From Software Bloodborne. Discuss or die!

[DragoFireheart]

But I thought BB was made by A-Team?

praetor AngryEddy

 

[StaticSpine]

But I thought BB was made by A-Team?

A-Team with Hidetaka Miyazaki as director.

 

[DragoFireheart]

But I thought BB was made by A-Team?

A-Team with Hidetaka Miyazaki as director.

He also directed Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidetaka_Miyazaki

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

B-Team is shit you pull out of your ass when you don't like the game. It's a great meme. I still use it myself sometimes.

 

[praetor]

UndetectedButthurt

that definitely looks like a "b-team" (or at least a different team). the leads are the ones who matter and make all the decisions, the grunts just do the dirty work

DragoFireheart

why did you summon me?

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

that definitely looks like a "b-team" (or at least a different team). the leads are the ones who matter and make all the decisions, the grunts just do the dirty work

My point is that quality of gameplay design seems to have very little to do with Miyazaki. He seems to be gud at influencing art, story and aesthetics. DaS2 is lacking in those but everything else is just business as usual (minus the troubled development mess of hastily patched together level design ideas).

Important shit like "game design" and "project manager" is still the same according to that table. I have no idea what the red highlights are supposed to mean.

 

[DragoFireheart]

why did you summon me?

I enjoy the colorful dialog you inspire.

 

[Machocruz]

Does armor give you any skills, like Diablos and Monster Hunters? I wouldn't mind that.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

RIP stream.

 

[Murk]

No equip load, apparently, and seems things are a lot... simpler. Still, it's 2nd hand so can't really form too much of an opinion other than r1 stun is wayyyy too real.

Not simpler, more arcade compared to dark souls. There are no shields, you can't be defensive in bloodborne, you have to attack all the time. Bloodborne seems to be a more button masher.

What you said is true, but it is also simpler. Less stats, your weapons are outright called "right hand weapon" or "left hand weapon", and it seems that you can't really... uhh mix n match like say in DS 2 with weird boosting/powerstancing/attack swapping (some weapons have a different attack if they follow the other hand's attack.)

So yeah... simpler. There seems to be some socketing of weapons too... like you can toggle certain buffs on your weapon at the workshop that give boosts/effects and weapons have a number of slots you can socket/activate. It seems it's not permanent like say Diablo 2, but vaguely similar.

edit: CLOTH ON EVERYTHING, WE SPENT ALL THIS FUCKING MONEY ON CLOTH PHYSICS -- PUT A CLOAK ON THEM ALL. THAT HUNTER? TRENCH COAT. THAT WEREWOLF? BLANKET OVER FACE. THAT SPIDERY WEREWOLF LIKE BOSS? GIVE IT WINGS OR SOME SHIT I DONNO JUST MAKE IT CLOTH LIKE OK? THAT OTHER SPIDERY WEREWOLF LIKE BOSS? FUCK IT, BANDAGES EVERYWHERE.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Fewer weapons with more customization might be a worthwhile design change.

Having 20 different flavors of Claymore, while fun, typically resulted in only 2-3 that were any good.

 

[Murk]

I posted a lot, including stuff I'm seeing in the streams, so I'm going to spoiler this just in case. I don't think it's all spoiler stuff, but I figure better safe than sorry.

Spoiler

I donno about customization... it may end up closer to just "one claymore".

For example, both the saw cleaver and saw spear have the same moves when 'folded', and when extended they have different attacks. It makes sense... but I guess I don't see room for weird movesets like say Santier's Spear or Syan's Halberd or Royal Dirk.

Anyway, it's all difficult to judge because of how little I see. The streamer in question wasn't a total nub but he was p scrubby -- I'd hold judgement until a proper souls veteran plays the game (if you are thinking of buying a ps4 for BB exclusively). On the other hand, if you already have a ps4, I doubt you'd be severely disappointed with it. It's very much beast souls and it looks about as fun as one could expect.

I won't buy a ps4 for it even if it turns out to have the best parts of the last 3 souls games combined, but I suppose I enjoy being in the master race too much.

EDIT: 4 streams up as of right now: http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Bloodborne™

The most annoying part of these streams is not that they are 'spoiling' the game, but that every one of these bastards is just running around Yarnhem in the same areas we've seen over and over, and I have no clue if the whole game is this or if there are other unique/interesting areas. Other observation from yesterday and today - having seen 4 different weapons now... they all seem to have a LOT of range. Quite often swings will hit enemies that from my view should have missed. This, coupled with easy r1 stunning of enemies (even large ones) seems to be more spammy than before. The people who hate r1 spam are gonna be very upset -- tho I donno how relevant it will be in PVP as I'm not sure if there's even poise in this game.

Also seems you can't 2hand weapons like before. Rather, some weapons are just 2handed or not. Like the axe is 1handed in its small form and 2handed in its halberd form. Same thing with the sword/hammer it seems.

Player attacks seem to always go through walls/objects, I have yet to see an attack 'bounce' off walls even when the player straight up attacks through a fence or a tombstone or something.

Thematically, it seems 'dreams' are a big thing -- if ds 2 had a lot of memories, and ds 1 had stuff about having a mission or purpose then dreams seem to be the deal in BB.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Also seems you can't 2hand weapons like before. Rather, some weapons are just 2handed or not. Like the axe is 1handed in its small form and 2handed in its halberd form. Same thing with the sword/hammer it seems.

...

Wut?

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

This maniac is still going... http://www.hitbox.tv/Mobius0ne

Jeeeeeeeeeeeesuuus

 

[Murk]

Also seems you can't 2hand weapons like before. Rather, some weapons are just 2handed or not. Like the axe is 1handed in its small form and 2handed in its halberd form. Same thing with the sword/hammer it seems.

...

Wut?

Yeah, so far only seen 2handing of the halberd and the hammer when in their respective forms.

On backstabs:

Spoiler

Seems you can't backstab right off the bat -- you have to knock them into a prone state using a power-charged attack or a gunshot -- then you can backstab them. Effectively, the backstab is like a guard-break critical or parry where you have to set it up before you can do, so that's a bit of a plus I guess.

 

[DragoFireheart]

That change to backstabs, love it.

 

[Makabb]

I guess they've changed it for PvP becuase they know their net code will be laggy as usual, so no more ghosting backstabs.


Wasn't b-team working on souls 2 because a-team was doing bloodborne in that time ?

Suddenly I'm not so sad that this is a ps4 exclusive anymore.

Whatever, Bloodborne will probably be more fun to play than souls series.

 

[Makabb]

Does armor give you any skills, like Diablos and Monster Hunters? I wouldn't mind that.

You can change weapon stats like in diablo you would with gem stones.

You can also customize your weapon with Blood Gems. You can have many different combinations--so actually the amount of weapons in Souls is absorbed in Bloodborne by this customization element and how someone can tailor a weapon to how they want to use it. In a way, the variety is still there, but it's absorbed down on a customization level, rather than in the quantity of actual weapons, much more than in Souls."

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bloodborne-aiming-to-make-you-feel-fear-and-terror/1100-6426060/







Waifuborne intensifies

and yes, that is a lady doll

summoning RK47

 

[dr. one]

I´d been watching the above maniacal endless stream on and off and, even when taking into account differences between backseat gaming and actually playing and likeliness of being a bit biased because I don´t have PS4, at least the PvE portion of the game seemed surprisingly underwhelming to me.

As a fan of both Dark Souls games, the only aspects I´ve found consistently solid were art direction and level design, though not without caveats - after the central city parts the exteriors started to feel aesthetically somewhat monotonous (including a fair amount of grey-ish stuff a bit á la Harvest Valley or Huntman´s Copse) and level design didn´t seem to bring anything new interesting to the table (the areas seemed more labyrinthine and with more shortcuts than DS2´s on average, but also felt quite formulaic, without interactive options á la Pharros lockstones or shortcuts made by blowing stuff up - just a lot of doors which "open from other side" and elevators activated from one side).

Other than that I think the sentiment this game is bare bones compared to Souls games is quite spot on, certainly so when it comes to "RPG elements".

The amount of weapons has been drastically decreased and I don´t think the fact they´re now more unique makes up for it, especially since off hand is exclusively for guns and options like dual wielding and two handing are tied to few specific weapons´ transformations.
Same goes for outfits, except these also happen to lack in the uniqueness department, both aesthetically and mechanically (considering equipment load being out and one rolling speed/length for all).
Most of the weapons also have requirements low to the point of meaninglessness.

The above is also connected to what seemed like probably the biggest negative difference to me - the exploration rarely seemed rewarding - vast majority of loot (both from enemies and environment) comprises of vials/bullets and upgrade materials, anything else being (very) few and far between. There´s an occasional outfit or equivalent of Souls´ rings (with seemingly less variety) and some enemies, mostly bosses, drop a token which makes the homebase´s merchant sell a new weapon and that´s pretty much it.

Speaking of merchants, and NPCs in general, the game seemed a lot more bare bones in this regard as well - AFAICT there´s only one merchant in the whole game and he/it doesn´t talk, and after the earlier portions of the game the encounters with talkative NPCs seemed really rare (and even in the earlier game most of the speaking characters seemed to be just voices behind locked doors).

The lack of talks and loot also created an impression that there´s less lore bits in general. There are also notes scattered throughout the environment, but, once again, there didn´t seem to be much of these either.

I´m guessing the NPC/lore stuff will improve on more thorough playthroughs, partially also because there did seem to be hints at storylines one can uncover when being at the right time at the right spot (not something I´m personally that fond of, but still) and there also might be secrets revealed for those using/wearing right items, or even gestures, at appropriate circumstances (which would be cool).
It´s also possible some NPCs will "come alive" when online.
In general though, I´d be surprised if the game ends up feeling richer in these regards.

I also don´t think the healing consumables system was a good decision. Exploring or fighting bosses with 20+ vials in pack is likely to make the resource aspect non-issue for decent players and at the same time it may make the game unnecessarily tedious for newcomers and/or people struggling with some parts of the game, because the only way to obtain the pots is to grind.
Considering the regain mechanics, I think the system from DS1 would be more appropriate (say, 10 vials on respawn/death, without enemies dropping any).

Finally, I think the new dodge available only when locked-on might exacerbate camera issues some of the bigger bosses seem to come with.


When trying to put the preconception of Bloodborne being a Souls game aside, the stream still created an impression the game features what I´d consider significant flaws on its own.

The biggest mechanical issue seemed to be that for a lot of the time the enemies weren´t appropriately designed to counter players´ combat arsenal. The first 1/3 of the game or so seemed alright in this regard, but afterward almost everything felt like it wasn´t designed with the new combat system in mind, pretty much the only exceptions being fighting NPCs á la Souls´ invaders (though apparently without AI improvements introduced in DS2´s DLCs). The most notable cases being mid-to-late game bosses who were mostly slow, with few moves, and/or lack of countermeasures to gun parries. For some reason the game also features a fair amount of fodder enemies slowly crawling on the ground and enemies who are entirely harmless except for a single grab attack which can deplete most, or all, HP in one attack, neither of which I consider interesting design.
The streamer was able to brute force through pretty much all of the mid/late game, rarely breaking a sweat, killed all bosses in 1-2 tries, was not "overlevelled" (unless I´ve missed some extensive grinding session) and didn´t seem like a particularly skilled player either.

The biggest general issue to me was that the last 2/3 of the game seemed relatively uninspired across the board, except perhaps for art direction.
The early game felt more fleshed out in terms of NPC interactivity, level design, variety of common enemies (which also felt to fight appropriately considering low level gameplay) and the bosses felt well designed with the new combat system in mind (relentless and with solid arsenal of moves), but most of what came afterwards gave a strong impression of being unfinished, not particularly well thought-out and creatively lacking (bar some of the art).
I know that not all bosses can be 100% keepers, but whereas in the previous games the quality was fairly spread out throughout, in this game all highlights seem to be featured within first 4-5, unless the few bosses the streamer hasn´t fought are return to form.
I think quality-wise both vanilla Dark Souls games were somewhat frontloaded, but in the case of Bloodborne the differences feel a lot more pronounced, structurally more obvious and the drop comes earlier.


Hopefully the online aspect will turn out fun and/or the early patching will bring some major PvE improvements.
If not, I expect a major uproar once people get to the latter portions of the game, unless the stream was somehow seriously misleading
or I let my inability to play the game myself get the better of me when forming my impressions.

But I thought BB was made by A-Team?

Based on the above admittedly possibly misguided impressions, I´d say A-Team was busy making DS2 DLCs.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

After watching someone play through the majority of the game I'm definitely disappointed. I have no idea why or how, but I'm getting a Bioshock Infinite vibe from this.

 

[Makabb]

After watching someone play through the majority of the game I'm definitely disappointed. I have no idea why or how, but I'm getting a Bioshock Infinite vibe from this.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Lol nope. Miyazaki has nothng to do with those dlcs. Naotoshi zin was working on them. Guy responsible for kings fields games
. Lots of new items in dlcs are copied from those games.

 

[Kanedias]

So, Bloodborne being close to release summoned me to this thread again after a long absence. How have you all been?

Sadly I caved in and watched Wingman's stream, near the entirety of it.

I must say I'm a bit disappointed.

The main problem are the bosses. The early game bosses are all excellent, well designed fights against fast, aggressive creatures. I can't stress how good they are. But what happened afterwards is that the designers that worked on these bosses mysteriously disappeared or something like that, because the quality in boss fights goes down significantly for the rest of the game. Gone is all the aggression of the early game fights, the game almost seems to have a reverse difficulty curve. Bosses are now slow, have few attacks, and some of them can even be R1 spammed to death. The visual designs are always top notch: these boss fights seem very Demon's Souls-y: excellent aesthetics, easy and mediocre gameplay. It's almost a shame seeing some otherwise good bosses being brought down by easily fixable things. For example, there was a boss that looked like it could be excellent, but he was easily parryable and had 0 poise. Just giving him poise and making him unable to be parried would make the fight great. But then again, I believe that Pinwheel would have been a good boss if he had more HP, and they never fixed this, keeping him as a joke boss, so I don't have high hopes for From improving on these bosses.

Apart from this, there are too many enemies that can be stunlocked to death by R1 spam, enemies without poise and without hyper armor. There were also lots of very high health enemies, so I would have liked the game to be balanced differently: instead of having high HP and 0 poise, give them some poise or hyper armor, but make them die faster.

I'm not calling this worse than the other Souls games, though. They all have their flaws, and after seeing some of A-Team's boss fights in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 (yes, Dark Souls 1 had a lot of mediocre bosses, it wasn't all Manus and Artorias) I expected some of them to be like this. Most of my disappointment comes from the fact that I had hyped myself too much by watching the early bosses, as I expected the other bosses to be like them too. Oh well.

At least two very important things, atmosphere and level design, were great. Lots of shortcuts and dense, atmospheric areas. The enemies also looked great, especially some of the most nightmarish ones.

All in all, I can't hide my disappointment. I bought a PS4 only for this game, and I expected more bosses to be like the early game ones we have seen. It seems From can't help but produce excellent games with deep flaws every time, keeping them away from what they could have been.

 

[dr. one]

Lol nope. Miyazaki has nothng to do with those dlcs. Naotoshi zin was working on them.

I know .

 

[Kanedias]

So apparently Wingman's copy may have been bugged, making some bosses easier than they should be. I know it sounds like wishful thinking, but there has been some proof. The PlaystationTrophies leaker, who has been very reliable until now, described some of the boss fights and he found mechanics that we didn't see in Wingman's Stream.

Spoiler

Take for example Mergo's Wet Nurse. In Wingman's stream, it just pathetically flailed his arms the whole fight and never did a different attack. For the PT leaker, however...

The fight is pretty standard, but then once you do enough damage, she then produces a purple mist that covers the battlefield. This severely hinders visibility, and she summons a clone during the second time she does this. Think of this boss similar to the Darklurker from Dark Souls 2, but more melee focused. The problem is that you can only damage the real boss, and hitting the clone will usually get you knocked by the boss. Really love the design of this boss. Very nightmarish/death theme

He also mentioned Micolash using spells instead of only hitting with melee punches, and Shadows of Yharnam summoning three beasts once two of them were down. This didn't happen in Wingman's stream, but watching through the videos of the chinese player Stonicat, you can see there are indeed 3 great snakes summoned into the fight. They lunge at you after a second or so.