What is Bloodborne?

Dark Souls goes to a Victorian city that dreams of the sea, and stays on one console forever.

Bloodborne was released for the PlayStation 4 in March 2015, North America on March 24, Japan on March 26, Europe in the same week, directed by Miyazaki and co-developed with Sony’s Japan Studio. In Yharnam, a city of gothic spires built on a healing church and a miracle blood, the player is a Hunter on the night of the hunt: no shield worth the name, a transforming trick weapon in one hand and a pistol in the other, and a city whose sickness is older and stranger than any beast.

It began in 2012 as Project Beast, when Japan Studio approached FromSoftware about a new game; Miyazaki, who had wanted to make an eighth-generation title, took the chance. It carries, by its makers’ account, the DNA of Demon’s Souls, and it sold 7.46 million copies by February 2022 without ever leaving the PlayStation 4.

Bloodborne cover art, the Hunter with saw cleaver — **BLOODBORNE · 2015** The cover of Bloodborne (2015): the Hunter, saw cleaver in hand, back turned to the player and facing Yharnam.

YHARNAM

The hunt · 2015

Bloodborne cover art, the Hunter seen from behind

Bloodborne · PS4 · 2015

The Hunter from behind: the only major game on this shelf with a single platform, a single cover, and a decade of unanswered petitions for more.

Guns for shields

The design swaps the Souls shield for a firearm used to stagger, and rewards aggression with health regained by striking back. Defence was deliberately made the losing strategy.

Dragons to gods

The credited inspirations trade the trilogy’s medievalism for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and H. P. Lovecraft, and for real architecture in Romania and the Czech Republic. The horror changes species halfway through, on purpose.

What is Bloodborne?

YHARNAM

THE FIRST WORD