Souls Without Stats™ probably isn't the correct direction to move in, and is likely
.
While the character systems of Demon's/Dark Souls leave a lot to be desired, they do help to build upon what is, at the core, a rather shallow action gaming experience. FromSoft does a great job papering over this from the content end, by constantly placing new locales, enemies, and bosses in front of the player, but make no mistake...Souls games are not deep. It's not long before any player has plumbed the depths of the combat system, figured just about everything out, and can no longer learn anything. Contrast with something like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, or what have you, where even now, the gaming community is still making significant (mechanical) discoveries in 10+ year-old games.
And this isn't to slight Souls games; there's a place for breadth over depth in (action) gaming, and FromSoft's action-RPGs occupy this niche nicely. But stripping depth from the systems won't necessarily make things better, and all video footage of Bloodborne seems to be in line with this; there are not a whole lot of interesting frame properties on moves, it's pretty much generic Souls combat with little-to-no additions. And enemies don't look much better, being mostly Hollows dressed up in clothes a few generations from Boletaria/Lordran/Drangleic fashion. I'm not seeing any appreciable increase in combat depth to counter-weight the (possible) slashing of character stats. Hell, it doesn't even look all that much faster, with attacks being perhaps a few frames swifter than Soul's series counterparts. In addition, like DeS and DkS1, it over-relies on "surprise" encounters and ambushes, encouraging the player to slow their pace.
Disappointing, really. I'd prefer that Souls-like games, going forward, actually receive meaningful elements of character building that exist outside of a community-organized PvP metagame rather than "lol, level to 40/50 in everything and pwn with whatever you want". Building upon the role-playing elements seems a better choice than discarding them. But I doubt Bloodborne will do much of this*. Which leaves it as nothing much more than a shallow action game with (most likely) a lot of content, yet no aspirations of anything greater. Lame.
*My guess is that "special to Bloodborne" character customization is, following the rumors, being able to choose a beast form to play/invade with. Some magazine interviews have hinted at this and I can't believe they would even try to have symmetric PvP with the even more retarded than DeS/DkS parry/riposte system they've implemented.