The smog over the city is dusted by the fading sunlight, a gorgeous orange that fights to be seen against the plumes of smoke that rise from every corner of the city. Great bonfires built to burn monstrous corpses attest to the state of the city, as even around those dead monsters gather the sick, the already-monstrous, human beings transforming into what they fear the most. This is a city that is sick, a city that is dying, a city in ruins that remarkably can still fall even further from grace. Like so many ruins in video games, it is our job to piece together the story of what went so very wrong. So, at last, a Gothic stagecoach draws up outside of the city of Yharnam, and drops off a young woman. She dons a tricorne hat, picks up her weaponized walking cane, and heads off to be massacred over and over again. She is a deathless explorer whose frustration shall know no bounds, and a blood-soaked ghost of an archaeologist who shall work to narrativize the destruction of the city all around her.
I’ve never played Bloodborne (FromSoftware 2015) before, outside of a small foray a few years ago. I didn’t make it all that far last time, but this time, I’m properly engaged with the game’s systems and its world. Given that the game is now eleven years old, a frankly awful age to consider a game from the early PlayStation 4 era to be, I figured there would be no better time than to discuss it a little here.
What really interests me about FromSoftware’s games is that I think there’s a real interplay between cynicism and hope in both narrative and mechanics. Plenty of people have observed that, I think – links to the Souls formula’s capacity to make people keep trying, or to overcome depression, are well documented. In Bloodborne, the push and pull between cynicism and hope feels particularly evident. It seems that everywhere you turn, humanity is transforming into monsters. A Lycan infection is passing through Yharnam, a city of gothic stone and cathedral spires as far as the eye can see, and you are one of the few that is allowed to navigate it without immediate fear of transformation. So you become a witness to its awful decay, and die brutally over and over again to various horrific and powerful enemies. One then has to ask the question – what holds me here?
In her thesis, game studies scholar Marina Cone argues that we play with ruins in video games using a framework called ludo-archaeology. “Ludo-archaeology encourages the perception of the world as a space in which we document, categorize and otherwise complete the world by discovering it” (2025, 18-19). Ludo-archaeology exists on a spectrum, and so too does Bloodborne’s potential for engagement in the world. On one end of this ludo-archaeological spectrum, “ violent ludo-archaeological play encourages approaching a game with a colonialist mindset and allows a player to inhabit various power fantasy roles”. In Bloodborne you certainly do not begin as an apex predator, but you have the potential to become so. The process of completing a Souls game involves wiping out the game’s unique boss enemies, thus making the world safer, “cleaner” and, in some sense, smaller. The map is a process of conquests that we engage in, destroying each enemy in order to prove our mastery over the gameworld, becoming ever more powerful as we do so. This process of mastery is, for many players, the point of enjoyment of Bloodborne. I would be lying if I said that right now obtaining a sense of power through play is not deeply satisfying, in a world where I feel increasingly powerless.
However, this is not all that ludo-archaeological play has the potential to be. Bloodborne, while being a fast-paced and frenetic action game (closer to 2019’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice than 2011’s Dark Souls), frequently requires that you slow down and observe your environment to even have a chance of surviving. This environmental exploration takes the form of “‘slow gaming’ or ‘slow game time’” (19). To explain, slow game time is the opposite of what film, media and game studies scholars John Vanderhoef and Matthew Payne call “hegemonic game time”, which they use to “describe those prevailing relations and rhythms of play that emphasize the connection between pleasure and power and between speed and control” (2022). To that end, Bloodborne plays on both hegemonic and slow game times, with that aforementioned push-and-pull between cynicism and hope. We have hope in the quiet moments that we will push through to see a brighter future. It is interesting to write this piece and have no idea of how the game will end, as perhaps my faith in an optimistic future in Bloodborne’s world is misplaced. But nonetheless, I have hope that through my choices, I will be able to find that ending, with even a spark of promise. And yet, at the same time, Bloodborne really does emphasize the connection between pleasure and power, speed and control. For every moment that I stop and soak in the haunted atmosphere of an empty dream, or a dying city, or a nightmare realm, or a gloomy wood, or a witch’s castle, there are multiple times more moments where I am just as happy to keep charging at enemies.
Bloodborne, true to its name, is soaked in blood. It rewards aggression through a constant pummelling of your enemies – you can regain some of the health you’ve lost if you attack an enemy fast enough, spraying their blood into your open wounds. It isn’t exactly sanitary, but given that the whole city of Yharnam feels about as sanitary as an open sewer, it fits. Everything is a vector for infection. As we get deeper into the city, we uncover more of its mysteries and we also become more entrenched in the game’s world. It is the monstrous nature of Yharnam that we, potentially, come to reflect. Cone argues:
“How we play video games allows for different kinds of stories to be told about ruins. The spatiality inherent to the medium affords us with plenty of opportunities to narrativize space. The ubiquity of ruins – both inside and outside of video games – demonstrates a need to study them […] we can begin to comprehend how ruins in video games allow us to both externalize and internalize disaster” (23).
The developers externalize stories about ruins such as the ruins featured in Bloodborne, and then we, the player, subsequently internalize them through play. Perhaps we can say that I’m finally beginning to understand what a virtual space means to me. Bloodborne’s spaces – explicitly demarcated as one to purify and cleanse of monstrous influence, but which can never be truly healed – soak the player character in gore just as the player is doused in memory. The thrill of a successful hunt cannot be rivalled. My heart genuinely pounds as the Blood Starved Beast reaches back to deliver a killing blow, but the Molotov Cocktail lands first, killing them. That kind of fight is exciting. It forces you to focus. But I’ve also been thinking about video game’s relationship to violence. The potential of mechanics to influence thought, specifically the thoughts of what is possible. If the main method of interaction with the world is violent, how does that influence how we are engaging with the narratives of these games? I think there’s really something to be said for how we navigate a space. Bloodborne has an intoxicating world that I can’t help but want to continue to explore. Whether through labyrinthian streets that wind around on each other in deeply satisfying ways, or cavernous catacombs that exist as a true challenge to be surmounted, Bloodborne sinks its hooks in early and refuses to let go. Its extremely hard difficulty at the beginning of the game, with mobs of enemies to cleverly fight your way through, is a puzzle unto itself. You must be patient and then you must strike with merciless rage. You must kill the monsters. Kill them all. Yet what is it, truly, that separates us from monstrosity?
Aestheticist Robert Ginsberg writes evocatively: “nature is a ruin that we have carved out of our humanity” (2004, 220). As a screeching, towering, formerly human monstrosity known as the Cleric Beast crashes down on our heads, we know only that it must die. As Vicar Amelia screams in formerly human torment, trapped in a body she can no longer control, we nonetheless must kill her to ensure our own survival. What once was human is now no longer. Beyond a meditation before the monster’s spawn point, or a regretful sigh upon their demise, the possibility of violence is all we have. We have crafted nature in opposition to civilization. We have corralled it, commanded it, and continue to conquer it. In much the same way, Bloodborne’s monsters are something to be slain – sad, at times, sure, but they are in opposition to our continued survival. So they must be destroyed.
So, the hunt goes on.
Reference List
Cone, Marina. 2025. “Ruins in Play and across Time in Contemporary Video Games”.
FromSoftware. 2015. Bloodborne. Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Ginsberg, Robert. 2004. The Aesthetics of Ruins. Rodopi.
Vanderhoef, John; Payne, Matthew Thomas. 2022. “Press X to Wait: The Cultural Politics of Slow Game Time in Red Dead Redemption 2”. Game Studies, 22 (3). https://gamestudies.org/2203/articles/vanderhoef_payne
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