used to look more like the bloodletting beast (I will die on that one ! XD)

He was so fascinated by the watchdog of the old lords (you know fire too)

The golden pendant was a gift from all his close relatives/ friends when the healing church was founded.

[kaponos]

Unconnected series of thoughts on the final SotO patch

Story was ass. We just walk into the demon king’s castle and kill him and then the patch is over. I’ve been over SotO’s story for a while so it didn’t bother me as much. A few of my many reasons why:

The wizards infuriated me from the get go, super powerful group of cool guys we didn’t know about because “oooo it’s a secret society” except they also have a giant standing army made up of every race in the world. I don’t care how cool and magical you are, that’s not something you can hide. Isgarren is fine though I like him being a dickhead who only cares for a nebulous ‘greater good’ and not the lives of lesser people who he could help but chooses not to. Shame he’s barely in any story.

humanizing demons and trying to make them sympathetic is a mistake to even attempt- I don’t want a creature molded of flesh and horns and sin to say stuff like “oh nooooo I swoooo scawdddd :((( save me big stwong wayfindew!” that fucking sucks, I want demons to be scary and threatening. Cerus was threatening, Deimos was threatening, everything else is Nayos is just a reskinned human.

Way way too much effort to tie this story that came out of actual nowhere to previous stuff even when it damages those old stories and doesn’t respect established lore. Retconning Deimos and Kanaxi to be kryptis when they super aren’t? Awful. Retconning the bastion of the penitent from being a mursaat construction and prison to being a wizard bastion that the mursaat just started squatting in? Unforgivable. Don’t get me started on the fractals becoming real thing, I will flip.

Anyway, Zakiros is extremely cool and very well done, some of my favourite parts are the area around the magic collectors, it really makes you feel how super high in the air you are and along with the thorns around the collectors reminds me of the bramble levels from donkey kong country (high praise.)

The interiors of the castle are really gory and dark and they’re cool to fight through, and the boss rooms right before Eparch are especially well decorated- it all feels like a survival horror. If the story was better I could see these aesthetics as being really oppressive and scary.

Out of the 3 fights with Eparch we got this patch I only like one of them, the open world version.

It’s an insanely chaotic fight and the devs don’t do a great job of explaining anything, but once I figured it out the mechanics I began to really appreciate the encounter design. The emotion buffs are the most important part of the fight and they’re all pretty interesting, with upsides and downsides that you need to match with your build and your role in the squad (power builds take rage or gluttony, condis take envy, healers can take sorrow, everyone takes malice when there’s a breakbar.)

The hp is tuned pretty perfectly, I did a slightly organized squad run of it tonight and we won with 30 seconds remaining, so an actually organized group will have plenty of time to secure the kill.

Eparch’s meta model is proper freaky and way better than his other one that is used everywhere else, that one just looks like a generic dude while this one is like if patches from bloodborne had flesh eating bacteria.

What else did I like…

Oh. Peitha continued to be fun, I love her weird way of talking. Her voice actress did a great job. Also she has a really funny exchange with Eparch during the meta.

E: “I am the kryptis! Nayos begins and ends with me!”

P: “And that’s why you let her die!” L + ratio + dead wife

That’s it. Good riddance SotO.

I hope the next expac is better, I would pay double the price for the next expac if it meant it was guaranteed to be twice the quality.

[peregrineggsandham]

Been playing Dark Souls I for the first time, blind. It's my first-ever Soulsborne game but after really enjoying other games that have been compared to Dark Souls for a variety of reasons (encouraging exploration, interconnected world, lore/plot that is drip-fed through sparse dialogue and item descriptions, combat that is challenging but fundamentally fair, environmental storytelling, themes of light/dark not necessarily corresponding one-to-one with good/evil, "dark fantasy" setting in general, secrets upon secrets upon secrets) I decided to give it a shot.

Have been completely blind so please no spoilers, even though this game is now 12 years old. All I know about the lore is... uh... Aviators music. Really enjoying having context for songs I've loved for years. Fading Light really hits now, it's awesome.

Thoughts below.

[Edit: an absolute shit-ton of thoughts below, sorry y'all, it just kept going.]

...I am loving this game, y'all. I understand why it's a classic and damn, I think I'm gonna end up playing through the whole series. Eventually. Too bad Bloodborne doesn't have a PC port, because I hear it has a more explicitly Lovecraftian vibe and I am here for that aesthetic.

...Will say that this is entirely blind save for one googling which amounted to "hey I consistently suck at bosses that require me to split my focus because I have a hard time tracking moving things on a screen, but... Ornstein and Smough are a pain in the ass for everyone, right? right? they are exactly the kind of boss I tend to be very bad at but it isn't just me right??"

(very glad to see the answer was yes, finally gave in and summoned another player for help. Thank you Percy, whoever you are. I think I could beat them solo, I was getting either of them in their giant forms to about half-health pretty consistently, but by then it had been far, far too many hours and I have real-world things to do, I really couldn't spare the time to keep trying. for now. maybe later.)

(felt kinda bad about it for a bit but then with the Lordvessel in hand holy fuck I have fast travel now and it feels amazing I went into the magma-y depths and took care of the... whats-his-name, the guy who acted just like the Stray Demon. Having beat the Stray Demon, it only took a couple tries, and then I one-shot the one after it, whom I think was called the Centipede Demon but whom I have dubbed Crawly.)

Currently throwing myself at the Bed of Chaos, who feels more "environmental hazard" than "boss" but after the rest of the... gauntlet?... kind of a nice break.

(Admittedly I realized late that it was a gauntlet - I beat Ceaseless Discharge right after Quelaag and then learned there was nowhere to go afterwards, whoops.)

Lore Musings:

(Look I know I'm probably super off - this game is very old and has sequels and I'm sure people have spent literal months of their lives piecing it all together, and believe you me I will be watching lore videos... after I have finished the game. By which I here mean "gotten all achievements". Which, google tells me [I like to check these things] will take three playthroughs. So it'll be a while, and it's fun to piece things together on my own! Feel free to hint cheekily at things that are right and wrong here but please don't spoil.)

I've been told I am to succeed Lord Gwyn and take his place to "link the first flame" and prolong the Age of Fire. Mm. Right. So. That seems lovely. Really, honestly, lovely - the world is beautiful. Worth keeping it going, I think.

(I had an initial theory that, having kinda passed its natural endpoint, the whole world was basically "undead" - lumbering on after it was supposed to have ended. So that prolonging it would effectively curse everyone to eventually go Hollow. But it sounds like "linking"/succeeding Gwyn would actually return things to how they were a millennia ago and solve this whole undead problem.)

......However. Two issues there.

First Issue: One of my favorite games of all time is Hollow Knight, which I've heard is rather DS-inspired. I definitely see how. Not just the metroidvania design and emphasis on challenging bosses and drip-fed lore, but themes. Light and dark. A sacrifice to keep something at bay, who is failing in their duty, who needs to be replaced. Now, I'm not going to rely on a completely different game to inform my understanding of this one's lore, but...

... But... well, this isn't a permanent solution, is it? Something like a thousand years ago, as I understand it so far, shit went down. People started becoming undead, Gwyn went off to Do Something About It. (Also the Witch of Izalith fell to Chaos around that time? Will get there.) Havel went Hollow and was locked in his tower, presumably by Gwyn (which was my original clue that Gwyn/the Lords were still alive after their whole Lords vs. Dragons showdown, since it meant Gwyn had to still have been around when the zombie problem began - love this piecemeal lore).

Gwyn "linked the flame" (the First Flame? what did he link it to? current bet is the Shrine, since that is what it is named - maybe that has something to do with why its Firekeeper, of all of them, seems to have some terrible penance she is performing). Now it's my turn? But Gwyn was a Lord (whatever that means? current guess is Lord=God but we've heard of more gods than just the four, so honestly I'm gonna base my Lord=God assumption entirely on what happens when I collect a Lord's soul and whether they look like the other unique souls in my inventory, since that would imply they're a similar kind of soul).

I am not a Lord. I'm just some dude. a flawed vessel, if you will.

Meaning that eventually - and probably less than 1000 years from now, someone is going to have to succeed me. (Was Gwyn even the first?)

How far will this go? How long can this last?

We're prolonging the inevitable.

(Also what does "linking the fire" entail and is this a Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas situation.)

Now, you could easily frame "prolonging the inevitable" as either a good or bad thing.

(1) Theme of persistence and hope: Even if the end is inevitable, isn't it worth fighting to drive it back as long as possible? Just because everything ends doesn't mean we shouldn't give up and wait for it to happen. We must fight to keep the fire lit, as long as we can.

(2) Theme of acceptance and change: Yes, everything ends and the end is inevitable - fighting that will only lead to despair. Ends are not bad, change is not bad, and letting change occur is not giving up - it is only witnessing the start of a new age. Even if we can bring it back to its former glory in some day, is the world not, by this point, undead?

Is that a bad thing to be?

Even if it isn't, is there new life that we are preventing from existing?

Now of course you can argue that there is not new life! What is to come is darkness! It is devouring, consumption, end, ash, blindness! (Funny, though, isn't it how all of those things can come also from wildfires.) Dark is bad. Obviously. Of course we don't want the end to come, when all it will bring is despair.

But then, that's the Second Issue:

"Falling to dark", the end of the age of fire, it's all presented as quite horrible. Fair enough! It does, indeed, seem to be! Certainly darkness is a corrupting force - Gwyn's soul (?) split into four, Four Kings, falling to dark - don't know what that's about yet, I imagine I have to find some way to drain New Londo to find out.

Point is, darkness is bad! Very bad! Everyone is quite insistent upon this! Dark=bad. Falling to it = bad.

....

........Except I'm in Lost Izalith right now and it's. uh.

not gonna lie, it's pretty bad here.

and it's very, very bright.

Here, in this lava-lit city, where Solaire himself found a "sun" so blindingly beautiful he lost himself to it. Here, where the witches who had mastered fire - mastered light - fell just as hard.

Light, it seems, is just as corrupting a force.

"Chaos" is more confusing - I think it's effectively the primordial base from which light and dark arise, aka "Disparity", will have to watch the opening cutscene for a third time. But that doesn't seem quite right since seems to be more light-aligned, what with the chaos fire pyromancies and seeing how the witch and her daughters were corrupted by chaos. not dark. they did not fall to dark.

Again, haven't figured out what's going on with the Kings yet, but...

...I am not convinced that dark is evil.

And I'm not convinced that clinging to light is the right thing to do.

Fantasy likes to paint darkness as stagnation and death, light as life and change.

But as I understand it, both light and dark arose from Disparity, which had something to do with the First Flame. They were created at the same time. There is no such thing as light without a corresponding concept of darkness. They are equals.

Stagnation, emptiness, those aren't characteristics of darkness, they're characteristics of the ancient world, the one the dragons ruled/existed in. Dragons which might (?) have been made of stone, the #1 metaphor for something firm and unchanging and eternal (geologists everywhere just rolled their eyes). Eternity, immortality, that predates light and dark.

The concept of decay and death requires a concept of life, of change. A world of dark is not a world without change. Things still died in the Age of Fire; it is not eternal. (that's rather the whole "problem", actually). Hell, Nito is apparently "first of the dead" and he was born of flame like the other Lords as per opening cinematic. Things will, presumably, still live in some future Age of Darkness.

...the entire point of disparity, of fire, was the introduction of the possibility of change.

........so it kind of feels that the perpetuation of this world, a world of Fire Unchanging, would be just... a shallow and ill-fitting recreation of How It Used To Be during the age before disparity came to be.

Like. Look. Uninformed blind-playthrough timeline here: There was Stagnation, all stone and dragons. Then, Disparity was born, Change, and with it Light and Dark. The Souls of Lords were found, and used Light to fight against Stagnation. (I feel like Dark would have worked just as well.) They built a world of Light.

Now everyone is upset that Change is happening? My dudes you built this place out of one half of Change incarnate. It does that! It's almost as if you didn't really want Change, you just wanted a new world of Stagnation in which you ruled as gods.

A new eternal kingdom, made of fire instead of stone.

But fire isn't stone. Fires go out, eventually. And are rekindled.

....Funny, it's almost like a classic dark-light-dark-light cycle. The story is so close to "there was dark, then light, now dark is coming again and everyone fond of light is trying to stop it".

But it's not.

Because there hasn't been dark - at least, not a full-on Age of it. I think. I dunno, there are two more games and I haven't finished this one yet but...

...I suspect that that kind of cycle is exactly what would happen if this age ended! Dark is born of disparity, too! It'd end eventually, and a new Age of Fire would be born, and so on, ad infinitum, until even change itself changes and the cycle is broken, because an infinite cycle is really just its own kind of stagnation and one day someone will have to make that choice.

But that's not this story. This cycle hasn't even started, because fire is clung to so tightly.

Maybe that's not a bad thing. Again, infinite cycles, not great, but... more natural, certainly. And if dark is destruction without rebirth, decay without fertilization of new soil, despair and suffering without relief, then, well, I can't say I disagree.

...............but is it though? all I have been told of it comes from its kings and those who followed them. maybe they are corrupt and unwilling to give up their power. or maybe, more likely, they are only afraid of the dark.

....We are afraid of the dark when we do not know what lurks in it. Souls of Lords, found in the flame - they're children of light, then? What do I know so far, that is born from the dark? Anything?

........yeah I have no idea if I am reading really really really too far into this but from what I know of games that take inspiration from this and from what osmosis of its Themes has entered pop culture I really don't think I am. (and hell, even if I am, it's super fun)

I don't know if I'm going to have the choice to succeed Gwyn or not but I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is yes given that the achievements list gives two endings named "To Link the Fire" and "The Dark Lord" (the latter of which... uh... vaguely ominous)

also side note what the fuck is humanity

and also talking about Lords why has no one mentioned the furtive pygmy since the opening cutscene. "so easily forgotten indeed"

Four souls for the Lordvessel: Nito, the Witch, Gwyn in four pieces via the Kings…. and Seath? The dragon? Not the pygmy. What happened to the pygmy.

[rewatched cutscene] "then from the Dark, they came" are those humans. those look like humans.

something is very weird here.

WAIT FUCK corollary to 49

"Then from the Dark, they came" humans. found lords in the flame. are humans are born of dark like lords are of light?

.....well what the fuck does that mean?

if lords=gods, are humans "dark" things that have been ruled by light for millennia? i mean, that's not so bad, light is lovely, big fan of fire, I am a bona fide swamp-dwelling pyromancer fire is my jam 10/10 would solve all my problems with arson wait are we the fucking "dark souls"

I mean we exist during this Age of Fire, but we're also turning undead. A problem the gods don't (?) seem to be having.

…We are afraid of the dark when we do not know what lurks in it.

What if we are what lurks in it?

...........alright now I'm reading too much into this. But I LOVE this kind of lore where things all just feel… kind of off? As if there is some big picture you can't -quite- see.

I am under no illusion these questions'll be answered perfectly in-game, and I'm well aware there are 12 years of figuring all this out for me to catch up on! But damn if it isn't fun to specul-

THE HUMANITY ITEM. IS A FUCKING. BOSS SOUL ITEM. IN INVERTED COLORS.

.........

Gripes:

...not many. But the one thing. My nemesis. In this game. Is the god-damned keyboard menu controls. Look, I get that this was made for controller! I do! But I do not own one! Navigating the weapon/item selection is one thing, I'm [checks steam] 84.7 hours in [...oh god, really?? holy fuck. dear lord.] and have finally gotten a handle on that!

But the button to unequip an item in the equipment screen is the same as the button to switch to inspection in the... item screen. whatever you call it. and I suspect this would actually be the same for controller.

How many times have I unequipped something when I meant to look at it? many. 84.7 hour in, how often do I do this still? usually.

...also I only found that bonfire in Sen's Fortress via combination of friendly player message and sheer dumb luck holy crap that would have been a nightmare y'all didn't need to make them that hidden.

......also it'd be very nice if NPCs had some sort of indicator of their name, or mentioned it more than once. I remember Solaire (...RIP, poor dude found his new sun, I carry his talisman in solidarity) and Quelana (because it's so close to Quelaag) and Eingyi (he's mentioned in an item description and the whole... egg... thing haunted me for ages before I met him) and Sif (because why would you make me kill a good pup, guard dog wolf with sword, best friend, she [? female name in Norse myth, not sure if character is also female] was protecting her master's damned grave she did not deserve this) and for some reason Laurentius (dunno why that one stuck) but everyone else gets monikers. Onionman. Bird Friend. Sad Friend. Blacksmith. Bigger Blacksmith. Deader Blacksmith. Sadder Blacksmith. Cheshire Cat Lady.

(Frampt is remembered now because Gwynevere says his name but in my heart he is still Mr. Teeth.)

..........yeah that's all I got, honestly, I have loved everything else about this game.

WAIT NO

ONE MORE THING THAT I REALLY HATE

so there are all these player messages before female characters with no tops reading "great chest ahead"

ha ha very amusing yes chuckle chuckle

BUT

you know who has a very well-defined chest on full display right there in your face and for whom I have never seen a single "great chest ahead" message?

SMOUGH.

i realize that he is wearing armor but i have no reason to believe it isn't form-fitting and true-to-life. dude may as well be topless. there is no smough boobs appreciation and i will not stand for it.

To conclude, I present two pieces of evidence:

"Since his sores were inflamed by lava from birth, his witch sisters gave him this special ring." - Orange Charred Ring item description

"...the Witch of Izalith and her Daughters of Chaos..." - opening cinematic

Diversity win! Ceaseless Discharge is trans.

[feartheoldblog]

OI

OPEN UP! I GOT ASKS!

8. What are your 3 favourite areas and why?

16. Who is the most underrated NPC in your opinion?

29. What are your 3 favourite non-boss enemies? (behave)

35. What ingame faction would you belong to?

HELLO BIM I HOPE YOU ARE BLESSED WITH TESCO BAGUETTES ON THIS FINE DAY

8. What are your 3 favourite areas and why?

Okay so in no particular order:

Castle Cainhurst (Bloodborne): I don’t even know if I have to explain tbh it’s a super cool dilapidated vampire castle covered in snow. The lore surrounding it is really interesting as well, as are the enemy types. Also ice pop grandpa is pretty cool 👍

Irithyll of the Boreal Valley (DS3): It has this really uneasy feeling attached to it. The Sulyvahn’s Beast that attacks you on the bridge is ofc the first sign that something isn’t right but the emptiness of it is so unsettling. Until you bump into the knights and get murdered (rite of passage). The lore, once again, is impeccable, and the architecture is magnificent. Furthermore, the little ghosts of the Irithyll people are super eerie but also tragic :’)

Prison Town (Elden Ring): This was a difficult choice because I love the Haligtree aesthetics (hate it’s enemies) but I had to choose PT because I enjoy mostly everything about it. The Godskin Noble is a bit annoying as a boss but they’re easy dealt with with a bit of patience! The view of a literal town semi-submerged in lava is amazing. Rykard, you are a genius. A terrifying one, though.

16. Who is the most underrated NPC in your opinion?

I think everyone in BB gets a decent amount of attention bc there’s like 10 NPCs so I’m gonna have to say Irina from DS3. Her and Eygon’s dynamic is really interesting and I really want to know what she did to get sent there. Of course there’s the firekeeper thing but Eygon seems really perturbed about coming here and insults her specifically. Also she’s just super nice. I can never bring myself to learn the dark incants from her bc it upsets her </3 Also the braille makes her happy.

29. What are your 3 favourite non-boss enemies? (behave)

Life is so unfair when I have to behave 💔💔💔

Okay:

1) Corvian Knights (DS3)

2) Ringed City Knights (DS3)

3) Second Generation Albinaurics (Elden Ring) - my silly little guys

DS3 had the best enemy selection honestly

Do I enjoy fighting most of these? No, because they are evil and destroy me. Are they cool? Absolutely.

35. What ingame faction would you belong to?

Bloodborne: I’d love to be an Workshop Hunter. I feel like you have a great selection of weapons to choose from, the armour is stylish and you’ve got some of the strongest hunters to support you. Realistically though probably the Choir (I am too asthmatic).

Dark Souls: The DS world absolutely terrifies me so I’d hate to be in any of the covenants but if I had to choose I’d probably say the Watchdogs of Farron. I wanna make the dead dog happy :( (also they’re basically DS1 forest hunters. kinda sucks that we don’t get the flip ring though)

[lidrens]

Soulsborne asks: 8, 9, 16, 23?

this became rambly so under read more it goes

8. Do you have any fond coop memories? Does a specific moment stand out to you?

yeah you know from high-level dungeons in bb come all kinds of things. so on my platinum character ive also farmed all kinds of gems and shit, and 99% of coop i do happens in the chalice dungeons with people just as insanely overleveled as me.

...that's until hunters of hunters roll in and you realise that whoever invaded your ass is probably just as high a level as you or more (which is around 300) and you're just. well that'll be a fun fight huh.

i have a vivid memory of a crow wannabe showing up and pulling out a tonitrus, the Most Okayest Weapon Ever. they chased me around ihyll and died to a fireball trap. fuxking lmao.

another one is from ds3 and it's about a greatbow user who fucking soloed midir, the big bad fuckoff huge dragon for me on my dark character run. i was doing like 20 damage? and then this guy rolls in and puts the fear of god back right into my heart. oh it was amazing.

9. What are your three favourite weapons and why?

im not gonna list all of the games because i can't remember all weapons right now, so:

- the blade of mercy. it's so worth learning how to effectively use. it's fast, it does a respectable amount of damage on a good skill build and it encourages very high mobility and less of R1 mashing.

- the onyx blade. everything about it is immaculate, from the caduceus aesthetic to the black flames, to its speed. i love how light it feels to wield too, as if its barely holding together from everything its original wielder been through.

- morgott's cursed curved greatsword. it's very satisfying to use and to land the skill attack in succession, also i absolutely love curved greatswords in elden ring. the design of the blade and the introduction of it, as the wood falls off it from the sheer force of morgott's grip? hhoh. i want this thing in my house not gonna lie.

- honorable mention of estoc, the weapon i use in every souls game until i find something i like for my specific build. also it fucking carried me through my first ds2 run, what a great weapon.

16. What are your favourite areas?

ds1: new londo and anor londo. all of the headcanons aside, i can't help but wonder what they were like when they were alive. and in their current states they're much like yourself, undead and long hollow, having forgotten what it is to be a home.

ds2: THE GUTTER. lighting up all the sconces is something i look forward to every run. and with the heartbeat... the place is so unsettling and beautiful in the dark, i just spend a lot of time wandering around and looking at the edges of structures peeking out from the dark. the runner up is shulva. i would love to live there before it went to shit.

ds3: i like carthus catacombs, sue me. mainly because invasions in there are very fun (for me). irithyll is okay. the ringed city is more okayer but it takes longer to get there, and the only reason i like two of those is their aesthetics. idk ds3 lore.

bloodborne: ...the hunter's nightmare. the ruined and warped city of yharnam in sickly daylight, drowned in blood and knowing nobody but those who spill it. to be fair i like most of all bloodborne locations with one petty exclusion (fuck you hemwick). i wish the castle cainhurst was bigger on the inside as well as the outside, but i guess i will have to do with the castle sol </3

elden ring: fuck all of you, caelid is beautiful and haunting, a festering and living grave of a land. i like it a moderate amount. i have not spent hours obsessively taking pictures of various plants and creatures there. i am normal about caelid. ...on another note, i think leyndell is the best area fromsoft ever made as a dungeon and aesthetics wise.

23. What is your favourite fashion souls?

oh man im kind of tired of listing every game, so I'll go with top three outfits i have on some of my characters:

- nights cavalry set and nox monk headpiece.

- tomb prospector set and yharnam hunter hat (or maria's hat).

- loyce set.

[itstheclaud]

Actually I’ll have you know, I DO have other hyper-fixations, I just don’t ever talk about them… many of them because there is simply nothing to say…

For example…

CULTIST SIMULATOR:

I am utterly OBSESSED with the aesthetics and lore of Cultist Simulator, and I have a near encyclopedic knowledge of it’s mechanics… but like… what is there for me to say…?

Wow this card game sure is fascinating! Let me tell you about why The Witch and Sister and The Sister and Witch count as two different Hours, or how I think it works that The Sun in Rags was The Sun in Splendor the first history, but is no longer in our history?

Am I supposed to say that King Crucible probably fucks? I mean, he does, but that’s like… the start and end of the thought.

SUBMACHINE:

I absolutely ADORE the Submachine series of point and click games, but gushing about it is like gushing to a wall. NOBODY has played these games, and I have only ever managed to convince a total of ONE person to try them…

Not to mention, at the moment, Mateusz is remaking the entire series outside of Flash, which is gonna fix a bunch of the issues some of the games had, so I don’t really wanna yell and shout and sing their praises until that’s done, because I want people to have the best possible experience with these games…

But oh my GOD do I wish I had someone to discuss Submachine lore with, like HOLY SHIT. I love this series so much and it’s so unknown it breaks my heart. Did you know Markiplier played the first (and arguably, the worst) game in the series, and then never came back to it? I was honestly SO betrayed. Shit sucks man.

BESIEGE:

I mean, really, what is there to say about Besiege? That it’s my most played game on steam, and that I have spent hours building machines with it? But like, for what? What am I gonna do with that? I’m not showing them off. They don’t DO anything… I make them for me, and then they sit on my computer forever.

LEGO:

Lego.

HOUSE OF LEAVES:

HOLY SHIT THIS BOOK IS [Redacted]

Go purchase a physical copy of it right now. That’s all I can say.

KITTY HORRORSHOW:

Honestly I like, legit just don’t know what to say about Kitty Horrorshow… I just genuinley really like her games, they are spooky and good… that’s all I got…

DARKEST DUNGEON:

Once again, game good… I have played it lots… what else is there to say, besides I know it like the back of my hand…? That Wayne June has an amazing voice and I want him to describe unknowable abominations to me as I fall asleep? Everybody knows that already. We all want it, don’t lie!

Cosmic horror in a gothic horror setting is fantastic and it works perfectly and the fact that like this and Bloodborne are the only well-known things to do it is a tragedy.

Idk fam.

[katyspersonal]

What is a piece of soulsborne lore that just utterly drives you mad?

Not going to lie, it is a hard question.. I just like or at least accept everything in these games? There ARE some "would have been more fun/deep/interesting" moments on my end, but canon decision is never BAD in my eyes! But my mind is legit blank in terms of "getting mad"! (Unless you meant mad as in, madness and not as in, anger?)

The closest to being angry I've gotten was the thing about Radahn as Miquella's consort! And, no, it is not about hassle of some Malenia-hating Redditors "getting validated 😥" or #shouldhavebeengodwyn thing! The story is NOT concerned by petty fandom infighting and its perception should not be dependent on it! And Godwyn was ALREADY in love with Fortissax! When he wasn't, he was getting so gay with his Knights that they straight up rebranded into Death Knights instead of complaining about something-something against the order! He was TAKEN!!! Cope and SEATH! xD /hs

It is... hard to explain, but it felt like a wasted concept! I realized that I'd prefer Miquella of all characters to not have a pair in canon. The God that wants to embrace everyone and love everyone should not pick a favourite. He is not ALLOWED to pick a favourite! Conceptually! It appears that Greater Will set up a standard for anyone who wants to shape the laws of nature to have a pair, right? Placidusax was a partner of previous Elden Ring's owner, Marika had two consorts and Two Fingers sent you to be the third... Looks like the rule is unbreakable, right? Except for one character...

Ranni was set on walking her "dark path" to Godhood alone, and we had to do a bit of insisting to join her! So, all in all, Miquella needed a consort because he wanted a consort! Divinity is scary, and it must be even scarier in solitude, so, I understand! Like, I sure can't even tell the guy to "grow up" for AT LEAST two reasons hfhfjdjg

But, I think he should have forsaken the biases. To love everyone or no one, to be omnipresent... Heck, keep the whole plot about a vow and clinging to Radahn, just with the plot twist of him getting "enlightnment" that he should not embrace one above everyone else! I know that he discarded his love, not his promise. Well? Discard it NOW, then? He should not at least because Radahn would be his weapon? But he wants a world WITHOUT war and battles! I don't know, I just feel a strange type of jealousy I can't explain well... Having a fav doesn't fit his concept of divinity for me. In fact, it strains the vibe of being "embraced" by him because there is always this Third Guy just standing there (menacingly). What, he will force everyone to not just be friends, but also polyamorous now? I mean he might as welllol hfhggvfj Argh. Him not being able to overcome some weakness, fear, clinginess and bias in spite of all is not a BAD story, but it could have been better? Yet I still wonder whether I am right or my preferred idea is a boring cliché and I misunderstood Miyazaki's genius of subverting it! Nor I know why what I am feeling is def a type of jealousy. Oh nooo, has he charmed ME? LITTLE PRICK!!!

Here are a few other things that I am not as happy with, but nothing critical:

Fanart sabotage: Like not making it clear enough that the guy from Scholar of the First Sin cover that holds the crown is Aldia, not Vendrick! He misses Vendrick's trademark braids (that were present even in his youth, mind you!) and has wizardy aesthetic instead of Vendrick's warrior one! Or making the idea of the statue behind Memory Altar in Bloodborne being Caryll easily skippable because this asset is also used literally everywhere in Chalice Dungeons! Or not placing Gold Pendant on the bearded guy's statue in Research Hall, so one has to admit Laurence had a beautiful beard gfhhfj Little things like this, that guaranteed absence of some cool fanart rooted in the source material! Not lore but Fromsoft's way to present things, but still!

Skipping what Demigods Vyke and Bernahl fought: I love, love, LOVE the way Miyazaki deliberately removes some pieces of the puzzle from the story that IS full in his head, to imitate his childhood experience of reading foreign books but not knowing many words! It is an interesting approach, allowing people to fill the gaps with their own imagination! But in THIS case particularly, I didn't like it. 🤔 This is a bit TOO important to miss out on. Like, bro... there were 4 deceased Shardbearers nothing and no one ever mentioned! The whole lore acts as if they never existed! They erased this part of lore so hard it ripped a HOLE in the page!

Creighton reappearing in DS3: I do not dislike what the writers ended up doing to him, but.. at the DS2 time, there was a room to speculate that Creighton was not the unhinged murderer he appeared as! But instead, a trope of a guy who just has negative charisma and SPEAKS like a serial killer! And that maybe Pate actually framed him or something like that! Creighton's lore was kind of vague in DS2! Creighton doesn't even have Mirrah accent, ffs! You know who does though? Pate! Buuuuuut, in DS3, they just straight up confirmed that yeah, he just likes killing. There is no mystery or complexity to him now, he is JUST like that. Sure, why not, but also why? ;-;

Gnarrl being patched out: Keeping the concept of Dragonic Sentinel to a unique character was a way cooler idea! Even if they just could not come up with a better boss to gatekeep Leyendell/Death, at least keep his name as someone who started the trend and others followed!

Put him back. NOW.

Characters disappearing: Again, not really a lore thing, but a presentation thing! But I am talking things like, missing out that the "female archer" in the woods in Dark Souls 1 IS Pharis herself, or that there is a stated female character Knight Amerix amongst the Forest covenant! Why people need to look through Japanese guide to know this info? Or missing the fact that Queen of Lothric is not Gwynevere? (Granted, this is a fault of English localization...) I'll dig out every single obscure gremlin from under the ground!!! Don't fuck with me!!!!!

Priscilla being discarded at birth: I can't criticize this idea at all, it works for the story and as a perfect reflection of how society of Light worked! But I can FEEL mad about it! Gwyn spared a baby dragon (Midir) on condition of having them be of help, Gwyndolin is here, Yorshka is here despite also being half-dragon and also having connection with Lifehunt ability, so tell me why-

Tell me why ONE baby of Seath just straight up got abandoned? Based on what feature others never got? This is needlessly cruel! Like, yes, it works for what it does, but I still will strangle all of the characters involved in this decision! Granted, I gave it a bandaid of saying Seath and Caitha had Yorshka after Gwyn's death now that they were left together in grief, but it doesn't exempt Seath from Priscilla being ditched! Shira I think is also his daughter ("daughter of the duke", also has white hair in concept art and Sam hair as Yorshka in game) but she is doing fine! So, he just dislikes children who remind him of his mortality? What about Yorshka, then? Is she here because she formed as a dragon "differently"? Full disrespect to this cringe looser 🤦‍♂️

Hilde being dead: They've ruined perfect Moonrithyll x Hilde yuri is what they did. Literally the only Fire Knight to be dead and it had to be her. Why could not we have just fought her as a unique mob? :pensive:

_______________

Okaaaay I think this should be it! If you wanted me to finally say something besides devout praise to Soulsborne, I hope that was enough? xD

[bestworstcase]

what are some of your eldritch horror inspirations?

oh hm lets see

in no particular order: 

my first introduction to the genre was actually a kim possible fanfic series? i remember reading it as a teen and being like woah

the discworld series to an extent? pratchett’s riffs on the genre are excellent, in particular those from later novels in the series eg the summoning dark. (thud! was actually my first discworld novel for some baffling reason and i spent the whole book like “i have no idea what’s going on but i love this” skjdffklshsdk). this has also definitely had an impact on my lean into the more humanist or optimistic end of the scale

gideon the ninth is not eldritch horror per se but hot damn if it doesn’t have some glorious imagery. 

annihilation (the book much moreso than the film, though the film has some nice visuals too). i keep meaning to read the other books in the trilogy but haven’t got around to it yet. the crawler hoo boy 👀👀👀

a pretty large assortment of books and short stories and plays actually. probably too many to list really; not all of them are eldritch horror themselves but anything with the right atmosphere or aesthetic or lore tends to work its way into my brain as an inspiration for my own particular blend of eldritch horror and dark fantasy; as a random selection off the top of my head, poe’s entire oeuvre, the road, the bacchae, euripedes in general actually, pretty much anything that was inspired by the year without a summer lmao, the dragonoak trilogy and sam farren’s work in general... magical realism anything, marisol comes to mind in particular just for its extra closeness to theatre of the absurd... 

this one is a bit silly and honestly mostly just because it’s the Queen Hyperfixation and i will find a way to connect it to every single one of my other interests somehow, but alice’s adventures in wonderland, through the looking glass, and the hunting of the snark have all had a pretty marked influence on my development as a writer and have absolutely contributed to how i approach eldritch horror tropes in my own writing; and also nonsense literature is basically absurdist eldritch horror for children. 

(especially the hunting of the snark, tbh. like go read it now if you haven’t before; it’s a treat and it’s gay and boojums are 100% just your classic eldritch abomination presented through a light-heartedly witty, child-friendly lens.)

relatedly: i love the american mcgee alice games. they riff on some aiw-related tropes that irritate me but idc that much because the atmosphere and aesthetic is just. so good and the gameplay is fun

relatedly again: a blade so black and the subsequent books in the trilogy (one of which isn’t due out until next year i’m suffering) do some really great stuff with nightmares as creatures that are empowered by humanity’s fears and, esp in the second book, the weird mystery of wonderland itself. and is just a neat urban fantasy take on alice in wonderland in general.

pathygen’s work and especially strings has been a big source of inspiration for me in the last, like, eight or nine months since we met. read it.

adhd distractibility has me stalling out in the middle of season 3 of the magnus archives but. yknow. it’s my jam 👌

like, theatre of the absurd and theatre of cruelty? in particular i recall a production of waiting for godot which i saw in college that leaned very hard into a horror-esque reading of the play and that was kind of a game-changer for my own creative outlook; in general these forms of theatre and the experiences they seek to evoke and the narratives they center share a lot of emotional overlap with the experience of good eldritch horror and, like aiw, have had a significant influence on my writing generally.

darkest dungeon is really fun and has a great aesthetic and strikes exactly the right balance between bleak and hopeful. the crimson court dlc especially was a total game-changer for how i think about vampires because holy shit

it’s not eldritch horror per se but subnautica is like. its ability to provoke dread is second only to the trial of blindness in hellblade (which is also def an inspiration, though again not eldritch horror per se. the enemy designs are really good tho) and the creature designs and lore are super cool and it does an excellent job of of getting across that... feeling of being insignificant in a vast uncaring cosmos (or in this case: ocean planet infected with virulent water-borne bacteria) and that’s enough to make it like, eldritch horror-adjacent in my mind.

tyranny is? another odd one in that it isn’t eldritch horror by any stretch of the imagination but idk. there’s something about the lore surrounding the archons and the spires + oldwalls that speaks to me and i love that so much of it is simply left unexplained. not in a way that feels half-assed or like the lore wasn’t well thought out, but rather in a way that truly gets across the feeling of an ancient civilization whose culture and magic/technology have decayed and been suppressed to the point of being completely lost by the time of the game; that’s a hard balance to strike and it’s totally my jam. 

my gf got me into pathologic and i am veeeery slowly playing my way through the original game rn and holy shit. holy shit. the atmosphere and the slowly unfolding lore and increasingly bizarre plague itself and the despair and the grind it’s all so good.

i still need to actually play bloodborne, it’s been on my list forever, but every image and video i’ve ever seen is. hoo boy. hoooooo boy. 

and honestly??? growing up as a very non-spiritual person in an evangelical family i think definitely predisposed me toward this genre because, idk. god as presented by evangelical christians is an eldritch abomination and i don’t have the spiritual inclination to convince me otherwise. so that’s something i draw from a bit as well lol

also as a final note i think it’s v important when talking about eldritch/cosmic/lovecraftian horror and inspirations thereof to say that hp lovecraft (and many of the contemporaries of his who participated in the expanded/shared universe we now call the cthulhu mythos) was virulently racist and xenophobic and this absolutely had an impact on his creative work. they codified this genre and that means that racism and xenophobia is kind of baked in to a lot of the basic tropes and they must be very rigorously, very critically evaluated when we use them to create new fiction. 

[ranger-report]

Thoughts On: Mortal Shell  Open Beta

I want to start this off by stating up front that I am not a fan of Dark Souls in any way, shape, or form. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Dark Souls is bad per se. I actually really like the world the games have built up. I watch videos on the lore, the environments, the bosses, and I find it all thoroughly fascinating, it's just that when I play video games I like to enjoy playing them, and playing Dark Souls is like bashing my head against a wall repeatedly because I'm using my forehead in lieu of a hammer and these goddamn nails just won't go in the wall. Oh, I've tried to get into it; I've put in two separate six-hour runs, along with diving into Bloodborne because I'd heard that game rewards players who are more aggressive vs the measured style of Souls, but no matter what, I just don't have the patience to be punished over and over again by a game that actively hates me. So imagine my surprise when I not only got into Mortal Shell, but actually persisted to play through the entire demo.

Mortal Shell, developed by Cold Symmetry, is a Souls clone and proud of it. Currently, the open beta is available to download via the Epic Game Store. Pre-purchase is up and running for $29.99. The first trailer was released on April 1st of this year, but make no mistake, the game is no joke. Far from it. For those coming in late to the party, Dark Souls's gameplay revolves around slow, methodical combat in which the player has to read enemy patterns in order to know when to strike, parry, dodge, etc. Any enemy in the game can potentially be a bad time, meaning that if the player gets a little too cocky and impatient, a solid run can so south pretty fucking quickly if they're not paying attention to timing. That's literally what the game is: a massive, calculated game of timing, fueled by trial and error. If you die – and you will, frequently – you're sent back to the last checkpoint you camped at or visited or lit up. You'll have one chance to forge your way back to the point where you died, and reclaim all the currency you worked so hard to accumulate, but if you die again before you do, all of it is lost. So essentially we're working with a complex risk and reward system, in which any fight could be your last, any moment could turn ugly, and your character is having the worst fucking day they could imagine.

Mortal Shell takes this formula and puts a bit of a spin on it. Sure, you've got the health bar, the stamina bar – which depletes any time you attack, dodge, or run – the quick items, and the ability to parry and commit heavy attacks if your timing is right. But what it does differently is the character system itself. Most Souls games involve the player creating a character and slowly leveling up as time goes by. You could become a super beast depending on what you choose to invest in. Shell puts you in charge of a Foundling, basically a nameless/faceless lost spirit, who can inhabit the bodies of fallen warriors it comes across. Each warrior – called a Shell – has different attributes which can be leveled up. Some Shells are faster, some are tougher, and each one has their pros and cons to fit your play style. In the beta, we get two, named Harros and Tiel. Harros is a well-rounded fighter, your basic bitch knight class, while Tiel is more of a rogue, which a much higher stamina bar but can be hurt a lot quicker. Regardless of which Shell you choose to inhabit, you're carrying around what has to be one of the most badass swords I've seen in a video game in quite some time. Called the Hallowed Sword, it's two handed and looks like it could ruin pretty much anything if you put your mind to it. It has a secondary attack where it turns into a goddamn spear for massive damage. There's another weapon in the beta, a hammer and chisel, but I somehow missed that in my playthrough. I'm eager to dive back in and find it, but for now we'll focus on the sword. Sweet Jesus, that sword. If a fantasy game had the equivalent of a double-barreled shotgun, it would be the Hallowed Sword.

There's also a catch to hitching a ride in the Shells: if you take too much damage, the Foundling will be knocked out of the Shell, vulnerable and weak. You'll have an opportunity to get back into the Shell, and if you do, it's an instant HP refill and you're back in the fight. Your Shell can die twice, but if you're knocked out of the Shell a second time, it's game over and back to the checkpoint. This is inventive because dying isn't immediately a punishment, and it's also neat because the Foundling can still carry the Hallowed Sword while trying to get back to the Shell. I have a feeling YouTube is going to be full of No Shell Runs in which players go hard as only the Foundling, chopping, parrying, dodging, somehow escaping damage. And make no mistake, the naked Foundling will die in one hit without a Shell. Having a safety net like this automatically makes gameplay more forgiving and also more intense. Say you fuck up and get knocked out of your Shell early on, leaving you with just one more chance to get through to the next checkpoint knowing if you get knocked down again, you're done. That's a rush unlike many I've played in video games. Also the frantic panic of running and dodging as the Foundling, surrounded by enemies, trying to get back to your Shell, desperate to stay alive, is shockingly effective.

However, there's another weapon in the Foundling's arsenal: the ability to Harden. Pressing the left trigger instantly turns the Foundling into a rock solid statue, unable to move, but also unable to take damage for one single hit. Once the hit lands, the Harden goes away and the Foundling starts moving again. What is absolutely wild about this are the potential combat tactics that can arise. Because if the Foundling is moving or attacking when the Harden goes into effect, they will immediately resume what they were doing when the Harden is gone. So say you're going in for a light strike, followed up by a heavy strike, and before you can land the heavy strike the enemy goes into attack animation. You hit the Harden, freezing mid-swing, and the enemy connects – and then your heavy strike animation resumes, smashing into the enemy, staggering them, freeing you up to either dodge away or get in another attack. Some enemies will be staggered just from hitting your Hardened form, so even if you're not mid-swing, you'll have a window of opportunity to get in and sucker punch. But Harden has a cooldown period, so if you use it at the wrong time, you'll have a wait a minute before you can use it again. And come out of it at the wrong time, you could be facing the business end of a bad day.

What initially drew me to Mortal Shell was definitely not the concept of a Souls game, but rather that Cold Symmetry cited old-school first person shooter Quake as one of their influences on the game. By and large this comes across in the aesthetics: browns, grays, armor textures, otherworldly pagan imagery, skulls and bones and dark caverns, it's all over the place, and it's lovely. Grimy industrial atmosphere permeates everything. Enemies range from brutish bandits with swords and pikes, to imp-like creatures that poison you when they strike. And the monster design is a visual chef's kiss, craggy and awful and menacing. My personal favorite is the Pincushion Warrior, which I've dubbed because it looks like a goddamn pincushion. Walking around with an eyeless helmet and multiple fucking swords sticking out of its torso like, well, a meaty pincushion, when it notices you from afar it will pull out one of the swords and throw it you. It'll keep doing so until you get into melee range, at which point it pulls out two swords, one for each hand, and come at you fast and hard. Do enough damage to it and it will attempt a kamikaze maneuver, in which it rips off its fucking head to throw at you and release a poison cloud which does massive damage over time. Seriously one of the most metal things I've seen, and I cursed the fuck out loud when I saw it the first time. But the showstopper, the truly most outstanding beast in the beta, is the Enslaved Grisha, a lumbering monstrosity that looks like a combination between Silent Hill's Pyramid Head and BioShock's Big Daddy. You fight it in an icy cave, and its attacks are so thunderous it will shake loose stalactites from the ceiling which can fall on top of you for damage. It's fast, brutal, mean, and intimidating, and beating it was such a terrific rush that it made me wonder why I've never gotten into this style of game before when it feels this rewarding to win against a tough enemy. Maybe it's because Soulsborne games are vicious and unrelenting in their assault on the player as they slowly attempt to crawl their way through the environment. Here, it seems like there's just enough stacked in the player's graces to save them that it's simultaneously more forgiving and more brutal. With the Harden ability and the different Shells as combat style options, the choices presented to the player are unique enough to offer a deep challenge, but one that players themselves can modify depending on how they want to play.

There's a couple other mechanics that I want to touch on briefly while I'm here: Resolve, and Familiarity. Resolve is essentially a limit break with multiple uses. When you're attacking enemies, you're building Resolve, and can keep track of how much you're gaining via the meter above your health. But while it builds through attacks, it slowly goes away unless you fill a whole bar, and each Shell will have a different number of bars to fill. For example, Harros has four bars, Tiel has only two. Once a bar is filled, you'll be able to use the Resolve in one of two ways. The first is parrying; you can attempt to parry if you don't have resolve, but in my experience it worked better when I had a bar built up. If you've got the Resolve when you parry, you'll do so with greater success, but it'll also open up a window for you to hit the attack button immediately after. Time it right, and you'll do a powerful strike which will regain a large portion of health, which is handy as fuck when you don't have healing items, but also uses up a lot of Resolve. This can hinder you a little bit if you want to use your special strike. Remember how I said the Hallowed Sword has a super strike where it turns into a spear and does a fuckload of damage? Yeah, you need to fill up at least one or two Resolve bars in order to use it. I'm not sure if you need one bar, two bars, or a full load, haven't done as much experimenting with that as I'd like. Some things in the game are still obtuse, relying on trial and error to discover, which brings us around to Familiarity: picking up items in the game world at first gives only a brief guess at what the items will actually do, so you have to use them to figure out what their effect is. This can be positive, or negative, but the more you use said items the more familiar the Foundling becomes with the effect. Each item has a different number of times you need to use it to become completely familiar with it, but once you do, it'll unlock bonus side effects. For example, the weltcap mushrooms restore 40 hit points over the course of 60 seconds (the regen shrooms I mentioned earlier). But use them often enough, and the Foundling will get a bonus effect of being able to dodge once without using any stamina to do so. Meanwhile, using the tarspore mushrooms – which infect poison damage – will eventually make the Foundling immune to poison damage for 120 seconds. For me this is one of the more revolutionary parts of the game, which requires the most amount of trial and error and experimentation. Of course you're not going to want to use the poison mushroom again after it killed you with poison, but if you take it enough, next thing you know you're immune to poison for two minutes? This is wild when confronted with Imps that deal poison damage with each strike they land, or the fucking Pincushion Warriors and their suicide poison bomb. But at the same time, this could be a bit frustrating when the player gets rare items that are hard to come by, which may have huge bonuses, or massively negative effects. I love it, but also kind of hate it, though where Harden and Resolve add complementary aspects to the combat, Familiarity throws in the gamble of figuring out whether a consumable will do you harm, or make your day.

Mortal Shell has already impressed the hell out of me simply by being a Soulsborne game that I can play and not feel vandalized by, but also through sheer innovation and attention to detail. The atmosphere is thick and luscious, the combat is deep and so are the RPG elements, and there's a genuinely terrifying obtuse story being played out. I did have a few issues with my playthrough, notably the two times the game crashed, one of which forced me to force restart my desktop. A few other ragdoll glitches notwithstanding, the beta is a resoundingly solid experience which is promising great things for the full game. Something which, to my unending surprise, I have already pre-purchased based on this demo. May wonders never cease.

[the-stray-liger]

Honestly i really really love the bloodborne story & characters & lore but it feels like they're completely seperate interests to the game itself lmao. Games that're hard for the sake of being hard just make me mad & i can't get into them properly without a podcast so then i just miss all the lore & story?? Save me from this purgatory saint liger

Saint Liger ghserojgeirgjergierg0hergser

Honestly? I feel that WAY too hard. I can’t play a lot of videogames anymore bc I’m prone to migraines and motion sickness; I am very slow and depression has not helped my brain activity so things that are instinctive and that other gamers take for granted really don’t stick with me. I was sure I was never going to progress in Bloodborne bc I’d heard it was SUPER fucking difficult and I was even annoyed for a while thinking I would never play it.

Thing is, I fell so in love with the lore and the aesthetics I had to play it, and it turned out to be just as hard as I thought. The thing is also that it’s been a while since failure was treated as part of a process and a learning experience rather than a punishment for me. 

Strap in bc this is gonna get long because I’m a fucking ANIMAL and Bloodborne has been an ExperienceTM. Imma free you from this purgatory by telling you that there’s no wrong way to enjoy Bloodborne and here’s why:

I’ve said it a lot of times-Bloodborne is probably the first game that has made me care for gameplay and in-game mechanics, because rather than punish you for dying, it gives you chances to lern new things. When you die, you keep the items you picked up. You learn new shortcuts, you find new lore items, you can learn about the world around you, you generally get rewarded for trying again with experience that actually means something rather than punished for failing. This said, I don’t think Bloodborne is hard for the sake of being hard. It’s challenging and borderline sadistic in how hard the bosses are and how easily you can die. But here’s the thing:

You never really lose at Bloodborne. I thought the idea of not having a pause button was awful at first, andit’s true that it sucks ass how easily you can die if you’re not careful, but honestly? it’s worth it because of how much you can do anyway. It’s super stimulating, and it’s something that I needed urgently because my ADHD has started to cause me irl problems since I don’t find that sort of positive stimulation irl anymore. You’re not just repeating the same thing again and again to be fucked over by a shitty AI. You’re being challenged and encouraged to keep trying new things. 

It’s something I really noticed during my fight with Gascoigne: the fact that I lost literally almost 1000 times to him, and that I still didn’t want to give up. I wanted to keep trying. I was frustrated, yes, but I was so excited to fight him again. It’d been forever since I felt like a failure in a videogame didn’t feel like a personal insult! I felt like the game was just telling me “it’s hard, but you’re doing great anyway. here’s some blood vials and an upgrade for your weapon. there’s optional bosses, if you don’t want to burn out, why don’t you give them a try? go explore the city, look at the architecture, what does it look like? talk to Gilbert and the nasty old lady and Eileen, imagine what they’ll say when you do move on” and giving me reasons to stay engaged. It was rewarding and actually healing if it makes sense. And when I finally defeated the Cleric Beast and then Gascoigne I was so excited I had to sit on the floor bc my whole body was shaking and I thoguht I was gonna fall off my chair.

Then again I HARDLY did this on my own. Like I’ve mentioned I’ve always been bad at videogames, bad enough that wheenver I played with others it usually ended up with people mad at me (whcih is one of the big reasons why I don’t play co-op in anything). I went to look for guides. Vaatividya literally was the one who got me through Central Yharnam, through the Cleric Beast and Gascoigne. It’s like art. Using guides and references isn’t cheating, it’s not bad to have help. I had no idea you could just. Run. I thought I had to fight everything and that had me stuck for a while. Learning you could speedrun got me to some super good items and upgrades and lore items and stuff. Of course you do need to get Blood Echoes to level up but there’s a ton of resources you can access before you start fighting!

And speaking of Vaatividya-if you really do love the lore, and the aesthetics, his lore videos are wonderful and what ultimately convinced me to play Bloodborne. He includes reccomendations of other channels that give wonderful insight and analysis on the story of the game and tours around cool locations in which you can take your time pausing and enjoying the aesthetics. I’m of the honest opinion that you don’t need to even watch or play the source material if you want to enjoy the parts of it that catch your eye, I did it for years with Overwatch until they let me down (bang bang) and you can do the same with Bloodborne because the community has had four years to dig around its every nook and cranny to find every secret and every layer of meaning it hides. 

I’d say to give it another try with a different mindset if you can and really want to. But I know it’s hard for ppl with certain kind of disabilities to get into certain games, from firsthand expereince (first person shooters for example trigger instant migraines and nausea for me)-and most people play games for fun and dont want everything to be a challenge, so if you don’t want to have your ass eaten by every beast in Yharnam every 30 seconds that’s also fine? But if you truly want to enjoy Bloodborne, there’s really no wrong way to do it. Like I said, the Bloodborne content in youtube is rich and varied and there’s comics and art and fic you can enjoy regardless. I can tell you that once you find the one that tickles your fancy, you won’t feel like you’re missing anything.

[cyberroses]

*BONK!!!*

11. What impacted you the most while playing the game ?

13. A cut content you would have wanted in the game ?

15. Favorite weapon and favorite built ?

18. Are you interest in the lore and invested in it ? Talk about something.

WAHooooooooooo

Hey hey!! Know that i am attempting to bonk you back in spirit

11. What impacted you the most while playing the game ?

I don't think anything spcefic impacted me other than in general getting into bloodborne led me to pick up art again as a hobby, even if the things i make don't particularly lean towards cosmic horror.

But also that really stuck with me, bit unrelated but the slowly veering from just werewolves and beasts into cosmic horror was not something i expected at all and i was a delight to experice and i wish i could be surprised like that again.

13. A cut content you would have wanted in the game ?

I think i would have liked the chance to have more dialogue from Lady Maria, i just think it would be neat

15. Favorite weapon and favorite built ?

I like using blade of mercy! but out of the runs I've done bloodtinge builds have become my favorite, and therefore so are some of the bloodtinge scaling weapons.

Getting familiar with the chikage really made me have to change my approach a bit from just going plain bonk. And going pew pew pew with Simon's bowblade is so much fun!!

(ik pew pew is not the right sound but you get the gist)

18. Are you interest in the lore and invested in it ? Talk about something.

I am not great at keeping track of lore myself, but in general i do enjoy all the lore bits from the world and funky flavor text and how open ended it is in a way.

Tho allow me to list off some incoherent thoughts i had lately: Like id love to know what is the deal with Cainhurst, like the logistics on how we got past the bridge, not to mention the letter. And the entire aesthetics of the place are made to represent the culture but it also feels so anachronistic when you try to fit it in with the rest to "current" Yharnam. But with the conflict with the executioners, it would imply vilebloods are not entirely ancient?? Or at least not as much as the pthumerians???

I am certain someone out there has already put together something coherent about this, but still

Ty for the asks!

[melonbreadreviews-blog]

Playing ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’ Three Years Later

I’ll admit, I’m often late to the party on major title releases in gaming. I’d like to tell you that it’s an intentional choice of mine, that it’s in my best interest to let the best and worst parts of these landscape altering pieces of art simmer in a pot together. I picked up Bloodborne on a whim three years after its release, and after about a two hour play session, I decided it wasn’t for me; three months later I was glued to my TV every night after work searching every nook and cranny that the hunter’s dream had to offer me.

My point is that buying a game upon its initial release is a commitment to either loving or hating that game. I often feel compelled to shower praise on the solid parts of games that I love, and pressure to explain with hyperbole the games I just couldn’t vibe with. Playing Bloodborne years after its release at a much lower price allowed me to put it down when I didn’t enjoy it, and pick it back up when I needed it. The parts of it that I didn’t like weren’t exacerbated by a pressure to validate my own experiences relative to the gaming community. Likewise, when i picked the game up again, I loved it not because I thought I should, but because the experience itself was legitimately breathtaking.

Three months later, set against the familiar hum and drum of my slowly dying Playstation 4, my experience with CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt begins. I tried to begin this same journey a few months earlier, but that run died on the starting line in a messy tutorial and a post-Bloodborne haze. One enormous Dragon Quest XI run later, and I’m finally ready to give this journey three years in the making a chance. My expectations are a mixed bag; I carry with me the influences of a thousand burning reddit threads and the weight of an inescapable question: Has this game aged well?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with The Witcher franchise (I’ve never read the series or played a mainline game before touching The Witcher 3, so you’re not alone!), the main plot of the game follows the journey of a Witcher named Geralt as he searches for his protege and ward Ciri while also fending off the primary antagonistic force of the game, the Wild Hunt. Witchers serve as bounty hunters of the region, often dealing with the monsters and villains ordinary folk are incapable of handling themselves. Throughout the game, players can feel the tension in the air between Geralt and the people around him, often including the ones he saves. Witchers exist outside the realm of normalcy in this universe, and to some extent the amount of agency the franchise gives you over the lives of the people who exist around you is a direct cause of the aforementioned tension. Though the social world Geralt inhabits mirrors the dangers of the physical world around him, there are romantic options in the game that allow for a deeper understanding of his character and The Witcher universe. The lore aspect of this game really separates it from similar titles in the same genre.

My first memories of the game still hold true, though my feelings about them have changed. I love the comic style art that flashes across the screen as the game loads, not because it matches the aesthetic of the game, but precisely because it does not. If I compare The Witcher 3 to other iterations of the same genre like Skyrim or Fallout, I find myself enjoying that not every moment of The Witcher is something that I need to take seriously. Sometimes, it’s okay to be reminded of the fact that I am actually playing a game and not living and dying by the decisions I make in this world.

That isn’t to say that decisions in this game don’t matter, though; I find that The Witcher 3 places weight on its decisions in a similar fashion to Mass Effect, rather than Skyrim or Fallout. There are several moments in the game that require a timed quick response in conversations or during action, and those quick responses sometimes dictate both the flow of ongoing dialogue and possible relationships with the characters around Geralt. There are even dialogue options that seem quite diplomatic on the surface, but end in brawls or even death for characters that the player did not expect. These moments are meant to teach the player just how much agency they have over the lives around them; sometimes Geralt feels like a god, and sometimes he feels just as vulnerable to the whims of the world as the people around him.

Normally, worlds that freely give that sort of agency to the player overwhelm me. I feel paralyzed by just how much my choices matter, and my love for the friends I’ve made throughout the story keeps me from playing the game as intended. Through the use of guides and reddit threads, I orchestrate my game in order to keep those characters alive, and that leaves me with less of an experience in the end. The Witcher 3, however, doesn’t leave me paralyzed in the same way. Because much of the main narrative is decidedly linear, Geralt is free to explore the world around him, which includes contracts to kill creatures and free spirits and occasional games of a fairly fun but not too complex card game called Gwent. Not every decision has a role to play in the main story, and the ones that do feel natural in the game’s flow. Geralt is both insanely powerful and incredibly vulnerable, but I never fear for the outcome of his story while enjoying the fun of making decisions.  

The skippable tutorial of the game remains not so skippable considering the amount of experience I have with The Witcher 3’s combat, but I appreciate that I have the option of ignoring it if I decide to run through new game plus. It’s here that the meat of the game comes to the forefront. The reason I initially put down The Witcher 3 was because I didn’t enjoy the flow of combat, which includes the two primary slashing attacks with two variants of weapons, a myriad of magical powers called Signs, and the use of items like bombs, crossbows and oils which can be applied to Geralt’s main weapons. If you’re just judging the combat of the game on the first few hours, The Witcher 3 may not meet your expectations of a major title release. When disjointed in the name of learning, the combat feels clunky, and the first few contracts in the region, especially on higher difficulties, are a major challenge for the uninitiated.

But in the same way I came to love Bloodborne, I’ve come to adore The Witcher 3 because of my journey with it. Sitting through the first few hours of the game, especially in 2018, can be sort of a grind. The story has yet to materialize, the combat is underdeveloped, and Geralt himself can seem unrelatable, but as the hours move on, the game opens up in parallel fashion to the world it encompasses. The combat itself feels incredibly fluid, each piece of it tied together in a way that challenges the player to learn how to be a Witcher, while also rewarding enough to encourage growth and not detract from the side-questing and story that make this game fun. The Witcher 3’s systems include a hearty dodging mechanic that feels clunky outside of battle, but seamless in it, and a parry system that is absolutely necessary on higher difficulties. Geralt’s magic, Signs, interact with objects in the world, but they can also be morphed and shaped into crowd control devices. The ability tree is extensive, but in a way that represents a mixing of action and role-playing. Each playthrough can be different, but Geralt remains much of the same, just upgraded.

Though not combat in a traditional sense, I think The Witcher 3’s in-game card system, Gwent, represents an entirely different method of fighting for players. Though not required, there are various quests given to Geralt in different regions of the game which involved beating skilled Gwent players at cards. While the game involves a little bit of strategy, it’s never overwhelming, and because Gwent isn’t a major factor in the story, it’s skippable for fans who don’t enjoy it. I found myself going from inn to inn, challenging keeps to games for their best cards, and I really came to love a part of the game I didn’t enjoy all that much at first. It’s a missable portion of the game, but it definitely adds dimension to the gameplay without requiring too much effort on the part of the player.

Much of the game’s story is very compelling, and it isn’t saddled with an extensive lore that the player is forced to grapple with. There is lore, yes, but that lore is discoverable all over the world, and it’s the player’s choice to explore it, or not. There is a distinct moment in the first 20 hours or so of the game that allows the player to learn about about Geralt’s relationship with Ciri through dialogue options with another character. The player can listen to all of the heavy lore in the dialogue, or simply skip it. The Witcher 3 is chalk full of story, but it never asks the player to share the burden of that story. In much the way you can flow in and out of the narrative of the story through side-questing and contracts, you can simply choose not to pay attention to certain parts of the main quest line.

That isn’t to say that the story is lacking or is unfocused. There are reasons to want to stay on track, including a wide array of characters who are, though not as interesting as Geralt, incredibly complex. The Witcher 3 does a fantastic job of presenting its best qualities though, and those qualities encourage players to explore the world around them and creative a narrative journey that varies significantly from player to player. Whether or not a player values that storytelling approach, though, depends on their own taste. Personally, I found that I could have my fill of Gwent and monster hunting, and then pick right back up where I left the main story.

The Witcher 3 is not without its faults, despite my glowing praise up to this point. While the world itself is rendered beautifully, I found the interactions with other characters to pose the biggest problems for the game’s graphics. There were times where Geralt’s face would simply teleport all over the screen until the game was able to settle into the set animations for the dialogue, and I distinctly remember an interaction between Geralt and Triss Merigold which involved Triss pressing a hand to her face that was stuck in the Igni battle animation for fire. While these graphical glitches don’t detract from the overall product, they are wrinkles on the surface of the game that begin to show its age. I was surprised that the world remained incredibly stable, save for a few times I found my horse could fit between a clustered group of trees better than I could, while the dialogue options proved incredibly difficult for the animations in the game. It reminded me a lot of my time with Mass Effect, in both good and bad ways. There was a certain novelty, but maybe that novelty is a bit too dated for a Playstation 4 title.

I’d like to end this review where I started, and that is on the subject of playing games years after they’ve already debuted. I wish I was a strong enough person to not feel the pressure that comes with making a commitment to a new title, but I often let reviews and recommendations, either positive or negative, affect the way I experience games. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a near perfect example of my current status as a consumer, because I’ve been able to enjoy all the good that the game has to offer without taking the bad bits too seriously. I did expect the game to be great, of course, but I didn’t expect it to be perfect, and that’s partly because I don’t have a need to be justified in having purchased it. I haven’t tasked myself with deciding The Witcher’s place in history; that’s already been decided. So, for now, I feel quite content to stroll along cobblestone city roads and swampy marshes, living life as a Witcher.