To date, I think this video is hands down the best at interpreting and contextualing the themes of Bloodborne. I do think there is a slight or mild inversion to the Call to Adventure phase however since we're hardly given a choice in signing the contract. There is choice but it is not informed choice. All we know is that we're seeking Paleblood for some unknown reason and the blood minister (man in the wheelchair) is ignorant of what that even is or means. So the treatment to receive blood is for some reason that isn't made extremely evident to us the player nor are the terms of the contract explained or communicated. In being chosen by the Messengers we're conscripted into the service of the Moon Presence. We even have its scent as do all Hunters. But we're never given a choice to be a Hunter or not be a Hunter, we don't even know what a Hunter is and Gehrman doesn't even explain it, he just tells us to kill beasts and includes that that's just what Hunters do. This is really the only video I share with folks who struggle in digesting Bloodborne and actually From Soft games. It's so well done, you deserve ever view and like you have on it and then some.
Thanks for the insight and for the support! Excellent point considering Souls games almost always give us a choice in what we accept. Dark Souls even has Oscar ask you if you'll hear him out before he sends you on the quest for the rest of the game and we as players get to make that choice--something that's not present in Bloodborne! Again, I appreciate the support. This video hit a brick wall when TH-cam decided to ad restrict this video so shares help a ton!
Those Amygdala do actually pay attention to you When nearing them, their heads turn towards you and move to accommodate your movements, out of everything they could focus on they choose to focus on you consistently... It does make me think that the player character is much more than he/she seems Hell, we are even able to conquer these eldritch gods, alone. An ant we may be, but an ant is not entirely harmless.
the moon presence seems to attempt to use hunters to slay amygdala's. normally, they wouldn't care, and it wouldn't work. but there's something different about you. you can SEE them. and you CARE about them, and you may have even KILLED one. and an ant or spider that may kill a man is perhaps the most terrifying thing of all.
Heedfulconch3 the Moon Presence's scent was already mentioned, but keep in mind that they're lesser Amygdala which exist in the waking world, and the world of Lovecraft is filled with a lot of entities which, while much greater than humans, are not so high as to not take notice of them.
Dark Souls: go on a journey of self realization in order to see God in one's self. Bloodborne: learn and accept your place as an insignificant being in the eyes of the gods. Sekiro: sever the connection between you and the gods to ensure it cannot seduce man ever again.
Where does code vein fit in this, because we’re missing one souls-like-game The folly of humans in an attempt to become gods only leads them to more suffering?
@@guilhermedossantos4770 and they're not skeletons, they're FUCKING DREAM ALIENS (which by the way is something I love about Bloodborne, how it actually acknowledges that Lovecraft's work deals with dreams as much as aliens and cultists) and on a (much longer) side note I think the Messengers were pretty much designed to be both creepy and cute in the same way that babies are cute when they're happy and creepy when they're dribbling various repulsive substances with varying degrees of fluidity; consequently, as you get accustomed to them you start seeing them less as horrible monsters and more as cute little helpers. Combine this with the Insight you gain over the course of the game, and you get a great Lovecraftian narrative where the Good Hunter starts loving the Messengers as much as the Doll does as they start becoming desensitized to all the weird shit in Yharnam... powerful stuff!
or so we think this is another example of humans deifying themselves "beyond angles and putting demons to shame" lovecraft's point is that that is simply not the case we are nothing we have the same affect to these greater beings as an ant walking on a sidewalk would affect us walking by to our own destination the ant is unnoticed and unimportant unable to stop us as we walk by we are the ants
[08:26 Video seemingly ends] - Damn that was a fantastic Dark Souls essay [08:32 Part II Bloodborne] - Oh right this video was about Bloodborne Great essay! Really enjoyed this
I just wanted to point out a small error when explaining "The Belly of the Whale". Dark Souls 1 did this first in the encounter with Seath, the Scaleless. The first time you encounter him it is impossible to hurt him, the player is then forced to die. After dying, you wake up in a prison cell in which you must escape from. Amazing video by the way.
I thought of that too, but it doesn't quite work. The player already has the Lordvessel and thus the ability to warp to any bonfire at that point, which completely undermines that feeling of being trapped in a circumstance that's beyond your control.
ExzoSSG I'd say that Blightown did it first. It's an area of the game reached after traveling deeper and deeper into the ground, each are becoming more labyrinthine and difficult to traverse, the only known exit being the path they came through. While you are able to return the way you came, the first section of Blightown is by far the most difficult, and since (for most players) there isn't a way to circumvent Blightown and progress the game, they will ultimately be forced to repeat the same journey. The player isn't forced to continue deeper into Blightown, but it's by far the best of the two bad options they have available.
Can confirm this is false, I tried it on my second playthrough. Also LIGHTING a bonfire never sets your return point in Dark Souls 1, you have to actually REST at one
I've come back to this video so many times. The delivery is great, with humor here and there, but also it provides such an awesome review that is useful not only to understand Bloodborne, but also to understand narrative. To anyone trying to write a story, this should be an indispensable video to watch.
I'm a little surprised at how brief your part on the endings were, since in my eyes each one is a absolute gold mine of symbolism. In one ending we choose to kill our selves to allow us to "awake from the nightmare" and return to that safe, sain ,world where humans matter. In another we attempt to continue to move forward despite without the understanding (Or insight if you will) of our place in this world and end up just a puppet of a higher power. Finally there is the ending where we come to understand humanities place in this world and, though bathing in the blood of a higher being we shed what we have come to realise is insignificant, our human selves. Stripped of our humanity we are able to ascend beyond our bestial self and become something more, we become another god looking upon humanity with the same mild curiosity any higher being would have when observing insignificant insects. (In a way many of these players are even able to have a limited understanding of this feeling as they look upon players who have yet to achieve this ending with smug superiority)
hmm I always got the feeling bloodborne was also trying to say ascending to godhood isn't all we thought it would be, and that maybe its better to remain an ignorant human. Many of the bosses we slay are great ones, like rom and we can see sure they are powerful, can use magics we could never hope to match yet that seems to have come at a cost, from one perspective they are a hideous beast. But perhaps these are just the animistic ignorant mumblings of a human without enough eyes.
@Gwapa snuna that my friend is the ckassical lovecraftian flexibility. If we could percieve and understand what is above us we would already been ascended and would have no need to transcend. This is the paradox that cant bensolved by us humans, hence the symbolical shedding of ones humanity.
0:57 Very close, but a common misinterpretation. There are many superior alien god-creatures in Lovecraft's work that actually do take notice of humans, we just aren't very significant to them, a mere curiosity at most. Your comparison is accurate, in your ant allegory. We do not think of ants as very significant to our own lives, but we do take notice of them, perhaps studying them or slaying them for reasons they could not possibly understand.
Shnarfbird Interestingly, the amygdala do take notice of you during the game. In fact, the character is the only thing they turn their heads at. They just don't care that much.
I vaguely recall item descriptions implying that both: the Great Ones long for children, lending to why Formless Oedon impregnates the lady of the night and Queen Yharnam; and that they are sympathetic in nature and often appear when called apparently even by us ants, lending to why the Pale Moon Presence heard Gerhman's beckon and created the Hunter's Dream. Although I'm sure he did not intend to remain there endlessly if at all.
Your last sentence makes me think of the Amygdala in Yahar'gul firing its laser at you. That seems to be nothing more than it being curious about you dying. Just as a lot of people kill ants "just because". But when you actually fight Amygdala as a boss that seems like the kid that just kills ants for fun with a magnifying glass. Probably way off, but your comment piqued my interest on the matter...so late to this comment party.
In the case of Cthullu, he actually does need humans to revive him. At least according to the cultists, they might be wrong: "That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. […] Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."
Agreed, in a way, humanity is very much interested in "ants" but as you said it's more or less a curiosity perhaps of a scientific or even a more child-like nature that a select few will only show interest in.
@@phillmoore1561 he had some cool conceptual ideas. Far from a great man, although he has inspired many great things so I definitely do give him credit there. Doesn't make his other deficiencies go away though
vaati has a lot new for many people for sure (and does a great job in explaining this), but if u are rlly into the game he hardly ever has any intel u hadnt discovered ingame or read in simple item description before to be honest
Vaati is more of just beneath the surface and geared more towards an introduction than anything else. If you want to go down the rabbit hole then check out JSF, Aegon's Let's Talk Lore, or Mitch L. I'd reccomend Redgrave but I don't agree with some of his later suggestions(like the Hunter having past associations with a certain Hunter in the Hunter's Nightmare..), his earlier ones are great though. Imo JSF is the best one to check out, he's also got a few DS3 videos that are pretty damn good.
Vaati is a shitty Lore-master which telling lore bases on his own guesstimates. (Aslo way he talking is so much boring that i want to jump from the top of some really high building)
If you remember, Wilhelm said, "The blood makes us human, makes us more than human, makes us human no more." So right off the bat the story makes it very clear that we are no longer human. Insight, knowledge of the so-called eldritch truth a.k.a. enlightenment in bloodborne is our understanding of the special world beyond the main mundane setting in the beginning, the nightmare realms. This inhuman knowledge manifests itself through its bearers as what seems to be madness to unenlightened individuals according to item descriptions and such knowlege is dangerous because there are some things we just aren't meant to know. The video says that since bloodborne is an anti-myth instead of using our humanity to be one with god we are shedding our humanity to become a god indicating as the story progresses we become less and less human. So as the story progresses and we gain more insight it would make sense for us to be able to fight the amygdalas and moon presence as we are so inhumanly enlightened at that point we know how to beat them. After we kill Rom the doll says our presence soothes, alluding to the fact we inherited some nuance of Rom's power to dull reality. So it can be said that with the blood echo system we absorb the great ones' essences as with our other "prey" but as well as leveling up and becoming stronger we become so inhuman and so enlightened by killing great ones and absorbing their traits that we have to shed our human form to contain our consciousness and become a god ourselves, hence we transcend the hunt. We find paleblood, which the doll bleeds when struck, to do so. Without the courage to pursue enlightenment and just imbibing the blood to force a communion (trying to take the easy way out) we embody our baser animal nature and devolve into a mere beast. It must be this way because these are alien beings. In not just Catholicism but the whole of Christianity humans are created in god's image and he is therefore familiar with us. So maybe because we aren't made in the great ones' image, and they are so alien an existence to us, to try to force a deeper connection by imbibing the blood in communion with them when that connection was never present to begin with is what makes us sick. It is something that should not be, an abomination, which is a common Lovecraftian theme, hence why we become beasts. In the end if we want to be connected with the great ones we must leave our humanity behind and become one of them. All in all the souls series has always revolved heavily around themes of humanity, human nature, and our origins. In Bloodborne we can either use what makes us human, our minds, pursuing knowledge no matter how dangerous and ascend to a higher plane of existence, or succumb to our animal side and do what is easy and feels good, thereby becoming a beast. Sorry for the essay guys, just had to get that off my chest. What do you guys think?
Jasper H That is unused dialogue. It's from a trailer but never said in game so isn't canon. Everything else said is pretty damn good though. Well said.
+LoganSoulsBorne4 Glad you enjoyed it. I remember Wilhelm saying that and "Our eyes are yet to open," after touching Laurence's skull to Laurence himself though. The one after the Vicar Amelia boss fight. They even say the "Fear the old blood" adage.
Jesus: Died and came back to life. Buddha: Died and was reincarnated. Hercules: Descended to the Underworld (Hell) and brought back Cerberus. TIL They're all zombies!
@@Vasharan funny meme, but wrong. The point of buddhaism is to not get reincarnated, and a budda is someone who manages to die while alive, destroy his reincarnation essence so there's nothing to reincarnate. It works like a respawn curse and you're trying to die for good, and it's only possible when human.
Good video, but I feel like you missed something added to the myth. It's easy to miss because it pertains to boss battles specifically and it's hard to analyze game mechanics as anything "deep". You mentioned how all those Amygdala ignored you, but remember how you also kill one in the game. Sure, the message that these gods don't care about human struggles is clear, but Bloodborne also shows how human can force notoriety. Imagine if an ant (as you compared humans to gods) started crawling up you. You could swat it away, but then it comes back. Basically, one power humans do have, even against gods, is consciousness enough to bother others, or at least persist against. Bloodborne manages this through it's classic Dark Souls death system. Bloodborne is like the non-pessimist version of Lovecraft's vision. Human still matter little to the gods, but humans can always force some shred of recognition onto themselves. Even if it's minor.
I also believe that the representation of the amygdala was the magnification of fear which the amygdala in our brain is there to detect fear and prepare for emergency events
In the world of Bloodborne, humans aren't ants. We're like a cross between a cockroach and a mosquito. Just as harmless, but really, really annoying when we need to be.
Problem is, it is not your power the one that granted you the ability to kill the Amygdala, is the moon prescense's power and by extention the doll's, the Hunter's Dream sustains you so you can overcome the challenges, but you dont rise to the expectation and struggle to retain your humanity like in Dark Souls, you're sent over and over again until you somehow manage to get the task done, you're nothing more than a tool for a grander purpose that doesnt belong to you and it's only when you're ready to shed your humanity that you start to take part in such purpose but by then, the player no longer has control of the Hunter
Since you mentioned boss battles, one important point is that when you beat a boss, you don't get the "VICTORY ACHIEVED" of Dark Souls, as if you accomplished a Herculean task, you get "PREY SLAUGHTERED". The bosses in this game are nothing but prey to you, and you shouldn't be scared of them, they should be scared of you. Sometimes I think the Moon-Scented Hunter is the scariest individual in the game, even above the Great Ones.
"...we distrust them because they're snakes..." Nah dude, those denture like teeth and elephant like ears are just way too far into the uncanny valley to make them (fraampt and kaathe) anything less than disturbing.
You're right .... But dark souls subvert our expectations with the giant big tits waifu Gwynevere who is actually an illusion . But you'd trust her because .. well .. its obvious aint'it ?
Yeah, I feel like if they actually looked like snakes, they'd be 100 million times less disturbing. But the teeth and enormous eyes (snake eyes are not that big in proportion to their faces)... those get me.
The Healing Church is Catholic on the surface but very Shinto beneath it, which is an interesting merger between cultures and religions, wouldn't ya'll agree?
I fear the old blood. The one time I got hurt bad enough to need a blood transfusion, there were only elderly people around to get it from. I took my chances I wasn't taking any of that old blood.
The Moon Presence also had wings. Not of blood but physical, dark in color and tattered. Likely because of its opposition to both the player and other "gods".
"We are but a rope tied between animal and superman. Man ought to be overcome, what have you done to overcome him?" - Frederick Nietszche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
'Morality is the final aspect of God that must be discarded before the period of reconstruction begins'. This explains why you have to literally murder babies to get the true ending. Nota bene: I don't know if Nietzsche said those exact words but the book I got it from was explaining Nietzsche's philosophy.
HP Lovecraft is a legend. He took the proverbial horror baton from Poe and handed it to contemporary authors. He evolved fear, in unison with the expansion of evolution.
A rock As if you could ever achieve something as significant as Lovecraft’s literary legacy. Yes the man was racist, but you cannot deny that his carrer is more important than anything I or you could ever dream of. Stop wining about Lovecraft being racist as it is natural to fear something we do not comprehend, and Lovecraft did not comprehend nor tried to comprehend certain things.
You know, when I first started playing Souls games, I noticed something deeper that was drawing me to them. Something I couldn't put my finger on. I tried summing it up as, "It feels like it's telling a story older than time." I feel like a lot of people brushed me off as pretentious. Good to know I'm not totally crazy!
"It feels like it's telling a story older than time." makes sense imo There is no real "recorded history", and most lore comes from item descriptions and wistful recollections from NPCs
I disagree with your opinion of the dark souls lore in relation to other myths. The fire to me, represents the key part of souls lore that everything has its time to end. You're not saving the world by linking the fire, you're letting it drag on a little while longer, because everything is temporary. Dark Souls is about realizing that, and that the journey through a temporary existence is worth it anyways.
Yeah I actually agree that while dark souls has some elements of the hero's journey, they're subverted and questioned, just in a different way from how bloodborne does it. This was a great video overall, but I did have to work through the first bit because I don't really agree with the analysis of dark souls here beyond a surface level. But then again, the video is about bloodborne, not dark souls, so it may have been a bit unnecessary to go on about the vagaries of dark souls in this.
Yep. Bloodborne in some ways is just a way to make it even more blatantly clear that the message is that the hero's journey may not be that important or relevant after all, except from your own perspective.
This analysis seems to be done by someone who isn't a Christian nor literate in Christian mythology. OP's trying to invert stuff while it's quite literally the inverse of his inversions. Miyazaki's game are very literal and also a critical comment on how Western civilization has pushed itself onto other cultures in its quest to spread their message of God. Also, minus points for using the hero's Journey. It's a freakin cliche and it doesn't make anyone sound smarter. I could do "A Hero's Journey of Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and it wouldn't make any goddamn sense.
Fun fact: In Hypogean Gaol, "gaol" is actually the old British spelling for jail and it's pronounced the same way. So "gaol" is pronounced "jail" not "goal" or "ga-ole". :)
You make absolutely amazing content. The videos you make are far better than most channels with millions of subs. Please, keep it up - you will go far.
He's just being polite and grateful for something positive that was mentioned about him. It's not like he's rewarding a hateful or offensive comment. Chill Out. Everyone who liked this video is likely to share that guy's opinion about it. I don't think his opinion on other subjects should be a matter of discussion here. This is a commentary section on SolePorpoise's video and given the wonderful quality of its content a compliment is due.
im so in love with this video and the way you were connecting bloodborne and dark souls to the myths of mankind. it seems you have a really good overall knowledge about myths in generell im really impressed dude
Coming from a Catholic uprising, I can't fucking believe I missed the blood communion in Bloodborne being a reference to the blood of Christ that Catholics drink. Of all the Gothic architecture, Latin chorus singing, and the church hunters basically being the inquisition, I missed the one thing that Catholics are known for!!! They literally drank the holy blood of their gods!!!
"As for her romantic love, what should expect is a scene like what we get in the Lion King where Nala gives Simba that very inappropriate 'fuck me' face." 😆Tehehehehe😂 I knew that something was off about that scene when I watched that movie over and over as a kid.
I like to come back to this video whenever I get the urge to play Bloodborne again, to help put me in the right mindset. Something that I find interesting is that so many of the story notes regarding an inverted hero's journey were the exact opposite in my experience, and I think that's also significant. In my first (failed) playthrough, I met the beggar at the Church and was put off by his appearance but eventually, upon experimenting by sending people to the different locations, I discovered he was truthful. This was a good sign not to judge simply by appearances but to also pay attention to actions. While everyone else knows less about the world than myself, a newcomer, I felt that it was less tragic and more a display that, lost as I was, I could still help people. And rather than feeling depressed or lost at the reveal of the Nightmare and the return to Yahar'gul, I felt invigorated: I could see the truth, now, and that means I can fight it. The fact that the Great Ones are not truly divine, just as fallible as any human, means that we can face and overcome them. Some people treat unknown horrors with reverence, hoping that through worship they'll be spared. Some curse their lack of understanding and spiral into self-hatred, trying to imitate these unknown beings in an effort to comprehend them. But some see these horrors as no more than another obstacle, forces uncaring at best and malicious at worst that cause pain to humanity by their very presence. You don't need to understand them beyond how best to hurt them. The endings are a bit more muddied, because the game is morally ambiguous in the extreme, but in essence I can see two major interpretations of each one. Leaving the Dream, you're either escaping the horrors after doing Flora's bidding or you're leaving once you've ended your battles. There's no reason to continue a fight that isn't yours, especially once you're getting into circumstances you truly don't understand. Whether you're fleeing in terror or pragmatically departing, your work there is done and you're returning to your old life. Slaying Gehrman is generally due either to heroism in trying to free him from his prison or bloodthirst in seeking ever more powerful opponents. Gehrman is an elite hunter and presuming you can overcome what has ensnared him without preparation leads to you being trapped. Your reckless bloodlust, or foolish heroism, is rewarded by being trapped in the same wheelchair, used to anchor the Dream. Slaying Flora is the result of careful preparation, of paying close attention to the world and taking the same risks that got you this far. Great Ones can never exist in the same plane as their children, their obsessions arising due to utter loneliness. The umbilical cord is the only evidence of the connection between Great Ones. It doesn't just symbolize birth, death and the inverse of birth: it's also a solid educated guess that taking it into yourself will serve as a sort of barrier between you and any Great One trying to invade your being. Upon slaying Flora you become a baby Great One, with the mind of someone who defied godly beings to free himself and humanity from their machinations. Perhaps that will allow you to bridge the gap between humanity and the Great Ones, and actually bring understanding to your friends and loved ones rather than madness.
I've seen so many Bloodborne analysis videos and this is by far my favorite. Thorough, convincing, and incredibly interesting. I may be a few years late but I tip my hat to this beautiful piece
That's basically the lore of all Soulsborne games. Everyone tries to find some deep lore behind them while Miyazaki sits there with his dick in his hands giggling to himself "heh heh... Berserk"
As anyone who writes shit will tell you, the most profound symbolism is done completely by accident, you just got to learn to pretend it was totally intentional
Found this vid on Max Derrat's suggestion. I'm floored, this was amazing and I couldn't look away or pause for some errands or anything. This game offers above else, a nice hard dose of humility that will stick with you long after you play, it seems.
I think the reason most Lovecraft stories have such a hard time translating to anything outside books is because it's honestly hard to make something scary and give a face to that scariness. The phrase "A coward dies a hundred deaths, a hero only once" is something like it, where when it lingers in our minds or us being able to personally personify our fears is actually much more horrifying than actually seeing it. Much like the movie "Blair Witch" (Which I personally feel is a good way to explain Lovecraft), we spend the entire movie scared from something we never see.
You know, having watched this video several times over the years, I would say that Dark Souls also subverts the Hero's Journey. For one, the special people that go to Firelink are found trapped in the special world by you, they are helpless until you interact with them. Then, when you've gained all you can from them or progressed the game far enough, they set off into the special world again, only to be dismantled by their own knowledge and desire. Many of them do not know any more than you do, and regard you to be far more talented than themselves. And you are. When you meet the motherly love figure, and/or the romantic love figures, the mother is an illusion and your potential lovers are murdered or kidnapped. You may rescue them, of course, but in rescuing one you only set her up to be kidnapped again since she has no strength of her own. The other resents you for restoring her soul and body, because you took agency from her just as the murderer did, since she did not ask you to revive her. She resents being able to speak, now being whole. When it comes time to, "Make the same decision Gwyn did." It appears to be the same symbolically, but it's actually that very idea, the idea of elevating yourself to Gwyn's level by roasting yourself as fuel to extend the age that lets the ruse go on for so long. What you actually are doing is perverting the natural order of the special world by wrongfully extending the age of fire past its prime. The creatures of the dark twist in the light of this mutant flame becoming mutants themselves in response in order to put an end to an unnaturally long lived cycle. That is what an Undead is, a human mutated by the over lived age, made immortal, able to possess power beyond that of the Gods. Having witnessed this ability in primeval man, what the Gods referred to as pygmies, Gwyn branded humanity itself, the Dark Soul, such that any human whose piece of the Dark Soul grew strong enough to turn them immortal would run into the limitation set by Gwyn's brand. To be drawn and ensnared by his fire. Until once again humanity mutated into Ash, becoming impervious to flame, unable to burn, and unable to die. But in Bloodborne, though it appears to be an anti-myth, it's actually the Hero's Journey with the more romantic aspects removed. When you look on the inhabitants of the special world, they do know more than you, but not by much. The real bar scene is the Hunter's Dream. Whenever you meet other Hunters they reference The Dream. You gain the most insight about the special world from those most similar to yourself. Other Jedi as it were, if we were to make a Star Wars comparison. The residents of Yharnam that you can send to Oedon Chapel, but can also send to Iosefka's Clinic makes the Oedon Temple as the Bar Scene not work. There are people who had no Bar Scene there on their first playthrough, afterall. But everyone encounters other Hunters. They may not get every shred of dialogue or knowledge the first time around, but they do get some dialogue. Knowledge they otherwise wouldn't have. When you ascend in the true ending, you've conquered the spiritual forms of Great Ones. Multiple Great Ones. The players that get this ending should understand that though they cannot relate to what has happened to their character, they can comprehend it. Something almost no one touches upon is the fact that your new slug like state may only be what your soul, your dream self, has become. It is worthy to note that the Great Ones have a physical form and their dream form. The dream form can sustain multiple physical incursions into the waking world, but if the dream form is killed, then only their body and blood remain. Dreams can also show the past, and make memories just as real as the waking world. As shown in the Hunter's Nightmare. Becoming a Great One is a selfish act, as the Great Ones have no camaraderie with one another. They do not act in tandem, though they may appear to. They live in similar fashions, because that's what life becomes at that level of ascension. One wonders what new terrors and what new glories are beyond that. The true ending to Bloodborne is a mind blowing revelation that we can only know so much, and there's always another secret, another hint, another ascension another truth to uncover. It never ends.
Also... What about gehrman and the doll? I honestly can't se the minister as the mentor and arianna as the mother... That just seems weird when gehrman litterally calls himself the first hunter and "the master to the pupil" which in this case is the player and the doll litterally talks about loving the hunter, crying and feeling joy for his actions, acting as a catalyst and tool to grow, and it all ends with her nurturing the hunter. Those seem far more logical associations to me
24:00 "It's not a new idea to have a character impregnated by aliens, but being impregnated by alien gods is a unique one." Seems to me like a "The Dunwich Horror" reference.
Yeah, eat it, Jordan B Peterson. Where's your Dragon-Slaying Room-Cleaning now that I have eyes on the inside and a direct line of communication with a slug-deity birthed by the cosmos?!
wow im both surprised and elated to see some fellow lobsters in this thread, hit me up @anzax, im always on the lookout for gamers with similar perspectives.
wow. just, wow. I've never been so glad to click on a recommended video. your thoughts are clear and easy to follow and your attention to detail and the willingness to research so far outside of the game makes this a great video. You just earned a sub and most likely a patron (I will decide after binge-watching your content, haha). Although I'm surprised how you didn't mention the hunter's dream and the doll. The doll would make a good "goddess" for our hero.
Oh my god! Thank you! Even if you don't decide to become a patron, I really appreciate your support! As far as the doll as a goddess goes, you're totally right! I was trying to imply that when saying she nurtures us in the end for our witnessing of another virgin birth. She definitely provides that motherly role in that ending. Anyway, thanks so much for this awesome comment. I really appreciate it.
The transition from gothic to lovecraftian is definitely my favorite switch in all of media. I dont think any footage of the lovecraftian stuff was shown before release which made it a really good surprise. I still dont know which i prefer though, this or the witcher 3
@@lolmanbomber2904 more specifically, the Witcher 3 is a really good game, but it's not a really good Witcher story. I'd argue the Bloody Baron quest and Hearts of Stone DLC are the only parts that feel much like the Sapkowski books.
Typically, when I stumble upon channels with such low subscriber counts, I really don't expect much... But damn, this is a tremendously high quality video. You absolutely deserve a much larger following than what you have. I'm definitely subbing, and I hope more do the same.
Man...I will NEVER look at Soulsborne games the same anymore....Now I know WHY I was feeling some of the things I was during this game...Miyazaki is... Incredible. THANK YOU for this video, your hard work and dedication is worth it's weight in gold, my friend.
Congratulations on the most philosophical video on the Souls series in combination with the Mythological history of humanity. I think you deserve more credit then "Vaati" for what you have made here, the way and tone you brought it to us is exactly how I would want it to be told and I agreed.
"In participating in this version of the Hero's Journey, we went in thinking that humans would conquer this world and unite ourselves with some aspect of God. Instead, we discover that we are nothing more than sophisticated beasts with good intentions...." FUCK, THAT'S how you subvert expectations and deconstruct a common, universal human narrative, ladies and gentlemen. Miyazaki is a genius and I don't use that term lightly. When people scoff at the prospect of video games being art, I point them to the SoulsBorne series to shut them up. Great analysis and video.
while you talk a lot about humanity never merging with god im pretty sure thats exactly what happened at the end. i think that the ultimate lesson is that humans must leave behind their their exact existence as humans to ascend in to a human like god. its like what carl sagan once said "It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very much like us. But with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, far-seeing, capable and prudent."
I don't think that's quite correct. The hunter becomes an infant Great One, clearly ascending and leaving humanity behind. That's the whole point of the "true ending". To leave every trace that makes you human behind.
FlyteDanny But when you get that trophy and the following trophy, it says something along the lines of “lifting humanity up into its next stage”. Wouldn’t that mean we still are human in a sense and thus sympathize with those left behind?
True, but that could also mean exactly what happened in the events of Bloodborne. Humans found the blood of the Great Ones, meddled with it and then turned themselves into ungodly things but human.
I believe the hunter learns 14 things. well. leaves 7 behind and adopts 7 more while abandoning 5 and loosing two. Then attaining them all again. The ultimate goal for a human is to 'win' through our knowledge or some other form we will always seek survival over others where resources are key: Knowledge or insight can help us attain favor with the old-ones and be blessed with sight of their lesser formations, we can also ascend their level or become the same as them to a degree, only shedding our human form when that insight lets the knowledge of how to do so become available. It's super-imposed as you choose to bow your head for the edge of a scythe, or you fight to attain the seat of the most powerful human, only to find you've become more or less powerful than him, and his god/patron. I never liked playing blood-borne for a certain reason. I can never put my finger on it but it's like it wants to speak or convey a message but fails in cementing any one kind of ending... But that's just my opinion. I prefer the child of Kos to the moon presence, same as I'd prefer the dumb idiot god to the Cthulites. The same way I'd prefer vast nothingness to insufferable noise and light. But that's just my opinion overall... I don't covet the games message, I like to draw my own lines and theory's rather than use someone else's, else I become lazy and bored.
Honestly this is breath taking, you managed to understand every part and the inspiration of dark souls and bloodbourne, connect them ,etc... My first game was Dark Souls 2, I don't know what your thoughts on it are, but to be honest I'm glad it was my first game, it actually inspired me to learn more about the dark souls world and try to play the other games, it also made me learn an important lesson by the end of it... From what I understand, Dark souls guides you in to the world and what you need to do, while Dark souls 2, tosses you into the unknown, almost completely without any info. Then by the end of the game if you are perceptive enough, it teaches you that it is the same world as Dark souls 1. Legends were born, the world has change, it will always change. The only thing that you can do is be part of it as an ANT as you would say in this giant world
32:31 - What do you mean, the Amygdalas' totally did intervene! One will crush you to death or send you to an un-escapable(lore-wise) nightmare if it catches you. Another one outright fights you if you meet it in the Nightmare Frontier
Maybe he meant it specifically in that part of the game, the second version of the prison. But as you said, throughout the game as a whole, some Amygdalas troll you. I can remember at least 4 of them who attack us.
the one outside oedon chapel will grab you and throw you if you go after the item there (priest set i think) but you don't know what the fuck just picked you up and threw you...because it's invisible.
As someone who has just recently beaten the game and wanted an introspection, this was just what I needed. Thank you. This was a wonderful 36 minutes well spent.
One question: The very last part you mention 'The hero ascends to godhood but without the player. The player is trapped on this plane, unable to see themselves in this virgin birth.' Would you elaborate on this? Is it that we, as the player, work hard to unravel this 'true' ending only to not feel a deeper sense of self-understanding through the cloudy choices we made throughout the game? Instead, we see our avatar ascend into something we do not understand, put the controller down and feel befuddled. Because we're stuck on the human plane? I prefer Bb over DS. Until watching this video, I thought it was for the more defined game mechanics and the darker Lovecraftian tones. This brings it to a whole new dimension of self-examination. Extremely well done!
That's pretty much what I was trying to say, yeah. Campbell thought we experience these stories to feel, through empathy, a feeling of self overcoming. And this self ovecoming was supposed to tap into the better parts of our human nature to get there. So you'll see stories where characters will realize they're fighting for love or for a moral code or something else other humans can understand and relate to. And that's why I think the "true" ending of Bloodborne is so interesting. We can't use empathy to relate to this step of apotheosis because it has no human qualities. When I said it sheds its humanity to ascend, I mean it sheds the player.
Thanks for the quick reply and clarification. Your perspectives on Bb, and how they relate to the human psyche, philosophy, and spirituality, really help with a lot of self examination. You offer another great step toward self actualization. Cheers.
This might be a bit picky, but why did you choose the expression of "anti-myth"? I mean I have the impression that it's at the most a 'perversion', a corruption as you said yourself, like the 'dark side' or mirror-image of the myth, but not it's opposite. The tricky thing of Campbell's definition of the hero journey is that you cannot really avoid it or escape its scheme - it doesn't really change if you change the parameters - a dark, inhuman, illogical etc. god, and our apotheosis to him does not contradict the pattern of the hero journey. On the opposite it just seems more authentic, or rather Old Testamental - in the way that we cannot really understand the divine for it must remain mysterious.
I think that the use of 'antimyth' is less in reference to the Hero's Journey and more as a myth in general. The video defines a myth as a typically human-centric affair - with the Hero's Journey being the most typical example that has clear inversions in the case of Bloodborne. The inversion of the Hero's Journey is not what makes it 'antimyth', it is the fact that the Inverted Hero's Journey is used to present an antimyth wherein humanity is shrugged off and has absolutely no place in the universe. In other words, the inverted journey is the symptom, not the disease. As clarified above by Porpoise: myths are experienced to feel a sense of self-overcoming that taps into the better parts of human nature. Thus, an antimyth walls off the viewer/reader/player from any sense of self-overcoming, which is built up by showcasing the animalistic and ugly portions of human nature that can not be shaken. "These are the reasons you will never amount to more than you are already, insignificant as you are."
This is one of those videos where everytime I come back to it I understand more and more of it and I never get tired of seeing it over and over again because it's incredibly interesting and the editing and delivery is amazing.
I really love how Bloodborn is based on Lovecraftion myth as well, making the player feel fear of the unknown...coming across higher gods and the only thing we will understand of them is how they move and how we kill them...but we will never know why..who they really are, they are their an we are the hunters to stop them...I love it.
@@Cajek2 The others are mostly movie essay channels, like Screened, Real Dimensional Pictures and all the others on the recommended after that XD. There are also a lot of literature reviews and essays on youtube, like reviews for the works of HP Lovecraft, Tolkien and even game storylines are reviewed.
to quote Hbomberguy "What level of genius does a man has to operate on to make this game ?" I am consistently blown away by Bloodborne on a mechanical level, but now that I have finished the game and begin lore diving on TH-cam and Internet forum, Bloodborne has become even more impressive with each new video I see.
Won a sub. 1 note: Did you notice how, in Dark Souls 2, we also are made feel like WE, the players, are the true hollows, forever seeking souls hoping that would keep us stronger and alive? Even tho we could not play at all. I found myself in that situation when I decided "ok, I'm lvl 300, nothing can stop me from killing, but, what stops me from killing them in 1 blow" Yeah, levels, thus souls. I started to famr The Ancient Dragon, cuz I'm dat gud. I burned 99 ascetics and more to get to level 642. With 99 int/fth I decided to try using the spells that were more powerful, the dark resonant spells. These take your souls to use them as beams. So obviously, I had to keep farmin the dragon. To a point were I had to kill it twice to level 1 stat. I even tried to 1 shot Vendrick using Climax and 50 million souls.And that was it. I stopped playing Dark Souls 2 for weeks. I felt sooooo empty, like nothing makes sense, like why am I even playing anymore, repeating the same shit everyday. I felt soooo hollow. If u read all this, thanks. I'm stoned :P
"Yeah, that was a great video but...." LOL no. Full stop. More than a great video, this was fantastic. it's opened up a whole new way to interpret these games for me. Not only that, but I suspect it will change my world view a little as well as a result. Thanks for all the hard work!
I stumbled upon this video and your channel by chance. Super interesting and you earned a sub after just 5 minutes of great analysis and discussion. Keep up the good work!
LoganSoulsBorne4 I mean the third ending. Although it still doesn't make sense for new game plus. The game designers kinda wrote themselves into a wall with that one.
I watched this video in 9th grade and it sent me down a rabbit hole of mythological analysis and symbolism that five years later I still have yet to find the bottom of.
I love videos like these and the people that make them. Mythology and video games are two things that i care about a lot and its so cool when i find people that love lore and mythos in games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and Death Stranding like i do. Its sad that not everyone really sees how much it takes to create a game like Bloodborne, and all of the attention to detail, and how the creators pay homage to the religions they pull inspiration from. I appreciate u sir.
Ok, to start this off, there are a few problems associated with only working under Campbell's theories, one misses out Lévi-Strauss's very powerful etnology/anthropology. Dark Souls and Bloodborne are identical in their _fundamentum:_ circular temporality. It is typically associated with eastern religions precisely because they hold _metempsycosis_ and/or reincarnation at their life's structure (meaning death is now opposed to birth, not to life). Meanwhile the abrahamic religions (sort of, mystical islam and judaism can speak of reincarnation at times) carry on a linear, progressive and ascending timeline (the very word, 'time-line', indicates it), e.g. St. Augustine of Hippo's _Confessions,_ book X. This matters because, precisely, it changes the way we understand a myth: it is _not_ anthropocentric as the video claims, but rather nature/world-centric, i.e., in a myth we get to know and come into contact with these utterly indifferent immanent forces (deities, demons, spirits, drives, call them whatever you will) that show us how inhumane life actually is. Now Lovecraft's twist to the thing is precisely that he makes it astrological/cosmological, viz., these forces are not even geocentric, he finally makes myth heliocentric or simply centered nowhere, in the void, in the enigma of existence; and he stipulates a fundamental dualism that questions the very notion of _subject_ modernity has forged and holds so dear: in the hypertime and hyperspace of his stories subjectivity (a subjec[tive]-position) is disembodied (maximal ver.), or depends upon a body just to make itself manifest (minimal ver.). Whichever version one prefers, all subjectivity is merely a byproduct of Yoh-Sothoth, viz., what we thought was our innermost, most intimate experience, is actually completely alien to us, extra weird and totally careless about us. Lovecraft's insertion of something bizarre at our very core is simply magnificent (let us not transcendentalize it, though, his weird antideities are fairly immanent to the multiverse). This goes back to when the video affirms that the city has its citizens all turned and in full contact with their beastly side. This is the problem of skipping most contemporary anthropology and etnology. _Homo sapiens_ is an animal species. What we call _human(ity)_ is merely a myriad of techniques to further apart itself from its constitutive animality. Nothing more. Philosophy, videogames, fashion, whatever you will, nothing but _anthropotechniques._ And taking Lovecraft seriously for a moment: they do not succumb to their animality, or are turned into beasts (as in wild animals), they do operate a _theosis,_ a very material (even bodily) one, only thing is that this divinization/deification process is not as one would usually expect. It does not turn them into lovely, peaceful, good-willed ethereal entities, but rather depends the body's constitutive animality, its natural traits, exaggerating and enhancing them. This puts us back into mythology (as in study of myths): most traditional and classical myths have a divinization/deification ritual or process in some way or another. These processes and rites usually put someone in contact with the _Outermost_, or simply the _Absolute Outer_ (or even Absolute Other if you will). The voices that survived through time, reaching us nowadays, named the Outermost "divine", but it is not necessarily so. Were they naming it correctly? We may figure it out, I just don't know how. Thing is: "deities" might not be much different to lovecraftian _mythos,_ it could be a misnomer so to speak. To take lovecraftian _mythos_ to its final consequences means to not focus on what these stories speak, say or tell _to/of us_ - still a veiled anthropocentrism - but to focus on the greater questions they posit: what can be thought, what philosophy is possible, once no man (minimal ver.)/no life (maximal ver.) exists at all?
I felt your comment hit some really important distinctions that can be super confusing (and why we get an amazing sense of theme in this game series, even if we don't know why we feel that way while playing).
You seem to know a lot about this stuff. Could you help me with something? I want to ask only one question. Is the lovecraftian, Dark Souls or Bloodborne's myth universal to all humankind. You know, I live in Brazil and things are so messed up here that I'm afraid we need a new kind of myth here...
Great comment. Although, to pick hairs, it is Azathoth, not Yog-Sothoth whose dream encompasses all of reality. Yog-Sothoth is the literal embodiment of time (although exists outside of it) within that dream, in order to give it some form of structure. The interesting aspect is that it suggests, as does Bloodborne, that reality and dreams are in fact the same. Dreams create different realities, and new realities create different dreams. The cycle repeats ad infinitum to the point where reality and dream is appropriately indistinguishable. After all, perhaps we are all part of a dream of some unknowable Blind Idiot God at the center of the Universe? How would a dream-being know that they are, in fact, part of a dream, when that very dream is the only reality they've ever known? Ergo, what is the distinction between said dream and reality? The answer is there is none, or at least it is not comprehensible to humans.
Ed Kazaragy I wish it would happened too but that will not happened coz wiazaki. Bloodborne is actually the last darksoul or contrast sequel \ spiritual successor to darksoul.
Probably wont happen, and i hope it wont happen. Miyazaki has proved that making original titles is much more appealing than sequels. Dark souls 1 is amazing, but 2 and 3 are above average. Bloodborne however is also amazing, and a bloodborne 2 would probably land on that above average spot as well. Instead we could have something completely new, which could blow our minds again.
5 years after Bloodborne was realesed, 3 years after this video was published and 2 years after I played this game ... I am watching this video once again for coultesss time. That's how amazing Bloodborne lore is. Great analysis. Very well done!
Would’ve made more sense if you said Bloodborne follows the Hero’s Journey a lil better than Dark Souls. Even though Bloodborne presents itself like you are an ant amongst the gods, you still earn the Great Ones’ recognition and in the true ending become stronger than all of them, just like how humans become closer to god in traditional myths.
I'd say that even the chance to become a Great is given to you by the moon presence, by granting you virtual immortality to basically carry a grudge for him to kill mergo without him having to do it, and after all that you don't become a great one in you own merit by achieving a higher conscience but by consuming part of them, it's forced evolution not unlike what Maria was trying to do
29:08 In Dark Souls 1 if you get sucked into the Painted World you can´t teleport, you have to traverse the area. When you are killed the first time by Seath you are also sent to a prison and can´t teleport.
Takezo Kimura True, but the difference is that the painting is a player choice, and getting defeated by Seath is just a normal part of playing through the game, though you can leave his boss room and progress that way as well. Getting kidnapped by the Snatchers is almost like punishment for not being able to kill them. If you are caught, you then have to fight your way out of Yahar'gul in order to progress. This is an area you're not intended to go to until a bit later, and you may not be ready for what you see there, whereas you're expected to be able to get through the Archives as a natural progression.
Takezo Kimura as for seath, yes that is the belly of the wail. but the painted world is a far different meaning as you don't have to fight Priscilla and this part of the myth isn't meant to make you feel weak or kill you.
Yeah but in a blind play through the player would have no idea where the lantern is and could possibly be wandering around for quite a bit before finding it.
bloodborne is one of my favorite games, with its depths of human cruelty and idiocy brought to the forefront, with nothing but consequences when ambition is left unchecked and morals thrown to the wind. this game, and this video, has been an incredible journey (heh) and i can say without a doubt that it was very enjoyable to hear your commentary on the bits and pieces of the game.
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To date, I think this video is hands down the best at interpreting and contextualing the themes of Bloodborne. I do think there is a slight or mild inversion to the Call to Adventure phase however since we're hardly given a choice in signing the contract. There is choice but it is not informed choice. All we know is that we're seeking Paleblood for some unknown reason and the blood minister (man in the wheelchair) is ignorant of what that even is or means. So the treatment to receive blood is for some reason that isn't made extremely evident to us the player nor are the terms of the contract explained or communicated. In being chosen by the Messengers we're conscripted into the service of the Moon Presence. We even have its scent as do all Hunters. But we're never given a choice to be a Hunter or not be a Hunter, we don't even know what a Hunter is and Gehrman doesn't even explain it, he just tells us to kill beasts and includes that that's just what Hunters do.
This is really the only video I share with folks who struggle in digesting Bloodborne and actually From Soft games. It's so well done, you deserve ever view and like you have on it and then some.
Thanks for the insight and for the support! Excellent point considering Souls games almost always give us a choice in what we accept. Dark Souls even has Oscar ask you if you'll hear him out before he sends you on the quest for the rest of the game and we as players get to make that choice--something that's not present in Bloodborne!
Again, I appreciate the support. This video hit a brick wall when TH-cam decided to ad restrict this video so shares help a ton!
@@SolePorpoise Couldn't agree more!
Those Amygdala do actually pay attention to you
When nearing them, their heads turn towards you and move to accommodate your movements, out of everything they could focus on they choose to focus on you
consistently...
It does make me think that the player character is much more than he/she seems
Hell, we are even able to conquer these eldritch gods, alone.
An ant we may be, but an ant is not entirely harmless.
Probably because you were chosen by Gherman to serve the moon presence.
I'm sure the Amygdala's can tell there's something different about you.
+Bitter Sentry queen Annalise refers to us as a "moon scented hunter" so there is something different about our character.
ben posavad The Moon Prescence might have something to do with that.
the moon presence seems to attempt to use hunters to slay amygdala's.
normally, they wouldn't care, and it wouldn't work.
but there's something different about you.
you can SEE them. and you CARE about them, and you may have even KILLED one.
and an ant or spider that may kill a man is perhaps the most terrifying thing of all.
Heedfulconch3 the Moon Presence's scent was already mentioned, but keep in mind that they're lesser Amygdala which exist in the waking world, and the world of Lovecraft is filled with a lot of entities which, while much greater than humans, are not so high as to not take notice of them.
Dark Souls: go on a journey of self realization in order to see God in one's self.
Bloodborne: learn and accept your place as an insignificant being in the eyes of the gods.
Sekiro: sever the connection between you and the gods to ensure it cannot seduce man ever again.
Elden Ring: yes
Elden ring : your favorite character maybe or maybe not be killed within 10 minute
Elden Ring: "We're totally deconstructing the tropes of this genre. Also, we're going to put in a lot of tropes from this genre."
Where does code vein fit in this, because we’re missing one souls-like-game
The folly of humans in an attempt to become gods only leads them to more suffering?
Elden Ring: Oooooooooooooohhhhhhh.
"The most terrifying thing in the game"
_three tiny skeletons with hats burst through the floor and hold up a scroll_
They're not terrifying, they're cute
this is a good note
But they're so adorable!
@@guilhermedossantos4770 and they're not skeletons, they're FUCKING DREAM ALIENS
(which by the way is something I love about Bloodborne, how it actually acknowledges that Lovecraft's work deals with dreams as much as aliens and cultists)
and on a (much longer) side note I think the Messengers were pretty much designed to be both creepy and cute in the same way that babies are cute when they're happy and creepy when they're dribbling various repulsive substances with varying degrees of fluidity; consequently, as you get accustomed to them you start seeing them less as horrible monsters and more as cute little helpers.
Combine this with the Insight you gain over the course of the game, and you get a great Lovecraftian narrative where the Good Hunter starts loving the Messengers as much as the Doll does as they start becoming desensitized to all the weird shit in Yharnam... powerful stuff!
@@olivermorin3303 you may be looking into this a bit too much. I think the intention with the design of the messengers was just to look cool
"Humans are capable of kindness beyond angels, yet we commit sins that would put a demon to shame..."
Makes you wonder who the real demons are
angels*
or so we think this is another example of humans deifying themselves "beyond angles and putting demons to shame" lovecraft's point is that that is simply not the case we are nothing we have the same affect to these greater beings as an ant walking on a sidewalk would affect us walking by to our own destination the ant is unnoticed and unimportant unable to stop us as we walk by we are the ants
@@combatsportsaddict2334 I take it you have not played FFXI lol if you dont know you dont know
@@YukihyoShiraki i have that quote is more of the traditional myth i was just giving a lovecraftian twist but hey if u dont know u dont know
[08:26 Video seemingly ends]
- Damn that was a fantastic Dark Souls essay
[08:32 Part II Bloodborne]
- Oh right this video was about Bloodborne
Great essay! Really enjoyed this
"You can't write a doctorate english thesis on video ga-"
Will Panuska seriously, this could be a dissertation
And people wonder why liberal arts education in USA produces so much student debt.
@@nokki25 its a mostly useless field, in that, it produces little to no income.
@@SevenPr1me Psychologists make a lot of money if they actually study their shit and actually get involved in therapy themselves. That's about it
@@SevenPr1me You are a fine working robot. Producing income good, not producing income useless. No wonder we are dying out.
H.P lovecraft: he saw a horrible monster
Reader: how horrible is it?
H.P: it’s so horrible I can’t even describe it
Reader: ...
MyStErIoUs CoLoRs UnLiKe AnY sEeN oN eArTh!
A black person?
That is my main goddamn issue with all of lovecraft. In so many of his works he uses a phrase similar to that. It's so tedious and kills any pacing.
@@orangesoda4535 ayyy that's an overly sarcastic reference right there
@@orangesoda4535 noicee
The Blood Makes us Human...
Makes us More Than Human...
Makes us Human No More.
Fear The Old Blood.
I just wanted to point out a small error when explaining "The Belly of the Whale".
Dark Souls 1 did this first in the encounter with Seath, the Scaleless. The first time you encounter him it is impossible to hurt him, the player is then forced to die. After dying, you wake up in a prison cell in which you must escape from.
Amazing video by the way.
I thought of that too, but it doesn't quite work. The player already has the Lordvessel and thus the ability to warp to any bonfire at that point, which completely undermines that feeling of being trapped in a circumstance that's beyond your control.
ExzoSSG I'd say that Blightown did it first. It's an area of the game reached after traveling deeper and deeper into the ground, each are becoming more labyrinthine and difficult to traverse, the only known exit being the path they came through. While you are able to return the way you came, the first section of Blightown is by far the most difficult, and since (for most players) there isn't a way to circumvent Blightown and progress the game, they will ultimately be forced to repeat the same journey. The player isn't forced to continue deeper into Blightown, but it's by far the best of the two bad options they have available.
But that makes it even worse, because you cant warp out of the prison area or the painted world
If you don't light the bonfire in the cell, you can return to the last one used
Can confirm this is false, I tried it on my second playthrough. Also LIGHTING a bonfire never sets your return point in Dark Souls 1, you have to actually REST at one
I've come back to this video so many times. The delivery is great, with humor here and there, but also it provides such an awesome review that is useful not only to understand Bloodborne, but also to understand narrative.
To anyone trying to write a story, this should be an indispensable video to watch.
Definitely, I plan on making an indie game in future and am definitely calling back to this video as inspiration when truly writing in the story
I'm a little surprised at how brief your part on the endings were, since in my eyes each one is a absolute gold mine of symbolism.
In one ending we choose to kill our selves to allow us to "awake from the nightmare" and return to that safe, sain ,world where humans matter. In another we attempt to continue to move forward despite without the understanding (Or insight if you will) of our place in this world and end up just a puppet of a higher power.
Finally there is the ending where we come to understand humanities place in this world and, though bathing in the blood of a higher being we shed what we have come to realise is insignificant, our human selves. Stripped of our humanity we are able to ascend beyond our bestial self and become something more, we become another god looking upon humanity with the same mild curiosity any higher being would have when observing insignificant insects. (In a way many of these players are even able to have a limited understanding of this feeling as they look upon players who have yet to achieve this ending with smug superiority)
Got to point out people really need to read achievement descriptions, you uplift humanity into its second childhood in the true ending
hmm I always got the feeling bloodborne was also trying to say ascending to godhood isn't all we thought it would be, and that maybe its better to remain an ignorant human. Many of the bosses we slay are great ones, like rom and we can see sure they are powerful, can use magics we could never hope to match yet that seems to have come at a cost, from one perspective they are a hideous beast. But perhaps these are just the animistic ignorant mumblings of a human without enough eyes.
@Gwapa snuna transcending to the 4th dimension or "dream" where you become immortal.
@Gwapa snuna that my friend is the ckassical lovecraftian flexibility.
If we could percieve and understand what is above us we would already been ascended and would have no need to transcend. This is the paradox that cant bensolved by us humans, hence the symbolical shedding of ones humanity.
@Gwapa snuna Transcendence is a symbol for "purpose/spiritual maturity"
0:57
Very close, but a common misinterpretation. There are many superior alien god-creatures in Lovecraft's work that actually do take notice of humans, we just aren't very significant to them, a mere curiosity at most. Your comparison is accurate, in your ant allegory. We do not think of ants as very significant to our own lives, but we do take notice of them, perhaps studying them or slaying them for reasons they could not possibly understand.
Shnarfbird Interestingly, the amygdala do take notice of you during the game. In fact, the character is the only thing they turn their heads at. They just don't care that much.
I vaguely recall item descriptions implying that both: the Great Ones long for children, lending to why Formless Oedon impregnates the lady of the night and Queen Yharnam; and that they are sympathetic in nature and often appear when called apparently even by us ants, lending to why the Pale Moon Presence heard Gerhman's beckon and created the Hunter's Dream. Although I'm sure he did not intend to remain there endlessly if at all.
Your last sentence makes me think of the Amygdala in Yahar'gul firing its laser at you. That seems to be nothing more than it being curious about you dying. Just as a lot of people kill ants "just because". But when you actually fight Amygdala as a boss that seems like the kid that just kills ants for fun with a magnifying glass. Probably way off, but your comment piqued my interest on the matter...so late to this comment party.
In the case of Cthullu, he actually does need humans to revive him. At least according to the cultists, they might be wrong:
"That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. […] Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."
Agreed, in a way, humanity is very much interested in "ants" but as you said it's more or less a curiosity perhaps of a scientific or even a more child-like nature that a select few will only show interest in.
I cant help but wonder what lovecraft would think about bloodborne and dark souls
Too many non-whites. I mean there's not a lot, but too many for lovecraft
He would also hate the half dragon people.
He'd throw his controller at the tv screen and write another book...
@@DalithaMW Still a great man. Stay mad
@@phillmoore1561 he had some cool conceptual ideas. Far from a great man, although he has inspired many great things so I definitely do give him credit there. Doesn't make his other deficiencies go away though
And this whole time, I thought I was just a Vampire killing werewolves and other deadly things. Not a laughing stock to the alien gods.
Naray Cross don't worry, in the end you kill said god either way
Great one: lmao lookit this wanker running around all small li-
Hunter: *kills Great one*
Great one: well fuck me
@@carso1500
And become one at that.
Now you can laugh at the ones in the limbo.
@Conrad Kujur Now? You mean for the past 10 years?
Life is a lot better when you keep saying that to yourself. I know i did.
This is probably the best bloodborne video I have seen and I watch a LOT of Vaati.
vaati has a lot new for many people for sure (and does a great job in explaining this), but if u are rlly into the game he hardly ever has any intel u hadnt discovered ingame or read in simple item description before to be honest
Then you didnt even scracth the surface. Start reading ''The paleblood hunt'', free pdf written by redgrave, imo the best bloodborne lore interpeter
Vaati is more of just beneath the surface and geared more towards an introduction than anything else. If you want to go down the rabbit hole then check out JSF, Aegon's Let's Talk Lore, or Mitch L. I'd reccomend Redgrave but I don't agree with some of his later suggestions(like the Hunter having past associations with a certain Hunter in the Hunter's Nightmare..), his earlier ones are great though. Imo JSF is the best one to check out, he's also got a few DS3 videos that are pretty damn good.
Stop holding Vaati as the epitome of Souls lore dissemination.
Vaati is a shitty Lore-master which telling lore bases on his own guesstimates.
(Aslo way he talking is so much boring that i want to jump from the top of some really high building)
If you remember, Wilhelm said, "The blood makes us human, makes us more than human, makes us human no more." So right off the bat the story makes it very clear that we are no longer human. Insight, knowledge of the so-called eldritch truth a.k.a. enlightenment in bloodborne is our understanding of the special world beyond the main mundane setting in the beginning, the nightmare realms. This inhuman knowledge manifests itself through its bearers as what seems to be madness to unenlightened individuals according to item descriptions and such knowlege is dangerous because there are some things we just aren't meant to know.
The video says that since bloodborne is an anti-myth instead of using our humanity to be one with god we are shedding our humanity to become a god indicating as the story progresses we become less and less human. So as the story progresses and we gain more insight it would make sense for us to be able to fight the amygdalas and moon presence as we are so inhumanly enlightened at that point we know how to beat them.
After we kill Rom the doll says our presence soothes, alluding to the fact we inherited some nuance of Rom's power to dull reality. So it can be said that with the blood echo system we absorb the great ones' essences as with our other "prey" but as well as leveling up and becoming stronger we become so inhuman and so enlightened by killing great ones and absorbing their traits that we have to shed our human form to contain our consciousness and become a god ourselves, hence we transcend the hunt. We find paleblood, which the doll bleeds when struck, to do so.
Without the courage to pursue enlightenment and just imbibing the blood to force a communion (trying to take the easy way out) we embody our baser animal nature and devolve into a mere beast. It must be this way because these are alien beings. In not just Catholicism but the whole of Christianity humans are created in god's image and he is therefore familiar with us. So maybe because we aren't made in the great ones' image, and they are so alien an existence to us, to try to force a deeper connection by imbibing the blood in communion with them when that connection was never present to begin with is what makes us sick. It is something that should not be, an abomination, which is a common Lovecraftian theme, hence why we become beasts. In the end if we want to be connected with the great ones we must leave our humanity behind and become one of them.
All in all the souls series has always revolved heavily around themes of humanity, human nature, and our origins. In Bloodborne we can either use what makes us human, our minds, pursuing knowledge no matter how dangerous and ascend to a higher plane of existence, or succumb to our animal side and do what is easy and feels good, thereby becoming a beast.
Sorry for the essay guys, just had to get that off my chest. What do you guys think?
Add some fucking paragraphs.
Jasper H You're a hero
EpicHysteria Glad I could help, man!
Jasper H That is unused dialogue. It's from a trailer but never said in game so isn't canon. Everything else said is pretty damn good though. Well said.
+LoganSoulsBorne4 Glad you enjoyed it. I remember Wilhelm saying that and "Our eyes are yet to open," after touching Laurence's skull to Laurence himself though. The one after the Vicar Amelia boss fight. They even say the "Fear the old blood" adage.
Jesus, Buddha, Hercules, The chosen undead.
Sorry It's sounds so funny
Procione Mannaro: It sounds like the start of one of those "walks into a bar" jokes.
Jesus: Died and came back to life.
Buddha: Died and was reincarnated.
Hercules: Descended to the Underworld (Hell) and brought back Cerberus.
TIL They're all zombies!
@@Vasharan Cerberus is the doggo guarding Hades.
@@Vasharan funny meme, but wrong. The point of buddhaism is to not get reincarnated, and a budda is someone who manages to die while alive, destroy his reincarnation essence so there's nothing to reincarnate. It works like a respawn curse and you're trying to die for good, and it's only possible when human.
It sounds funny because it's ridiculous.
Good video, but I feel like you missed something added to the myth. It's easy to miss because it pertains to boss battles specifically and it's hard to analyze game mechanics as anything "deep". You mentioned how all those Amygdala ignored you, but remember how you also kill one in the game. Sure, the message that these gods don't care about human struggles is clear, but Bloodborne also shows how human can force notoriety. Imagine if an ant (as you compared humans to gods) started crawling up you. You could swat it away, but then it comes back. Basically, one power humans do have, even against gods, is consciousness enough to bother others, or at least persist against. Bloodborne manages this through it's classic Dark Souls death system. Bloodborne is like the non-pessimist version of Lovecraft's vision. Human still matter little to the gods, but humans can always force some shred of recognition onto themselves. Even if it's minor.
I also believe that the representation of the amygdala was the magnification of fear which the amygdala in our brain is there to detect fear and prepare for emergency events
What would you think those amygdala would think, seeing you kill them ?
In the world of Bloodborne, humans aren't ants. We're like a cross between a cockroach and a mosquito. Just as harmless, but really, really annoying when we need to be.
Problem is, it is not your power the one that granted you the ability to kill the Amygdala, is the moon prescense's power and by extention the doll's, the Hunter's Dream sustains you so you can overcome the challenges, but you dont rise to the expectation and struggle to retain your humanity like in Dark Souls, you're sent over and over again until you somehow manage to get the task done, you're nothing more than a tool for a grander purpose that doesnt belong to you and it's only when you're ready to shed your humanity that you start to take part in such purpose but by then, the player no longer has control of the Hunter
Since you mentioned boss battles, one important point is that when you beat a boss, you don't get the "VICTORY ACHIEVED" of Dark Souls, as if you accomplished a Herculean task, you get "PREY SLAUGHTERED". The bosses in this game are nothing but prey to you, and you shouldn't be scared of them, they should be scared of you. Sometimes I think the Moon-Scented Hunter is the scariest individual in the game, even above the Great Ones.
Isn't it incredible that this game can ignite so much theory, intrigue and debate. What a masterpiece. 👌🙌
It's the only game, where each time I play it, I enjoy it more and get more obsessed with it.
"...we distrust them because they're snakes..."
Nah dude, those denture like teeth and elephant like ears are just way too far into the uncanny valley to make them (fraampt and kaathe) anything less than disturbing.
You're right .... But dark souls subvert our expectations with the giant big tits waifu Gwynevere who is actually an illusion . But you'd trust her because .. well .. its obvious aint'it ?
Yeah, I feel like if they actually looked like snakes, they'd be 100 million times less disturbing. But the teeth and enormous eyes (snake eyes are not that big in proportion to their faces)... those get me.
also the fact one of them will pay you to feed him shit and women's clothes
and also because I just got that huge teleport bowl, I'm not just gonna immediately get rid of it :(
@@dylana.9057 the real waifu is Priscilla
The Healing Church is Catholic on the surface but very Shinto beneath it, which is an interesting merger between cultures and religions, wouldn't ya'll agree?
It's pretty common in Japanese portrayals of religion. Many Japanese mix elements of Shinto, Buddhism, and Christianity in their everyday lives
Sincretism at its finest.
Oh fuck off
Oedeon Chappel =Oedeon Shrine
@@TheTroutyness Thanks, you taught me a new word! A slightly uncommon occasion.
We are born of the blood
Made men by the blood
Undone by the blood
Our eyes are yet to open
FEAR THE OLD BLOOD!
We must line our brain with eyes
More blood for the blood god.
@aa aa Laurence is that you ?
I fear the old blood. The one time I got hurt bad enough to need a blood transfusion, there were only elderly people around to get it from. I took my chances I wasn't taking any of that old blood.
May the good blood guide you friend.
The Moon Presence also had wings. Not of blood but physical, dark in color and tattered. Likely because of its opposition to both the player and other "gods".
2 years later and people are still dissecting this game. This game will live forever
in a few more years it'll be talked about in college courses along side some of the most popular novels.
What about MH4U
You actually think 2 years is a lot? Must be young then
It's magic of FromSoftware
"We are but a rope tied between animal and superman. Man ought to be overcome, what have you done to overcome him?" - Frederick Nietszche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape."
- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Nietzsche also ended up losing his mind like Master Wilheim. He also probably mumbled nonsense like Wilheim in his last moments
'Morality is the final aspect of God that must be discarded before the period of reconstruction begins'.
This explains why you have to literally murder babies to get the true ending.
Nota bene: I don't know if Nietzsche said those exact words but the book I got it from was explaining Nietzsche's philosophy.
HP Lovecraft is a legend. He took the proverbial horror baton from Poe and handed it to contemporary authors. He evolved fear, in unison with the expansion of evolution.
Cat name funne
@@Limitlesspower98 Yea his cat naming game was peak
A rock As if you could ever achieve something as significant as Lovecraft’s literary legacy. Yes the man was racist, but you cannot deny that his carrer is more important than anything I or you could ever dream of.
Stop wining about Lovecraft being racist as it is natural to fear something we do not comprehend, and Lovecraft did not comprehend nor tried to comprehend certain things.
lol
You know, when I first started playing Souls games, I noticed something deeper that was drawing me to them. Something I couldn't put my finger on.
I tried summing it up as, "It feels like it's telling a story older than time." I feel like a lot of people brushed me off as pretentious. Good to know I'm not totally crazy!
you're just pretentious, & a liar. Lmao
You sound like the old Dark Souls 1 pvp community.
Funny considering just how important "time" really is (and really isn't) in Dark Souls.
"It feels like it's telling a story older than time." makes sense imo
There is no real "recorded history", and most lore comes from item descriptions and wistful recollections from NPCs
You can mind meaning in everything if you look long enough
I disagree with your opinion of the dark souls lore in relation to other myths. The fire to me, represents the key part of souls lore that everything has its time to end. You're not saving the world by linking the fire, you're letting it drag on a little while longer, because everything is temporary. Dark Souls is about realizing that, and that the journey through a temporary existence is worth it anyways.
Yeah I actually agree that while dark souls has some elements of the hero's journey, they're subverted and questioned, just in a different way from how bloodborne does it. This was a great video overall, but I did have to work through the first bit because I don't really agree with the analysis of dark souls here beyond a surface level. But then again, the video is about bloodborne, not dark souls, so it may have been a bit unnecessary to go on about the vagaries of dark souls in this.
If he misses that,he misses the whole story of dark souls.
Donovaneagle2098 hm
Yep. Bloodborne in some ways is just a way to make it even more blatantly clear that the message is that the hero's journey may not be that important or relevant after all, except from your own perspective.
This analysis seems to be done by someone who isn't a Christian nor literate in Christian mythology. OP's trying to invert stuff while it's quite literally the inverse of his inversions. Miyazaki's game are very literal and also a critical comment on how Western civilization has pushed itself onto other cultures in its quest to spread their message of God.
Also, minus points for using the hero's Journey. It's a freakin cliche and it doesn't make anyone sound smarter. I could do "A Hero's Journey of Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and it wouldn't make any goddamn sense.
"Where is your god now?" - ngl a scary thing to be asked by cthulu on the shitter
It's a Thatcher
Immaculate presentation of my favourite series. This is practically a dissertation.
An “Immaculate Concept” in a way
*Solaire gets impailed*
*takes a sippy sipp of Sunny D*
You monster
B I G S I P P
Solaire gettin impy uh
Sunny D gettin sippy uh
I'd be fine with being impaled by solaires sunny d
@@FloraOfTheCats P R A I S E T H E S U N
@@kairo3201 G L O R Y B E T O T H E G R A C I O U S S U N
Fun fact: In Hypogean Gaol, "gaol" is actually the old British spelling for jail and it's pronounced the same way. So "gaol" is pronounced "jail" not "goal" or "ga-ole". :)
You make absolutely amazing content. The videos you make are far better than most channels with millions of subs. Please, keep it up - you will go far.
Thanks man. That's really awesome of you to say.
Good to know you're enabling reactionary alt-righters
Same thing I was thinking. Getting a compliment from that guy isn't something I'd be proud of.
He's just being polite and grateful for something positive that was mentioned about him. It's not like he's rewarding a hateful or offensive comment. Chill Out.
Everyone who liked this video is likely to share that guy's opinion about it. I don't think his opinion on other subjects should be a matter of discussion here. This is a commentary section on SolePorpoise's video and given the wonderful quality of its content a compliment is due.
What's wrong with him giving a compliment just because he has different political views then you doesn't mean you can hate on him
Gaol is an old way of writing jail
TheHortoman I fucking hated that place
What he said. Pronounced the same as jail also.
im so in love with this video and the way you were connecting bloodborne and dark souls to the myths of mankind. it seems you have a really good overall knowledge about myths in generell im really impressed dude
Coming from a Catholic uprising, I can't fucking believe I missed the blood communion in Bloodborne being a reference to the blood of Christ that Catholics drink. Of all the Gothic architecture, Latin chorus singing, and the church hunters basically being the inquisition, I missed the one thing that Catholics are known for!!! They literally drank the holy blood of their gods!!!
EatitHarvey how could ube a catholic in the 21 century o.O
Latino culture is heavily religious
Luke B So your using the current year argue to tell others to not be Catholic, libertard
Just don't pay attention to this troll.
Raime The Fume Knight "libertard"
Um what? What about him suggested that he was liberal?
"As for her romantic love, what should expect is a scene like what we get in the Lion King where Nala gives Simba that very inappropriate 'fuck me' face."
😆Tehehehehe😂 I knew that something was off about that scene when I watched that movie over and over as a kid.
You weren't alone. Hell, even a small part of me was turned on which was super confusing what with being a kid and all.
what the actual fuck!!!! XDDD
I like to come back to this video whenever I get the urge to play Bloodborne again, to help put me in the right mindset. Something that I find interesting is that so many of the story notes regarding an inverted hero's journey were the exact opposite in my experience, and I think that's also significant.
In my first (failed) playthrough, I met the beggar at the Church and was put off by his appearance but eventually, upon experimenting by sending people to the different locations, I discovered he was truthful. This was a good sign not to judge simply by appearances but to also pay attention to actions. While everyone else knows less about the world than myself, a newcomer, I felt that it was less tragic and more a display that, lost as I was, I could still help people.
And rather than feeling depressed or lost at the reveal of the Nightmare and the return to Yahar'gul, I felt invigorated: I could see the truth, now, and that means I can fight it. The fact that the Great Ones are not truly divine, just as fallible as any human, means that we can face and overcome them. Some people treat unknown horrors with reverence, hoping that through worship they'll be spared. Some curse their lack of understanding and spiral into self-hatred, trying to imitate these unknown beings in an effort to comprehend them. But some see these horrors as no more than another obstacle, forces uncaring at best and malicious at worst that cause pain to humanity by their very presence. You don't need to understand them beyond how best to hurt them.
The endings are a bit more muddied, because the game is morally ambiguous in the extreme, but in essence I can see two major interpretations of each one.
Leaving the Dream, you're either escaping the horrors after doing Flora's bidding or you're leaving once you've ended your battles. There's no reason to continue a fight that isn't yours, especially once you're getting into circumstances you truly don't understand. Whether you're fleeing in terror or pragmatically departing, your work there is done and you're returning to your old life.
Slaying Gehrman is generally due either to heroism in trying to free him from his prison or bloodthirst in seeking ever more powerful opponents. Gehrman is an elite hunter and presuming you can overcome what has ensnared him without preparation leads to you being trapped. Your reckless bloodlust, or foolish heroism, is rewarded by being trapped in the same wheelchair, used to anchor the Dream.
Slaying Flora is the result of careful preparation, of paying close attention to the world and taking the same risks that got you this far. Great Ones can never exist in the same plane as their children, their obsessions arising due to utter loneliness. The umbilical cord is the only evidence of the connection between Great Ones. It doesn't just symbolize birth, death and the inverse of birth: it's also a solid educated guess that taking it into yourself will serve as a sort of barrier between you and any Great One trying to invade your being. Upon slaying Flora you become a baby Great One, with the mind of someone who defied godly beings to free himself and humanity from their machinations. Perhaps that will allow you to bridge the gap between humanity and the Great Ones, and actually bring understanding to your friends and loved ones rather than madness.
I've seen so many Bloodborne analysis videos and this is by far my favorite. Thorough, convincing, and incredibly interesting. I may be a few years late but I tip my hat to this beautiful piece
Plot twist:
Miyazaki was throwing random shit, just to see us suffer from multiple deaths.
This is the best comment so far.
This but unironically.
Hows that a plot twist? Isn't that the main plot?
That's basically the lore of all Soulsborne games. Everyone tries to find some deep lore behind them while Miyazaki sits there with his dick in his hands giggling to himself "heh heh... Berserk"
As anyone who writes shit will tell you, the most profound symbolism is done completely by accident, you just got to learn to pretend it was totally intentional
Found this vid on Max Derrat's suggestion. I'm floored, this was amazing and I couldn't look away or pause for some errands or anything. This game offers above else, a nice hard dose of humility that will stick with you long after you play, it seems.
I think the reason most Lovecraft stories have such a hard time translating to anything outside books is because it's honestly hard to make something scary and give a face to that scariness. The phrase "A coward dies a hundred deaths, a hero only once" is something like it, where when it lingers in our minds or us being able to personally personify our fears is actually much more horrifying than actually seeing it. Much like the movie "Blair Witch" (Which I personally feel is a good way to explain Lovecraft), we spend the entire movie scared from something we never see.
You know, having watched this video several times over the years, I would say that Dark Souls also subverts the Hero's Journey. For one, the special people that go to Firelink are found trapped in the special world by you, they are helpless until you interact with them. Then, when you've gained all you can from them or progressed the game far enough, they set off into the special world again, only to be dismantled by their own knowledge and desire. Many of them do not know any more than you do, and regard you to be far more talented than themselves. And you are.
When you meet the motherly love figure, and/or the romantic love figures, the mother is an illusion and your potential lovers are murdered or kidnapped. You may rescue them, of course, but in rescuing one you only set her up to be kidnapped again since she has no strength of her own. The other resents you for restoring her soul and body, because you took agency from her just as the murderer did, since she did not ask you to revive her. She resents being able to speak, now being whole.
When it comes time to, "Make the same decision Gwyn did." It appears to be the same symbolically, but it's actually that very idea, the idea of elevating yourself to Gwyn's level by roasting yourself as fuel to extend the age that lets the ruse go on for so long. What you actually are doing is perverting the natural order of the special world by wrongfully extending the age of fire past its prime. The creatures of the dark twist in the light of this mutant flame becoming mutants themselves in response in order to put an end to an unnaturally long lived cycle.
That is what an Undead is, a human mutated by the over lived age, made immortal, able to possess power beyond that of the Gods. Having witnessed this ability in primeval man, what the Gods referred to as pygmies, Gwyn branded humanity itself, the Dark Soul, such that any human whose piece of the Dark Soul grew strong enough to turn them immortal would run into the limitation set by Gwyn's brand. To be drawn and ensnared by his fire. Until once again humanity mutated into Ash, becoming impervious to flame, unable to burn, and unable to die.
But in Bloodborne, though it appears to be an anti-myth, it's actually the Hero's Journey with the more romantic aspects removed. When you look on the inhabitants of the special world, they do know more than you, but not by much. The real bar scene is the Hunter's Dream. Whenever you meet other Hunters they reference The Dream. You gain the most insight about the special world from those most similar to yourself. Other Jedi as it were, if we were to make a Star Wars comparison. The residents of Yharnam that you can send to Oedon Chapel, but can also send to Iosefka's Clinic makes the Oedon Temple as the Bar Scene not work. There are people who had no Bar Scene there on their first playthrough, afterall. But everyone encounters other Hunters. They may not get every shred of dialogue or knowledge the first time around, but they do get some dialogue. Knowledge they otherwise wouldn't have.
When you ascend in the true ending, you've conquered the spiritual forms of Great Ones. Multiple Great Ones. The players that get this ending should understand that though they cannot relate to what has happened to their character, they can comprehend it. Something almost no one touches upon is the fact that your new slug like state may only be what your soul, your dream self, has become. It is worthy to note that the Great Ones have a physical form and their dream form. The dream form can sustain multiple physical incursions into the waking world, but if the dream form is killed, then only their body and blood remain. Dreams can also show the past, and make memories just as real as the waking world. As shown in the Hunter's Nightmare. Becoming a Great One is a selfish act, as the Great Ones have no camaraderie with one another. They do not act in tandem, though they may appear to. They live in similar fashions, because that's what life becomes at that level of ascension. One wonders what new terrors and what new glories are beyond that. The true ending to Bloodborne is a mind blowing revelation that we can only know so much, and there's always another secret, another hint, another ascension another truth to uncover. It never ends.
Also... What about gehrman and the doll? I honestly can't se the minister as the mentor and arianna as the mother... That just seems weird when gehrman litterally calls himself the first hunter and "the master to the pupil" which in this case is the player and the doll litterally talks about loving the hunter, crying and feeling joy for his actions, acting as a catalyst and tool to grow, and it all ends with her nurturing the hunter.
Those seem far more logical associations to me
Bloathead: *Laughs maniacally*
This is by far my favorite video. I dont know how many times ive watched it. Amazing content and delivery.
Bloodborne lore with an FFX backing track? Mate. You're the true Great One.
Thank you, Your analysis of Bloodborne is one of the best I have seen
Yep. Him and LHudson are the best.
Watch Redgrave
And read Redgrave!
24:00 "It's not a new idea to have a character impregnated by aliens, but being impregnated by alien gods is a unique one." Seems to me like a "The Dunwich Horror" reference.
Yeah, eat it, Jordan B Peterson. Where's your Dragon-Slaying Room-Cleaning now that I have eyes on the inside and a direct line of communication with a slug-deity birthed by the cosmos?!
Holy fuck that sounds awesome! Lol
@Adam Murphy "What is common and to attain", "What is disparate and to endure"
wow im both surprised and elated to see some fellow lobsters in this thread, hit me up @anzax, im always on the lookout for gamers with similar perspectives.
@@Vgallo "Similar perspectives"... dearie, dearie, me. Have I given such an impression with so few words? >:)
what's this about Jordan B. Peterson?
wow. just, wow. I've never been so glad to click on a recommended video. your thoughts are clear and easy to follow and your attention to detail and the willingness to research so far outside of the game makes this a great video. You just earned a sub and most likely a patron (I will decide after binge-watching your content, haha).
Although I'm surprised how you didn't mention the hunter's dream and the doll. The doll would make a good "goddess" for our hero.
Oh my god! Thank you! Even if you don't decide to become a patron, I really appreciate your support!
As far as the doll as a goddess goes, you're totally right! I was trying to imply that when saying she nurtures us in the end for our witnessing of another virgin birth. She definitely provides that motherly role in that ending. Anyway, thanks so much for this awesome comment. I really appreciate it.
The transition from gothic to lovecraftian is definitely my favorite switch in all of media. I dont think any footage of the lovecraftian stuff was shown before release which made it a really good surprise. I still dont know which i prefer though, this or the witcher 3
The transition works so well, it doesnt even feel like a switch, but an unfolding of the horror
The witcher 3 is a really good game but I think it's a bit overrated
@@lolmanbomber2904 more specifically, the Witcher 3 is a really good game, but it's not a really good Witcher story. I'd argue the Bloody Baron quest and Hearts of Stone DLC are the only parts that feel much like the Sapkowski books.
I´m a Souls Veteran, but this Video gave me a whole new perspective of the Game .. Holy shit Dude great Work, hands down.
Bloodborne shows us the side of ourselves we fear the most.... THE FURRY WITHIN.
... Is this a typo?
Is it not?
I honestly cant tell and that scares me more.
Oh no, not the ponies.
that sounds like a hilarious The Evil Within parody game that would be awesome to play
@Gwapa snuna yes
Oh God No
Holy shit!! I am absolutely awestruck by the quality of this content!! Well done man, well done!
Typically, when I stumble upon channels with such low subscriber counts, I really don't expect much... But damn, this is a tremendously high quality video. You absolutely deserve a much larger following than what you have. I'm definitely subbing, and I hope more do the same.
Literally the best Bloodborne video on youtube!
Literalmente el mejor video sobre Bloodborne. Antes de éste vi por lo menos tres o cuatro pero ninguno llega al punto al que llegás vos. Gracias :)
Man...I will NEVER look at Soulsborne games the same anymore....Now I know WHY I was feeling some of the things I was during this game...Miyazaki is... Incredible. THANK YOU for this video, your hard work and dedication is worth it's weight in gold, my friend.
Congratulations on the most philosophical video on the Souls series in combination with the Mythological history of humanity.
I think you deserve more credit then "Vaati" for what you have made here, the way and tone you brought it to us is exactly how I would want it to be told and I agreed.
I love the amount of Final Fantasy music you use in your videos
"In participating in this version of the Hero's Journey, we went in thinking that humans would conquer this world and unite ourselves with some aspect of God. Instead, we discover that we are nothing more than sophisticated beasts with good intentions...."
FUCK, THAT'S how you subvert expectations and deconstruct a common, universal human narrative, ladies and gentlemen. Miyazaki is a genius and I don't use that term lightly. When people scoff at the prospect of video games being art, I point them to the SoulsBorne series to shut them up.
Great analysis and video.
DarkFallenSurgeSekiroBorneSoulsDarknessVein
while you talk a lot about humanity never merging with god im pretty sure thats exactly what happened at the end. i think that the ultimate lesson is that humans must leave behind their their exact existence as humans to ascend in to a human like god.
its like what carl sagan once said "It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very much like us. But with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, far-seeing, capable and prudent."
I don't think that's quite correct. The hunter becomes an infant Great One, clearly ascending and leaving humanity behind. That's the whole point of the "true ending". To leave every trace that makes you human behind.
It's not a merger but a complete transformation. Sure, the player character becomes a Great One, but only by essentially not being human anymore.
FlyteDanny But when you get that trophy and the following trophy, it says something along the lines of “lifting humanity up into its next stage”. Wouldn’t that mean we still are human in a sense and thus sympathize with those left behind?
True, but that could also mean exactly what happened in the events of Bloodborne. Humans found the blood of the Great Ones, meddled with it and then turned themselves into ungodly things but human.
I believe the hunter learns 14 things. well. leaves 7 behind and adopts 7 more while abandoning 5 and loosing two. Then attaining them all again. The ultimate goal for a human is to 'win' through our knowledge or some other form we will always seek survival over others where resources are key: Knowledge or insight can help us attain favor with the old-ones and be blessed with sight of their lesser formations, we can also ascend their level or become the same as them to a degree, only shedding our human form when that insight lets the knowledge of how to do so become available. It's super-imposed as you choose to bow your head for the edge of a scythe, or you fight to attain the seat of the most powerful human, only to find you've become more or less powerful than him, and his god/patron. I never liked playing blood-borne for a certain reason. I can never put my finger on it but it's like it wants to speak or convey a message but fails in cementing any one kind of ending... But that's just my opinion. I prefer the child of Kos to the moon presence, same as I'd prefer the dumb idiot god to the Cthulites. The same way I'd prefer vast nothingness to insufferable noise and light. But that's just my opinion overall... I don't covet the games message, I like to draw my own lines and theory's rather than use someone else's, else I become lazy and bored.
Honestly this is breath taking, you managed to understand every part and the inspiration of dark souls and bloodbourne, connect them ,etc... My first game was Dark Souls 2, I don't know what your thoughts on it are, but to be honest I'm glad it was my first game, it actually inspired me to learn more about the dark souls world and try to play the other games, it also made me learn an important lesson by the end of it... From what I understand, Dark souls guides you in to the world and what you need to do, while Dark souls 2, tosses you into the unknown, almost completely without any info. Then by the end of the game if you are perceptive enough, it teaches you that it is the same world as Dark souls 1. Legends were born, the world has change, it will always change. The only thing that you can do is be part of it as an ANT as you would say in this giant world
32:31 - What do you mean, the Amygdalas' totally did intervene! One will crush you to death or send you to an un-escapable(lore-wise) nightmare if it catches you. Another one outright fights you if you meet it in the Nightmare Frontier
The Amygdala in the the nightmare is of our own creation. We can only defeat them in our dreams.
Maybe he meant it specifically in that part of the game, the second version of the prison.
But as you said, throughout the game as a whole, some Amygdalas troll you. I can remember at least 4 of them who attack us.
the one outside oedon chapel will grab you and throw you if you go after the item there (priest set i think) but you don't know what the fuck just picked you up and threw you...because it's invisible.
Amygdalas who attack you are like humans who play/kill the ants. Nothing more than curiosity.
This video just increased my love for bloodbourne by over 9000. You sir, are amazing.
As someone who has just recently beaten the game and wanted an introspection, this was just what I needed.
Thank you. This was a wonderful 36 minutes well spent.
this is a great breakdown, should seriously keep up the vids man
Lydell Storm this is the best villain 101 video on TH-cam imo
One question: The very last part you mention 'The hero ascends to godhood but without the player. The player is trapped on this plane, unable to see themselves in this virgin birth.' Would you elaborate on this? Is it that we, as the player, work hard to unravel this 'true' ending only to not feel a deeper sense of self-understanding through the cloudy choices we made throughout the game? Instead, we see our avatar ascend into something we do not understand, put the controller down and feel befuddled. Because we're stuck on the human plane?
I prefer Bb over DS. Until watching this video, I thought it was for the more defined game mechanics and the darker Lovecraftian tones. This brings it to a whole new dimension of self-examination. Extremely well done!
That's pretty much what I was trying to say, yeah. Campbell thought we experience these stories to feel, through empathy, a feeling of self overcoming. And this self ovecoming was supposed to tap into the better parts of our human nature to get there. So you'll see stories where characters will realize they're fighting for love or for a moral code or something else other humans can understand and relate to.
And that's why I think the "true" ending of Bloodborne is so interesting. We can't use empathy to relate to this step of apotheosis because it has no human qualities. When I said it sheds its humanity to ascend, I mean it sheds the player.
Thanks for the quick reply and clarification. Your perspectives on Bb, and how they relate to the human psyche, philosophy, and spirituality, really help with a lot of self examination. You offer another great step toward self actualization. Cheers.
This might be a bit picky, but why did you choose the expression of "anti-myth"? I mean I have the impression that it's at the most a 'perversion', a corruption as you said yourself, like the 'dark side' or mirror-image of the myth, but not it's opposite. The tricky thing of Campbell's definition of the hero journey is that you cannot really avoid it or escape its scheme - it doesn't really change if you change the parameters - a dark, inhuman, illogical etc. god, and our apotheosis to him does not contradict the pattern of the hero journey. On the opposite it just seems more authentic, or rather Old Testamental - in the way that we cannot really understand the divine for it must remain mysterious.
I think that the use of 'antimyth' is less in reference to the Hero's Journey and more as a myth in general.
The video defines a myth as a typically human-centric affair - with the Hero's Journey being the most typical example that has clear inversions in the case of Bloodborne. The inversion of the Hero's Journey is not what makes it 'antimyth', it is the fact that the Inverted Hero's Journey is used to present an antimyth wherein humanity is shrugged off and has absolutely no place in the universe.
In other words, the inverted journey is the symptom, not the disease.
As clarified above by Porpoise: myths are experienced to feel a sense of self-overcoming that taps into the better parts of human nature. Thus, an antimyth walls off the viewer/reader/player from any sense of self-overcoming, which is built up by showcasing the animalistic and ugly portions of human nature that can not be shaken. "These are the reasons you will never amount to more than you are already, insignificant as you are."
This is one of those videos where everytime I come back to it I understand more and more of it and I never get tired of seeing it over and over again because it's incredibly interesting and the editing and delivery is amazing.
I really love how Bloodborn is based on Lovecraftion myth as well, making the player feel fear of the unknown...coming across higher gods and the only thing we will understand of them is how they move and how we kill them...but we will never know why..who they really are, they are their an we are the hunters to stop them...I love it.
This seems useful for my research on story writing.
Thank you. It was amazing.
Rox Requiem recommend your other fave videos on storytelling pls
@@Cajek2 The others are mostly movie essay channels, like Screened, Real Dimensional Pictures and all the others on the recommended after that XD.
There are also a lot of literature reviews and essays on youtube, like reviews for the works of HP Lovecraft, Tolkien and even game storylines are reviewed.
to quote Hbomberguy "What level of genius does a man has to operate on to make this game ?"
I am consistently blown away by Bloodborne on a mechanical level, but now that I have finished the game and begin lore diving on TH-cam and Internet forum, Bloodborne has become even more impressive with each new video I see.
Won a sub.
1 note:
Did you notice how, in Dark Souls 2, we also are made feel like WE, the players, are the true hollows, forever seeking souls hoping that would keep us stronger and alive?
Even tho we could not play at all. I found myself in that situation when I decided "ok, I'm lvl 300, nothing can stop me from killing, but, what stops me from killing them in 1 blow" Yeah, levels, thus souls. I started to famr The Ancient Dragon, cuz I'm dat gud. I burned 99 ascetics and more to get to level 642. With 99 int/fth I decided to try using the spells that were more powerful, the dark resonant spells. These take your souls to use them as beams. So obviously, I had to keep farmin the dragon. To a point were I had to kill it twice to level 1 stat. I even tried to 1 shot Vendrick using Climax and 50 million souls.And that was it. I stopped playing Dark
Souls 2 for weeks. I felt sooooo empty, like nothing makes sense, like why am I even playing anymore, repeating the same shit everyday. I felt soooo hollow.
If u read all this, thanks. I'm stoned :P
"Yeah, that was a great video but...." LOL no. Full stop. More than a great video, this was fantastic. it's opened up a whole new way to interpret these games for me. Not only that, but I suspect it will change my world view a little as well as a result. Thanks for all the hard work!
I stumbled upon this video and your channel by chance. Super interesting and you earned a sub after just 5 minutes of great analysis and discussion. Keep up the good work!
FYI: Gaol is the old english word for Jail, and is pronounced the same. So it's the Hypogean Gaol; the Hypogean Jail
"...Evolution without courage will be the ruin of our race."
Very well done. I just wish Demon's Souls would be considered as well.
I keep coming back (a year later) to watch this again. One of the BEST pieces of Bloodborne content out there. Excellent work!
Wow the youtube algorithm working well,
Great video man, loved it.
This is a great analysis! Finally someone explains the ending in a way which makes sense.
VejyMonsta Many have, just not in videos. And it's up to interpretation, so it's up to you. There are multiple endings too.
LoganSoulsBorne4 I mean the third ending. Although it still doesn't make sense for new game plus. The game designers kinda wrote themselves into a wall with that one.
I watched this video in 9th grade and it sent me down a rabbit hole of mythological analysis and symbolism that five years later I still have yet to find the bottom of.
Got distracted when I heard the FFX macalania woods song come on lol
Dope ass video man :). Liked, faved, and I've always been subbed.
Thanks for your support. :)
Thank you for making this video. It's so in-depth and intuitive. The wording and music application are so good. Keep it up
I had forgotten how good your videos are. You should do them more often to elevate the standars of video making.
could the entire game be an unfinished hero's journey of all of humanity, ending at the "belly of the whale" stage?
Just wow... I dont even reallly have the words to describe how good this was...
Miyazaki: "I just wanted some hard stuff"
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
was not ready to hear about lions giving each other 'fuck me' faces but it was quite brilliant, as was everything else in the video
I love videos like these and the people that make them. Mythology and video games are two things that i care about a lot and its so cool when i find people that love lore and mythos in games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and Death Stranding like i do. Its sad that not everyone really sees how much it takes to create a game like Bloodborne, and all of the attention to detail, and how the creators pay homage to the religions they pull inspiration from. I appreciate u sir.
Ok, to start this off, there are a few problems associated with only working under Campbell's theories, one misses out Lévi-Strauss's very powerful etnology/anthropology.
Dark Souls and Bloodborne are identical in their _fundamentum:_ circular temporality. It is typically associated with eastern religions precisely because they hold _metempsycosis_ and/or reincarnation at their life's structure (meaning death is now opposed to birth, not to life). Meanwhile the abrahamic religions (sort of, mystical islam and judaism can speak of reincarnation at times) carry on a linear, progressive and ascending timeline (the very word, 'time-line', indicates it), e.g. St. Augustine of Hippo's _Confessions,_ book X. This matters because, precisely, it changes the way we understand a myth: it is _not_ anthropocentric as the video claims, but rather nature/world-centric, i.e., in a myth we get to know and come into contact with these utterly indifferent immanent forces (deities, demons, spirits, drives, call them whatever you will) that show us how inhumane life actually is.
Now Lovecraft's twist to the thing is precisely that he makes it astrological/cosmological, viz., these forces are not even geocentric, he finally makes myth heliocentric or simply centered nowhere, in the void, in the enigma of existence; and he stipulates a fundamental dualism that questions the very notion of _subject_ modernity has forged and holds so dear: in the hypertime and hyperspace of his stories subjectivity (a subjec[tive]-position) is disembodied (maximal ver.), or depends upon a body just to make itself manifest (minimal ver.). Whichever version one prefers, all subjectivity is merely a byproduct of Yoh-Sothoth, viz., what we thought was our innermost, most intimate experience, is actually completely alien to us, extra weird and totally careless about us. Lovecraft's insertion of something bizarre at our very core is simply magnificent (let us not transcendentalize it, though, his weird antideities are fairly immanent to the multiverse).
This goes back to when the video affirms that the city has its citizens all turned and in full contact with their beastly side. This is the problem of skipping most contemporary anthropology and etnology.
_Homo sapiens_ is an animal species. What we call _human(ity)_ is merely a myriad of techniques to further apart itself from its constitutive animality. Nothing more. Philosophy, videogames, fashion, whatever you will, nothing but _anthropotechniques._
And taking Lovecraft seriously for a moment: they do not succumb to their animality, or are turned into beasts (as in wild animals), they do operate a _theosis,_ a very material (even bodily) one, only thing is that this divinization/deification process is not as one would usually expect. It does not turn them into lovely, peaceful, good-willed ethereal entities, but rather depends the body's constitutive animality, its natural traits, exaggerating and enhancing them.
This puts us back into mythology (as in study of myths): most traditional and classical myths have a divinization/deification ritual or process in some way or another. These processes and rites usually put someone in contact with the _Outermost_, or simply the _Absolute Outer_ (or even Absolute Other if you will). The voices that survived through time, reaching us nowadays, named the Outermost "divine", but it is not necessarily so. Were they naming it correctly? We may figure it out, I just don't know how. Thing is: "deities" might not be much different to lovecraftian _mythos,_ it could be a misnomer so to speak.
To take lovecraftian _mythos_ to its final consequences means to not focus on what these stories speak, say or tell _to/of us_ - still a veiled anthropocentrism - but to focus on the greater questions they posit: what can be thought, what philosophy is possible, once no man (minimal ver.)/no life (maximal ver.) exists at all?
Bit late, but I just wanted to say that this was a very interesting comment. Thanks for sharing.
@@apuffin9545 , thank you for your kindness. Thou art welcome.
I felt your comment hit some really important distinctions that can be super confusing (and why we get an amazing sense of theme in this game series, even if we don't know why we feel that way while playing).
You seem to know a lot about this stuff. Could you help me with something? I want to ask only one question. Is the lovecraftian, Dark Souls or Bloodborne's myth universal to all humankind. You know, I live in Brazil and things are so messed up here that I'm afraid we need a new kind of myth here...
Great comment. Although, to pick hairs, it is Azathoth, not Yog-Sothoth whose dream encompasses all of reality. Yog-Sothoth is the literal embodiment of time (although exists outside of it) within that dream, in order to give it some form of structure.
The interesting aspect is that it suggests, as does Bloodborne, that reality and dreams are in fact the same. Dreams create different realities, and new realities create different dreams. The cycle repeats ad infinitum to the point where reality and dream is appropriately indistinguishable.
After all, perhaps we are all part of a dream of some unknowable Blind Idiot God at the center of the Universe? How would a dream-being know that they are, in fact, part of a dream, when that very dream is the only reality they've ever known? Ergo, what is the distinction between said dream and reality?
The answer is there is none, or at least it is not comprehensible to humans.
I really need a bloodborne 2 now
Ed Kazaragy it is gonna.happen we just have to wait
Ramsey Bolton not likely
Ed Kazaragy I wish it would happened too but that will not happened coz wiazaki. Bloodborne is actually the last darksoul or contrast sequel \ spiritual successor to darksoul.
Eldritch Enigma it really depends on how desperate Sony gets..
Probably wont happen, and i hope it wont happen. Miyazaki has proved that making original titles is much more appealing than sequels. Dark souls 1 is amazing, but 2 and 3 are above average. Bloodborne however is also amazing, and a bloodborne 2 would probably land on that above average spot as well. Instead we could have something completely new, which could blow our minds again.
5 years after Bloodborne was realesed, 3 years after this video was published and 2 years after I played this game ... I am watching this video once again for coultesss time. That's how amazing Bloodborne lore is. Great analysis. Very well done!
Would’ve made more sense if you said Bloodborne follows the Hero’s Journey a lil better than Dark Souls. Even though Bloodborne presents itself like you are an ant amongst the gods, you still earn the Great Ones’ recognition and in the true ending become stronger than all of them, just like how humans become closer to god in traditional myths.
I'd say that even the chance to become a Great is given to you by the moon presence, by granting you virtual immortality to basically carry a grudge for him to kill mergo without him having to do it, and after all that you don't become a great one in you own merit by achieving a higher conscience but by consuming part of them, it's forced evolution not unlike what Maria was trying to do
19:00 I just bought blood vials from the bath messengers in the Hunters Dream
Same lol.
god
this is one if not the best video i've ever seen on any kind of aproach of the soulsborne series
"He who slayed the Great Ones"
29:08 In Dark Souls 1 if you get sucked into the Painted World you can´t teleport, you have to traverse the area. When you are killed the first time by Seath you are also sent to a prison and can´t teleport.
Takezo Kimura True, but the difference is that the painting is a player choice, and getting defeated by Seath is just a normal part of playing through the game, though you can leave his boss room and progress that way as well. Getting kidnapped by the Snatchers is almost like punishment for not being able to kill them. If you are caught, you then have to fight your way out of Yahar'gul in order to progress. This is an area you're not intended to go to until a bit later, and you may not be ready for what you see there, whereas you're expected to be able to get through the Archives as a natural progression.
Except that it's laughably easy to get to the lantern. You don't even have to fight a single enemy along the way
Takezo Kimura as for seath, yes that is the belly of the wail. but the painted world is a far different meaning as you don't have to fight Priscilla and this part of the myth isn't meant to make you feel weak or kill you.
Yeah but in a blind play through the player would have no idea where the lantern is and could possibly be wandering around for quite a bit before finding it.
trequor Exactly, people seem to forget how quickly the fear subsides when you find a lantern within 1 minute of getting there.
bloodborne is one of my favorite games, with its depths of human cruelty and idiocy brought to the forefront, with nothing but consequences when ambition is left unchecked and morals thrown to the wind. this game, and this video, has been an incredible journey (heh) and i can say without a doubt that it was very enjoyable to hear your commentary on the bits and pieces of the game.