"We've got Bloodborne at home!"

 You're doing god's work

Even now, in this brightened age of ports and withdrawn exclusivity, a few lingering shadows billow then darken more and more. And in that bubbling, pustulating darkness writhes a gem most brilliant, most incandescent, stolen and hidden away from our wider world. Bloodborne, they call it. A game, a masterpiece so say, but one jealously hoarded by the drakes of Sony Entertainment. People cried, hers and ours, to set the jewel free for the masses, to grant that brilliant warmth to lay rest upon us all, but it was a vain hope, crushed with uncaring silence time after time. But perhaps their something of a hope, as lowly and forgotten as it may be, for those of the Desktop persuasion to capture the faintest glimpse of their lost swansong, a peering through the looking glass of the world that could, or should, be. Such was not granted by FromSoftware, nor by Sony, but by an indiscernible talent known just as LWMedia.

Yes, my experience with Bloodborne is so non-existent that I can't even do a decent parody of it's intro and have to settle for a half hearted Souls-spoof. (More of a spoof in language than structure. Hmm? What do you mean I'm rambling? Oh, right.) So people like me, unflinching fans of Miyazaki's work, (the director and the game developer, incidentally) have had to watch by the side lines as again and again Bloodborne is awarded with the 'greatest Souls game' award and praised as 'A masterpiece'. Well, I'm sick of it! It's been nearly seven years now, when will those ghouls at Sony just okay a PC port? And I guess I'm not the only one, because someone whole boat-loads more talented than me decided to pull together and make his own port of the game. Straight up! Only it's less of an actual 'port' and more an artistic reimaging born of a trend that no one could have expected would peak like this.

Going retro has always been a big appeal for developers in the game development space, it allows for a tuning into that ever profitable market of nostalgia. Who doesn't like dreamily thinking back to simpler times where your past self seemed happier and more put-together, and what symbolise freedom from responsibility more than gaming? It's the reason why 2D platformers remain popular despite the development zeitgeist firmly leaving it behind, why 16-bit graphics are a popular visual style even today, and why some genres actively try as hard as they can to invoke the feelings of their progenitors. (Just look at CRPGs) It's this appeal that I think first led to the PS1 style of horror game to become popularized, and it is a popular trend among the more talent visual artists out there. That style of blockish featureless faces and firmly square geometric spaces invokes both warm nostalgia and a feeling of some far-removed distant past full of long dormant secrets. The perfect fertile ground for indie horror.

I think that perhaps the lingering fascination with bizarre PS1 games like 'LSD Dream Emulator' might have played a part in this trend. As if somehow these developers were trying to capture certain shades of that kaleidoscopic experience piece and filter into something concentrated and evocative. And when using a familiar yet strange palette like the PS1 design suite offers, it feels easier to slip into the player's sense of childhood and manipulate their emotions from the inside. That's all my hypothesis on why the trend took off, how we got to a state where someone felt the need to transfer that to demaking games in this style, let alone Bloodborne specifically, is a tad beyond me. Although I suppose Souls games in general, and Bloodborne in particular, do flirt with the atmosphere of horror and horror-like concepts, so perhaps Bloodborne makes a better fit for the demake space than it ever did in it's original state.

The project to de-evolve Bloodborne has been active for quite a while, and there was a time when I tuned into every single update just to see the clever ways that the developer tried to evoke the spirit of Playstation 1's limitations stretched across a Modern-ish FromSoftware frame. The limited character customisation with unintuitive arrow selection menus, the loading screen transitions indicative of much stricter memory limitations, the strangled gasps this dev called the Cleric Beast's scream, compressed into oblivion to match a Playstation's audio capabilities. There's many funny examples of intentional backwards steps in design to capture a feeling of the past, and the purity of this project in general is that it's not driven by some rosy-tinted perception that all in the past was better and that this game would be infinitely more effective in it's mood with this visual flair, but rather just the desire to bring this beloved game back to this period in game development because it means something to some people out there. It's niche, it'll age, but for the moment it's special, and there's something eerily transcendental about that.

Much to my surprise, and you've likely been made aware, this project did not limit itself to the Youtube space and right now you can download this single developer's concept piece and play it for yourself. I've done just that, and can confirm that some incredibly talented work was put into making this feel like a FromSoftware game, as if it's from an alternative universe where King's Field games were 3rd person. And better. Oh and thankfully our Dev was kind enough to ensure this thing runs on modern resolutions full screen, because there's nothing more annoying then having your entire screen smooch itself just to play an old game. Bloodborne de-made is surprisingly faithful, (from what I've seen of the Bloodborne intro, having never played it myself) stupidly well animated to capture the feel of the game-in-motion to a tee (it feels like your just running an PS1 emulator render over the original game, the thing's fidelity is that close) and the analog sticks are disabled so you can only use arrow buttons. That part I hated, god I can't stand D-pad movement.

One thought that kept kicking about as I played though intro moments was "Wow, I think this might be one of the greatest retroactive PS1 titles I've played" because LWMedia went through pains to ensure the pure Bloodborne experience was intact. Heavy attacks and bullet parries, (that was cool to pull off for the first time ever) revenge health-back system, and even Father Gascoigne's fight is here (According to the screenshots, I haven't reached him myself). But of course there comes the limitations, such as the cumbersome menu navigation, and the quick bar menu, crowned off with the necessity to use the back bumpers are camera adjustment controls. It all works, it's just cumbersome; fitting the aesthetic. I also ran into some choppy frames in the larger sections, betraying the range of the engine in use here, but again that's to be expected.

This project is so faithful to the original that I got stuck on how to progress and looked up a Youtube walkthrough on traditional Bloodborne in order to guide me through, that's some dedication to the bit. I think it's incredible that games like this are being made and very fortuitous that none of this has been shut down by Sony or FromSoftware yet. (fingers crossed they can just admire in something incre#dible too.) I know that the creator is also hoping to bring out a jokey Bloodborne Kart spin off sometimes soon, so that's going to be fun, and I think that after a stunt like this just about anything that LWMedia is going to turn his head to next is going to draw some well-earned attention. What more can I say than play the game right now, there really is no good excuse not to.