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Bloodborne gameplay : The first 18 minutes

Kssio_Aug

Member
It was shit your pants and then change them for a clean pair and then shit your pants again terrifying.

I think that might be the scariest sound I've ever heard in a video game. The sound design for this game is incredible.

I noticed the same when watching the boss-fight. I agree with you, cant remember a creepier boss (sound wise) in any game. Not even horror games. That was really incredibly terrifying, and its just the 1st boss...

Can't even imagine that spider thing!
 

Toxi

Banned
Do we know if the entire world is connected outside of the hub, or are there specific areas? From what I saw, it looked like the tombstones in the hub act as archstones, and each one pertains to each area. The areas look much more open than Demon's Souls though, and there isn't a linear way of going through them. To give an example, it would be like if an archstone in Demon's Souls led to a self contained area containing Undead Burg, Undead Parish, and Lower Undead Burg from Dark Souls.

Basically, each tombstone leads to self contained areas (like in Demon's Souls, as in there's no way to get from Boletaria from Latria), but the structure of those areas is more similar to Dark Souls than Demon's Souls.
From what I can tell the tombstones are just bonfire warping. The world was said to be interconnected and I didn't see any isolated areas besides the Hunter's Dream.

Can't even imagine that spider thing!
I CAN'T WAIT
 

Neoweee

Member
Really confused by all the UI stuff that seems to have cut out two stats from both Dark Souls games.

Dark Souls
  • Vitality
  • Attunement
  • Endurance
  • Strength
  • Dexterity
  • Resistance
  • Intelligence
  • Faith

vs
Bloodborne
  • Vitality
  • Endurance
  • Strength
  • Skill
  • Bloodtinge
  • Arcane

Could Arcane encompass Intelligence, Faith and Attunement?

Who knows.

Something like that.

Resistance -> NULL, because it was a sick joke or something the devs never bothered to test for balance.

Faith/Attunement/Int -> "Arcane", if that really is a separate build.

Dex -> Skill

Bloodtinge -> ??? It doesn't sound like something "Resistance" based.
 

Redrop

Member
Imru’ al-Qays;150296636 said:
Corridor zones in Dark Souls 2:

Heide's Tower of Flame
Harvest Valley
Iron Keep
Shaded Woods
Doors of Pharros
Tseldora
Black Gulch
Drangleic Castle
Shrine of Amana
Undead Crypt
Aldia's Keep
Dragon Aerie
Dragon Shrine

Zones with a reasonable degree of complexity:

Forest of the Fallen Giants
No-man's Wharf (I'm being generous because I like the level)
Lost Bastille
Huntsman's Copse
Earthen Peak
Gutter

I'm confused, what's the definition of a "corridor zone?" Because Heide's diverges into two paths halfway, Harvest Valley has several different paths to different stuff (the cave in the poison mist near the first bonfire, the area left of the second bonfire, the room with the lockstone near the covetous demon), Iron Keep allows you to skip a boss by changing your path, and you can take a completely different path to the boss by changing the levers in the room with the collapsing platforms. In Shaded Woods, the mist area has several things to explore because it's fairly open and you have to find the path, and by the time you reach the first bonfire, you can jump left, right (onto the trunk) or go straight, and then you can go left, straight, or right again.

Much of Dark2's level design reminded me Demon's. I mean sheesh, outside of Tower of Latria, and 5-2, you could describe the game as being full of "corridor zones," if the definition means tight, dungeon crawling areas.
 
Giving Sony's propensity to not completely shun the PC (I'm basing this on the existence of SOE and Street Fighter V) what are the chances we can see this on PC a year or two down the road? From has proved with Dark Souls II that they can make an excellent port. I'm gonna grab a PS4 at one point regardless, but man the AA seems to be nonexistent and it's really souring me on this footage. I would love to play this with some heavy AA, if not at least enabled on the GPU side.

Anyway, this looks about what like I expected out of the game. I don't think its going to wow any veterans of the souls series but it looks fun and I think the lack of shield or defensive options in general is gonna make this entry way more action focused and generally more tense (not being able to hide your shield to catch your breath will be huge, especially for players like me who used shields a lot) and definitely exciting. I really hope they don't adopt the DS2 approach to enemy encounters where in order to make things hard they just throw groups of enemies at you at a time. It seems like they're doing it again here but hopefully it's only the early areas of the game and is not the norm. One thing that I really love is the absolutely terrifying sounds coming from the enemies, in particular the boss near the end of the video. Absolutely spine-tingling and extremely disconcerting, fun!
 

Ethelwulf

Member
I really, really like the animations! Do we know why the character looks so different? is character creation entirely custom then?
 
Do we know if the entire world is connected outside of the hub, or are there specific areas? From what I saw, it looked like the tombstones in the hub act as archstones, and each one pertains to each area. The areas look much more open than Demon's Souls though, and there isn't a linear way of going through them. To give an example, it would be like if an archstone in Demon's Souls led to a self contained area containing Undead Burg, Undead Parish, and Lower Undead Burg from Dark Souls.

Basically, each tombstone leads to self contained areas (like in Demon's Souls, as in there's no way to get from Boletaria from Latria), but the structure of those areas is more similar to Dark Souls than Demon's Souls.

We don't know 100% for sure yet, but I'm pretty sure the world is all connected. The tombstone is just fast travel... it listed the 2 areas he'd been to as options to warp to.
 
The large open camp area has quite a bit of exploration, as does the zip-line area since you can just drop down to various larges, meeting the bird lady, do the Pate sidequest part, etc.

Even the room before Freja has a bunch of paths down and out of the way ledges to explore.


If people are being that reductionist, then most of Dark Souls 1's areas could also be viewed as being corridors. If Tseldora is a corridor level, then so are the Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith, Crystal Caves, Tomb of Giants, etc. Even Anor Londo is a giant corridor in that regards, except some short off-shoots that lead to gates to other zones.

Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith are literally known to be cut short due to time restraints.

The other thing is that DS1 and DeS are very labyrinth-like in their level design. Tower of Latria is an extreme example of this, but even Stonefang can become disorienting until you figure out the shortcuts. There was never a time in DS2 that I felt lost. The game just kept leading you to where you had to go. The zones looked big, but often times you were always just going in one single direction. Hell, even Shrine of Amana looks GIGANTIC, but very little of it is able to be explored. You're simply just going in one direction the entire time (King's room aside) until you hit a fog door or bonfire. If you go the wrong way, you fall off into the water.
 

HanaChie

Banned
Giving Sony's propensity to not completely shun the PC (I'm basing this on the existence of SOE and Street Fighter V) what are the chances we can see this on PC a year or two down the road? From has proved with Dark Souls II that they can make an excellent port. I'm gonna grab a PS4 at one point regardless, but man the AA seems to be nonexistent and it's really souring me on this footage. I would love to play this with some heavy AA, if not at least enabled on the GPU side.

Anyway, this looks about what like I expected out of the game. I don't think its going to wow any veterans of the souls series but it looks fun and I think the lack of shield or defensive options in general is gonna make this entry way more action focused and generally more tense (not being able to hide your shield to catch your breath will be huge, especially for players like me who used shields a lot) and definitely exciting. I really hope they don't adopt the DS2 approach to enemy encounters where in order to make things hard they just throw groups of enemies at you at a time. It seems like they're doing it again here but hopefully it's only the early areas of the game and is not the norm. One thing that I really love is the absolutely terrifying sounds coming from the enemies, in particular the boss near the end of the video. Absolutely spine-tingling and extremely disconcerting, fun!

There is no way it's gonna be on PC.
 

Neoweee

Member
With that said, unlike previous Souls games, I find Tseldora to be poorly designed because you have to revisit the area multiple times in order to reach all of the areas. I don't believe it's possible to obtain everything on your first run through the area whereas in previous Souls games, I can't recall many, if any instances in which if you failed to reach a certain location/platform on your first attempt, you couldn't revisit and try again after.

The 2nd part of the "Dwarf"/Mountain area of Demon's Souls strikes me as somewhat similar in that regards, especially the "drop-down" part. Also, maybe the 2nd part of the 4th tablet in DeS?

Then there's dropping down the well in DkS2.

I'm confused, what's the definition of a "corridor zone?" Because Heide's diverges into two paths halfway, Harvest Valley has several different paths to different stuff (the cave in the poison mist near the first bonfire, the area left of the second bonfire, the room with the lockstone near the covetous demon), Iron Keep allows you to skip a boss by changing your path, and you can take a completely different path to the boss by changing the levers in the room with the collapsing platforms. In Shaded Woods, the mist area has several things to explore because it's fairly open and you have to find the path, and by the time you reach the first bonfire, you can jump left, right (onto the trunk) or go straight, and then you can go left, straight, or right again.

Much of Dark2's level design reminded me Demon's. I mean sheesh, outside of Tower of Latria, and 5-2, you could describe the game as being full of "corridor zones," if the definition means tight, dungeon crawling areas.

Dark Souls 2 encompases everything possible about bad game design, according to a many people here. I agree with you, but I think we're in the minorities. Dark Souls 2 was a longer game with more bosses, and more zones, but by sheer "number" comparisons it leaves the game exposed to "too many humanoid bosses" (pretty much the same ratio as Dark Souls 1), or too many corridor zones (has roughly as many "open" zones as were in Dark Souls 1).
 

xxracerxx

Don't worry, I'll vouch for them.
Giving Sony's propensity to not completely shun the PC (I'm basing this on the existence of SOE and Street Fighter V) what are the chances we can see this on PC a year or two down the road? From has proved with Dark Souls II that they can make an excellent port. I'm gonna grab a PS4 at one point regardless, but man the AA seems to be nonexistent and it's really souring me on this footage. I would love to play this with some heavy AA, if not at least enabled on the GPU side.

Anyway, this looks about what like I expected out of the game. I don't think its going to wow any veterans of the souls series but it looks fun and I think the lack of shield or defensive options in general is gonna make this entry way more action focused and generally more tense (not being able to hide your shield to catch your breath will be huge, especially for players like me who used shields a lot) and definitely exciting. I really hope they don't adopt the DS2 approach to enemy encounters where in order to make things hard they just throw groups of enemies at you at a time. It seems like they're doing it again here but hopefully it's only the early areas of the game and is not the norm. One thing that I really love is the absolutely terrifying sounds coming from the enemies, in particular the boss near the end of the video. Absolutely spine-tingling and extremely disconcerting, fun!

Sony just sold SOE.
 

Bunta

Fujiwara Tofu Shop
Giving Sony's propensity to not completely shun the PC (I'm basing this on the existence of SOE and Street Fighter V) what are the chances we can see this on PC a year or two down the road? From has proved with Dark Souls II that they can make an excellent port. I'm gonna grab a PS4 at one point regardless, but man the AA seems to be nonexistent and it's really souring me on this footage. I would love to play this with some heavy AA, if not at least enabled on the GPU side.

Anyway, this looks about what like I expected out of the game. I don't think its going to wow any veterans of the souls series but it looks fun and I think the lack of shield or defensive options in general is gonna make this entry way more action focused and generally more tense (not being able to hide your shield to catch your breath will be huge, especially for players like me who used shields a lot) and definitely exciting. I really hope they don't adopt the DS2 approach to enemy encounters where in order to make things hard they just throw groups of enemies at you at a time. It seems like they're doing it again here but hopefully it's only the early areas of the game and is not the norm. One thing that I really love is the absolutely terrifying sounds coming from the enemies, in particular the boss near the end of the video. Absolutely spine-tingling and extremely disconcerting, fun!

No chance it comes to PC.
 
Giving Sony's propensity to not completely shun the PC (I'm basing this on the existence of SOE and Street Fighter V) what are the chances we can see this on PC a year or two down the road? From has proved with Dark Souls II that they can make an excellent port. I'm gonna grab a PS4 at one point regardless, but man the AA seems to be nonexistent and it's really souring me on this footage. I would love to play this with some heavy AA, if not at least enabled on the GPU side.

Anyway, this looks about what like I expected out of the game. I don't think its going to wow any veterans of the souls series but it looks fun and I think the lack of shield or defensive options in general is gonna make this entry way more action focused and generally more tense (not being able to hide your shield to catch your breath will be huge, especially for players like me who used shields a lot) and definitely exciting. I really hope they don't adopt the DS2 approach to enemy encounters where in order to make things hard they just throw groups of enemies at you at a time. It seems like they're doing it again here but hopefully it's only the early areas of the game and is not the norm. One thing that I really love is the absolutely terrifying sounds coming from the enemies, in particular the boss near the end of the video. Absolutely spine-tingling and extremely disconcerting, fun!

The chances are 0.
 

jayu26

Member
Giving Sony's propensity to not completely shun the PC (I'm basing this on the existence of SOE and Street Fighter V) what are the chances we can see this on PC a year or two down the road? From has proved with Dark Souls II that they can make an excellent port. I'm gonna grab a PS4 at one point regardless, but man the AA seems to be nonexistent and it's really souring me on this footage. I would love to play this with some heavy AA, if not at least enabled on the GPU side.

Anyway, this looks about what like I expected out of the game. I don't think its going to wow any veterans of the souls series but it looks fun and I think the lack of shield or defensive options in general is gonna make this entry way more action focused and generally more tense (not being able to hide your shield to catch your breath will be huge, especially for players like me who used shields a lot) and definitely exciting. I really hope they don't adopt the DS2 approach to enemy encounters where in order to make things hard they just throw groups of enemies at you at a time. It seems like they're doing it again here but hopefully it's only the early areas of the game and is not the norm. One thing that I really love is the absolutely terrifying sounds coming from the enemies, in particular the boss near the end of the video. Absolutely spine-tingling and extremely disconcerting, fun!
SOE does not exist anymore and SF5 situation has just as much to do with MS policies regarding cross play as Sony giving them money.
 

Joey Ravn

Banned
Well. It's Dark Soulsy alright. DSII left a real sour taste in my mouth, so I think I'm done with this type of game for quite some time. Bloodborne looks alright, but not alright enough for me to buy a PS4 just to play it.
 

Finalow

Member
fuck yes, I want more.

Really confused by all the UI stuff that seems to have cut out two stats from both Dark Souls games.
-
.
resistence was useless anyway.

I wonder how far you can go without dying and with just your fists.

the guy got destroyed by the boss for various reasons. 1. he needs to git gud, 2. he didn't level up at all, I assume that you could and should do that before the fight, 3. isn't the boss weak to fire or something? I remember people in the alpha throwing at him fire bombs which did huge damage, whereas the starting weapon doesn't do much. or, considering how little time he had, he just wanted to show the boss.

I don't think he knew how to properly use the shotgun though.
 

takriel

Member
I don't think that's it at all haha. A new player at least is clearly supposed to die there. If he was super hardcore I'm sure he could punch him to death, but that would take up the whole 18 minutes just through the same doorway he went through later.

Couldn't not watch it

The game looks fucking amazing, I can't wait



Umm, he got his weapons after dying the first time. I think it's pretty obvious you're supposed to die here. The way you're supposed to die in the Souls games' tutorials.

Yes, and you can actually kill the big demon in the Dark Souls starting area too if you're really dedicated. Wouldn't really make sense in a 'regular' 18 minute playthrough though, i'm guessing beating that wolf with just fists and no armor is no cakewalk.

he...had no weapons. you were "meant" to die there to pick up weapons

You wouldn't even have to fight it. If I remember correctly, there's a pathway behind it where you could just run to once you manage to get by the wolf. It's not easy, yes, but most of us who've played previous Souls games should be able to do it.
 

Afrodium

Banned
We don't know 100% for sure yet, but I'm pretty sure the world is all connected. The tombstone is just fast travel... it listed the 2 areas he'd been to as options to warp to.

Right, but given that this is the beginning of the game, it would make sense that the only two fast travel options would be from the first headstone. When the player leaves the house in the hub (16:25), you can see two more tombstones that look exactly like the ones he uses, but they don't have the baby skeletons reaching out (a symbol that the tombstone is active, I suppose). Also, the tombstone he uses is specifically called the "Headstone of Awakening" and when he's in the menu there's a heading that reads "Awaken above ground." Seems to me that each tombstone correlates to a different area, and that you can't just use any tombstone to go anywhere in the game. If that's true though, then it would make sense that the areas are self contained there would be no reason have multiple tombstones in the hub.
 

Kssio_Aug

Member
fdujkm.gif
 
You wouldn't even have to fight it. If I remember correctly, there's a pathway behind it where you could just run to once you manage to get by the wolf. It's not easy, yes, but most of us who've played previous Souls games should be able to do it.
If you've played previous Souls games, you can probably guess that they might do something to prevent that :)

And even if not, who wants to see him punching everyone?
 

vilmer_

Member
I've watched this an u̶n̶h̶e̶a̶l̶t̶h̶y̶ healthy amount of times now. The music in the Dream Refuge is absolutely glorious.
 

F4r0_Atak

Member
I know I might be the only one but.... I really would like to see a full fledge sequel of Soul Sacrifice on PS4 (really loved the first one on Vita), solely due to the art direction of Bloodborne being similar in style. Imagine that project as a collab between SCEJ + Comcept + From Software with all those creepy fairy tale monsters, demons, epic spells, compelling settings in a full fledge open-''world'' ala Dark Souls.:p
 
Right, but given that this is the beginning of the game, it would make sense that the only two fast travel options would be from the first headstone. When the player leaves the house in the hub (16:25), you can see two more tombstones that look exactly like the ones he uses, but they don't have the baby skeletons reaching out (a symbol that the tombstone is active, I suppose). Also, the tombstone he uses is specifically called the "Headstone of Awakening" and when he's in the menu there's a heading that reads "Awaken above ground." Seems to me that each tombstone correlates to a different area, and that you can't just use any tombstone to go anywhere in the game. If that's true though, then it would make sense that the areas are self contained there would be no reason have multiple tombstones in the hub.

Unless they chose to give each area it's own warp menu, sort of like how in DS2, each zone had a menu with a few bonfire locations to warp to.
 

takriel

Member
If you've played previous Souls games, you can probably guess that they might do something to prevent that :)

And even if not, who wants to see him punching everyone?

Of course, and that something is clearly the wolf in this situation :p

Yeah I think he died there on purpose in order to not spoil too much of this area.
 
Right, but given that this is the beginning of the game, it would make sense that the only two fast travel options would be from the first headstone. When the player leaves the house in the hub (16:25), you can see two more tombstones that look exactly like the ones he uses, but they don't have the baby skeletons reaching out (a symbol that the tombstone is active, I suppose). Also, the tombstone he uses is specifically called the "Headstone of Awakening" and when he's in the menu there's a heading that reads "Awaken above ground." Seems to me that each tombstone correlates to a different area, and that you can't just use any tombstone to go anywhere in the game. If that's true though, then it would make sense that the areas are self contained there would be no reason have multiple tombstones in the hub.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-11-bloodborne-preview

Yharnam is one seamless open world, and Miyazaki promises variety throughout the city and its surroundings.
 

Vire

Member
Wow... uhh the aliasing is really quite bad. Pretty unfortunate.

I'm also not crazy about the changes they made to the skybox.
 

MilkBeard

Member
Has it ever been discussed about what engine FromSoftware are using for this game? I see similarities between Bloodborne, graphically, and Dark Souls 2 in terms of effects and texture style. That is to say, Bloodborne looks like it is using a further evolution of the Dark Souls 2 engine on a stronger, more capable system that can handle it, thus the greater detail and quality. That is just a guess, though, based on me watching these videos.
 
Wow... uhh the aliasing is really quite bad. Pretty unfortunate.

I'm also not crazy about the changes they made to the skybox.
It's still by far the best looking 'Souls' game to date, so I'm not complaining. Hopefully the framerate holds steady.
 
I saw the whole video. My thoughts (keeping in mind that this is an earlier build):
1) The graphics look a little rough and worse compared to previous walkthroughs. Clipping, aliasing, even texture resolution.

2) Yharnam is set in daylight hours. Previous builds had it set in night time.

3) The giant Cthulu-Spider is no more.

4) The enemies look...easier to kill? Could be just me.
 

takriel

Member
...It's a different time of day.

That's really exciting to me. I didn't know that at all until today! Will there be seamless transitions between day and night, or will the transitions have to be triggered? I'm dying to know! This game man.
 

Dio

Banned
That's really exciting to me. I didn't know that at all until today! Will there be seamless transitions between day and night, or will the transitions have to be triggered? I'm dying to know! This game man.
Triggered transitions. Also, enemy behavior changes depending on night or day according to Miyazaki.

There are day/night cycles in this game?
Yes, there are. They're just not 'real time'.
 

Primeau31

Member
You wouldn't even have to fight it. If I remember correctly, there's a pathway behind it where you could just run to once you manage to get by the wolf. It's not easy, yes, but most of us who've played previous Souls games should be able to do it.

yes but he had no weapons. that's what I'm saying here. he couldn't pick up weapons till the refuge.
 

MilkBeard

Member
This is probably how the game will look on release.

The video did say 'early version of the game' at the beginning so it's possible the final build will have some touch ups. If rumors are true about Dark Souls 2, they improved the game dramatically (fps) in the final months before the game went gold.

It does seem like this is what we are going to get with Bloodborne, though. I do hope they improve the framerate a bit.
 

Cavalier

Banned
Yep. This will be one of the first few games I will be getting if I end up getting PS4 later this year. Looking incredible. Keep it coming!
 
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