Mild spoilers for Bloodborne: The Old Hunters follow…
Despite it being my first venture into a game of the Souls ilk, I never found Bloodborne to be too cripplingly difficult. Yes, it had a healthy level of challenge and was certainly tougher and less forgiving than anything I had played in a long time, but for a game coming from a developer with a renowned history of making crushingly hard games, I never found the game to be unfair or harsh – instead, I danced around monstrous enemies, learning their patterns and environments until I was able to crush them with so much as a swing. Often I found I was able to defeat controversially difficult bosses such as Father Gascoigne and the Bloodletting Beast in just a few attempts, all the while hearing woeful tales of players taking twenty to thirty goes just to beat their enemies. Perhaps I just got lucky. After breezing through the game a second time on New Game Plus, I sat and waited patiently, attempting to play other games that just weren’t quite up to the same standard to fill the void. Finally, a few months later, the game’s first (and possibly only) expansion, The Old Hunters, arrived.
My hunter stepped foot into Yharnam again. Everything felt immediately familiar as I slipped into the new nightmare, arriving in the DLC’s first new area. Simply known as The Hunter’s Nightmare, the first area is a twisted meshing of Central Yharnam and Cathedral Ward, where familiar architecture protrudes eerily from a bulging, sickly world, as though two worlds have slipped upon one another. Despite the haunting scenery, I worked myself back into the game with ease – approach an enemy, bait their attack and parry for a visceral strike. My hunter was a high level, and the tactic had seen me blow through my second play through of the game without obstacle. I felt unstoppable. The Old Hunters was easy. Finally, I arrived at the location of the expansion’s first boss – a sinister, underground chamber soaked in blood. After tearing through the main game’s bosses earlier, I stepped into Ludwig’s den with a boastful pride, an arrogant complacency. New Game Plus number two? Bah. This’ll be a cakewalk.
Ludwig, a figure regarded as a fable in the main game, sat menacingly in the shadows. When he finally revealed himself to me, he wasn’t the hunter of legend that I knew. Instead, he was a monster – a maelstrom of malformed madness that sat on grotesque legs. He had two heads and neither was quite human. One was simply a maw of unblinking eyes, while the other was gnashing and horse-like, with eyes that rolled in their sockets. Perhaps it was with a heretic irony that I faced him with his own weapon – the Holy Blade. The fight began and with an animalistic scream, he was upon me. Like the decaying world of Bloodborne, Ludwig was constantly oppressive and bore down on me, slamming me against walls and tossing me across the room.
I tried to gather myself and use what the game had taught me – I dodged to his side and attempted to stay there, as one should attempt with all large beasts – but he simply brought his entire body round to me and shattered my plans in one fell blow. Every time I thought I had him worked out, Ludwig revealed another new trick. Sometimes he’d leap into the air and come crashing down onto me, where only a well-timed roll would suffice, or he’d charge me and ram me into a dank corner of the battlefield where my hunter would then be at his mercy. Were I to escape his hooves, he’d spit some strange fluid at me that would burn my health away to cinders. Upon discovering I could call a hunter called Henriett to my aid, I did so – but once Ludwig had trampled her to death, his dead-eyed gaze would fall upon me once more. After fighting tooth and nail to shave away his health, he changed. From the darkness, a glimmering sword appeared and he wielded it as if to tell me that I could never have truly wielded Ludwig’s Holy Blade. In an instant, I was swept aside.
After thirty or so attempts, I put down the controller. For the first time in my Bloodborne career, I was struck with a realisation:
I can’t do this.
Humbled, I resolved to return to Ludwig when my hunter was more powerful, and I was more suitably prepared. My pride had been trampled and crushed by the first boss – it seemed, that after beginning to master the game and my style of play, I had forgotten what it meant to play Bloodborne. I had forgotten what it meant to take up residence in this world. Dread and crushing defeat are commonplace – Yharnam is no playground. In the lore of the city, the once grand and proud have long since fallen from grace. That same notion is true of the players who dare to take a leap into the abyss. Yharnam, and to that extent, Bloodborne, is a cruel and demanding mistress. The rewards are great, but punishment is greater. In Bloodborne, punishment is reward.
I returned to the Forbidden Woods a broken man. I wasn’t seeking refuge, but power. Pushing on through the darkened woods, I gathered blood echoes and blood vials – enough to bolster my level and health respectively. For me, the Forbidden Woods has always offered an excellent farming route – straight from the entrance, all the way until the first snake-headed enemy. It’s an easy enough route to barrel through, and doesn’t take all that long. By the end of each trip, I’d accrued almost two hundred and fifty thousand echoes – enough for one level. This repetitiveness is a central part of Bloodborne’s nature. The eternal grind that forces players to grow stronger, both in character and in mind. Defeat is natural in Bloodborne and it’s the very essence of the game.
After levelling my character a number of times, I returned to the DLC. Gripping the Holy Blade in my hands, I stepped into the bloodied dungeon. Of course, he was there, his wait for me undying, his horrible face emerging from the shadows with a chilling screech. This time however, I stepped into his den feeling different. Gone was the out-of-place arrogance that caused me to fall. In its place, I saw Ludwig the Accursed for what he was – a boss that would undoubtedly kill me again and again. But he was beatable. He had to be. Applying my fire paper to my weapon, I ran at him. I saw his first leap coming – it’s nearly always the same. I weaved to the side and struck him with a burning swipe. A couple of hits in and I was out again. I backed off, observing, waiting. He did the same and for a few tense seconds, we circled one another. His horse head was low to the ground and even though his eyes were glassy to the point where I couldn’t see his pupils, I knew he was watching me.
He made the next move and charged. We fought back and forth for what felt like hours, sweat gripping my hands. Eventually, I brought him down – but then he reached for his sword. The second act would now begin. Through waves of shimmering emerald, Ludwig swung his sword at my hunter, as though he was trying to squash a particularly annoying fly. I applied my knowledge and got behind him, hacking away at his legs at every opportunity, making sure to watch for the telltale signs of a shockwave blast, or a hailstorm of green light from above. Victory was in sight. I lunged and he turned, swinging his massive blade like a ghostly pendulum through the darkness. In a momentary lapse of patience, I was struck and my hunter slammed into the ground, crumpled. I thought for a second, that I had still failed, despite all that I had learned.
With an inhuman shriek however, Ludwig collapsed to the floor like a felled tree, disappearing in a cathartic burst of blood and mist. Despite the midnight hour, I let out an audible cheer as he vanished – represented in-game by my hunter throwing his hands up to the sky in joy. With my hard-earned victory, I had remembered what it meant to play Bloodborne. Wins do not come easy. Bloodborne is a masterpiece in a number of ways, and making the player suffer in seemingly never-ending darkness is almost at the top of the list. Above that though, is the richly rewarding sense of satisfaction it bestows on those who make it out of the shadows. Bloodborne demands a lot from its players – patience, timing, concentration and repetition, but above all, it demands skill and perseverance. Drunk on blood, like the hunters who occupy the nightmare, I had forgotten that.
Now I’m ready to return to the hunt. It’s been so long.
Tom Powter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=0_9dLZCKOvQ
