Daily Grind: Bloodborne likes to surprise me with boss fights

It should surprise no one that I’ve been playing a lot of Bloodborne this week. I mean Aside from Journey (Journey be praised) I think Dark Souls is the most talked about game on this blog. Granted, there was also a span of several months in which updates were so rare that I’m surprised there’s not a new Uncharted game in which Nathan Drake searches for one, so any reader base I once had has been scattered to the internet winds by now. But gather back around, dear readers! For I have a story to tell!

First, though, I will do my best to avoid spoilers. However, if you’re the type of person who thinks merely writing the names of bosses is a spoiler, I advise you proceed with caution. I’m sure there’s one or two people out there who think it’s a spoiler that I even confirmed there were bosses period. I cannot help those people, for they have been consumed by fear and cannot be reached by logic or reason.

So, Bloodborne. The level design is brilliant, and in a vein similar to its Souls cousins before it there are many interconnecting paths that do an excellent job of making what are basically very long hallways feel like vast, mysterious places. Part of the brilliance is that you can open up shortcuts that make foot travel less linear and time consuming. As such, the player is generally encouraged to explore every nook and cranny to find all the cool loot and really learn how all the different paths exist geographically in relation to each other.

After losing once to the first boss, Cleric Beast, it was that very encouragement that led me to avoid that boss and try to find some more cool stuff and rack up enough souls blood echoes to level up a little before attempting it again. I had cleared out most of the area, but I felt strongly that I was probably missing some very useful secret passages and shortcuts. Down in the aqueducts, for example, I could see on a higher level across a gap the faint but unmistakable glow of an unclaimed item.

I was determined to find out how to get to it, and decided that I probably had to drop down from above. So I explored a bit, freeing the city of a few rats and birds on the way, and eventually found a very large pig as well, which was also vanquished in a hilarious cacophony of traumatizing squeals and enormous fountains of porcine blood. Oh FromSoft, you and your giant farm animals.

But cutting to the point, I found a very tall ladder that led to a few more enemies and some stairs, which unbeknownst to me led to a boss arena. That’s right, in my efforts to explore and avoid a boss fight, I ironically stumbled into a totally different boss fight. And as you can see in the video, it was some grade-A slapstick at first. See, it was getting late and I was tired from playing too long. I was still wearing all my starting gear, with the exception of a Saw Spear which I found in the aqueducts. I hadn’t spent my several thousand souls (damn it!) blood echoes to level up yet. And I was definitely not expecting to attempt a boss fight.

But despite all that I gave it a try anyway and miraculously succeeded on my first try, which I promptly saved the footage from out of sheer joyous shock. I was pretty impressed with myself. I mean, it’s not a super difficult boss, but considering my situation and being caught off guard it was a pretty white knuckle fight for me. I didn’t even have the wits to notice that the name of the boss, Father Gascoigne, was also on an item I had that I later learned from someone else could have helped me in the fight. But whatever poor play I demonstrated at the start I think I made up for with the triple parry/riposte interrupt/visceral at the end.

The main thing I took away from this, though, is how engaged I was with the game. This is a game that has me flinching at every corner, that has me playing for hours past when I would normally be in bed, that has me thinking about it while I’m bored at work. Basically, this is the first time in a long time that a game made me feel a sense of wonder and excitement. When I was young  this happened a lot more, but as a jaded adult I rarely feel this passionately about my digital experiences, with a few notable exceptions. It’s refreshing and exciting, and gives me a renewed hope for the future of console gaming and really modern gaming in general.

Go play this game. Don’t worry, I’ll talk about it more here if you want further convincing, but seriously go play this game.

The point is, you are alive when they start to eat you.