Soul is like 17. @@
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Bloodborne Story and Lore Discussion Thread [Unmarked Spoilers]
- Thread starter GorillaJu
- Start date
Soul is like 17. @@
You're talking about the place that if you go up from leads you to the talisman to get lidwigs sword right? If so when I got to the bottom I just got nabbed by a bag man.
At the beginning, you are looking for 'Paleblood' as the intro NPC explains. When you speak to the guy next to the central lamp, he tells you to try heading to the Healing Workshop / Cathedral Ward to find it. A note in the Hunter's Dream instructs you to end the nightmare. After heading there you find a boss and find out about someone who studied it before and are given a secret password to start heading there. From there on, various notes around the world reveal what you are meant to do and what's going on, particularly in the Lecture Halls, Unseen Village and Byrgenwerth.
Because you said it in ffxiv chat I think.
DrDrizzay101
Member
Any theories as to why the AOW is found where it is, in the world design? Seems so conspicuous to be in the middle of that tower that's above Old Yharnam and below the Healing Church Workshop + Upper Cathedral Ward. Dark Souls world design always struck me how the placement of Ash Lake at the bottom and Anor Londo at the top told you so much about the lore and world history.
The tower leading up is still intact and easily traversable but it's been destroyed for anyone trying to go down or come up from the bottom. I imagine that's at least partially related to the quarantine used to suppress the "beast scourge" in Old Yharnam, from Charred Hunter Set found in OY:
"One of the staple articles of hunter attire, fashioned at the workshop.
A product of the scourge of the beast that once plagued Old Yharnam and culminated in the town's fiery cleansing.
Designed to be highly resistant to fire. Wearers of this attire hunted down victims of the scourge who survived the raging flames and stench of singed blood"
I already thought he was adorable when I fought him. Felt bad killing him
I'm currently doing a second runthrough and grabbing the Mensis Cage to equip before taking on the great ones (other than Rom) to see if any dialogue is revealed. Has anyone found out if you can somehow interact more with the scholar by the lake?
Edit: If anyone has done the Mensis Cage thing already please let me know so I don't waste my time.
I think in the game world the hunters dream is a physical place and dream isn't a literal dream but a figurative dream. I also think that the dream on its pedestal sits above the Nightmare. And the nightmare is Yarnham in the future.
Yeah there were some crazy people in houses and a bag man at the bottom I didn't get much further because I got bagged.
What? The moon becomes "redish" when there's a lunar eclipse..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_eclipse
Many cultures see it either as good or bad omen.. For some, it has some other kind of prophetic meaning..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_eclipse
Many cultures see it either as good or bad omen.. For some, it has some other kind of prophetic meaning..
I think the Abandoned Old Workshop exists in the "real" world (well, as "real" as Yharnam can be), and that the Hunter's Dream is a memory of it. The Abandoned Old Workshop appears to be in an actual physical place, with a fully modeled landscape showing the cathedrals rising up all around it. It's not suspended in the middle of a void like the Hunter's Dream.
I would imagine that before he became the ward of the Hunter's Dream, back when he was in the real world, Gehrman used that space in the Cathedral Ward to suit up hunters of the day.
This is kind of where I was going with it, but *shrugs*
Also- So we touch a mummy. Or dead body. And we end up in a lecture building/dream?
Was he a student there, orr
Yeah, I don't think the Hunter's Dream is a literal dream, i.e. something you experience while sleeping. I think it's some higher plane of existence to which the hunters are privy. They're like mystical warriors who can tap into this other realm created by... something... and for some purpose. They then can channel the accumulated life force of their fallen foes -- the blood echoes -- by using the doll as a medium to grow stronger. So when the hunter uses the lamp, I think they are physically disappearing into that space known as the Hunter's Dream.
GwyndolinCinder
Member
Has anyone found out why Gerhman dies early in the game? I'm pretty sure that's what happen's, he goes outside and initially appears to be sleeping, but is infact dead and then later the doll will head over towards the non intractable grave. Then Gerhman can't be seen till the end.
True, but in a game that deals heavily with themes of pregnancy a red moon can be considered as a metaphor for menstruation. Especially because the moon is and has been linked with femininity in many cultures around the world.
TheNamelessOne
Member
I just wrote a Reddit post about my thoughts around this. Are there any obvious errors I have made?
http://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne/comments/30uog4/lore_symbolism_and_the_moon_in_bloodborne_open/
TheNamelessOne
Member
He isn't gone, you can find him in the area behind the house (with the messenger tree stump) where he stares into the void begging to be set free.
I don't have the game sadly, but from what i gathered in this thread about the lore i'd say your conclusion for the symbolism of the moon within the game makes sense.
the only obvious error i could find is
Yeah that seems pretty clear since the messengers rise up from a portal around the lamp. I mean if there's an entire village that exists in a pocket dimension or something than this hunters dream can exist as a real place to. I also feel the towers that we see or a visual representation to remind the player that there are other hunters on the hunt going to other similar worlds. I just don't understand why they are all far above your's.
The Artisan
Member
I've asked this a ton of times but I think it disappeared into the pages of OT.
what exactly is bloodborne? is it the name of the disease that has plagued your hometown and even worse so in the town of yarnham? and if so, is it based on the actual blood borne disease in real life?
what exactly is bloodborne? is it the name of the disease that has plagued your hometown and even worse so in the town of yarnham? and if so, is it based on the actual blood borne disease in real life?
TheNamelessOne
Member
I don't have the game sadly, but from what i gathered in this thread about the lore i'd say your conclusion for the symbolisms of the moon within the game makes sense.
the only obvious error i could find is
Thanks, edited
TheNamelessOne
Member
The queen was probably chosen to bear the new baby god. Somehow she lost the baby though. I dunno if it was natural, or if someone "took it" from her womb. The Wet nurse is the woman who was supposed to care for the baby god.
There might be a little too many liberties taken with the dream aspect, especially given Lovecraft's prominence for dreams/nightmares, and its medium as communication with the Outer/Old Gods, but I think the "Good" ending of the player waking up is the rejection of reality. The game's first NPC tells you that you can pretend it was all a bad dream, but waking up is a rejection of the game's events as truth. Pretend it's not real, that the Great Ones don't exist.
In that sense, the Hunter's Dream, Nightmare Frontier, and other between-spaces are all related to Yharnum and the cosmos. We might not ever be able to define their relationship clearly, but they exist as different spaces or dimensions, and they're all there and traversed by the Great Old Ones.
In all Lovecraft lore, special things happen when all of the stars align, allowing an Outer God to enter our world. It may be that this particular night of the Hunt is one of those nights, which precipitates the ritual at Yahar'gul. What I can't quite figure out is the relationship of the Moon Presence to the other Gods. Are they opposed to each other, aligned, or competing against one another?
- The Moon is related to the Hunter's Dream, and thus all Hunters, who purge Beasts from the land. But some Hunters can reject the Dream.
- Byrgenwerth was the center of research into the Gods.
- The Healing Church tried -- successfully -- to commune with them.
- Iosefka looks like the other researcher at Byrgenwerth, perhaps continuing her own experiments at the clinic.
- The cult of Yahar'gul continues their work and rituals.
Everyone wants to spawn an Outer God's offspring, for different reasons, and each faction/person attempts to do so by using a surrogate mother. None of these plots succeed, but when the player consumes the failed results (umbilical cords), he unknowingly become a perfect vessel for the Old Gods.
Edit: I should add the Vilebloods' queen wants to do the same, and through the same method. Not sure who is using Arianne, or if she was simply chosen, but that would -- under this hypothesis -- have also failed.
In that sense, the Hunter's Dream, Nightmare Frontier, and other between-spaces are all related to Yharnum and the cosmos. We might not ever be able to define their relationship clearly, but they exist as different spaces or dimensions, and they're all there and traversed by the Great Old Ones.
In all Lovecraft lore, special things happen when all of the stars align, allowing an Outer God to enter our world. It may be that this particular night of the Hunt is one of those nights, which precipitates the ritual at Yahar'gul. What I can't quite figure out is the relationship of the Moon Presence to the other Gods. Are they opposed to each other, aligned, or competing against one another?
- The Moon is related to the Hunter's Dream, and thus all Hunters, who purge Beasts from the land. But some Hunters can reject the Dream.
- Byrgenwerth was the center of research into the Gods.
- The Healing Church tried -- successfully -- to commune with them.
- Iosefka looks like the other researcher at Byrgenwerth, perhaps continuing her own experiments at the clinic.
- The cult of Yahar'gul continues their work and rituals.
Everyone wants to spawn an Outer God's offspring, for different reasons, and each faction/person attempts to do so by using a surrogate mother. None of these plots succeed, but when the player consumes the failed results (umbilical cords), he unknowingly become a perfect vessel for the Old Gods.
Edit: I should add the Vilebloods' queen wants to do the same, and through the same method. Not sure who is using Arianne, or if she was simply chosen, but that would -- under this hypothesis -- have also failed.
If I were to interpret the symbolism I would say that since a red moon is abnormal and that the red moon represents a miscarriage. And the miscarriages over all these years accumulate to make the messengers. Which have cleft palets and other fetal abnormalities.
Also the doll thinks they are cute which leads me to believe are babies and not some other weird space creature.
A bloodborne disease is a disease spread through blood.
The doll says he comes and goes as he pleases.
DrDrizzay101
Member
I don't think N Frontier is related to aliens, I think it's more about an intense, personal psychological experience. A physical exploration of the mind facilitated by the higher knowledge and capabilities of the Great Ones. Remember that Amygdala takes you to the Lecture Hall that leads to NF, and the amygdalae in the brain are related to memory processing. The environment is aggressively bizarre, more so than any other area in the game. It's also very clearly inspired by surrealist painters like Dali in the way that the rocks and monuments form human shapes and faces (and...
penises
Not the best picture but gets the idea across. Head behind me, nose facing left, phallic monuments on the back left:
One of many Dali landscape-face examples, "Paranoid Face"
Actually there are a lot of environmental faces in the game:
The Nightmare Mensis feels different. For one thing, it's not as intensely abstract as the Frontier (relatively speaking). It's more relatable as "a castle" instead of this insane fever dream landscape. You also arrive at the 2nd floor that leads to Mensis by a different means, iirc just by inspecting the skeleton thing after the One Reborn fight, i.e. Amygdala doesn't take you there.
My biggest takeaway from BB compared to Souls games is how intensely personal the expression feels, while still being rooted in and inspired by universal themes of cosmic horror.
About the werewolf in the intro while you are laying on that table: he tries to touch you but suddenly he starts bursting into flames. Why does that happen? Are you being protected by the old blood that is running through your veins now? Maybe is Gerhman's way of protecting you so you can continue your mission and relieve him from his burden?
I could see this too. It could really go either way for me. Reading Lovecraft and his disciples, I always got the impression that places like Carcosa and the Plateau of Leng and other such places were physically real places. In some sense at least, even if they were on another plane of existence.
Though, again, I hold to my theory that the Hunter's Dream is a shared delusion between all hunters, probably resultant in all of us being tied to Gerhman through the blood, as the blood carries memories.
If that's true, there's no reason why the Nightmare Frontier couldn't be a delusional realm as well.
I don't see how the messengers prove anything. No one who isn't from the Dream talks about them. For all I know, I'm only hallucinating the creepy little beasties because of what these nut jobs put in my blood.
In a sense, I think this is true. The werewolf to me represented the threat of the transfusion turning you into a beast, instead you're claimed by the messengers and transformed into a hunter.
I think the real question is, what does it mean for a hunter to cease dreaming? When they first started asking me if I still dream, I thought it meant becoming a beast. Now, I'm not so sure.
I think it should be mentioned that both Eileen and Djura suggest that neither of them dream any longer. Djura suggests that he no longer dreams due to being disillusioned as a hunter by the plight of the beasts. Meanwhile Eileen is a Hunter contracted specifically to handle those hunters who have gone too far in their bloodlust. Trying my damnedest to piece together what the hunters as an organization as a whole is.
SO far we've these factions:
Yah'argul - Hunters in name only, they're actually just kidnappers for the Mensis. Likely the source of the people who are used as sacrifices for their attempts to commune with the old ones
Cainhurst Vilebloods - Aristocracy predating the healing church. They once had dealings with Yharnam but had a falling out with the city. Annelise specifically notes that they are in direct opposition of the healing church.
Executioners - Not a hunter group, but likely a group made by Yharnam to directly oppose Annelise and her ilk. They are the basis of the Healing Church Hunters.
Powder kegs - Heretical Hunters that predate the healing church. Known for their love of style and flair. Presumably a significant number of them died to the point where it's believed the group no longer exists. If Djura is anything to go by, they became disillusioned by the hunt of the beasts of plague
Crow Feather(Hunter of Hunters) - Sect of Hunters trained specifically to handle addled hunters and give them a respectful death. Considers Yharnam and its ilk far gone and heretical to the core.
Saw Hunters - Presumably the very first sect of hunters. Their name and meaning long lost to all hunter sects now. Most likely started by Gehrman. The saw holds rather profound meaning to the messengers.
Then there's the healing church which has subsects of their own that deserve discussion.
SO far we've these factions:
Yah'argul - Hunters in name only, they're actually just kidnappers for the Mensis. Likely the source of the people who are used as sacrifices for their attempts to commune with the old ones
Cainhurst Vilebloods - Aristocracy predating the healing church. They once had dealings with Yharnam but had a falling out with the city. Annelise specifically notes that they are in direct opposition of the healing church.
Executioners - Not a hunter group, but likely a group made by Yharnam to directly oppose Annelise and her ilk. They are the basis of the Healing Church Hunters.
Powder kegs - Heretical Hunters that predate the healing church. Known for their love of style and flair. Presumably a significant number of them died to the point where it's believed the group no longer exists. If Djura is anything to go by, they became disillusioned by the hunt of the beasts of plague
Crow Feather(Hunter of Hunters) - Sect of Hunters trained specifically to handle addled hunters and give them a respectful death. Considers Yharnam and its ilk far gone and heretical to the core.
Saw Hunters - Presumably the very first sect of hunters. Their name and meaning long lost to all hunter sects now. Most likely started by Gehrman. The saw holds rather profound meaning to the messengers.
Then there's the healing church which has subsects of their own that deserve discussion.
I found one at Iosefka's, but couldnt take it because i already had the one at Mergo's. Weird
The weird part is it drops off a blue alien.
This is some great reflection!
My personal read was originally very close to yours, that there is some kind of mass hysteria going on in Yharnam, something of a Wild Hunt, and those caught up in it take on their animal nature to hunt others and survive in the streets; its like how the beast-y town folk tell you that you are cursed, when they are clearly the ones who are twisted and beastial.
Is it all relative? Do other hunters look normal to you because you share the same blood? What do you look like to those around you? This seems to change a lot depending on the person, and how wound up they are
I don't want to ruin Hotline Miami 2 for anyone, but the last level of that game is a great parallel to the kind of unreliable perspective I'm talking about.
Exhibit A:
This originally struck me as very important, as well as the doll coming to life as soon as you gain your first insight. Given all the Lovecraftian weirdness, and the changes "insight" brings to your interaction with the world, I am fairly certain whatever we are experiencing is some very unreliable narration -- are these people all human, and we are just seeing their inner nature instead of what is physically, actually there? If so, thats fucking cool.
I am more inclined to see Yharnam as akin to Silent Hill or Zanarkand, in that there are forces at work so powerful and beyond comprehension that you are caught up in an echo of the place Yharnam was, perhaps in its final hours, so Yharnam-y and exaggerated to all of the people caught up inside it to that it seems *more* real and immediate than what is actually real (like a dream can feel).
Are these people alive? Dead? The fact that you can return from the dead (something *always* explained in the universe of each Souls game) lends cadence to it being a realm you are a guest within, something that feels real but is merely a crude imitation.
My current take is that you enter into some kind of collective psychic nightmare, and there navigate the dream plane until you bump into the dreams of the gods lurking beneath Yharnam itself. Hunters have the ability to navigate to a safe zone outside of the nightmare, the Hunter's Dream, but as they spend more time within the nightmare they lose touch with their humanity and are cut off. Do you need the bloodlust and distorted perspective to even attempt interacting with something as potent as Old One influence?
Madness, and I love it.
SargerusBR
I love Pokken!
Here's a close shot of Yharnam. You can see clearly the black eyes.
Would not waifu.
Chalice Dungeons are the tunnels that the researchers at Byrgenwerth studied right?
My theory on the creatures and protagonists' miraculous return to life is because of the blood itself. It sustains us, keeps us animate long after the rigors of the hunt should've put us down. It makes even deathblows only a temporary inconvenience.
Supporting my theory are the crows. Those pitiable creatures crawl across the ground, I believe, because their spines are broken. But the blood keeps them alive and animate all the same. S'what the little bastards get for being carrion feeders and eating off the Yharnam dead.
Tons of item descriptions from Yharnam point to the tombs of the Chalice dungeons as being places where the secrets of the Great Ones lie.
I love that take! So then warping back to the lantern after death is your mind, caught up in the spirit of the hunt, editing out the part where you waited to revive. You are quite literally blacking out.
Do your little minions carry you back? That would explain their presence around the lantern, and would certainly fit with how eager they are to help you.
My only issue with that is how do the bosses stay dead?
Even if it is a dream, you are still holding agency over the dreamworld (as an outsider). Its more Inception, but replacing Cillian Murphy with an Old God.
GwyndolinCinder
Member
They are basically the starting point
indigo-cyclops
Member
This game has fostered immense speculation and discussion, and that's what I love. I don't remember the lore being so important to unraveling the mystery of what is really going on here.
Plus, if you love weird fiction, this is right up your fucking alley. It's the most expansive weird fiction narrative I've ever experienced.
And I'm not even finished, but I don't want to cut myself off from the meaty discussion going on as people finish because it's bringing out some really profound ideas.
The Beak Mask description is VERY intriguing:
"Hunters of Hunters dress as crows to suggest sky burial (Northern Lands anyone, Crow enemy much?) The first Hunter of Hunters came from a foreign land, and gave the dead a virtuous native funeral ritual, rather than impose a blasphemous Yharnam burial service upon them, with the hope that former compatriots might be returned to the skies, and find rest in a hunter's dream.
And we know from Father G's garb description that the title Father is not used in the Healing Church, but for clerics of a foreign land...
Plus, if you love weird fiction, this is right up your fucking alley. It's the most expansive weird fiction narrative I've ever experienced.
And I'm not even finished, but I don't want to cut myself off from the meaty discussion going on as people finish because it's bringing out some really profound ideas.
The Beak Mask description is VERY intriguing:
"Hunters of Hunters dress as crows to suggest sky burial (Northern Lands anyone, Crow enemy much?) The first Hunter of Hunters came from a foreign land, and gave the dead a virtuous native funeral ritual, rather than impose a blasphemous Yharnam burial service upon them, with the hope that former compatriots might be returned to the skies, and find rest in a hunter's dream.
And we know from Father G's garb description that the title Father is not used in the Healing Church, but for clerics of a foreign land...
Precisely.
As I told someone, else, I don't think the messengers are real. They're part of the dream and as such, are part of the shared delusion that is the Dream. I think your body reanimates, crawling and eventually (once enough of you has been knit back together from whatever paste you managed to turn yourself into) walk back to the safety of the nearest lamp, a place your mind associates with the Dream.
Not just bosses, but fallen hunters too. They die and stay dead. I'm not sure about this yet. I mean, because it's a game I know the answer is "because it would fucking suck if bosses rose from the dead." But in-universe I'm not sure yet. Perhaps bosses and potent hunters have just become something too...divine...for the blood's regenerative properties to successfully raise them?
The Artisan
Member
is that what bloodborne is in the game? a bloodborne disease, the one you're trying to find a cure for your hometown?
And yet werewolves that are clearly not or never were hunters return to life again and again every time you return to where you last found them...