If you haven’t read Part 1 of my Bloodborne analysis, read it here. In it, I give an abridged summary of Bloodborne’s plot and take a closer look at the key elements of the narrative, including the Hunters and the Great Ones.
To restate, much of this analysis is rooted in The Paleblood Hunt, but all of the information here may not match up one-to-one with that text.
Worldbuilding
As to be expected, the worldbuilding of Bloodborne is extremely intricate, in part because it’s a triple-A videogame that went through years of concept art, environment design, character and creature design.
I’m going to focus only on the broadest strokes of Bloodborne’s worldbuilding, but know that there’s reams and reams of lore and detail that could be examined.
Yharnam
The most obvious piece of worldbuilding in Bloodborne is the city of Yharnam itself. It’s a Victorian Gothic labyrinth of shadowy alleys, debris-strewn streets, and run-down slums, with the looming cathedrals of the Healing Church towering over all. The general time period is the 1800s, with blunderbusses, horse-drawn carriages, and early modern laboratories and medical procedures. But mixed into this Victorian setting are elements of the monstrous and the occult: ghostly pale Church Giants roam the Cathedral Ward, and the slaughterhouses of Hemwick, Charnel Lane contain a hunchbacked witch covered in eyes. As modern and familiar as parts of Yharnam can be, there are elements on its face that are distinctly nightmarish or fantastical.
Yharnam was built on the ruins of another, more ancient city, called Pthumeru. These ruins were explored by the scholars that would eventually found the Healing Church and Byrgenwerth Academy, and it’s within Pthumeru that the first hints of the Great Ones were discovered. In many, many ways, Yharnam is repeating many of the same events that led Pthumeru to its ruin, including the Beast Plague. Like the Healing Church and Byrgenwerth, the Pthumerians revered the Great Ones and sought to ascend to a higher state of being.
Insight & the Great Ones
Like worldbuilding, a lot could be written about the Great Ones in Bloodborne, but I’m going to focus on the parts that are connected to the Hunters and the protagonist. Let’s start with a quote from H.P. Lovecraft, whose work was a major influence on the game:
“The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen…The winds gibber with Their voices; the Earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest. They raise up the waves. They crush the city — yet not forest or ocean or city beholds the hand that smites.”
This passage refers to the Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos, the eldritch beings that are functionally equivalent to Bloodborne’s Great Ones. In Lovecraft’s fiction, artists, poets, and madmen are predisposed to being able to sense or comprehend the Old Ones on a deeper level than common people, whether in dream-visions or in the ability to withstand the psychic trauma of encountering them. Bloodborne essentially adopts these ideas and the passage above as part of its own worldbuilding, but manifests them in slightly different ways.
Bloodborne represents one’s affinity for the Greats Ones with the Insight stat, which “represents the depth of [one’s] inhuman knowledge”. As the protagonist progresses through the game, they gain Insight, and so become more sensitive to the Great Ones and begin perceiving hidden facets of the world. The most stark example of this is the Amygdala.
In Bloodborne, there are a number of huge creatures scattered across Yharnam called Amygdala, who belong to the race of Great Ones. At the beginning of the game, they are invisible to the player, but can still attack and kill the player character, leaving the player to wonder what happened. Only later, once the character’s Insight stat has reached a certain level, do the Amygdala become visible, clinging to the sides of buildings and looming over the city. That’s when the player realizes they’ve always been there, watching over Yharnam while unseen.
Because Insight is collected over the course of the game’s plot (mostly from boss fights), it represents both the protagonist’s comprehension of the nature of Great Ones and their understanding of what’s happening in Yharnam.
The Dreamlands & Other Planes
The Great Ones themselves appear to inhabit another dimension or plane of existence, called the Dreamlands. If a Great One dies in our plane of existence, like Kos, they still live on in the Dreamlands.
Bloodborne has multiple locations that represent alternate dimensions, though they are usually referred to as “dreams” or “nightmares: there’s the “Nightmare Frontier” and “Nightmare of Mensis,” for instance. These are surreal places that seem outside of reality. In “The Hunter’s Nightmare,” for example, you inhabit a distorted, fog-shrouded version of Yharnam, with giant spikes like splintered wood sticking out of the ever-present fog.
But there’s another realm outside of reality: the Hunter’s Dream, that mysterious pocket-world mentioned earlier. It turns out that not all Hunters can travel to the Hunter’s Dream—only those chosen by a Great One for a special task.
What’s mind-bending about the Hunter’s Dream is that, if you look into the distance, you can see what appear to be the trunks of giant trees sticking up through layers of fog. These are actually connected to those spikes in the Hunter’s Nightmare, showing that these dream-realms are stacked on top of one another. And what’s even more mind-bending is that those spikes are actually the masts of the ships in the fishing hamlet.
The Hunter’s Dream ties together the past and present of the Hunters and demonstrates their inextricable link to the Great Ones: they started as brutal investigators into the nature of the Great Ones (in expeditions to Pthumeru and the massacre of the fishing hamlet), then became the protectors of those who studied and worshipped them (as agents of the Healing Church and Byrgenwerth), and now some of them are the tools of the Great Ones (such as the protagonist).
Themes
This brings us to themes. I’m only going to talk about a few, to keep things focused.
Theme #1: Beware Ye Who Fights Beasts
The first and simplest theme can be summed up as “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.”
The original Hunters (who were the progenitors of the Healing Church Hunters) proved that they were willing to commit brutal, merciless acts in the pursuit of knowledge: they massacred the transformed residents of the fishing hamlet and butchered them to inspect their skulls. They killed Kos’ child. It’s even implied that the Hunters enjoyed the slaughter and reveled in the chance to kill to their hearts’ content. Arguably, the Hunters had already become monsters.
Decades later, the descendants of those brutal Hunters, now serving as the tools of the Healing Church, were given the task of butchering the transformed citizens of Yharnam. Now, however, the Hunters were aided by the ritual blood of the Church, which had become addicting and corrupting. The thrill of killing and bloodshed hastened the transformation of these Hunters, who were already doomed by the Old Blood to become the same beasts they had been tasked to hunt.
This potential for Hunters becoming beasts is actually reflected in an in-game stat, called Beasthood. The greater the Beasthood stat, the more adept the Hunter becomes at combat when using Beast Blood Pellets, which “grant a temporary spurt of beasthood”. The item also includes this line in their description:
Ripping apart the flesh of one’s enemies and being rained upon by their splattering blood invigorates one’s sense of beasthood, feeding strength and euphoric feeling alike.
This description illustrates what it feels like to slip away from one’s humanity and give in to being a brutal, bloodthirsty beast. What makes the Beasthood stat even more interesting is that, as the protagonist acquires Insight, their Beasthood stat is reduced, suggesting that as the protagonist gains a deeper affinity for the Great Ones and the ability to think as they do, they move away from devolving into a beast.
In my view, most Hunters don’t represent the pinnacle of human bravery or heroism—they represent everything blunt, cruel, and violent. The people who become Hunters do so because they have a taste for bloodshed, and all the talk of protecting people is a convenient excuse. Over the course of Bloodborne’s story, the protagonist is struggling between two different sides of themselves: the base, bloody killer and the enlightened, transcendent being.
Theme #2: The Evolution of Humanity
The second theme can be expressed as “the evolution of humanity requires a transfiguration of mind and body”. The key organizations in Bloodborne, the Academy of Byrgenwerth and the Healing Church, sought a way for humanity to become more like the Great Ones, or even ascend to being a Great One.
For Byrgenwerth scholars, this manifested as literal eyes growing on their brains in order to comprehend the universe like the Great Ones do. I’ll call this “The Path of Insight.” Ultimately, this path led to the creation of Rom, the Vacuous Spider—a human being who ascended to become something closer to a Great One.
For the Healing Church, this manifested in studying and imbibing the blood of the Great Ones in an attempt to become like they are. I call this “The Path of Blood.” However, the exact opposite happens when the Healing Church gives most people the blood of the Great Ones—they devolve into beasts.
What’s strange is that not all people become beasts—some people who imbibe the blood (or modified versions of it) become something between human and Great One, called Kin. This is illustrated pretty clearly (in my opinion) when the protagonist encounters a mysterious doctor called Iosefka, who is experimenting on humans by administering special blood. Late in the game, her patients become Kin, but she appears to be in the midst of transforming into something else. She says:
“I knew it; I’m different. I’m no beast. Oh God, it feels awful… but it proves that I’m chosen.”
If the protagonist kills Iosefka, a special item can be collected from her, called the Cord of the Eye, which appears to be the key to her research and her transformation.
I’d argue that the difference between becoming a beast and becoming Kin has much to do with the person in question—if they are driven by beast-like desires (like gluttony and violence), then they will turn into a beast. Rom, the human transformed by Byrgenwerth, was able to become Kin in part because (I’d argue) she had strong Insight.
Ultimately, there are only two characters in Bloodborne that seem to be fit for the long-sought transformation into a Great One: Rom and the protagonist.
In one ending of the game, the protagonist collects and consumes several Cords of the Eye, which triggers a climactic fight with the Great One called the Moon Presence. After defeating it, the protagonist will then transform into an infant Great One. In my view, this transformation is successful because the protagonist has gained enough Insight to gain a kind of eldritch enlightenment, which is then reflected in their new form.
Theme #3: Survival Horror & Becoming a Hunter
Because Bloodborne is a game and not a novel, it has to convey certain aspects of its experience through gameplay, not text. Despite usually being classified as an ‘action’ game, Bloodborne veers closer to ‘survival horror,’ which focuses on evoking feelings of suspense, fear, and helplessness.
At the beginning of the game, the protagonist is a Hunter in name only. Both they and the player have no knowledge of how to use their weapons or fight beasts. And from the moment they step into Yharnam’s streets, they are forced to fight for their lives against hordes of enemies. One mistake can lead the player character to being ripped apart, breeding a sense of caution and paranoia that carries throughout the game. At the same time, learning to overcome these enemies by learning their moves, mastering one’s weapons, and adopting Bloodborne’s aggressive gameplay style breeds a sense of achievement and mastery.
Eventually, the player experiences a shift in mindset. Instead of thinking like prey, they begin to think like a predator, ruthlessly exploiting weaknesses and taking risks to press the offensive. Throughout the game, they collect Blood Echoes from dead enemies and use them to become stronger or purchase items, and there are many times when the player goes and kills familiar enemies just to harvest more Blood Echoes. What was once a tense battle for survival becomes a one-sided slaughter. However, there is always the prospect of encountering new enemies in a new quarter of the city whose brutal and unpredictable behavior can once again reduce the player to prey.
Paired with this relentless cycle of slaughter is the fact that there are very, very few friendly characters in Bloodborne—nearly everyone the protagonist encounters is hostile. This breeds a sense of isolation in the player as they wage their one-person war against the monsters of Yharnam.
From a thematic point of view, this gameplay is embodying the theme of survival horror, but also growth and mastery. The player is forced to undergo a personal arc that involves learning how to become an effective Hunter, which involves becoming more confident in their skills and discovering how to balance caution and aggression. Thus, the player and the player character essentially undergoing a character arc.
Likewise, the player can choose to ignore the deeper layers of the game’s story and world and simply move from prey to prey, not questioning anything beyond the thrill of the Hunt. These players (and player characters) mirror the bloodthirsty aspects of Hunters, whose obsession with killing leaves them unequipped to unravel the esoteric truths of the Great Ones.
What Can Writers Learn?
It goes without saying that writing for a game and writing for a novel are vastly different tasks. That being said, I think Bloodborne has several lessons for fantasy writers and worldbuilders that want to improve their craft.
Worldbuilding Should Always Be Shaped by Narrative/Themes
I’m a firm believer that the concept of “Unity of Effect” is real and useful, and I think Bloodborne is a great example and counterpoint to a lot of fantasy writers treat narrative and worldbuilding as two separate activities, like building the backdrop for a play and then writing a script to play out on that stage.
God knows worldbuilding in itself can be a quagmire, but I think the way to a) make your story most effective and b) keep the sprawl of worldbuilding under control is to figure out your key themes first and let them inform your narrative and world. If something doesn’t fit in with your key themes, you know you can probably cut it from your story or world.
When you’re constructing your world, you shouldn’t be switching off the part of your brain that thinks about your story’s narrative and themes—you should be finding ways to express them in the fabric of the world.
For example, Bloodborne could have made the Hunters a group of warriors who rose organically out of the need to combat the Beast Plague in Yharnam. Instead, it tied them to the Healing Church and Byrgenwerth to deepen their connection to the Great Ones and mankind’s search for transcendence (the Paths of Insight and Eyes).
Likewise, Bloodborne could have chosen to make the monstrous, violent side of Hunters a side-effect of imbibing the Old Blood. Instead, it chose to portray Hunters as brutal, merciless killers early in their history, showing that they always had the ‘beastly’ traits that would cause them to transform.
What makes Bloodborne work so well is that everything is that its narrative, themes, and worldbuilding are inextricable from one another.
A Good Mystery Builds with the Story
I think a lot of fantasy writers who weave a mystery into their central plots think of that mystery in terms of a big reveal or a big twist.
Example #1: The vampire hunter protagonist has been searching for the truth of what happened to his parents, but (twist!) he discovers that he is half-vampire.
Example #2: The heroes are sent by a council of mages to gather artifacts of power in order to safeguard them from a mysterious evil order, but their journey and encounters reveal that (twist!) the council of mages was the evil order all along.
Having twists in a story is fine, but if you want to make “uncovering the truth” a core part of your story, it doesn’t have to take the form of a single, big reveal. Nor does the “mystery” have to consist of following a trail of MacGuffin-like clues that simply point to another clue without revealing anything substantial.
To illustrate what I mean by this, take a moment to read through this more conventional, modified retelling of Bloodborne:
The protagonist Hunter fights alongside other Hunters to reach the Cathedral Ward of Yharnam to get help from the Vicars of the Healing Church. Along the way, the protagonist watches their friends succumb and transform into beasts.
Their suspicion about the Healing Church’s blood grows until they arrive at the Grand Cathedral, where they discover that the last Vicar of the Church has become a beast herself, and that the Church as a whole has succumbed to the Plague (Reveal #1).
From there, the protagonist could explore the Church’s archives and discover that the blood comes from a mysterious being called a Great One (Reveal #2), and that the Church was using the blood to research a path to human transcendence (Reveal #3). The beasts, they learn, were unworthy and therefore became monsters (Reveal #4).
To understand this, the Hunter then travels to the ruins of Byrgenwerth, where they could find scholars driven mad by attempts at understanding the Great Ones. They find one scholar that reveals that Oedon, the Great One worshipped by the Healing Church, is at work in Yharnam (Reveal #5), and it’s trying to find a certain Yharnam noblewoman who will bear its child. If this child is born, it will pull the city into the Dreamlands as its new kingdom (Reveal #6).
From there, the protagonist must track down this noblewoman and defend her from the Great One, but they realize that the only solution is to kill the woman (Twist #1). At this point, it’s revealed that the Hunter has been manipulated by a different Great One, called the Moon Presence, to prevent Formless Oedon from bearing a child (Twist #2).
What makes uncovering the truth compelling in the plot above is that each “Reveal” expands the scope of the story, sets up new stakes, or deepens what we know about elements we’ve already encountered—the Church’s blood isn’t just turning people into beasts, it’s doing it because it’s trying to find a way to turn people into eldritch beings, and those eldritch beings are in the city, with their own agenda.
The story and the mystery build together toward the climax.
Worldbuilding Should Evoke Wonder (and Sometimes Fear)
There’s a concept that I keep returning to, one I call “The Candlelit World.” The idea is that folklore, myth, and legend are characterized by a view of the world in which human knowledge and civilization represent a tiny circle of light in a vast, tenebrous world shrouded in mystery and danger.
Fantasy, as a genre, was strongly shaped by folklore and legends, and part of the ‘magic’ of the genre comes from that sense of the unknown. Encountering things beyond human ken evokes feelings of fear and awe, but always reverence.
However, in a lot of fantasy novels, worldbuilding material is portrayed in the opposite light. The text implicitly takes the role of an encyclopedia or a travel guide, dropping details about history, other lands, and magical lore in a steady drip feed. Part of this is necessary to ground the reader in the world and make sense of it, but when the text keeps elaborating and revealing the world, it signals to the reader that this world has already been uncovered, catalogued, and taxonomized.
Part of this comes from the mindset of authors—if they created all this in-depth material, they’re going to show it off, damn it. But the byproduct of this presentation, where the author can’t wait to give exposition of their world, is that it robs the worldbuilding of a profound sense of mystery or wonder.
This is where FromSoftware’s famously obtuse item descriptions actually help convey the atmosphere of reverence and esotericism. Here’s how Bloodborne describes a Caryll Rune, a magical symbol:
“A secret symbol left by Caryll, runesmith of Byrgenwerth. This transcription of the Great Ones’ inhuman voices ripples like a watery reflection.
This rune means “Lake,” and those branded by it enjoy augmented defense.
Great volumes of water serve as a bulwark guarding sleep, and an augur of the eldritch Truth.
Overcome this hindrance, and seek what is yours.”
Mixed into the description of a magical rune is a hint to how it was created, as well as how water may connect to the Great Ones and dreams. There’s also a mysterious imperative: seek what is yours.
This isn’t a perfect slice of worldbuilding, but it’s representative of how Bloodborne presents its world: as something mysterious, esoteric, something that needs to be uncovered and unraveled, because the truth behind it is too powerful or frightening to speak about in common terms.
Conclusion
If someone tried to faithfully retell Bloodborne as a novel, it would likely resemble an obtuse Victorian novel, filled with ornate and ambiguous prose. It would also be a thousand pages long. Bloodborne, as a narrative and as a game, was not designed to be widely accessible.
Still, even if emulating Bloodborne wholesale is not feasible or desirable, I think the construction of its narrative, world, and themes can provide a wealth of insight and examples of how fantasy writers can improve their writing and worldbuilding. I’ve only scratched the surface in this analysis, so if you’ve found it valuable, I encourage you to dig deeper, starting with The Paleblood Hunt.
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