BLOODBORNE given Feb '15 Euro/NA release date, deemed worthy of own thread by ilxor

YOU DIED

i read that it needs to be 8 letters, so YALL DIED

sold

first post in this lolneogaf thread summarises the edge article for those interested: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1008499

key bullet point: "Bloodborne is Hidetaka Miyazaki's brutal riposte to the section of his playerbase that thinks it has seen it all before."

psyched

http://www.mcvuk.com/special-features/read/the-big-game-bloodborne/0166

“Yes,” Miyazaki confirms. “There will be a New Game Plus mode.” He laughs. “We’re having trouble beating it, though.”

am0n, can we be PS4 friends?

yes psn is online7845789547

http://imgur.com/a/uOT3b

The Souls games are about dying - every feeble creature and majestically grotesque monster and crumbling castle in those games is a manifestation of death in its many scary and sometimes beautiful forms. But Bloodborne? Bloodborne’s more about killing.

The rhythm and style of the combat is different, you see, even if it might look broadly similar. In Souls you’re usually on the defensive - you walk into a room with your shield up and can take a few hits before reacting. That just does not happen in Bloodborne. You don’t even have a shield. When something hits you, you have to hit back, and quickly, to regain health.

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/03/16/dark-souls-death-bloodborne-killing

http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/bloodborne/news/danish_blood_donors_offered_free_copy_of_bloodborne.html

Giv dit blud!
I would do this in a second

i don't actually want to know anything more before i play, but i can't look away:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GtcEBBs4rE

i want a positive critical consensus and two freaked out ILXor reviews
and then i'm buying the fucking system god help me

i can't remember the last time i was so hyped for a game, honestly

argh i refuse to watch videos!

Downloading now, it's gonna take days. No more videos or links for me until Thursday (the first chance I'll get to dig in).

http://www.thejimquisition.com/2015/03/bloodborne-review-die-die-again/

glowing reviews so far

Yeah, it's looking good. Common complaint seems to be loading times. 40 seconds after dying? Jeez.

Anyway, psyched.

early reviews obsessively positive:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/bloodborne/critic-reviews
i'm hoping the long loading time complaint is addressed by the patch?
Jordan, you are gonna be the guy who determines how my bank account looks in April.

downloading now!

so ready for this

Jordan, you are gonna be the guy who determines how my bank account looks in April.

ha, that's a big responsibility but i will let you know.

it took massive willpower not to start this before work today, there should be some sort of award.

i'm hoping the long loading time complaint is addressed by the patch?

apparently not yet, but soon:

http://www.justpushstart.com/2015/03/bloodborne-long-load-times-will-be-addressed-in-the-next-patch/

hm, will def wait for that to come to fruition

played the first hour. as good as I hoped. one of the character classes is "waste of skin" and has terrible stats haha.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-24-is-bloodborne-the-best-game-ever-or-just-the-second-best

my local gamestop has closed! and amazon is sold out...

i am going to have to go *out of my way* to buy this :(

gross

I DIED

it's 2015! digital never sells out :)

lol, i had dismissed that option because i am fastidiously husbanding my HDD space but of course that is precisely what i will do in the circumstances. of course, now i am going to have to WAIT for this to download. ugh could this be any more inconvenient.

played the first hour. as good as I hoped. one of the character classes is "waste of skin" and has terrible stats haha.
― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Tuesday, March 24, 2015 2:20 PM

i almost went with that but chose "a violent past" i think lol. game is awesome so far

"you're better off dead!!!"

have not played dark souls. have not played dark souls 2. think i might buy this today.

will i hate it/myself/you all? are DS/DS2 required playing before?

dark souls in some ways will give you bad habits because the controls are different. i'd say dive straight in.

agreed. the general approach of these games is similar enough that some skills transfer over, but they're different enough that each one has a learning curve. i sucked at all of them in the early stages.

Amazon and/or UPS fucked up my delivery and it got pushed back to the end of the week. Decided to just go to Gamestop and pick it up and that reminded me why i never go to Gamestop. Dude tried to get me to sign up for or buy like four other things at the register and then I get some smug ass response after I politely turn them all down. Gonna load this up and try to forget about how badly I hate everything right now.

im so tempted to go out and buy a ps4 right now

are DS/DS2 required playing before?
― GGGOAT: greatest goat game of all time (Will M.), Tuesday, 24 March 2015 21:21

no this one is different enough to be its own thing, mostly just shares the control scheme.

couldn't get the summoning to work. is password required or is that just if you want to limit it to specific ppl

I thought it was just to limit (or prioritize?) but who knows at this point.

well goddammit i think i may have bought this

played for about an hour last night, fell instantly into the familiar souls rhythm of nervously moving forward, dying, inching a little bit past the point where i died before, dying, repeat infinitely. those mobs can really fuck you up quickly!

it's impressive how familar it feels but how different too - i played exclusively nimble melee characters in DeS/DaS but not having a shield is taking a bit of getting used to, as is the altered parry/riposte mechanic.

these games have the most amazing atmosphere of mystery and tension which i don't think you could achieve in any other medium.

Which weapons did you guys pick? I went with the rod and the pistol.

I DIED a few times before work this morning. :)

went with the axe + pistol, kinda regretting not taking the cane. i got as far as the two werewolves, while also managing to (i'm sure) miss every shortcut. and i definitely keep trying to two-hand and accidentally healing. loving it so far.

went with axe and blunderbuss. the merchant will start selling the other weapons for not unreasonable prices after a certain point early on. might need an item for that to happen?

i played through and beat what i thought was the first boss last night. looking around online today though, it looks like i missed an optional one.

game's great so far. can't wait to get back to it.

will say that FROM really ain’t so hot at graphics optimization though, huh? the game looks good, but not so good it should stutter like it does on PS4 hardware. and the character creation tool is still comically antiquated. minor quibbles though. these things are basically trademarks of the series at this point.

ha, my girlfriend tried to help make a character that looks like me and it went horribly awry. basically the more parameters you start to change, the more you look like hideous mutant. i find it endearing though.

the stuttering sucks, how do you not iron that shit out of a console exclusive before release? i don't even usually notice that kind of shit. i just haven't played any games on ps4 that have had this issue. well except ac:unity

also saw lag during co-op which can hopefully be fixed in the network/server? the online stuff seems really buggy across the board

i went with axe/pistol and my char came out looking like 70 yr old kyle maclachlan

http://media.kotaku.foxtrot.future.net.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2015/03/PitifulMagnificentAsiansmallclawedotter.gif

I was after the Blood Stone Chunks in fact. Im not entirely sure I understand how the various rituals work. I have loads of the materials but I can only seem to create certain types or altar(?) or something(?) Eh...

Anyway, I seem to be doing this because I'm bouncing off both Logarius and Micolash. I think I can probably cheese Micolash but Logarius is NAILS. The other tough fight I can't do is that Cainhurst Crow NPC.

Is it fair to say that Bloodborne is maybe the hardest of the Soulsborne games overall? I haven't played DS2 enough to find out

DS2 has the annoying feature of tying iframes to a stat (adaptability), or at least it used to. So the early game was tough because you barely even have a functional roll, lol. But other than that I'm sure BB is tougher. But really it's just a question of getting used to the rhythms of each game, right?

I remember Logarius taking many tries. But Micolash is the gimmick boss who runs away from you, right?

Yeah that's right. My sense of direction is appalling so I end up running around the labyrinth house and getting decked by skellingtons a lot

It's worth learning about how Chalice Dungeon generation works so that you can generate any dungeon you desire. It is esoteric and confusing, I still don't fully understand it. Once you've unlocked the capacity to generate any possible dungeon, you can consult online databases of glyphs and find gems and items and armaments and anything you want. You'll also face some insanely hard enemies.

My last play through, I was focusing on an Arcane build. I had three weapons that I used. A fire-based Saw Spear, a bolt-based Saw-Cleaver, and a physical-based Church Pick. The best gems for these involved generating a cursed (you have half-health) 5-level root dungeon and descending down to the bottom and killing a Pthumerian Descendent. He would drop, usually, a level 19 or 20 gem; ideally, I wanted a level 20 "Cold Abyssal Cursed Blood Gem", one that paired maximum damage boost (either fire, bolt or physical) with a manageable curse (either stamina debuff, atk vs. kin down, or durability). There are many found glyphs that created optimal conditions for this endeavour, listed online. I would make it to the bottom, save outside the arena and killed him and save-scummed and reloaded and killed him again, over and over, until I got the gem I wanted. It was a highly enjoyable chore. I killed that Descendent 200 times at least. Immediately after getting my first useable Abyssal gem, my weapon went from flimsy to ironclad, and the game became much more manageable.

Cainhurst Crow NPC.

Oh shit, is this the one in the cathedral later? I don't think I ever bothered with him. Whatever guide I was following I think essentially warned that no matter how good or strong you are, it's basically a long slog of a fight.

Yeah, a crazy NPC who Eileen the Crow has trouble with (you meet her outside rather dishevelled). He heals constantly, has quickstep and I think has ranged attacks too

I keep coming back to this, often starting a fresh game just to refamiliarise myself with it. And also to see if, having beaten Demons Souls, Dark Souls, Elden Ring and a good chunk of Sekiro and DS2, I might have improved at playing this.
No. It's still really really tough. Or at least the start of the game is. I'm surprised more players don't just give up before Old Yarnham

From Bloomberg:

There was one idea that seemed perfect: Bloodborne, a gothic action game released in 2015 for the PlayStation 4. Developed by FromSoftware, Bloodborne is widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made, but its original release suffered from frame-rate drops and other technical issues, making it the natural fit for the Bluepoint treatment. Fans had been dreaming of a Bloodborne remake for years, and the idea had been strongly considered and at one point was even expected within Bluepoint but never entered production.

In early 2025, when Bluepoint again pitched the idea of Bloodborne remake, the studio was told that the numbers made sense but FromSoftware didn’t want it to happen, according to people familiar with the process.

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida shared a theory last year that this might be the case, saying in an interview with Kinda Funny Games that he thought FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki was interested in remaking the classic game but too busy to do it himself and “doesn’t want anyone else to touch it.” He added that he thought PlayStation would respect Miyazaki’s wishes despite owning the franchise.

Bullet Dodged

bloodborne is already a modern game with modern graphics, it doesn't need a remake, just needs a tune-up for PS5

it was a japan studio project so the people on the sony side who were involved with its development are gone. i assume that complicates their ability to do that, even if sony won't admit it

How hard is it to beef up and optimize a game from 30fps to 60fps? There's not just a toggle for that or something? No idea how that works. Regardless, I really enjoyed the Bluepoint Demon's Souls (and Shadow of the Colossus). Both of them looked great, and Demon's Souls, years later, may still be the best looking game on the PS5.

increasing resolution is easy but changing framerate can break the game if it wasn't designed to scale up. usually requires a bit more work under the hood. things like attack animations might be hard synced for 30 so they will happen at double speed if you raise the framerate, etc.

Personally I'd love it if Bloodborne got the Bluepoint treatment. I think it's a wonderful game. The frame rate thing doesn't bother me so much as thinking the visual clutter is very much of its time and seemed to exist solely to show off the PS4's capacity to have lots of "stuff" going on all of the time.

There's a fair bit I would change if I could play god. It would frustrate die-hard fans if I were to say fuck having to farm for vials and bullets, for example.

It's part of the game, of course and messing with the mechanics of the game might be sacrosanct.

But seriously: Fuck having to farm for vials. I don't want to stand in that doorway killing wolves again and again every time I ran out just so I could get on with the amazing journey this game takes you on.

So yeah, I loved the Demon's Souls remake. Sod it, give Dark Souls a face-lift while you're at it too. I'm not a purist - that game looks like dogshit sometimes and my modern sensibilities would love a little polish

Demon's Souls remake really is one of the best looking games isn't it. I love it

currently hitting demons on the ps3 and we really didn't need the graphical arms race post-ps3. We peaked. Everything since has been churn+burn for $$$ /w minimal benefit.

Remakes suck, It's incredibly easy to play something old. You can typically buy the original hardware for the price of the flashy new game.

Yes, but would I have, is the question. I didn't come back to games until midway through the PS4 cycle, so I missed the PS1-3 generations entirely. Much as I enjoy the Souls games I'm not sure I'd have gone the lengths to buy a secondhand PS3 and trawl the internet for an accessible copy of Demon's Souls.

That said, whether a remake is necessary or not, I do think it would be great if most games were available as backwards compatible on the newest generations.

But yes, I'm glad I got to experience Demon's Souls Remake, especially as it looked so glorious on the PS5 when it came out and almost justified its existence as a console

Heh I still haven't played the remake, but at some point before it existed I did borrow a friend's old PS3 (and copy of Demon's Souls, unless I tracked that down myself).

I never had a problem with 30 fps, but would play a BB remake if it existed.

I don't mind 30fps either, it just seems like the first update anyone gives older games.

I don't recall Bloodborne being particularly cluttered, and even if, it feels very much a part of the design (which is awesome). And even as far as farming goes, that's pretty much part and parcel of From games. Souls, items, whatever, you're likely going to be farming at some point. For whatever reason I find it much less onerous in From games than I did shard-farming in Silksong.

Dark Souls has already had a PS4-era remaster and rerelease, not sure it really needs another one?

If we're talking something visually on par with nu Demon's Souls, then sure, why not?

because it's a huge waste of resources to remake a game thats already on current systems? make a new game or port/remake something else from ps2/ps3

Idk, one thing I like about From games is you don't really have to farm/grind. If I find myself doing that it's usually because I should really just be learning the boss and I'm trying to brute force it.

My memory of the vials is that it wasn't a big deal when I was really playing the game for the first time, but was very annoying on a replay when I was rushing through and not worrying about killing everything (then would hit a boss and run out of vials).

xp PS3 isn't a current systemm and as far as I know, DeS original was a cult game that didn't sell brilliantly, so it made sense to remake it. Or did you mean Bloodborne?

I agree that these remakes/remasters can get ridiculous. Remastering TLOU2 after what felt like a year rrally was pushing things into unnecessary territory. But yo, I do think they did a great job on the DeS Remake - it feels so opulent, and there's the haptic feedback and immersive sound too

one thing I like about From games is you don't really have to farm/grind

Well, that's the thing about From games: you don't *have* to do anything. You can fight and win with no weapons or armor if you want, playing on a set of bongos with your eyes closed, as people have done. But as someone that hasn't replayed one of these games or DLCs yet, I want to get the most out of my first and possibly only playthrough, which in my case has always meant grinding for souls: to level up, to buy shit, to level up enough to use the thing I bought, and so on. It's the closest thing to an easy mode for casuals like me. The games are always stacked against you, so hell yeah I'm going to take advantage of every, er, advantage, since it's still going to be challenging. Brute force can only get you so far, at least in my experience.

Gem farming in Bloodborne proved to be more addictive than nicotine ime