Art is defined as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination to be appreciated primarily for beauty or emotional power. Typically, when one thinks of traditional art forms, paintings and sculptures are the first things to come to mind. However, over time, other mediums have been accepted under the art umbrella. Music, literature, and photography have, over time, been lumped into the art category and, most recently, movies and television have joined the ranks. Now, in the 21stcentury, we have a new medium that is just as large and impactful as those previously mentioned: video games.
Compared to the other forms of art mentioned, video games are most like movies and television. They combine elements of other art forms to create a new type of art. The difference between video games and movies and television, though, is how they are consumed. The participatory nature of videogames allows consumers to take a more active role in the way they interact with this particular art form. After all, they are games, but they sometimes are much more.
In this piece, I examined a specific game whose artistic qualities reach this higher plain. Today’s game is Bloodborne.
Fear the Old Blood (Spoilers Ahead)
On the surface, Bloodborne is a very violent, dark, disturbing game with a seemingly nonexistent story. The basic plot summary is that you are an outsider in the gothic city of Yharnam and it is the night of the hunt. Monsters prowl the streets and the townsfolk are either hiding in their homes or taking part in purging the city of the beasts. What brings you, the player character, to Yharnam is unclear, but you must assume the role of a hunter to seek something called Paleblood and survive the night. And… that’s about it. As Gehrman, your “mentor” in the Hunter’s Dream puts it: “Don’t think too hard about it. Just go out and kill a few beasts. It’s for your own good.”
From there, that’s exactly what you do. You venture into Yharnam, kill some monsters, and desperately try to put an end to the hunt. If one were to simply follow the “main story” and base all their plot information off of dialogue with NPCs and cut scenes, you would glean little of what is actually happening. To the unfamiliar, Bloodborne appears to be just another violent video game. But there is so much more to the world of Yharnam and one needs insight to be able to see what lies under the surface.
Bloodborne tells its story in an untraditional manner. It is very much like its sister title, Dark Souls, in that regard. Simply put, these games do not tell their stories. Instead, they set up a rather simplistic scenario of “go here and kill so-and-so” while leaving breadcrumbs for the player to piece together the events that happened, are happening, or that will happen.
The breadcrumbs of story in the world of Bloodborne can mainly be found in the environment, item descriptions, item placement, enemy placement, and bosses. While there are NPCs like Gehrman, Eileen the Crow, and Alfred who give some exposition in traditional storytelling fashion, it is usually cryptic and refers to events, places, characters, or objects you haven’t encountered yet, have changed drastically, or won’t encounter at all. This exposition isn’t nearly as direct as it is in other games or stories. Through item descriptions like those of Blood Vials, your healing items, you can learn how Yharnamites treat this special healing blood as most societies treat alcohol as, in Yharnam, the special blood is far more intoxicating. Through locations like Old Yharnam, you can learn about events like the disease that spread through that part of the city, forcing it and its inhabitants to be purged by fire. Through item placement such as the location of the Red Jeweled Brooch, one can piece together the tragic events behind the boss Father Gascoigne and his family. Through enemy placement like the snakes in the Forbidden Woods, you can tell that something is amiss here as these enemies are nowhere else in the game, which is confirmed when the snakes start sprouting from people’s heads. Through bosses, one can glean a fair bit of information about them based off of their names, location, or appearance. Martyr Logarius is a great example of this.
A more obvious aspect of Bloodborne’s artistic quality is the world design. The gothic setting of Yharnam is both beautiful and terrifying. They layered and interconnected streets and areas make it feel like a real place, despite the fact that coffins and headstones literally line the sidewalks. The architecture of Yharnam fits the horror genre perfectly. No matter where you are, the environment looms around you, making you feel an intense sense of dread that someone or something horrible is lurking around every corner. Yet, at the same time, you are awed by your surroundings as well.
The gameplay itself is also incredibly satisfying and, in some ways, an art form in and of itself. Bloodborne builds off of the Dark Souls gameplay style and changes just enough of it to make it its own unique style. Compared to its sister franchise, Bloodborne encourages a faster and more aggressive style of the timing based combat that made Dark Souls so popular. It adds to the intensity of the fights and heightens the action. You cannot survive Yharnam if you are passive and the game masterfully drives that mentality home early on. Making an engaging and fun gameplay system based off an already successful system is no small feat and it deserves to be recognized for its ingenuity.
More than anything else talked about, though, what really makes Bloodborne a work of art are the ideas it tackles in its story and how they are presented. It is done so subtly that you may not recognize them until you start having emotional reactions to them or catch yourself thinking about them outside of playing the game. When these ideas really get inside your head, Bloodborne becomes so much more than a typical violent video game.
Grant Us Eyes (More Spoilers Ahead)
You, the player, go out into the streets of Yharnam on the night of the hunt. You are told to seek Paleblood in the Cathedral Ward and you set off through the city to reach the Grand Cathedral. Everything is hostile to you: the mobs hunting the beasts, the beasts themselves, and individuals who are part human and part beast. When you get to the first mandatory boss of the game, Father Gascoigne, you realize that the beasts are really people who have transformed into these monstrosities. There is no saving them, however. Once someone becomes a beast, they cannot turn back unless they are a truly terrible type of beast. You are forced to kill them or they will kill you.
Your ideas of this are challenged further upon descending into Old Yharnam. Djura, a retired hunter, now defends the beasts from hunters such as yourself. If you harm them, you will bring about his wrath. Later in the game, you can actually speak to Djura civilly. There he says “, there’s nothing more horrific than a hunt. In case you failed to realize, the things you hunt, they’re not beasts, they’re people.” But why are people turning into beasts in the first place? It all stems back to the Healing Church of Yharnam.
Long ago, there was a school called Byrgenwerth and, at this school, those who studied and taught there tried to make contact with beings they called the Great Ones, godlike beings who exist beyond the human plane. In the process of attempting to do so, special Healing Blood was discovered in ancient tombs beneath where Yharnam was founded. This special blood was able to cure any illness or disease. Around this, the Healing Church was founded and centered their whole organization on their healing blood. The church became immensely powerful, as they were the sole possessor of the special healing blood.
But there was a terrible side effect to the blood. Those who used the blood would eventually become infatuated with it and then turn into terrible monsters with no recollections of who they once were. The church, unwilling to give up its power, attempted to kill these beasts through agents they called hunters before the populous of Yharnam discovered what was happening. The beasts could not be contained forever though and the church was forced to make the hunt a public event. The hunters were disbanded and the side effect of their blood remained a secret. That is until you discover it. By that point, however, it is far too late.
In your quest to end the hunt, you have instead done the thing the scholars at Byrgenwerth had tried to do. You make contact with the Great Ones and the gothic horror game you’ve been playing has suddenly become one of cosmic horror. In the end, you discover that putting an end to the hunt is tied to these Great Ones and, to do so, you’ll have to do battle with the gods.
The summary just given is a vague one. The story of Bloodborne is much richer and cryptic. During it all, though, the game asks the following: How monstrous do individuals need to become before we can be justified as an executioner? At what point does the pursuit of knowledge become immoral? What lengths will a person or an organization go to in order keep the power they have obtained and to keep their unseemly secrets? What happens when we realize just how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of the universe? What do we define as god or gods? What does it mean to be alive? Bloodborne asks all of these questions and more, but moreover, it does so subtly. The player can only discover these questions and begin to form their answers to them if they are willing to look deeper.
There is no doubt that these questions alone could elicit strong emotional responses and deep thoughts. Combine these with the subtle way of conveying these questions, the beautiful yet terrifying world, and the fast, aggressive gameplay and you get something that I like to call the Soulsborne High. For these reasons, I submit that Bloodborne IS art.