Entering another nightmare
After a long silence regarding the next content piece for Bloodborne, Sony and From Software used this year’s Tokyo Game Show to reveal the first big addition since the base game’s launch. While a 15-minute demo is hardly enough time to determine the expansion’s full quality, I’m excited by the promised breadth of content, as anyone should be who has delved deeply into the atmospheric action game.
As the name implies, this expansion focuses on the fiction around the legendary hunters hinted at throughout Bloodborne. My demo begins in a newly crafted area – a nightmare zone similar to those found in the base game. Blood blankets the ground in streams and small pools, and rising from the crimson liquid are agonized half-dead figures, too weak and slow to do much damage to anything except my psyche.
I try out several of the new weapons on offer; From Software is promising over a dozen in total. The cleaverstyle curved blade extends into a long and cumbersome chain that does significant damage when it connects. I also try out the newly introduced bow, which can be a real game-changer when transformed, since it lets players hit enemies hard from a distance.
Early in the demo, I’m approached by a horde of zombie-like creatures, and forced to dodge backward repeatedly to stay out of the way of their attacks. When another fighter joins the attack, several of the small foes break off, and for a moment I think I’ve found an ally. However, upon finishing up these lesser foes, the warped hunter turns his shotgun on me, and I’m forced to fight for my survival.
Soon after defeating the enemy hunter, I come across a hulking axe-wielder whose face bristles with Cthulhu-esque tentacles. His attacks are hard to dodge, but I take advantage of the new timed grenade bombs to help do some damage, and then venture up close to finish the beast off. Not long after that encounter, I get a brief glimpse at the area boss – a grotesque monstrosity with eyes inside its gaping maw, and a second head soundlessly screaming on one of its arms.
Nothing I played or saw of The Old Hunters implied any fundamental changes to the Bloodborne formula, and that’s just fine with me. The accelerated combat pace and Lovecraftian vibe of the original game captured my attention in a way the Dark Souls franchise hadn’t. If the new areas, monsters, and gear in The Old Hunters expansion are on par with other From Software expansions, we may see a resurgence of the game’s popularity, resulting in a 2015 bookended with Bloodborne enthusiasm. Matt Miller