Thoughts on Bloodborne

For the Games Development Society, my role is to create art for the level, and also the silhouetted character's run, jump, and slide animations. This meant looking into animation, which seems like an extremely interesting topic; designing a run cycle for a creature design later might be interesting, seeing how different gaits affect how its presence comes across.

Alongside making art, I've been drawing traditionally in my sketchbook for creatures designs for Bloodborne, my current mini-project. Currently I don't know whether to design a whole new area, a Chalice Dungeon (randomised underground areas full of various monsters), or just pick areas where creatures I have designed would fit in to. However, as I am quite familiar with the game (and in possession of the official guide, in lieu of an actual artbook) I have identified a few areas I feel could have been expanded upon:

• ambush-specific enemies - there is a creature in Chalice Dungeons that consists of a glut of blood and bones, which drops from the ceiling, spiders which do the same, and in the main game there are a few creatures set to run from around corners, and some that blend into their environment. However, they are all visible if you pay attention. Thus, one of my designs will involve trapdoor spiders, which could move between several places to ambush from, so the player would be on edge near all of them. One of the best designed ambushes in the game has one enemy run to the left of the doorway as a player approaches the room, whilst another, hidden one waits at the right-hand side - another enemy that did the same, but could teleport, could also be a possibility.
• crow boss - crows in the game are unusual, crawling on the ground instead of flying. A boss with similar capabilities (maybe something the citizens sacrificed humans/beasts to) would be extremely interesting, especially since in Japanese mythology there is a crow with three legs known as Yatagarasu, which could add new insights to what the boss would be capable of.
• hunters and hunting dogs - in Namibia there are people with muzzled hyenas on the end of thick chains, treating them as dogs. Hunters in Bloodborne are often near rabid dogs, or hunting dogs (with blades strapped to them), so maybe a hunter that captured a lycanthrope and wrestled it into submission is not too far-fetched, owing to their level of skill within the game. Muzzled, the werewolf would not overwhelm the player when coupled with the hunter as well, especially when held on the chain - upon reaching a certain point of HP, the chain would snap and change the strategy of fighting dramatically.
• foxes - all the animals in Bloodborne that were not human to start with are scavengers, as the lore would have them surviving by eating the corpses of transformed humans. There are rats, dogs, pigs and crows, but no foxes, despite the area being urban. Currently, I am looking into designing foxes that fear the player, and kill any crows that the player leaves behind (a common thing, as crows are no real threat and players often have to travel across the level to get back to where they were before death). Each crow killed would empower the fox (potentially up to three kills) until it stalked and attacked the player randomly on their journey.
• cats - despite the townsfolk being extremely superstitious, warding off beast-hood with incense, and burning transformed beasts on stakes, giving a feel of old witch-hunts, there are no cats around at all. Either it is to keep the idea of wolves alone, the dogs killed them, or it is to be assumed all the cats were burned immediately in superstition (there are cat corpses in the Chalice Dungeons). Either way, a cat would offer a new, small threat - if they are indeed linked to superstition, perhaps their attack causes ill effects, rising with each consecutive hit. Or perhaps they are barely alive, crawling from bonfires in a mess of smoke, blinding the player as they approach more threatening enemies.
• horses - there are no living horses - every one is frozen or burned or starved on the ground. However, a hunter on horseback would offer a whole new challenge, and could be something to consider.
• weapons - as the beasts are winning the war, enemies with visible signs of injury would be an interesting point to notice, especially as there are several distinct weapons in the game - imagine running across an enemy with the blade of a katana buried in it, when your own character wields the same blade. My favourite idea for this involves a giant wheel weapon called Logarius' Wheel, which is a bludgeoning tool - having it buried in the skull of a boss would be an unusual feature and a possible weak-point of the enemy.
• eyes - early game, the enemies are bestial and wolf-like. Late game, in an area that studied insight in the lore (insight being represented by eyes), creatures have multiple eyes, there are more bug-like enemies, and more unrecognisable/unearthly creatures. Potentially more of the original creatures could be deformed in this way, and gain more eyes, or, as one of the early bosses shows, they could be wearing eyes to try and gain insight. Carrion crows eat the eyes of the dead first, so one dressed in eyes would be an interesting turn of events.
• rats - rats only appear in the main game in the sewers, and they feel fairly under-utilised - a rat-king (an exceedingly rare creature created by baby rats' tails getting tangled and knotted together) would be a much more threatening strong enemy/boss, made of multiple rats that could work together for more unique attacks.

Additionally, DLC for Bloodborne came out yesterday - I intend to play it through and examine the new creature designs, and see if any of my identified areas have been used within the new content - it is a fairly unique opportunity and one I intend to take full advantage of. I will also have to look up more of the lore of the game and see how the new creatures fit across the categories of the original ones.