Be Excellent To Each Other

This game.

Played every class in the alpha and thought the first two (scythe/blunderbuss and hunter axe/pistol) were the best suited for me; the other two felt incredible in their own right, but also felt like they take more skill to be played perfectly.

This truly feels like more of a Demon's Souls successor than a Dark Souls one despite similarities. You still double tap circle to backdodge or jump while running, you use items with square and every attack button is located on the shoulder buttons. The world feels very 'Castlevania'-ish with the amount of doors and such I've encountered. I was shocked when I saw another player just on the street fighting; I've helped him and thought it was a NPC at first, but soon realized that he was seamlessly integrated into my game world which felt very natural. I was confused by the small inventory and how 'different' the game felt to actually control, but the more you play the more you realized that this is a fantastically streamlined version of the souls games.

Having a heal function mapped on the triangle button is so much better than having to scroll though the item submenu, especially during combat. Being able to transform your weapon with one button outside or even during combat is a bless and opens up the possibility to do fast and stylish combo chain attacks that have not been seen in any of the previous Souls games. The interface consists of way less elements and feels less cluttered than the other ones and doesn't interfer with the beautiful presentation.

The realization of the setting they chose is astounding; yes, there are crazy framerate drops during some segments and not every texture is sharp as a knife, but seeing this in motion with the horsepower of the PS4 behind it is something else. The use of decent motion blur during movements, the reflection of moody light sources in water puddles scattered on the street, the cape physics and the unbelievable sense of scope that puts Anor Londo to shame create an ominous yet exciting atmosphere that many games wished to come close to. The amount of assets is levels above anything you've seen in the previous Souls games: the inside of houses look way more detailed, the streets are filled with abandoned carriages, coffins, boxes, barrels, statues with facial expressions you can recognize and walls and railings and roofs and doors and architectures that are filled with crinkum-crankum.. and then there are this perfect moments during combat where you dodge and you witness the interplay of lighting, bloody coats, motion blur and think "Holy shit". This game is a looker to me.

The truly best part of it that made me giggle over and over again is the combat, and I have no idea how I should enjoy Dark Souls 2's combat ever again since I have some DLCs to finish. Bloodborne is fast. Bloodborne is brutal. You fight completely different than in previous Souls games because instead of choosing between two actions - attack and block - you have to make more decisions and button presses. Blocking always meant that you were safe to a certain extent, and that's gone now. You have no real safe options during combat surrouned by enemies; you can't just raise a shield and look for a wall behind you. You have to zig-zag dash your way between multiple enemies, keep your eye on stamina, choose the right moment to either melee attack or to shoot (which allows you to stun enemies if timed right before an enemy attack), than dodge back and then dash right back into the crowd while targeting the best target. I didn't manage to beat the Cleric Beast, but this was the first time I had a blast to fight a Souls boss again (especially since there is no dumb MaxHP-penality anymore lol). You dash around enemies, shoot them, slash them and transform your weapon to have a wider range and slash the enemies surrounding you, then you dodge a bullet and try to dash towards its shooter while being followed by mutliple enemies and then try to slash another enemy on your way because you've been hit before and the regain system makes you gamble if you want to win health back or not and and and. This has potential to be something really special because it feels soooo fresh.

This is not "I keep my finger on the shield button and walk into the room and if a enemy attacks me there is a slight chance that his attack will fall into the shield radius and be blocked". This is "I walk through open areas and if a enemy attacks I better dodge quickly into a direction where he doesn't hit me". This is "I can't stand still in a level because there are actual patrols who attack me instantly". This creates a new exciting dynamic scenario in which you never feel quite safe if you haven't killed all the enemies. And I loved it.

There were some typical Souls engine symptons though: enemies do the weird "skip animations if too far away" thing, they don't follow you all the way and sometimes have pathfinding issues. There were some other technical issues, but hey: this is an alpha, this is mostly normal. I believe the final product will be better in some areas.

All in all, I know what I'll be playing February. This is a true PS4 killer app and you will love this. Miyazaki and his team have done it again, and I can't wait to get my hands on it the next time.

Bloodborne's combat convinced me I don't need a sword and shield any more

Impressions from the first hour of From Software's PS4 exclusive.

Old habits are hard to break, especially when they're ones that kept you safe through trying times. When you walked through the Valley in the shadow of Drakes, when you descended into the toxic depths of Blighttown, and when you paced the gleaming ramparts of Anor Londo, the old sword and shield combo was a reliable fallback in Dark Souls. Block, slash, back off, wait. It was a mantra you repeated to yourself over and over, a song whose comforting words saw you through the darkest nights. Block, slash, back off, wait. Dark Souls' creator Hidetaka Miyazaki doesn't want you to get comfortable, which is why his latest title, PS4 exclusive Bloodborne, is taking that fallback away. And as suspected, learning to get by in a From Software game without relying on a sword and shield doesn't come easy - at least at first.

Starting the game, you awaken, laid out on a gurney, in Iosefka's Clinic, a grimy, sunless room lined with dirty bottles and rusted medical equipment. A man in a wheelchair with his eyes bandaged, presumably Iosefka himself, looms over you. He calls you a 'Paleblood,' tells you you'll need some Yharnam blood in you, and that you'll need a contract in order to begin the transfusion. This opens up the Character Creation screen, where you'll choose the appearance and gender of your avatar. You also select your character's personal history, or 'origin', which affects their starting attributes. Being a Lone Survivor gives you higher life essence and vigour, for example; other choices include Milquetoast (all stats are average), a Noble Scion, a Troubled Childhood and a Waste of Skin - a miserable state as you're told you're worthless, talentless, and shouldn't even really be alive. How charming, and oh so very Souls-like.

Upon creating your character and 'signing' the contract, the transfusion will begin, Iosefka will disappear, a werewolf will rise from a puddle of blood on the floor and reach out to you before bursting into flames, and then hissing little imp-like creatures will crawl up over the gurney and you'll pass out, awakening some time later. After getting up you're free to explore the clinic, though the only company will be your own creaking footsteps, until you stumble upon a werewolf that will immediately kill you. You'll reawaken (again) in the Hunter's Dream, a quiet, moonlit churchyard that'll act as your hub world. It's here you'll be able to level up, upgrade weapons, and, by inspecting various tombstones, warp to other locations. Upon the steps of the church, a life-sized doll stares at you with blank, glassy eyes - its use unapparent for now. Approaching it, the text description reads simply that it's "Just a plain doll." Not likely.

As you ascend the church steps, those imp-like creatures - loyal servants of Hunters like yourself called Messengers - rise out of the ground holding trick weapons, offering you a choice between a Saw Cleaver, a Hunter's Axe, and a Threaded Cane. I take the Cleaver. Another set of Messengers offer firearms, a choice between a Hunter's Pistol and a Hunter's Blunderbuss. I take the Pistol. You can equip up to two weapons per hand to switch between, though seemingly weapons will be nowhere near as plentiful as in Dark Souls 1 and 2 - they never drop from fallen foes in Bloodborne, for example. The Messengers hand me a third gift, a notebook, which the text states will allow them to leave my messages with hunters in other worlds. A soapstone, in other words. The church doors are locked for now, but approaching another Messenger sat in a birdbath and rubbing its hands greedily, I'm told it's here I can trade in Blood Echoes, which take the place of Souls as currency here, to buy and sell items. There are only basic items available to buy at the moment; Blood Vials, which take the place of Estus Flasks; Pebbles, which are used to distract enemies; Quicksilver bullets, and firebombs.

Inspecting a nearby Tombstone of Awakening warps me back to Iosefka's Clinic, though now I'm armed I'll have a better chance of passing through. The werewolf that dispatched me is still there, only now his eyes shine white. This trait means he holds the Blood Echoes I dropped upon death - or would have dropped, had he not been the first enemy I encountered. As with the Souls games, you'll drop your primary resource upon death at the spot in which you died, but in Bloodborne, a nearby enemy will sometimes snatch up your Blood Echoes before you manage to return to the spot to retrieve them. In that instance, you'll have to kill that enemy in order to restore the Blood Echoes you had previously collected, rather than simply touching a telltale pool of blood on the ground.

A few slashes with the Saw Cleaver quickly brings down the beast. The Cleaver has two states that you can switch between with L1; closed over, it'll deal greater damage at short range, but once snapped open it'll be much more useful at fending back greater numbers of enemies with wide, sweeping slashes. You don't have to steadfastly stick with one form or the other during combat, however - changing forms during attacks will change up the combos your character performs. Opening with a sweeping attack and quickly changing to a close quarters slice will help to open up enemies using shields, for instance.

Stumbling out of the clinic, up some carved steps and opening up a heaving, creaking set of iron gates, I suddenly find myself in central Yharnam - its 19th century gothic-inspired streets paved with wrecked carriages, decomposing horses, and rows upon rows of padlocked coffins. It's an incredible sight. Boletaria, Lordran and Drangleic were faded, ancient worlds; crumbling, medieval and melancholy. The twisted streets of Yharnam are something else altogether - dark, diseased, and exceedingly hostile. Gleaming spires, ornate fortresses and once-proud marble throne rooms are replaced by wrought iron spikes, weathered limestone statues and dirty alleyways. Sometimes you'll spy a sliver of light creeping under a door or out of a shuttered window and see a flicker of life inside, hear the murmur of voices within, lamenting the fate of the city but never allowing you to cross the threshold. As a whole Yharnam is a haunting creation, but it depicts a darker, more violent kind of beauty, the sort that'll have you standing and staring as the yellow flames of a bonfire gently lick a mutilated werewolf carcass.

Approaching one such bonfire from afar, I see a large group of standard enemies gathered - citizens of Yharnam that have become infected with a so-called plague of beasts, becoming maddened as a result. Somewhere, a bell tolls, signalling to the congregated mob that it's time to resume actively hunting for beasts. I watch them from afar for a time - some stand still, others wander up and down in groups, and still more seemed a touch unpredictable as they didn't appear to have a set patrol path. Whereas before in Dark Souls I'd have attempted to kite enemies, pulling them in one by one to make them more manageable, here that endeavour becomes more difficult. If I'm lucky I can use a pebble to distract one, but more often than not you'll grab the attention of two or three at a time.

It's at this point that the difference in combat between Bloodborne and From Software's previous titles really becomes apparent. You move much faster, for starters, the dodge button enabling you to weave quickly, though sometimes clumsily, in and out and around several enemies at once. With a sword and shield combo in Souls, the instinct was to remain unmoved, allowing combatants to come to you while keeping your defences up and waiting patiently for the right time to attack. In Bloodborne, enemies come so thick and fast that this approach would be suicide, even before factoring in your lack of defensive equipment. Your foes are faster and smarter, too, and have a wide array of attacks. Some prod you with a pitchfork while their comrades call you an accursed beast and wave fire in your face to scare you off. Some drag their scythes along on the ground behind them as they patrol, filling the air with a horrible scraping sound as they screech across the cobblestones.

Perhaps the most important new aspect of combat, however, is the firearm, which takes the place of a shield in your left hand. Used as a long-range weapon it's fairly useless, at least at this very early stage of the game, but as soon as you figure out what it really is - a device with which to parry incoming attacks - it's a revelation. Firing the gun with L2 just as an enemy is about to land a blow staggers them, throwing them off balance and allowing you to follow up with a swift and bloody counterattack that will instantly kill lower-level aggressors, drenching your cloak in their blood in the process. This mechanic all but forces you to be more pro-active, and thus completely changes the pace of Bloodborne's combat. Where before, in Dark Souls, I'd be slowly circling singular enemies, suffering their attacks while feeling for the right moment to plunge a blade into their back, now I'm chasing them down and facing mobs of them head on, goading them into battle. Charged attacks can also be carried out on enemies by holding and releasing R2, and in the case of one that is unaware of your presence, can stun them long enough to carry out a brutal follow-up with R1.

In addition to this, the Regain system also rewards aggressive play by allowing you to claw back health lost from enemy attacks if you retaliate within a certain timeframe. After being dealt damage, you'll notice an orange section momentarily appears on your red health bar. This is how much health you can potentially get back from counterattacking, and each consecutive hit will add a small portion of that orange bar back to your overall health. It doesn't make you invincible, but it does embolden you to strike fast and keep consecutive skirmishes going for longer than you might otherwise have done. Make no mistake, combat here still demands strategic thinking and some degree of foresight, but it feels much more immediate.

My hour-long demo ends with the first boss fight of the game - the Cleric Beast, a tangled, towering mass of bones and branches and lichen that leaps over a wall with a bloodcurdling screech and launches directly at me. One of my favourite aspects of Dark Souls was its incredibly detailed monster design, so it's good to see that still intact here. The Cleric Beast appears relentless in its attacks, but knocking back its arm with the firearm does seem to leave it vulnerable to a more powerful follow-up with the Cleaver.

On one hand, Bloodborne is unmistakably Souls in nature. From the mournful music to the surprise enemy placements, to the labyrinthine, complex world and the need to strategise and learn from your mistakes in order to inch forwards, this is an experience that Souls fans will immediately recognise. But there are fundamental differences in its design that make playing Bloodborne a markedly different experience. Though an hour wasn't totally enough to wean me off all the habits I learned while playing From Software's previous games, I am no longer a shieldmaiden of Lordran. Prior to playing, I had thought I'd just stick to my Souls' 'block, slash, back off, wait' mantra whenever and however I could. Playing through just an hour of Bloodborne, I can see that simply won't be the case, and nor do I want it to be. I'm a convert; in Yharnam, a good offence is the best defence, and that's the song I'll be singing come release day.

How Bloodborne feels on PS Vita via Remote Play

Plus, more hands-on impressions of next week’s PS4 action epic

Though Bloodborne shares some broad similarities with Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, it translates From Software‘s trademark high risk, high reward play-style to PS4 in new and interesting ways.

Starting with its zippier movement speed, Bloodborne seems bound and determined to strip away anything that might encumber the moment-to-moment flow. Shields are no longer central to gameplay, replaced with dodging and a new “regain” system that allows you to regenerate lost health by striking the creature that inflicted the damage (don’t expect to mash buttons hoping for an easy health boost, though). These strategic tweaks further heighten From Software’s blissful blend of risk and reward and encourage you to stay on the offense.

Character creation will be familiar to veteran Souls players. In selecting a character “origin,” you’ll choose from colourful descriptors such as Troubled Childhood (high resilience), Violent Past (high strength), and Waste of Skin (nearly helpless). I opted for the Military Veteran, which gave a balanced boost to my strength and skill ratings.

Moments into the game, it’s clear that From Software is putting PS4’s processing power to good use. Bloodborne’s grim hellscapes are a clear generational leap from the castles and courtyards of the Souls games. Bottles and boxes tumble realistically when struck. Fog flows like spilled blood. Light sources glow menacingly. The environments look and feel alive in ways the eight year-old PS3 hardware just can’t accommodate.

After ogling the environments, my Military Veteran set to work. Some friendly demons presented me with a choice of three starting weapons: I skipped the Hunter’s Axe and Saw Cleaver in favor of the Threaded Cane, a nasty piece of work that bashed skulls up close and expanded into a bladed whip for longer distance work.

Bloodborne’s weapons are multifaceted marvels, each effectively serving as two weapons in one. Combined with firearms like the Hunter’s Pistol and Blunderbuss, I strung together wicked multipart combos that shredded enemy mobs quickly and efficiently.

Bloodborne also taps into some of DUALSHOCK 4’s unique control features, starting with the touchpad. Click the right side and you’ll see your personal effects (molotovs, notebook, etc); click the left side and you’ll see your available gestures, which you’ll activate using DUALSHOCK 4’s internal motion sensor.

Being a PS4 title, we naturally had questions about how Bloodborne’s faster combat would translate to PS Vita’s smaller form factor. I can happily report that FromSoftware has implemented various niceties that ensure a smooth transition from
DUALSHOCK 4 to PS Vita, including a few clever re-mapping solutions:

DualShock 4 Control In-game function Remote Play Control
L2 & R2 Gun & Strong attack Bottom corners of front touchscreen
DS4 Touchpad (split to left & right halves) Gestures & Personal Effects Front Touchpad (split to left & right halves)
R3 Lock-on to enemy Right half of Rear Touchpad

After about five minutes of re-training my muscle memory, I was already dodging and counterattacking Bloodborne’s nightmarish beasts with the same finesse and ferocity as I was managing while playing natively on PS4.

Then there are the new Chalice Dungeons, procedurally generated levels set in the vast ruins beneath Yharnam. I test drove one dungeon called “Chamber of the Seal,” and its gloomy atmosphere and haunting ambient audio gave a tantalizing preview of what’s in store.

After hacking through a mob of scuttling rats and hulking horrors, a towering undead giant flattened me in two mighty blows. This experience perfectly encapsulated the major differences — as well as some key similarities — between Bloodborne and the Souls games. The melee combat felt more immediate, and I made rapid progress thanks to my faster movement speed. But in classic Souls style, all it took was one moment of hesitation to seal my fate.

I’m dying to dive back into Bloodborne when it lands on PS4 next week.

Where Dark Souls is About Death, Bloodborne is More About Killing

I’ve played a bit of Bloodborne. Not as much as I could have, because I don’t want my experience of it to be the weird, isolated experience of playing a game before its release, when the servers are empty and the code has strange wrinkles. I want to play Bloodborne like I played Demon’s Souls six years ago after I picked it up in a Japanese game store with no idea what it was. I want to discover it alongside a secret community of fellow players around the world, helping each other out. Not in an office somewhere, fumbling through pre-release code on my own.

Everything I’ve seen of Bloodborne so far suggests it’s going to be something really special, too, which has only hardened my resolve. Like quite a few early Souls devotees I know, I found Dark Souls 2 strangely difficult to love despite its many great qualities. The prospect of a new game from the series’ mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki excites me so much more than a Souls retread, however good it might be. And I get the impression that it excites Miyazaki himself, too; when I speak to him at FROM Software in Tokyo, the studio of which he is now President, he seems incredibly energised about Bloodborne - eager to share it, but wary of spoiling it. The game has literally just gone gold, and the studio’s nearly empty. I see futons and pillows stowed under desks.

Three years or so ago, Sony came to Miyazaki with the then-unannounced PlayStation 4 hardware and invited him to create something unique for it. I’d assumed that Bloodborne might have started out as Demon’s Souls 2, but evidently that wasn’t the case - Masaki Yamagi, the Sony Worldwide Studios producer who’s been working with FROM on Bloodborne since the very beginning, says that Sony wanted something new. “The goal was, just like we did with Demon’s Souls, to give people a whole new gaming experience - this time on PS4,” he says. “We always wanted to have this as an entirely new experience and allow Miyazaki-san’s directorial vision to come through. There was never really a conversation about it being a Souls game.”

Bloodborne might share an extraordinary amount of the Souls series’ DNA, from the third-person perspective to the sound that footsteps make on its cobbled gothic-Victorian streets, but there are key things that are very different about it - things that will feel very significant to anyone familiar with the subtle symbolism of Demon’s and Dark Souls. The Victorian horror setting is an obvious change, but I’ve also noticed a thematic shift. 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. My initial instinct was to dodge backwards and regroup after getting hit by some screaming madman with a cleaver, but after a while my mindset changed and I was lunging back aggressively with my own transforming cleaver after every blow I took. It’s exceptionally aggressive and exciting and on-edge. Every single encounter feels like life or death, and it usually is.

It gave me a feeling of bloodlust that was rare in Souls. It made me behave like the hunter that I was playing. Souls’ protagonist is a dead thing amongst all the other dead things, but Bloodborne’s is a demon-hunter drawn inexorably to the sight and sound and idea of blood. During boss fights his clothing becomes saturated with it. Every slash sends ribbons of it gushing and flying. It had a very strange effect on my primal brain. “You’re certainly drawn to a more aggressive style of fighting,” Miyazaki tells me later on. “It’s a running theme within the story of Bloodborne that you are drawn to the blood, and as you fight more and more in this terrifying combat, you’re being gradually swallowed up by this nightmare. If that is getting across through the combat mechanics, I feel that’s very effective in telling the story of Bloodborne.”

I’m not usually a fan of gore, or of horror, which made me nervous about Bloodborne - I’m still not convinced that I’ll be able to get through it mentally unscathed. This isn’t dark fantasy any more. It’s more gruesome than that. But it’s not gross-out - there’s no viscera gushing from wounds, no gore-porn, nothing that made my nose wrinkle in disgust. I’ve been scared and occasionally shocked by the things I’ve seen so far in Bloodborne, but not repulsed. This shouldn’t be surprising, really, as this is a Miyazaki game, and rarely has there been a game creator more devoted to aesthetic beauty - even if that beauty is also gruesome.

“I feel like nobody will believe me when I say this, but I’m a tasteful man and I like to adjust things accordingly; there was very careful management of the boundaries of what is shown,” he says. “Things like what colour the blood would be - we had to really adjust the tone of the red that we were using. But also when creatures are attacked and blood is spilling everywhere, it’s adjusted so that it’s expressed in more of an artistic way than a violent or gruesome way; it’s symbolic. It’s expressed in the way that a painting would show something, not a photorealistic representation. That maintains a sense of terror without being gratuitous.

“There were many things that needed to be toned down. Bloodborne is set in a nightmarish world, and that sense of horror needed to be expressed, so there are always going to be things that when first created were rather too over-the-top. Where do you set the limitations of what you show visually? It’s something that I had to exercise quite a lot throughout the project. I wanted to take a step into that more sinister, gruesome setting and environment compared to the Souls series, but then you’ve always got to be careful of how far you step into it - that’s something that Sony has helped with. We did discuss what the right boundaries were, what would be too distasteful.”

It’s evident from talking to anyone involved with Bloodborne that Hidetaka Miyazaki has taken the same extremely detailed, hands-on approach to directing the game as he did with Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls - even though he is now the president of FROM Software. “Director Miyazaki is much like an art director himself the way he works, so he gives the art staff very specific, concrete ideas on what he wants. The team works together with Miyazaki on very specific nuances of how things should look in the design,” one of the lead artists tells me.

“He is a very interesting director. He’s a very logical person,” adds Yamagi. “But one of the biggest things about him is the process by which he creates something, where he comes up with an idea for a creation. It is very unique to him and also very fast. He is a very quick creator and that’s something that really impressed me. Another thing about him is that he gets inspiration from a lot of different things, but his strongest inspiration comes from novels - he is a big fan of literature. As a result he’ll read a book and be like “THIS!”, and underline a section, and show it to the artists and attempt to draw - he’s not an artist himself, but he’ll draw what he’s looking for. He does everything in his power to expand his imagination to that his worlds take on a life of their own. I am very impressed by that.”

I wonder how he still has time for this, given all the other duties he must now have as President. Miyazaki laughs when I ask. “I feel very lucky, because I do get away with things for the good of the game - we’ve got a parent company now, Kadokawa, and they’re very understanding, and [Sony] is also very accommodating to some of the things that I decide not to do, because in order to make time to make the game I must forego some other duties, so to speak.

“Having such a hands-on approach to everything is very important to me, but it’s also important to the company. The most important thing is to create something that is great, in whatever time that takes… The development team understands that, the surrounding staff understand that, the chairpeople understand that. So the way I see it, it’s not having the time to do everything, it’s creating the time to do everything - ensuring it. Because without that, FROM would not be FROM. If we don’t create something great, that is compromising on what we’re all here to do.”

This is a situation that any other developer would long for; who wouldn’t want to take every minute necessary to make something as great as it can be? The realities of fiscal quarters and release windows and budgets usually prevent that from happening, but not here. “FROM absolutely do not accept compromise on their work,” Yamagi says, when I ask if it’s difficult as a publisher to work with such perfectionism. “A lot of people, if they get to 90% of the perfect product, they’d let that go, even if there were little things they weren’t quite satisfied with. But that is not From Software. I actually don’t think they’re doing anything particularly differently from any other studio, but they are so particular about their work and refuse to let anything that’s even 90% done go. Years and years of that attitude has created the FROM style that we know today.”

When I first played Demon’s Souls, it felt like it had arrived - fully formed and exquisite - from nowhere. It seems to me that Miyazaki has these worlds fully realised in his head, and the development time is mostly devoted to communicating them to the people who work with him. There are obvious influences - Fighting Fantasy was one of Souls’ main inspirations, and Miyazaki talks about the Cthulu mythology and the Dracula stories as part of the basis for Bloodborne - but FROM worlds just aren’t like anything else you find in video games. It’s not just the attention to detail - I think it’s the directorial vision that the studio’s structure enables.

“I think it’s something connected to Japanese culture: this is how we’ve always created games, the way that we’ve worked,” says Yamagi. “I’m sure we’ve added various aspects from overseas game development and been influenced in many ways, but that’s the way we’ve always done it, so that’s the way it’s done to this day… when it comes to Bloodborne specifically, I definitely think that this way of creating a game is what has led to its unified world. All of the aspects of art and design are connected, all of the aspects are linked, and they’re all unified - and I think that is precisely because of the way they are created.”

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