Bloodborne Previews, Gameplay Footage

More coverage centered around Bloodborne has been coming out of Tokyo Game Show, and I’m going to concede the first mention to what is probably the most relevant of it, a full 30-minute gameplay walkthrough of the game’s demo, courtesy of a Dengeki stream. Unfortunately, Dengeki made the video recording of it private, but it was captured by the folks at Open World Games (skip to 0:43 to get to the actual footage):

Speaking of footage, there are also three brief videos (unfortunately not direct feed, but otherwise of really high quality) over at GamerSyde that show the demo build that’s available for the public at Tokyo Game Show.

In case you don’t have time to watch footage of the game at the moment though, you might want to give a quick read to the round-ups that have also surfaced, courtesy of VG247:

As you traipse around faux-London (I say traipse but, finger hoveringly frustratedly over where the shield button should be, it was more of a terrified crawl, of course) you get the sense of an actual, inhabited place. You can’t explore the buildings that hem in the environment, any more than you can in most games (hello, door texture, our old friend), but the buildings feel like discrete units rather than what, in terms of game design, they actually are: decorative walls shaping your exploration.

The reason they feel so discrete is partially due to the gorgeous graphics (the lighting in particular really got me, by the way; almost everyone carries a torch and the effect is subtle but wonderful, as are the many torches and bonfires) but also thanks to some great atmospheric touches. As you climb a ladder, you’ll hear a howl; I actually froze in place, and looked carefully back at the bottom of the ladder, expecting to see something beneath me. Climbing up to the platform at the top was nerve-wracking, to say the least.

Passing a certain corner, you’ll hear something, inside. A snuffling, clawing, growling something, that paces back and forth. In another spot I heard the sounds of something repeatedly hurling itself at the other side of a nearby door. This is definitely a game to play with headphones.

Enemies seem so much more like real things, too, because they talk to you. (You fiend,) one hurled at me in a dodgy cockney accent (bless) as we threw ourselves at each other. (We don’t want your kind here,) another spat.

And Destructoid:

Able to select from a few different characters for the demo, I toggled between a fairly well-balanced build and one that favored agility. Rolling, blocking, and backward jumping to my heart’s content, I disposed of these neighborhood crime watch suspicious suspects with relative ease. That is until they decided that group efforts would be more effective. Turns out these freaks of the night know a thing or two about efficiency and teamwork.