A few weeks ago I finally finished Elden Circuit. In the absence of that unique combination of migraine-inducing stress and definite dopamine blasts that Only FromSoft Games can provide, I felt a drag to return to a certain spot in the developer’s back catalog. Something spoke to me about the relatively linear, tighter global design of Bloodborne after the incredible opening of the Elden Ring. I wanted to take myself out of the Soulslike experience by playing a healthier and more intense iteration of that experience.
And yes, I realize that makes me sound like someone with a physical problem, but exiting FromSoft after spending 150 odd hours in it should be done with caution, lest you find yourself playing mindless mobile farming games like a rebound from the challenging experience you just had. I’ve seen it happen. It’s not a pretty sight.
So I went back to Yharnam, and put on my fine bra and the laces of my high leather boots that would keep the gore and devour its delicious decaying streets from saturating my socks.
Initial impressions were as strong as I remember. The story, while by no means simple, is pleasantly straightforward compared to the Elden Ring, and completing the first episode of Central Yharnam to open the portal back to the initial lamp (or the location of bliss, because you’re tarnished) gave me such a satisfying sense of accomplishment that I was seeking it. Abbreviations, chaos of coffins everywhere, strange residents talking behind closed doors. It was good to go back.
However, I also felt something. Although I tried to enjoy the glorious Gothic architecture, and the ominous feeling that the unexpressed higher powers had a stifling grip on the city with great cosmic claws, I could not get past the sense that there was something to prevent me from losing myself. What for me has always been one of the most memorable and unique gaming setups.
I was looking up toward Cathedral Ward in the center of Yharnam, and everything within about halfway distance was shimmering in pixels. Looking at the blood-soaked moon threatening the city, I could clearly see on my 50-inch TV that it was surrounded by a mysterious, low-resolution celestial box. As the enemies move in to hit me, their limbs seem to blend in with the jagged landscape around them. I knew it had been some years since its release, but did it always look and feel that mud?
Even at the time of its initial release in 2015, Bloodborne was, on a technical level, a bit of a mess. Initially, it lacked Anti-aliasing, a technology vital in modern games that smoothes out jagged lines around every object in the game. In a game full of chaos, balustrades, knotty trees and dense urban geometry, you become, like our old friend Ludwig the Accursed, an ‘Ugly Beast’.
There was not a small amount of fuss about the fact that when the PS4 Pro came out, Bloodborne didn’t get a “Pro” facelift like many of its peers. So there are no highs from 1080p resolution and – most importantly – no frame rate improvement that would have hit 30fps (although it was quite capable of dropping to 24 fps like the N64).
That wasn’t a good look for Bloodborne in 2015, but a worse look when the Pro came out in 2017 and updated many of the console’s best games (sad fact: Bloodborne is just one of two games in the top 10 games on PS4. I wouldn’t get a patch PS4 Pro Enhanced, the other is Persona 5). But another six years after that, Yharnam looks (and feels) worse by erosion — not into beasts, pestilences, and malevolent outer deities the way he was meant to.
The underlying conditions for gaming have changed since 2015, especially as the mid-generation console upgrades standard 4K games (or will offer the choice between a higher frame rate or higher resolution). In 2015, the 32×1080p TV I played on Bloodborne was standard fare. While 4K TVs already existed, consoles and computers weren’t somewhere to take advantage of these things, so our eyes weren’t yet spoiled by the original clarity of high-resolution and the luxury of the huge screens we’ve used until today. Suffice to say, Bloodborne hopelessly doesn’t seem to belong on a 50″ 4K TV. If I could hear the game, I think it would be screaming like a monster who just got hit by a Molotov cocktail, desperately trying to escape back into the darkness.
FromSoftware contains some form of weak optimization. There was a complete mess about the original Dark Souls PC port, and the Elden Ring itself was pretty lousy. However, at this point, every one of FromSoft’s Soulslikes can be played with buttery smoothness. Dark Souls has got a revised version of the velocity, and you can still get 50-60 fps out of the Elden Ring on modern consoles. Even Dark Souls 2 – the series’ black sheep – garnered more love from the creators, was repackaged in Scholar of the First Sin and ran like a dream on consoles and PC to this day.
Outside of Sekiro, Bloodborne is FromSoft’s most aggressive, fast-paced game – and relies more than any of its peers on smooth performance. Its deep fights still look great—more danceable and elegant than the endless rolling of Souls games—but they are overshadowed by artistic absurdity. This high watermark of weird gaming fantasy looks like it’s been left to rot, just like the city it’s set in. Its legend still lives on, but the truth is that gameplay is becoming less and less desirable as developments in gaming and TV technology leave it behind.
FromSoft’s complete silence amid the endless calls to bring the game to PC (which will inevitably be accompanied by a remastered release for PS5) makes you wonder if Bloodborne, like Red Dead Redemption, is a minefield of bad code that hardly ever works. It is, and trying to fix it to the quality of a “redesign” is a lot of a headache for FromSoft.
In the meantime, I may have to rest my desire to recapture the beautiful bloodborne nightmare. With high resolution, clear anti-aliasing, and blazing slick tires, I now have a lot of insight, and I suspect that continuing to play this amazing game in its challenging state will only drive you crazy.
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