Bloodborne Previews

We have rounded up a (literal) couple of previews for Bloodborne, From Software’s PlayStation 4 victorian horror action-RPG.

Eurogamer‘s John Bedford decided to go for brevity when describing his experience with the title:

Bloodborne’s setting, Yharnam, looks and feels like the tobacco-chewing, gunslinging sort of place where Van Helsing might take a safari holiday. Gothic towers rise up from cobblestone covered floors, while gleaming black and silver stagecoaches lie in ruins at the side of the road. The cold, wind-whistling dread of a Dark Souls vista is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there’s a bright glimmer to everything, and a sense of silver-plated treasure wherever you look.

If the city shines a little more brightly than you might expect, its inhabitants are suitably grim and intimidating. Diseased, lumbering lost souls shamble about the place, some literally wielding pitchforks, others waving flaming torches that threaten to set your whiskers alight. Individually, none of these creatures present a particularly formidable threat, but in swarms it’s a very different proposition.

The combat itself feels simultaneously reminiscent of Dark Souls and yet nothing like it. The basic roster of melee swipes are far more fluid and forgiving, for example, and while careful timing of a heftier weapon swing is still critical to staying alive, there’s a little more time to pause, gather yourself, and recover from a disaster – even during the most calamitous of close-range encounters.

While RPGamer goes slightly more into detail, though I’m not sure whether the preview was based on the writer’s own time with the game or if he simply rounded up the already available information on the title:

But the biggest change Bloodborne is making to the Souls formula is its approach to combat. Not only has combat seemingly been sped up compared to Demon’s and Dark Souls, but From wants to change the entire way the game is played for many people by removing shields entirely. The designers felt that too many people played through the game by hiding behind a shield that forces them into a defensive mindset. In their place they now have guns, but probably not the ones you’re thinking of.

Don’t worry, From’s intent isn’t to make a shooter. Rather, the guns are more akin to the musket rifle or blunderbuss variety and have so far been held in the offhand as a defensive weapon, though in a far more aggressive manner. Their shots are limited in range and damage in most cases, but firing into an enemy in the middle of an attack animation opens them up in a similar manner to parries in the Souls games, allowing for a greater retaliation by the player or interrupting an enemy mid attack. From what has been shown in trailers and gameplay, guns seem to run on limited amounts of ammo, though presumably at a certain point in the final game it will be easy to procure more.

To support the increased combat speed, it seems that From has returned to the Demon’s Souls style of healing item, where it is a collectible Blood Vial similar to the healing grass that can be found in the world that when consumed immediately restores a set amount of HP. So fans of the Estus Flask and Lifegems from Dark Souls 1 and 2 will have to get used to this method. And while this could just be a convenient method of healing set up for demo purposes, it should carry over into the final game as the Triangle button is entirely dedicated to it.