![]() ![]() Bloodborne's story may be about humanity transformed into the abominable, but my experience playing it is often about the kindness of these strangers. ![]() I ring the bell a stranger with a massive bow, archaic in a world with firearms, nevertheless makes quick work of a gigantic boss that shoots lasers out of its face. I ring the bell another (more soberly-dressed) stranger painstakingly guides me through a level, leading me to every item's hiding-place. I ring the bell, and a shirtless stranger with flaming hair jumps into my game and makes mincemeat of a beast that's killed me countless times. I just need to ring the Beckoning Bell to see them. We can't stop the coronavirus with quicksilver bullets or saw-blades the most someone like me can do to save lives is to stay at home.īut every time I boot up Bloodborne, I know that fans everywhere, likely also trapped inside, are fighting the same fight with me. There's no sinister culprit behind COVID-19, unless you consider human shortsightedness as a kind of unseen evil (though I'm sure someone somewhere blames aliens, too). Yarnham doesn't face a random virus - its plague ultimately came from cosmic horrors (spoiler alert: the magic blood was alien blood all along). But at least Bloodborne's epidemic is more explicable. Churches in both worlds that once offered succor can instead spread disease. Public health preparations in both worlds seem woefully inadequate. The real populace on Earth and the fictional populace in Yarnham bide their time indoors, nerves fraying under the strain. The more I excavate Bloodborne's setting, the more I can see it as a dark reflection of life in 2020. These people are in quarantine, and I'm the closest thing Yarnham has to a first responder.Įvery time I boot up 'Bloodborne,' I know that fans everywhere, likely also trapped inside, are fighting the same fight with me. I knock on windows and the residents pity me, curse me, or laugh derisively at my plight to be out on the night of a hunt - a night that never seems to end. I notice that Yarnham's sane survivors have taken refuge behind closed doors - and while Bloodborne has nearly no exposition, I piece together a grim backstory from brief cinematics, obtuse notes, and snatches of dialogue. Here my grotesque escapism fully begins to resonate with reality. I teleport back to the streets of Yarnham (think Victorian London, with far more serrated weapons) and eagerly commence my bloody work once more. ![]() But I'm out of practice: It kills me - sending me to a surreal home base which offers respite and a burgeoning arsenal. A werewolf on all fours greets me as I stumble through the clinic and I'm delighted to see the familiar adversary. I enter their world strapped to an operating table, injected with strange blood, equipped only with my wits and a charge to hunt beasts. A friend suggested I try it again - and, well, I guess I missed those monstrous scamps. Now, huddled at home, keeping my social distance, I've returned to Bloodborne. All these monsters nearly drove me mad - but to my surprise, I was sad to say goodbye to them when I finished the game. Most chilling of all: figures with enormous, bulbous heads spotted with eyes, walking towards me, singing, their distended arms drawing me in for a fatal embrace. Small blue creatures, crowned with delicate filaments, shocking me with arcane bolts. Masses of mutant snakes, moving as one, coughing toxins at me. That's not to mention the beings out of The Thing or The Fly. I had aced its spiritual forebears, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, and I even bought a new Playstation exclusively to play it - a reckless expense for a then-temp worker! But while I expected Bloodborne to be difficult, I didn't expect gatling guns to rip me apart from a distance werewolves to savage me up close and dogs - just plain dogs - to leap on me, goring me to death in seconds. I thought I'd take swimmingly to the 2015 action role-playing game. I didn't expect a video game about a nightmarish plague to console me during a real-world pandemic, but Bloodborne has a history of surprising me. In Bloodborne, you battle a plague of monstrous werewolves - but who's really the monster? ![]()
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