10 Years Later, Bloodborne Still Transcends The Limits of Cosmic Horror

By Elijah Gonzalez | March 24, 2025 | 1:20pm

Video Games Features Bloodborne

10 Years Later, Bloodborne Still Transcends The Limits of Cosmic Horror

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Over the last 15 years, FromSoftware has had no shortage of bangers: Demon’s Souls ushered in a formula that Dark Souls would further perfect, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice honed the studio’s trademark tough-as-nails gameplay to a fine point, and Elden Ring took over the world, increasing the scope of the proceedings alongside its player base. Hell, despite its flaws, the previously cool-to-hate-on Dark Souls II has its own group of dedicated little freak defenders waiting to die on that particular hill.

However, even judged against these intense followings, Bloodborne inspires some particularly hardcore devotees. Part of this certainly stems from its neglect: it’s the least accessible to play out of FromSoftware’s recent output, a PlayStation 4 console exclusive that never got a remaster or PC port, and its fans that go into every Sony State of Play with the self-flagellating hope they’ll soon be able to dodge step at a stable 60 FPS certainly keep discussions about the game alive. But even still, there’s just something different about Bloodborne, a game that transcends its inspiration through striking environmental design, brutal battles, well-considered subversions, and most cited of all, its big twist.

The eventual rug pull moment begins with misdirection. When the Hunter arrives in Yharnam from an unnamed foreign land, seeking its miracles of blood transfusion, they quickly find that this place has become a living nightmare. A mysterious plague called the “scourge of the beast” has swept through the city, turning humans into lycanthrope abominations that roam the streets with pitchforks and torches, hunting in vain for the very thing they’ve already become. They hurl insults at the Hunter, as this mob blames them for crimes they weren’t even here to commit: “You are not wanted here” and “It’s all your fault!” are just a few of the lines you’ll hear approximately a billion times along this journey (alongside the head-scratching “I’ll mess up your brain!”). As you explore these crooked pathways, Victorian architecture combines with an endless night to create an oppressive, gothic landscape.

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It all lands because despite utilizing a werewolf aesthetic that could have come across as deeply campy, everything is treated with deadly self-seriousness sold by this studio’s ability to inspire discomfort and awe. For instance, there’s Vicar Amelia’s introduction: she prays by a strange shrine, face obscured and words muddled, clutching a pendant to her heart. As the camera goes full German Expressionist, focusing on her silhouette, she suddenly lets out a guttural scream, her body contorting and changing as blood splatters on ornate cathedral walls. Then she’s before you transformed, a lanky dog-like beast whose howls are laced with uncomfortable traces of humanity as she continues clutching her pendant, a sign of her devotion to this Church that doomed her and everyone else.

Vicar Amelia

As you battle her and various other creatures, the viciousness of this backdrop is underscored by the game’s brutal difficulty; the iconic blood-red “YOU DIED” text will be a constant companion. Despite the seeming sophistication of your transforming weapons, the swordplay is visceral, violent, and raw, encouraging player aggression in a way that complements the animalistic undertones elsewhere.

And while this experience is plenty evocative when you’re hacking and slashing through bestial foes, there’s always a sense that something more is at play, something inexplicable. You hear whisperings of a strange religion, come across allusions towards a higher form of knowledge, and witness a ritualistic obsession with blood. Sometimes, while walking through an empty graveyard, you’ll suddenly see a strange light appear. If you walk into it, you’ll be lifted into the air by an unseen presence, health rapidly draining as you’re either killed or teleported back down to solid ground after shedding a few pints of gore.

It’s only later that these hints come together. When you approach Byrgenwerth, a university that seems at the heart of these woes, you’ll begin to notice certain changes. Here, you’ll be ambushed by grotesque bug-like humanoids, all eyes and insectoid legs, a clear break from the wolfmen and Frankenstein’s monster-esque ogres you’ve been battling until now. And as you enter the school, this otherworldy energy increases when you see the poster child of weird fiction: tentacle-headed monsters. You may think, “Ah, here’s a little Eldritch area, just like Demon’s Soul’s Prison of Hope.” But after dispatching that area’s boss, Rom the Vacuous Spider, a many-eyed blob that doesn’t look much like a spider at all, everything changes. Or, to be more accurate, the world doesn’t change; you do.

Having experienced the secrets of Byrgenwerth and witnessing the Blood Moon, you’ve crossed a point of no return because now you can see the horrible entities at the root of this destruction, unknowable creatures summoned from beyond the stars. That strange light in the courtyard from before, the one that resulted in a surprise levitation act? It turns out you were getting hoisted by a spindly horror called an Amgydala, a cosmic being perched on a nearby church building that was previously imperceptible but always present. This is only a prelude to the increasingly unnerving sights that await because now you’ve seen the Eldritch truth.

While cosmic horror is a pop culture staple at this point, what makes Bloodborne’s rendition so effective is how it slides from one genre to another, beginning with fights against a top hat-wearing guy named Gascoigne before concluding in a battle against a misshapen mass of tentacles and ribs simply referred to as the “Moon Presence.” When you’re finally able to see these otherworldly creatures, either because you fought Rom or gained 40 Insight, an in-game resource that represents Eldritch knowledge, finally perceiving these monsters is a genuine “aha” moment, one that only works because of how heavily it pivots from one style of horror to another.

It’s a bait and switch further sold by how off-putting and specific these aliens are: while Demon’s Souls’ Mind Flayers look ripped straight from the Dungeons and Dragons rulebook, Bloodborne’s renditions are unique, each gross and weird in specific ways. A highlight is the Winter Lanterns, bags of flesh heaped on a human body with one giant eye that rapidly inflicts the deadly status effect Frenzy if you so much as look at them. At another point, a tear in spacetime gives way to an upsetting assortment of bones and organs known as The One Reborn. On the other end of the spectrum are the Celestial Minions, goofy little orb-headed dudes who run at you with arms outstretched like they’re wearing rubbery costumes from a cheesy ‘40s sci-fi flick. But even with these occasionally silly adversaries, the soundtrack still conjures a haunting, ethereal atmosphere that grows more overpowering as things go on, culminating in a potential climax where you turn into a space slug.

However, more than just positively nailing the tone of Eldritch horror by thrusting the player from a relatively familiar world (the hellscape known as the UK) to a far less recognizable one, this twist is only part of what makes this take on this sub-genre incredibly effective. Because when discussing cosmic horror and H.P. Lovecraft’s work, there’s always an elephant in the room: the fact that the author was a virulent racist, even compared to his contemporaries.

Lovecraft’s racism is particularly relevant when appraising his work because even if you’re the most ardent abuser of the phrase “death of the author,” his bigotry is deeply interlaced into his stories in a way that’s impossible to ignore. In Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, the ones ultimately responsible for unleashing otherworldly abominations are frequently people of color, whether that’s African “voodoo” practitioners or Middle Eastern seers (the in-lore character who created the infamous Necronomicon is literally a guy referred to as “the Mad Arab”). Thematically, it’s not a stretch to view Lovecraft’s concept of cosmic horror as one stooped in some degree of xenophobia, where an unknowable “other” threatens an existing way of life with annihilation, as if reaching out beyond the confines of “good society” can only lead to ruin.

Bloodborne avoids these tropes by inverting this dynamic: it’s Yharnam’s denizens who damn themselves by summoning something from beyond and a “foreigner,” the Hunter, who steps in to reverse the damage. The beastly scourge is spread by the Healing Church and its founder, Laurence, a former scholar who discovered ancient blood (the Eldritch kind) and began to administer it as a miracle elixir despite having reservations about its safety. Byrgenwerth’s scholars selfishly push for knowledge while ignoring any ethical concerns their research may bring, as the Church uses the healing properties of the Old Blood to become the de-facto center of power in Yharnham.

And then, as the illness spreads, the townsfolk of Yharnam don’t point their pitchforks at the elites who created this situation out of hubris but at outsiders who bear none of the blame. As the player, you spend the next couple dozen hours battling through waves of hateful Victorians turned beasts so you can fix their mistakes or, in what honestly feels like the “true” ending, take their bad behavior as a sign that something else entirely may be preferable.

After gaining some of the Great Ones’ power by consuming umbilical cords (it’s a long story), you can achieve the “Childhood’s Beginning” ending where you defeat the Moon Presence, which has been orchestrating this nightmare. However, things don’t end there: after vanquishing this hidden final boss, the perspective switches to “The Doll,” who has been aiding you throughout the game. She approaches something initially out of view, and then the camera pans down to a wriggling purple blob with small tentacles. “Are you cold?” she says. She picks it up and delivers the game’s final words: “Oh, good Hunter.” While you would assume the ending where the Hunter gets transformed into a space mollusk is the “bad” one, the other two include being executed or becoming a lobotomized surrogate child for the Moon Presence, so this is somewhat preferable.

But more than seemingly slightly less awful on the surface, the transformation in this third ending gets at a thematic underpinning that defines most of FromSoftware’s recent games: change is necessary because stagnation inevitably leads to corruption, exploitation, and death. In this case, the only way to break this loop of Yharnamites blaming outsiders and the Moon Presence turning Hunter after Hunter into its puppets is to personally undergo a radical change, one that may be initially offputting but could ultimately allow you to transcend the cruelty of humankind.

While some takes on cosmic horror simply regurgitate Lovecraft’s tropes without considering his work’s more troubling undercurrents, Bloodborne fits in with a wave of contemporary reinterpretations of this material that rejects these underlying ideas. First, it head fakes on its initial premise, going from gothic to cosmic in a brilliant twist that conjures the deep space dread that the Cthulu Mythos was going for. And then, perhaps more importantly, it pushes past multiple layers of baggage, suggesting that even compared to the otherworldly beings that await in the stars, the xenophobic denizens of Yharnam may be a worse kind of beast after all.

Elijah Gonzalez is the assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.