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Bloodborne Story and Lore Discussion Thread [Unmarked Spoilers]

Long shot...but while playing NG+ I thought about it a bit more and...does anyone think the body that you find the Workshop Tool on right after killing the Witches of Hemweck is Charyll?

That said...what's the deal with the witches? They're definitely not churchy, but do they have any Great Old One connection? Were they trying to find their own way to speak with the Old Ones and get power by learning the words Charyll wrote down?

Iunno. Probably none of that.
Charyll?
 
...Caryll. Sorry. Dunno why I threw an H in there.

Edit: Also realization that the beasts in Old Yharnam don't back away from your fire because it's bright but because they're afraid of it since the Church burnt down Old Yharnam.
 
...Caryll. Sorry. Dunno why I threw an H in there.

Edit: Also realization that the beasts in Old Yharnam don't back away from your fire because it's bright but because they're afraid of it since the Church burnt down Old Yharnam.
Oh, the runesmith. I know nothing about that character.

If I use a lantern, do the beasts avoid me? :-O I lost that one dude as a friend because I attacked one after agreeing not to. :-(
 

Gbraga

Member
Are there characters other than Eileen and Djura who mention the dream? Also, did they stop dreaming by allowing Gehrman to kill them? If so, then that's pretty much the undisputed bad ending.

I honestly don't think there are such things as bad, good, and true endings. This was very clear in Dark Souls, but somehow the addition of a third ending got everyone back in the classic videogame mindset, but it's not the case at all. There's no canon ending, no happy ending and no bad ending, just different outcomes (my favorite is the submit ending, after all).

About Eileen and Djura submiting to Gehrman, I think it's quite unlikely. Djura because IIRC his equipment just says he basically gave up on the hunt, so if he abandoned the hunt to take care of Old Yharnam, he couldn't have come to the end of it, after all, his big revelation is the obvious "beasts were humans once". Eileen definitely gets more complicated, but I don't think Gehrman is just flat out wrong in the most important part of his quest, if he says you'll forget the dream, I'm inclined to believe.
 

ElFly

Member
I don't think every hunter that stopped dreaming had to be "killed" by Gerhman.

For starters, what is the trigger for Gehrman standing up and killing you? Did Djura also kill some other Old One and Gerhman got pissed, burned the house too and killed the fucker?

IMHO at some point Djura just stopped wanting to kill creatures -which is why he is protecting them now- and that prompted him to stop dreaming, but not necessarily through Gerhman's scythe.

Maybe it doesn't make a lot of difference either way.
 
I honestly don't think there are such things as bad, good, and true endings. This was very clear in Dark Souls, but somehow the addition of a third ending got everyone back in the classic videogame mindset, but it's not the case at all. There's no canon ending, no happy ending and no bad ending, just different outcomes (my favorite is the submit ending, after all).

About Eileen and Djura submiting to Gehrman, I think it's quite unlikely. Djura because IIRC his equipment just says he basically gave up on the hunt, so if he abandoned the hunt to take care of Old Yharnam, he couldn't have come to the end of it, after all, his big revelation is the obvious "beasts were humans once". Eileen definitely gets more complicated, but I don't think Gehrman is just flat out wrong in the most important part of his quest, if he says you'll forget the dream, I'm inclined to believe.

I agree. I never thought that Eileen and Djura were people like you that Gehrman had "killed". There is something else that has cut them, and or other hunters, off from the dream.
 

Gbraga

Member
One thing I reaaaally wish we had more info on is Darkbeasts. We know they have natural lightning and, judging from the cannibal, at least some of them retain their consciousness (I'd like to say every one of them), so we know what defines a Darkbeast (and both of those things also support my "Paarl isn't a Darkbeast theory"), but we still have no idea of how a darkbeast is formed. What is it that defines one? At first I thought that maybe it was the same as the difference between Beast and Clawmark, with the regular beasts being taken over by the scourge, while people who embrace the invitation become Darkbeasts and merge with their beastly nature, instead of being take over by them, but Gilber drops Clawmark, so that's out.

Well at least that super duper confirms the celestials are ex-humans.

First thing I noticed too! Team "Our Emissary to them" was right, at least this time I was on the right team :p

EDIT:
Thanks for the link, Sephiroth!

"Interview is 14 pages long.

Says patches are necessary to balance competitive pvp.

His favorite weapon is threaded cane.

Favorite boss. Rom.

He personally did every map except chalices."

Maaaan, I need that guide for the interview >_<
 

ElFly

Member
In Dark Souls you are cursed, like everyone else playing the game* (note that) everytime you "respawn" you are becoming more hollow and your reasoning is degrading so you have to search for humanity on living beings to fight the curse long enough to your soul becoming a Great Soul and be inmune to the curse, for a certain time.

In BB respawning more diluted and you are practically bond to the Dream so everytime you fail in your jorney you will be saved and transported into the Dream inmediately without any repercusion at all, there is zero interaction with other players outside coop and invasion like dark souls 2 and the history is wraped around you like Dark Souls 2 so the story wont move until you move and will end until you end it.

I don't think there's any significant difference between DS1 and DS2 in how the story is told.

DS2 also has other NPCs trying to make their way through the world, most importantly, certain NPCs can be summoned for the final boss, and can be found inside memories, signaling that you are not the only one who got to Ancient Dragon to get the Ashen Mist Heart.

Your character is also greeted by the witches as if you are yet another one from hundreds of cursed ones that had passed through there. That you happen to be the one to sit on the throne is only because the game centers on the guys who do that. In BB Iosefka could have transfomed you into yet another Celestial Mob, but since you are a hunter, she leaves you to go ahead. You are -somewhat- special.

Hell, DS2 is even more centered on that you are not special, since a big theme is that the cycle has repeated many times.
 

Gbraga

Member
In BB Iosefka could have transfomed you into yet another Celestial Mob, but since you are a hunter, she leaves you to go ahead. You are -somewhat- special.

Not really. Iosefka is a good person and wanted to help people, she herself gets turned into a Celestial Mob by an imposter that takes her place.

Who exactly that imposter is, and how does she know so much and have so many important items, that is still unclear.
 

ElFly

Member
Not really. Iosefka is a good person and wanted to help people, she herself gets turned into a Celestial Mob by an imposter that takes her place.

Who exactly that imposter is, and how does she know so much and have so many important items, that is still unclear.

Oh yeah.

Doesn't really change my point; that you are special since you are the last -or one of the last- guys to get there, you escape by hours the fate of becoming a Celestial Mob, and that you arrive on a very particular night.

DS2 you could have arrived at any point, and you don't even close your entrance point. Tons of people could have gone to Drangleic after you.
 

Gbraga

Member
Oh yeah.

Doesn't really change my point; that you are special since you are the last -or one of the last- guys to get there, you escape by hours the fate of becoming a Celestial Mob, and that you arrive on a very particular night.

DS2 you could have arrived at any point, and you don't even close your entrance point. Tons of people could have gone to Drangleic after you.

With that I agree with. In fact, you could argue that how little everything matters is actually kind of an issue with the game's story. After all, if it's just a repeat of the same cycle and everything is irrelevant, why even do it? A repeat of the same cycle as a dev's choice, I mean, not our in-game motivation.
 

ElFly

Member
With that I agree with. In fact, you could argue that how little everything matters is actually kind of an issue with the game's story. After all, if it's just a repeat of the same cycle and everything is irrelevant, why even do it? A repeat of the same cycle as a dev's choice, I mean, not our in-game motivation.

Well, it is not irrelevant; the kingdom will be remade on your image.

I think the way Drangleic works is that, whenever a cursed one doesn't finish the game completely by sitting on the throne, all his changes are undone. The great souls eventually crawl back and remake the bosses. Of course this could take a long ass time, but the form of the kingdom that Iron King and Vendrick left behind is too strong to be undone without the throne.

But once you sit on the throne, the kingdom will in fact change names and shape once more. You just don't see it because hey, maybe for DS3?. Not sure how this fits with NG+; it could be that NG+ assumes you didn't sit on the throne, and just let everything reset, and for whatever reason things became stronger -probably cause more cursed ones arrived to Drangleic for the creatures to absorb their souls-.

But DS2 is the only of the four games that could accept an explanation like that for NG+, so I am not sure we can really apply such an analysis to this; in Demon, Dark 1 and BB, NG+ doesn't really make any sense. OFC Scholar kind of shot this down, since a "not sitting on the throne" ending exists too.
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
IMO NG+ makes the most sense in Bloodborne, because everything that happens could be seen, literally, as a recurring nightmare haunting the player character.

And when you're someone lucid dreaming, you remember that you've had a nightmare before; you're just trapped in it until you wake up.
 

ElFly

Member
IMO NG+ makes the most sense in Bloodborne, because everything that happens could be seen, literally, as a recurring nightmare haunting the player character.

And when you're someone lucid dreaming, you remember that you've had a nightmare before; you're just trapped in it until you wake up.

That's a way out, but that interpretation makes me uncomfortable because it verges too close to a "it was all a dream" interpretation.

When in BB it is important that the dream world is also real and stuff that happens in the dream world has implications in reality.

Main problem when you say "it was all a dream" is that all logic flies out the window.
 

Gbraga

Member
I think NG+ is one of the things that should just be accepted as videogames must be videogames, never thought too much about it, and I really don't mind it not having any meaning.

They shouldn't come up with shitty bs excuses for every single element, and cutting good game elements just because they don't fit the story would be an even bigger crime, so I'll take meaningless features.
 
I think NG+ is one of the things that should just be accepted as videogames must be videogames, never thought too much about it, and I really don't mind it not having any meaning.

They shouldn't come up with shitty bs excuses for every single element, and cutting good game elements just because they don't fit the story would be an even bigger crime, so I'll take meaningless features.

+1
 
I think NG+ is one of the things that should just be accepted as videogames must be videogames, never thought too much about it, and I really don't mind it not having any meaning.

They shouldn't come up with shitty bs excuses for every single element, and cutting good game elements just because they don't fit the story would be an even bigger crime, so I'll take meaningless features.
I completely agree. I like when a game veers far out of its expected way to make an in-game explanation for a common mechanic (Bravely Default was particularly ingenious in this), trying to reverse engineer an explanation for NG+ is along the lines of trying to come up with a logical reason why your character just stands there silently as people talk to them with exceptional one-time forgiveness if they are accidentally struck with a tombstone hammer.
 

ElFly

Member
I think NG+ is one of the things that should just be accepted as videogames must be videogames, never thought too much about it, and I really don't mind it not having any meaning.

They shouldn't come up with shitty bs excuses for every single element, and cutting good game elements just because they don't fit the story would be an even bigger crime, so I'll take meaningless features.

Dunno.

The integration of plot and gameplay is a big part of what makes the Souls series strong.

Of course, things like menus will never be completely explained away, but for things like letting the character respawn, having an in-game explanation is a huge part of the lore. Or for teleport, for example. Demon had different archstones for each area, and there was a lore explanation for how the areas were grouped in the archstones. About this teleporting we've seen different attitudes through the successive games.

-DS1 didn't have archstones or teleport, until you had an item that specifically lets you teleport between bonfires. Which was ok except there's not a lore explanation for why the Lordvessel let's you move between bonfires; the lore for the lordvessel just says that it does. It's ok.

-DS2 I assume that starts with the Lordvessel shattered, or the bonfire network powered by the emerald herald, which lets you teleport. Kind of lame but still there's some handwaving for it.

-BB just groups areas in four stones and that's it. They are kind of grouped thematically, but there's no lore reason for why certain stones allow you to awaken you in certain parts of yharnam. Out of the four games, it has the weakest explanation for teleport. Which is particularly grating as the Dream is reasonably big enough to allow more tombstones, so they'd be differentiated and grouped better. They didn't have to limit themselves to four.

So it is lame that as the games advance, they are paying less attention to some parts lore-gameplay relationship as they did in Demon.
 

Gbraga

Member
"You can teleport because reasons, it's a dream" would be Bloodborne's equivalent of "Time is convoluted in Lordran", I guess.
 

Ferr986

Member
They should keep NG+ something just videogamey , like in all the DS games as for now, and not try to tie with the story. Or else we will end up with some random non sense like the convoluted time in Lordran.
 

Gbraga

Member
I didn't expect completely new stuff from the guide, personally, I'm just interested in it for the interview, theme and art.
 

ElFly

Member
"Time is convoluted in Lordran" was used for interesting things, that DS2 and BB barely touched on. It is not just a handwave to let your character do whatever.

For example, DS1 had some instances where you'd help a NPC, or be helped by one, only for you to find their corpse and equipment in a later level, which led to a ton of story reconstrucion when analyzing that lore. The use of this phrase is that, through the centuries, several undeads have tried to reignite the flame and replace gwyn, and you meet them through time convolution. The main and favorite example is Solaire, but it is far from the only one.

DS2 also has NPCs that advance their own story alongside yours. But I don't think it does the stuff where a character would be dead in one area that had helped you in another, with one big exception I think, that was interesting because you find their corpse before meeting them live. There's one or two NPCs that are trying to complete the game, like you, but none of them fails midway like in DS1. I do not think that it is mentioned that "time is convoluted in drangleic", so I am just assuming that it inherited that property from Lordran. Maybe things are different, but since the multiplayer looks the same, I assume it is based on the same idea.

Both Dark games let you try the "invasion" mechanic on NPCs, though, which in the Dark games is based on time convolution, while BB and Demon don't, although Demon does have a boss that can be an invader.

BB just plain old only has hunters be there for the multiplayer; the other NPC hunters you find are not there trying to do the hunt alongside you, they are from other factions or just have no explanation at all. The NPC summons are characters that have different motivations than yours.

Demon, I think, didn't do this, and the NPCs explicitly advance their plot alongside you; they are not necessarily trying to awaken the old one. But since it precedes Dark 1, I cannot fault it for it. Demon does something interesting, that may have been explained as "time is convoluted", in that in Black Tendency levels, the NPCs could appear as evil versions, but there's not really a lore explanation for this. It was still a cool touch. None of the later games has done anything interesting with the White/Black tendency stuff, barely trying to imitate it with the Ascetic system in DS2 and Insight in BB, which is far from the same.
 

JVIDICAN

Member
Lol so if you use the jumping exploit in central yarnham at the start of the game and get into the back of iofeskas clinic, both the real iofeska and imposter can be found. The real iofeska is at the door and the imposter upstairs standing on top of the table that she is hunched over on after the blood moon. No dialogue obviously. But its cool seeing both, and acts as a definite confirmation of them being different people.

Last thread was dead. Sorry for the repost!
 
I might be reading a bit too much into it but what are the odds with a lot of the enemies in the Chalice Dungeons using pyromancy, the Witches knowing it and having extracted eyeballs to gain insight and for Chalice ingredients and the names of some of the specific bosses (Keeper of the Old Lords, Watcher of the Old Lords) that the ruins are in fact related in some way to the Dark Souls games or lore?

Otherwise I may just be reading too much into your inability to use magic or pyromancy and the Chalice enemies specifically being able to do so.
 

Toxi

Banned
One thing I reaaaally wish we had more info on is Darkbeasts. We know they have natural lightning and, judging from the cannibal, at least some of them retain their consciousness (I'd like to say every one of them), so we know what defines a Darkbeast (and both of those things also support my "Paarl isn't a Darkbeast theory"), but we still have no idea of how a darkbeast is formed. What is it that defines one? At first I thought that maybe it was the same as the difference between Beast and Clawmark, with the regular beasts being taken over by the scourge, while people who embrace the invitation become Darkbeasts and merge with their beastly nature, instead of being take over by them, but Gilber drops Clawmark, so that's out.
Could just be that a Darkbeast is a unique development stage for beasts under certain conditions. We see how beasts are influenced by their environment (The beasts in Old Yharnam inflict poison similar to the ashen blood disease they were once afflicted by), so maybe a Darkbeast evolved in conditions that allowed it to manifest lightning.
Not really. Iosefka is a good person and wanted to help people, she herself gets turned into a Celestial Mob by an imposter that takes her place.

Who exactly that imposter is, and how does she know so much and have so many important items, that is still unclear.
She's definitely a member of the Choir.
Yeah they're assholes. They just won the SEO war against Wikidot, which is a shame because Wikidot has always been far more reliable.
Goddamnit. I was wondering why Wikidot wasn't cropping up in my searches.
 
i looked through the guide briefly earlier, and the most interesting thing i saw was that the name of the giant brain in Nightmare of Mensis is "Brain of Mensis"

although i'm not sure if that's really all that significant

Well it does mean that Kos or Kosm are someone else.

And it might also mean that all the minds of Mensis fused together to make it with Micolash hosting it which is why it's a "stillborn" and doesn't seem to be outwardly hostile or even aware of it's actions. So a failed Great Old One.
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
That's a way out, but that interpretation makes me uncomfortable because it verges too close to a "it was all a dream" interpretation.

When in BB it is important that the dream world is also real and stuff that happens in the dream world has implications in reality.

Main problem when you say "it was all a dream" is that all logic flies out the window.

Personally, the idea doesn't bother me when viewed from the Lovecraft dream stories framework. Where the "dream world" is a real place, existing independently of any one dreamer. But everyone who visits during a dream perceives their own version of it.

To me that view compliments the phantoms of other player characters fading in and out, and sometimes crossing over from their own world. Just because a person keeps visiting the place as their recurring nightmare doesn't mean it isn't real.
 
Personally, the idea doesn't bother me when viewed from the Lovecraft dream stories framework. Where the "dream world" is a real place, existing independently of any one dreamer. But everyone who visits during a dream perceives their own version of it.

To me that view compliments the phantoms of other player characters fading in and out, and sometimes crossing over from their own world. Just because a person keeps visiting the place as their recurring nightmare doesn't mean it isn't real.
I think this is the proper way to view the game.
 
i looked through the guide briefly earlier, and the most interesting thing i saw was that the name of the giant brain in Nightmare of Mensis is "Brain of Mensis"

although i'm not sure if that's really all that significant

The LaLaLa singing Brains have the bizarre name of Winter Lanterns. That makes me view the Mensis Cage in a new "light" as a lantern casing with the trapped head/mind/light inside. Winter could reference the death of the body of the Mensis Mummies now that their eternal light (soul) is caged in the Nightmare.
 

Guevara

Member
I just don't get the dreams:

> Nightmare Frontier is optional, the boss is (one of many?) Amydala, and you get the chalice for defeating it.

> Nightmare of Mensis is mandatory to the completion of the game, the boss is... Micolash? Mensis (the brain?), Mergo's Wetnurse I guess? And you get 1/3 umbilical cord and also progress the story.

Why is there little or no commonality besides design? How many nightmares are there? Why is one optional and one mandatory?
 

Toxi

Banned
Watching the latest ENB video, apparently the Nightmare Frontier is in Loran?
Shouldn't be in Loran (since Loran is in the chalice dungeons), but the nightmare might be based on Loran in the same way the Hunter's Dream is based on the Old Workshop.
 

cakely

Member
I just don't get the dreams:

> Nightmare Frontier is optional, the boss is (one of many?) Amydala, and you get the chalice for defeating it.

> Nightmare of Mensis is mandatory to the completion of the game, the boss is... Micolash? Mensis (the brain?), Mergo's Wetnurse I guess? And you get 1/3 umbilical cord and also progress the story.

Why is there little or no commonality besides design? How many nightmares are there? Why is one optional and one mandatory?

Nightmare Frontier and Nightmare of Mensis seem to be the same nightmare, dreamed by Micolash.

You can see Mergo's Loft (the giant castle in Nightmare of Mensis) in the distance from Nightmare Frontier, it's all part of the same nightmare.
 
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