You forget the 'happy' ending isn't happy for Gehrman. He wants to die. He's been in the dream for God knows how long, and under the thumb of a godly being that he stood no chance against. He wanted to die, if you listen to him in the garden while he sleeps. He wants to be with Maria, and die. But he can't, because the hunt must go on. Even when Gehrman gets the chance to lazily kill himself fighting you, he doesn't. He wants to kill you so would wouldn't have to suffer the same fate he did.
g o d l i e d The Hunt must go on because it's the only hope for humanity. Gehrman sees no possible end to the Scourge and sees continuing to resist the beasts as the only way to survive.
Molly Fitzpatrick So I would force him to die. As it's the best way to let him Rest in piece. Next, I would kill the Great one. Then I would be in charge. Is that it?
it goes on as long as there is an anchor for the hunters dream.. I think it got made because gehman missed maria, wanted to freeze time-so MP came, followed gehrmans beckon (after he fucked up in the fishing hamlet, cursed all to beasthoold with his pals and knwe he had to clean up the shit he did...) I mean.. it says.. (some) old ones are kind ins pirit, but..eh, the are noneuklidian eldritch abominations, so what goes as kindness for them may be eternal imprisonment... but as a proverb says.. be careful what you wish for, you might receive it. and.. I dont thing "the cycle" ever ends, because humanity will always be soo..stupid and curios and only an honest death may cure us. The search for knowledge above else, knowledge above humanity allows humans to transcend and become like old ones- butwell, at the cost of humanity. (i.e. yo choir, why u do make celstial larvae? lemme do that, I can do it better) also ebriEtas. not ebritas. ..you know what being inEbrieate means, right? (also a funny pattern.. Rom is vacuos. hollow. stupid. Ebrietas is drunken, high..inebriated. the brain of mensis-also an artifical old one also..well got born fucked.. Like the one reborn. trying to reproduce an old one always failed..because they seemed to not do it the right way? (unlike us:)
@@mrwindupbird101 my first trip was met with "fuck you, fuck yo squidward looking ass mama, fuck yo punk ass daddy there's a reason he left, and it's because you fucking suck." Or you know the oh so subtle but just as over the top. Crying while downing a bottle of Jack Daniels, and putting to fingers to head in the classic style of "I much rather blow my brains out." Main reason I don't own a gun. I will kill myself without hesitation
"Ey, boss. I slipped in some ancient goo in the catacombs, and now my crippling polio is cured." "Sweet, scoop up all of it and pour that shidd directly into my veins. What's that? We shouldn't start with human trials? Nonsense. The Medical Code of Ethics hasn't even been invented yet."
Laurence: Can I have the old blood? Willem: To use responsibly with regards to our adage Laurence: Yeeeeeeeeeeeees *ACTUALLY FORGETS ADAGE LIKE A BOSS*
Just nitpicking: Actually, medical ethics pretty much exist in bloodborne world. Fake Iosefka references the 'hippocratic oath' in one of her lines. Hippocrates was a real guy who lived in classical Greece, and the Hippocratic Oath is still a thing in our days. The most famous phrase is 'primum non nocere', 'first, do not harm'. Of course, Fake Iosefka and the Healing Church know the ethics but evidently they chose to ignore them.
But the old hunters DLC shows that Humans commited massive crimes against the old ones and amongst themselves as well.They're not truly helpless pawns in this universe.Orphan of Kos seemed so tragic.
HeelPower200 pthumerians(aka the old humans) are the ones that started it all when ebrietas came. Instead of helping her get back to wherever she came from, the pthumerians took advantage of the fact that she was stuck there and kept her for her blood. This lead to the pthumerians ascending beyond humanity and being locked away in the catacombs. So yes i believe you are correct
While humans can have an effect on the Great Ones, it's implied that even that is just a result of behind-the-scenes Great Ones like Oedon or Moon Presence pulling the strings. And, let's be honest, any challenge that humans have overcome in regards to Great Ones has unleashed an even worse malice onto them. (Killing Kos created the Hunter's Nightmare, defeating Rom shatters the veil between the seen and unseen, the School of Mensis entering the Nightmare turned Yahar'Gul into a hellpit of undead, and, of course, the biggest one being that elevating their existence with the Old Blood unleashed the plague of beasts.)
AlyZa his mother died because of humans, and now he will kill anyone on sight, yeah pretty depressing, but you'll also grow to hate him as the hardest game in the Soulsborne franchise so...
Very insightful take on the themes of cosmic horror, for me, the endings of Bloodborne are all excellent for one important reason. At the very beginning of the game, upon waking up in the Clinic, you find a hand written note reading simply: "Seek Paleblood to transcend the Hunt." That's your only motivating factor in the entire game, the only reason your hunter is doing what they're doing, pursuing Paleblood to escape their new cyclical fate. What is brilliant about this singular driving factor is the payoff, all three endings of the game are you transcending the Hunt. In the Yharnam Sunrise ending, you awake from the dream and forget all that you knew, you return to the normal world free from ever taking part in the Hunt again. In the Honored Wishes ending, its a bit more cynical and depressing, but nonetheless you do transcend the actual hunting part of the Hunt. You don't have to venture back out into the horrors of Yharnam anymore, you can stay peacefully in the Hunters Dream, guiding new hunters without participating in their grisly work yourself. In the Childhood's Beginning ending you not only transcend the Hunt, but your very humanity, free from the frailty of your prior mortal form. All endings are bleak and ultimately hopeless in their own ways, but the fact remains that on a pure objective based mindset, all three endings can be considered a "victory".
Very well put. The endings are all different feelings of “I won, but at what cost?” Either you forget all you’ve been through, meaning everything you’ve learned and grown from is just thrown away and your life doesn’t improve. Or, you can leave the cycle, only to enter a worse, more tormenting one. And who knows what horrors await when you turn into a great one. The whole game shows you that nothing good happens whenever a human tries to reach celestial enlightenment, could your mind even comprehend the eldritch truth, let alone the madness of having to live across multiple planes of existence? The worst irony is how each ending leads you to new game plus, pushing you towards returning to the cycle once again… even after you escape you’re doomed to repeat your mistakes over and over. No matter how many new “endings” you find, you can never truly transcend the hunt.
Just something to note: The Old Ones are sympathetic in nature, and are often shown doing things to help. Its the Amygdalas and kin that are hostile to mankind, most likely because they are humans turned into monsters, or because they are Old Ones/Left Behind Old Ones that have had hostile interaction with humanity through the Healing Church
Yes and no. The Old Ones aren't inherently unsympathetic, but neither are they altruistic. They have their own plans, their own factions, their own goals, and they interact with humanity in ways that they think will help them reach whatever ends they pursue. The "benevolent" Old Ones (Rom, Moon Presence, Ebrietas, &c.) are clearly using humanity for their own ends. Case in point Ebrietas gives her blood to the Choir, who uses it for their stuff, but, uh, oops, monsters. Rom was giving out rituals and spells, but he was also hiding the amygdala from the world and basically tricked the School of Mensis into giving themselves a total lobotomy in order to create the dream dimension that Mergo would be born in.
Folding Ideas True, but perhaps from their point of view they were doing something good for humanity. Its also worth noting that Rom is not fully a great one, and neither is Ebrietas. The Great Ones aren't able to come to the physical realm, nor do they want to. Meanwhile, you have ones like Kos who are actually bennevolant (to an extent since all Great Ones seem to warp people in different ways). Once again, like with so many factions and stories, this is a game where intentions are not 100% clear, and empathy is not properly established in the sense that people barely understand each other's motives. Ones like Formless Oedon might be completely willing to do horrible shit (making Rom, giving out dangerous rites and rituals) to get their child, but ones like Kos are obviously willing to coexist in a much nicer manner. After all, wouldn't it be nice as a fisherman to be able to swim better and breath underwater? And she did punish those horrible Burgenworth people for doing these terrible things to her children ("biological" and adopted)
Yes, exactly. It's very much supposed to reflect a values dissonance, as the Old Ones' idea of "helping" is more akin to how we interact with pets or animals in a zoo than how we interact with each other, or even with children.
Becoming a great one is the best ending because a note in the game states: The great ones are sympathetic in spirit. So the player character, depending on how beastlike he has become ovr the course of the game just might fight for the people.
you might be right, other great ones are also sympathetic in spirit and look what good it's done. thats the nice thing about soulsborne, very interpretation heavy.
Thing is - "sympathetic" requires a frame of reference - which we don't have when it comes to Old ones. After all, Ebrietas is pretty chill until you attack her and yet literally all of the suffering that came from Paleblood - the downfall of the Pthumerians and the likely downfall of Man all came from her pale blood, which she gives without protest. What an Old one considers "sympathetic" could be completely different from what humans would.
It all depends, it's kind of an esoteric good ending because you don't know what exactly ascending to the next stage implies for humanity in Bloodborne. Admittedly, the situation with Ebrietas got fucked up more because of humanity than because of Ebrietas herself. She was just trying to help, humans took advantage of that.
Actually saying that the Hunter no longer cares about humanity once they transform into an infant Great One and that no ending will bode well for the common folk is not actually true. The PS4 trophy you get for the transformation ending states that the Hunter will lift humanity into it's next stage, which does heavily imply that the Hunter will help the rest of mankind transcend into another plane of existence. Whether or not you view this as a bad thing, one thing is clear; the Hunter does not forget about humanity once they transform into a Great One.
Not only that, but you were a human too you know what it's like to see horror and tragedy, remember the girl that wanted you to find her mother and you tried to save her but got her and her older sister killed. It makes you very sympathetic to humanity, since a lot of them are victims of the church and the hunt.
The Monolith A bit late, but let’s not forget the implication that the Plain Doll gains sentience through the feelings of affection of those close to it. Gehrman has lost all warmth for her by the time the Hunter came around. The Hunter arrives, and she comes to life through their connection to her (I’m sure everyone remembers walking up to this Doll and going “Are you good?” during their first play through). The fact that she doesn’t become inactive again when the Hunter ascends says that they remember these human emotions. At the very least, they still care for this creation. Even in the Yharnam Sunrise ending (I believe that Yharnam is a concrete place rather than an incubation chamber for Mergo), the Doll’s original form exists and can be found in the Hunter’s Workshop. She’s already shown to be able to feel the weight of Maria and communicate one of her tics (the twitching finger). What’s to stop this thread of a connection from reaching past the night?
Ren Alexander doesn't she appear to become sentient because the pc didnt have the insight to comprehend a living doll until a certain point? Theres so reason to think the hunter would feel any sort of connection to a random doll that would cause her to wake up ,she doesn't come to life until the hunter gets some insight into eldritch beings
Actually you might not live a happy life, you are still a hunter, still filled with the blood, and still doomed to one day be consumed by it. Eileen and Djura both remember the dream, Eileen even talks about the doll, you may wake up, but you are still bound to the hunters fate. And some of the Old Ones do care about humanity, Ebrietas does, but they do not truly comprehend what their actions will do, as a former human, you might be willing to guide humanity better. Maybe you will turn out like Rom, mindlessly defending humanity even if you don't comprehend it any more. It is unsaid, but the best ending may not be so hopeless.
Actually if you kill the orphan in the dlc you break the curse. Those already in it stay there but its heavily implied that nobody else will end up there.
At least with the third ending, a small vestige of your human self remains, since you do or say something (telepathically?) that makes the Doll laugh. I guess that's the intention, at least. Plus, you have superpowers now, so it's like the end of the first Matrix, minus Keanu Reeves.
Yeah, I personally saw that ending as overwhelmingly happy and beautiful. The Good Hunter ascended to The Good Old One, a tiny spec of hope in an unending war of cosmic horror.
I definitely think that's true - look at Rom. Rom was a human previously as well, and Rom is holding back the Blood Moon to try and protect humanity (something the other Great Ones aren't too concerned with or are openly opposed to). It definitely makes sense that the hunter would retain at least some vestige of his humanity or motivations.
From what I've heard, having never played the game, the doll can only be alive as long as someone loves her. The fact that she is still walking and talking in the end means that the Hunter-turned-Old-One is still capable of caring, and it still knows and cares about her. Olson said this creature the protagonist has turned into may not have reason to care about humans, but it's at least able to.
Toshimi1043 Perhaps. However, the Doll may be in fact a Great One. Remember: 'All Great Ones lose their children, and then yearn for a surrogate.' The doll holds the ascended hunter tenderly - the hunter whose sickly spirit she emboldened with her ability to turn blood echoes into strength. What does the trophy say again? Something similar to "Childhood's Beggining?"
The true ending of Dark Souls has another really interesting part. The Doll is very likely possessed by a great one and ill explain why with massive spoilers. 1. We know Maria committed suicide upon finding the body of Kos and the vivisection of the orphan in the fishing hamlet. 2. Gerhman found her and buried her in the abandoned workshop, we find her hair pin, a grave with a bone capable of quickening and another grave with a statue that looks very much like maria. However you want to decide, it is very likely her body was found and buried in the workshop by Gerhman. Gerhman then summoned the moon presence and the dream was born, he did this with an umbilical cord, likely take from Kos' body. 3. Gerhman made a huge mistake, he didn't understand that you need three thirds of an umbilical cord to be able to fight/be a proto great one yourself and became a slave to the moon presence. The doll hints that humanity was creator and it would love its creator in a discussion she has in the dream. She talks about being created and loved humans because humans created her and wouldn't humans have this same feeling to their creator. 4. the Doll is a recreation of Maria and i believe Gerhman tried to resurrect Maria in the doll. It failed though, the doll is linked with joy at seeing the pendant and freedom from this connection on Maria's nightmare form dying but the doll is still very different from maria. Maria is shown to be much stronger willed for example. 5. the doll is a great one or at least possessed by one. Firstly the doll has paleblood, even Wilhem who is very alien has grey blood. The doll, along with having paleblood, also has eyes on in the inside of her head. You can clip through the back of her head to see this. She can also dream, something only sentient things can do, and is later found talking to the moon presence to let you go, very rare dialogue but should be on fextralife. She can move between dreams and planes and knows of the great ones. Finally she can help you level up and control blood echoes, i know its a gameplay thing but she is the only thing in the game which can do this. It is a huge amount of power when you think about. 6. If we go with the idea that the doll is a great one and not the resurrected spirit of maria this great one will have an agenda as almost all of them do. The agenda for most great ones though boils down to having a child or replacing their lost child. Moon Presence and Amygdala are expections explained at the bottom. I think the doll great one has figured out a way to get a child. 7. it is you, she adopts you. she is waiting for a human to transcend the hunt and be adopted by her. This is why she stays in the dream despite being shown she can dream and go to whatever dream she wants, she could just wander off and never come back. After you evolve she is the one to find you and doesn't begrudge your murdering of the moon presence, in fact she takes you in from the cold in a very motherly fashion. So the final ending shows that the doll got her scheme completed and has her child. it is also very sad that Gerhman's rash attempt at resurrecting Maria, whom he has a grave for, books on how to talk to girls and it is noted in the game he never found the stomach to tell her how he felt, ultimately failed and resulted in a great one taking the doll over and Gerhman's imprisonment for ages. notes 1. Gerhman calls for laurence to come get him. Laurence seems honourable in what we see of him but he became a beast, lost his head, was overtaken by a parasite and was forced into the nightmare that Maria created upon the trauma of the Orphan of Kos' pain. Gerhman was trapped and never studied enough to know he would need a whole umbilical cord. this is important for understanding why no one who knew what Gerhman did tried to rescue him. 2. the moon presence doesn't have children but like i said the doll hints that human was created instead of evolved naturally. This means the moon presence is very smart. All great ones lose their children but by having all of humanity that is very hard to have happen because humanity would have to go extinct, strike one on the smart part, and two it got gerhman to make the hunt which keeps humanity safe too. The moon presence is one of the brightest great ones you come across, the one reborn being quite dopey. 2b. in killing the moon presence though and ending the hunter's dream it does mean you have doomed humanity. hunters won't have infinite life thanks to the hunters dream, more testiment to the power of the moon presence, but people will continue to use blood so the next night of the hunt will go unchecked. 3. I dont think the amygdalas are as powerful as people think they are. they have the ability to live in dreams but also nightmares. Most great ones prefer to live in dreams it seems. The amygdalas however don't seem to breed nor have a great amount of interest in mankind, they focused on the lorian civilisation. I believe amygdalas are more parasitic, living off fear and nightmares and don't really focus on much else. i mention this because lots of this is based on the theory great ones care about their familial ties about all else and amygdalas don't help this theory. Thanks for reading
A bit of an error in your plot summary. Laurence left Byergenwerth College to found the Healing Church. The upper echelons of the healing church split into the Choir and the School of Mensis.
Sort of. I simplified it because I didn't want to get bogged down further explaining the School of Mensis as I was running out of space on screen. The Choir, in its proto-form, pre-dates the Church, as it was their communion with Ebrietas (found in the Labyrinth) that formed the backbone of ideology that ultimately spurred Laurence to form the Church (as opposed to pure study, which is what Willem advocated). The Choir formed the leadership of the new church, but respect was always paid to their roots in Byergenwerth, the two being inextricably linked, despite being formally separate. Time passes and a schism forms in the Choir over methodology, leading to the "reformist" School of Mensis. Also for simplicity I left out that Mergo, the space baby, was being carried by Queen Yharnam.
You also left out Loran, a land whose inhabitants also discovered the secret of the old blood, but at the end everyone ended up transformed into monsters and the place was consumed by the sands (and became accessible only through chalice rituals). I'll speculate that the discovery of the fate of Loran was what motivated the creation of the hunt, as some people made the dreaded extrapolation that Yharnam would be next.
@@B1aQQ The Choir doesn't predate the Healing Church. The Healing Church decided to continue the studies at Byrgenwerth by opening up the Orphanage where you find the Celestial Emissary. The Church decided to do this because the upper echelons were composed of Laurence and those guys that would wind up becoming the School of Mensis. The Orphanage was both a place where the church got themselves guinea pigs and handpicked a select few to form an elite think tank of scholars (Yurie) , doctors (the Impostor), tomb prospectors (Forgotten Madman) and maybe clerics? I'm not really sure about the clerics. And then, The Choir became part of the elite delegation of the Healing Church because through their studies they managed to use Lumenflower to create Kin which would later result in the creation of the Celestial Emissary which allowed them to communicate with Ebrietas. Ebrietas led them to the discovery of blood ministrations and you can see the effects of this in the game proper.
None of the endings are really negative, you just have to be the sort to want them. The awakening ending simply has you live a normal life; it's actually debatable if the world will go down this path again. You slaughtered a bloody swathe through the various entities responsible for the old ones being attached to the world. Only Gehrman, locked in the hunt, remains-and he, and the hunt, prevent new old ones from encroaching too far. It's entirely possible humanity could survive for quite a long time, given that, unlike true lovecraft horror, there is a self-correcting mechanism preventing the old ones from truly taking over reality (namely, the Moon Presence being antagonistic to the other old ones). The second ending has you become subservient to the hunt, but this also isn't a bad thing. The Moon Presence has a sort of ephemeral beauty to it, and has empowered you throughout the game. In a way, you become close to a true god, replacing your mentor. And the Old Ones are sympathetic in spirit; The Moon Presence may even, in the end, love you, and it's embrace in the end is almost sexual. The loss of a leg is a small price to pay for the true love of a godlike being, for some, particularly one dedicated to, apparently, protecting humanity from it's kin; and a role you apparently aid it in yourself. The final ending has you become a God-in it, you are truly special, truly powerful, truly divine. You have managed to make humanity into something new, breaking the cycle and introducing a new, human, Old One; for unlike the others, you *were* once human, not simply *born* of humanity. If there is a happy ending to the cosmic horror story, it's this; humanity becomes a figure on the cosmic stage itself. That we don't resemble humans anymore is trivial. *If* this is your happy ending, of course.
MrCharles7994 I would like humans to still be human-like, but ending 3 is for sure my ending, because I feel like the Hunter can be very benevolent towards humanity once they’re a Great One.
I'm one of those people that thinks the one where you become a slave to a boring world is the worst ending. When I played threw the game the guy in the hunters dream asked me if I wanted to submit and be set free and I was like hell yeah, get me the fuck out of here old dude. Thankyou.
Ehh, Gherman doesn't seem very happy with his role. If you have enough insight, you can hear him cry and complain in his sleep. I think it's easily the worst ending. In the ending where you let Gherman kill you, you're still yourself (you only lose the memory of the last 12 hours) and you get to live your life in blissful ignorance. I personally don't think knowing the truth (all the stuff about the Great Ones) is mandatory to live a good, fullfiling life. And in the last ending, well, if you're okay with the fact that you transcend your humanity to the point that you become something else entirely (which, in my book, is pretty close to dying and being replaced with someone else), you're a god and that sounds pretty cool. Being a slave sucks in comparison. :c
I'm gonna put it out there that the way you described the ending where you replace Gehrman is a whole new level of jumping to conclusions. Not only is there no proof the GREAT ONE (stop using old ones in place of great ones) actually loves you despite the hug (which is more of a restraining move than anything) and I cant name a single thing sexual about that scene. It doesn't love you any more than it did Gehrman, you're simply a new peice of the machine that it ultimately controls. Not to mention that Gehrman lost his leg far before taking over the dream as the old hunters dlc video shows, so you dont lose your leg for that either.
Two things: 1. The Choir developed from the Healing Church and not the other way around. Provost Willem took exceptional steps to transcend humanity by gaining insight, but he was wise enough to know where to stop. His apprentice Laurence wished to go a step further by using the Old Blood to commune with the Great Ones. However he didn't go far enough either, and thus the scourge of beasts began. Only after the formation of the Healing Church did the Choir form as the Church's leaders, delving into the labyrinth beneath Yharnam to discover relics such as the Great Isz Chalice which allowed them to commune with Ebrietas who would become the object around their worship and study. 2. I see the Childhood's Beginning ending in a more positive light. You break the cycle and succeed in Willem's endeavor. You have feared the Old Blood and did not become a beast while also avoiding the fate that befell the School of Mensis that was melted into the stillborn Brain of Mensis when they communed with Mergo. Of course this also means that with humanity's next step in evolution, Yharnam is probably no more. Yharnam never had a chance; it was both figuratively and literally built upon Pthumeru which succumbed to the ravages of the Old Blood. Trying to save Yharnam would little different than the Healing Church's efforts to hunt the beasts which led to the creation of the Hunter's Dream. The only positive ending is to rise above it all as a Great One to lead humanity and build something new.
Also the moon rune says that "the great ones that inhabit the nightmare are sympathetic in spirit, and often answer when called upon". it says in spirit not in action. so while they may believe in the plight of humans and want better of them and to help, their interactions with humanity may in and of itself cause chaos to them. What would by aid by the great ones standard could be torturous war to humanity based upon their perception. But It seems that the Moon Presence is a Great One that feeds upon other Great Ones. Using the hunt as its feeding ground. The death of each infant Great One that occurs to prolong the hunt, the Moon Presence consumes the hunters who gave it this food, then shackles them to the hunters dream to continue providing him sustenance. Hunters for centuries have acted as this dudes Ubereats. So by the act of becoming a great one by fulling realizing the umbilical cord and obtaining a true connection to the eldritch truth ascending to this level, we actually threaten the Moon Presence. Rom for example is a human that nearly ascended to a true great one. She is considered a Kin Great One. so they are a celestial entity, a kin (a sibling), but not fully realized as a great one. Rom is the Diet Coke of Great Ones, pretty close, but not the full thing. They act as a barrier to prevent regular Yarnamites from fully succumbing to the horrors. The benevolent/sympathetic Great Ones cannot have the place fall to madness because then the Moon Presence could feed upon them in that plane without anything to slow it. So they toil so that eventually A hunter will be strong enough, skilled enough, and insightful enough, to actually ascend to their level and stop the Moon Presence. This theory is most interesting to me because it does not consider all Great Ones to be collectively good or evil or working together. It shows them to have groups, factions, difficulties, and problems with one another. They have their own goals and tasks that can stand in contrast to one another. Maybe the Moon Presence is not feeding on the great ones just to get some food. But by consuming other Great Ones, or rather fragments of them, It elevates itself to more powerful dimensions, potentially to contest an even greater entity. It just represents the moon. imagine a presence representing the planet, or the sun, or the galaxy, or the very fabric of the cosmos. representing the moon is pretty pathetic compared to the grand scale of I am a super nova coalescing into a black hole that will be the center of a galaxy. So this may be my personal theory but I like it and I don't think it goes directly against the games lore.
TetrisClock I absolutely 100% agree that childhood beginnings is the best ending possible There was no hope left for yharnam, the only way was to rebuild from scratch and as a great one you can absolutely do that
@@thefiestaman4864 - your interpretation is that the Moon Presence is a villain who feeds upon other Great Ones. Another interpretation is that the Moon Presence is the father of Mergo. Mergo's parents are Queen Yharnam and Flora the Moon Presence. You, the player character, got conscripted by the Moon Presence to free his child from captivity in the Nightmare of Mensis. Once you free Mergo your contract is complete, and you're free to go.
Also the Player character came to Yarhnam specifically looking for "Paleblood", which is related to the game's true final boss. Not necessarily to get Blood Ministration. We know this because in the first cutscene the Blood Minister says "Oh, Paleblood?" as though the Player themselves brought it up. Miyazaki has even said the player scrawls the note you find immediately in the clinic themselves before the Blood Ministration takes their memories away.
Sort of. The transfusions *are* Blood Ministration. Iosefka's Clinic is basically the generic knockoff of the Healing Church's Name Brand because the whole situation in Yharnam has reach the point of commoditization.
+Folding Ideas Paleblood is very specifically about the Moon Presence and the bloodmoon. We know this both from the developer interviews but also the notes left behind in Yarhar Gul and the Lecture Hall. The opening cinematic makes it clear the player specifically asked about Paleblood, to which the minister basically says "haven't heard of it. but if it's blood related Yarnahm has it somewhere. The best way to start looking is to undergo Yarnahms signature blood ministration." its a minor nitpick when overall i agree with your thesis.
Right, I think the point I edited out in haste was that Paleblood is (as far as The Hunter or anyone else is aware) is a flavour of blood ministration. People get all kinds of different blood for different purposes, and the Hunter is seeking "Paleblood". What The Hunter (or, really anyone other than Gherman) doesn't appear to know is that Paleblood is basically code for The Moon Presence. So it was, in essence, a scripting split between what the hunter *thinks* they're looking for and what they're *actually* looking for.
I think that Paleblood is -- in addition to referring to the Moon Presence -- also the main character's illness. I tend to think that the Bloodborne universe -- at least during the night of the hunt -- follows a weird dream logic where real things can also be symbols for other real things. So the Moon Presence is certainly a real thing, but it is also representative of the main character's affliction.
sweetMoriarty same. transcendence could give you special access to knowledge and knowledge for some of us is more valuable than the forgettable and mundane lives that most people live
***** and if you hadn't noticed, bloodborne takes inspiration from HP Lovecraft, AKA the guy who coined the term "great old ones" and "outer gods", both of which are terms corrupted and altered to fit into bloodborne and describe the kin of the stars. hence why they call them "gods", "higher beings", "old ones" and "great ones" interchangeably in the game. as the video indicates. if you don't want an actual answer, don't start a conversation in a public forum.
Yal Rathol I think that is fabiboy_87's point... We're talking about Bloodborne so the correct terminology would be 'Great Ones' since that is what they are called in the game. The game is highly influenced by the world of H.P Lovecraft and they do not try to hide it (Just look at the Lesser Amygdalas. They're a Cthulhu rip off if there ever was one). However, it is not the same world so calling them The Old Ones or Great Old Ones is technically incorrect. They are never referred to as 'The Old Ones'. That is the term coined by HP Lovecraft.
Malcolm Alden _"...bloodborne calls them the great ones..._ _" hence why they call them "gods", "higher beings" "old ones" and "great ones" interchangeably in the game."_ i already said that. and i seem to recall at least one item description labeling them as "old ones". i may be misremembering that however. and as for cthulu rip-offs, kos is closer than the amygdala, being the monster from the deep with the tentacles. amygdala would probably be more like shub niggurath, what with all the black-spawn everywhere. and they're all terms coined by lovecraft. the entire genre is named after him for a reason.
1.)Pre-Dark Souls: End the cycle of timelessness to bring about the reign of gods, thus ending the age of ancients (dragons) 2.)Dark Souls: End the cycle of kindling to bring about the Dark Age, thus ending the reign of gods. Darkness is often synonymous with humanity in the series. The Dark Age = age of humanity. 3.)Bloodborne: End the cycle of hunting to bring about the Era of the Great Ones, thus ending the Age of Humanity/The Dark Age. ITS JUST A CYCLE OF CYCLES THERE IS NO ESCAPE
You are correct; there is no escape. And also my point about the futility of trying to weight action on any scale beyond life as you know it. You can't, it doesn't mean anything if you could, and you end up being miserable regardless. So do as you need to enough for the life you have and don't agonize about how you relate to the cycle.
at least in dark souls 2 aldia implies that we might do something different beyond light or dark theres also the creation of the new painting in dark souls 3
These cycles are just a fan "law". Bloodborne has no in-lore lawlike cycle at all. Dark Souls has one but... Spoiler: It can be broken and we have done so in the lord of hollows/usurpation ending. Gwyn's First Sin is the only reason that the age of fire gets repeated. The other endings will still lead to the world state in Ringed City. The only real constant in Dark Souls is not an inevitable cycle, but rather inevitable change. It's however unclear whether the dark soul has a limit as its defining feature is endlessness (endless space of the abyss, endless depth of the dark sigils, endless life of true humans). The problem is that the game doesn't provide enough evidence to allow us to believe (for certain) that the events of Ringed City could occur after the usurpation ending. The sunlight in the DLC's second timestate is confusing as it's somehow piercing through the clouds. However, since this light vanishes when we confront Gael, and doesn't return when he's killed, I think it might just be a case of pathetic fallacy
Interesting interpretation, but I think there's more to it than only this. The basic idea is that Bloodborne is an open book written in a different language, based on Miyazaki's experiences of reading foreign books with little knowledge of the languages, so he essentially filled in the blanks with his own imagination. You never fully learn what insight there is to know about the Great Ones and instead, I think Gehrman's words of "You'll forget the dream" are rather symbolic of you losing connection to the dream and thus are able to live on, eventually forgetting the dream, but not like a mindwipe, at least I don't think so. Djura even says he 'no longer dreams' so he does in fact remember what he went through, to the point of having fully realized the beasts are people. Furthermore, the idea that the 'cycle' will repeat is a bit rushing ahead to me. True, it would have been ideal for the story of this game to mirror Dark Souls in that you're simply carrying out the events of a single.
...of many cycles, but the endings seemingly point to different things to me, aside from the 'bad ending.' We have to differenciate between the 'hunt' that the humans do and the 'HUNT' that the Moon Presence contracts you to. The two are bound because Gehrman exists, but aside from the first hunter's existence, their end goals are vastly different. The beastly scourge was caused by humanity's misuse of the old blood, as pointed out by Willem, they were 'thinking on the simplest of planes.' They misused the blood, causing their mutations, not the birthing of Great Ones. The birthing of the Great Ones seemingly causes those related to the pthumerians, like Arianna, to fall pregnant. And so, in essence, the hunters of the dream are essentially high class hitmen the Moon Presence sends after his (her......it's?) opponent's children. But to me, the central thing that caused the misery was never the pure existence of the Great Ones, in fact, many an item description states them to be sympat
+darklord884 ...sympathetic to humanity and most of the game's disasters are caused by human actions. The Healing Church and Laurence's corruption of Yharnam, the burning of Old Yharnam, the murder of Kos and the ransacking of the Fishing Hamlet by Byrgenwerth, the INSANE sacrifices committed by the School of Mensis under Micolash's idiotic attempts to contact Mergo. And to cap it off, Rom's ascension. Rom, the Vacuous (or in the original version, 'Stupid') Spider is assumed to have been a student of Byrgenwerth once, but became the monstrosity she is now (yes, 'she') because of the same thing the Good Hunter does in the 'Truth ending.' Consuming three third cords and ascending beyond humanity. But alas, it caused her brain to be stillborn, turning her into something not filled with knowledge of eternal power or anything cool, but rather, as a worthless caterpillar, unable to do anything, but defend herself. Many speculated that the state she is in, a caterpilar, means she hasn't reach
+darklord884 ...reached maturity, a.k.a. the full understanding of her power yet. My interpretation, however, is that she IS the not yet fully understood power. She turned braindead because of the thing she did, ingesting three third cords, but, like with the blood, it's 'thinking of the simplest of planes'. To me, it's not that the Great Ones control the world, but that humans are stupid and don't know how to deal with supernatural, godlike beings. The choir had Ebrietas helping them, all they did is lock her up and take blood from her, corrupting the city. And so, to me, the sunrise ending is an ending of hope. You lose connection to the dream, but retain the things you earned, having wiped out the cause of beasthood and broke down the nightmare's clutches on the city (and possibly, the world) and are free to walk off, do what you wish, live out the rest of your life. Sure, there miht be some other dumbasses who mighht cause such problems again, but the trophy's description, to me, s
+darklord884 ...signifies it's meaning perfectly. To me, that ending's meaning is that you DID live through it. That you escaped and managed to reach another day with your valiant effort. Not without scars or haunting nightmarefuel, butwhat do scars matter when you have reached what seemed impossible. Bringing back the day. And though you might deem it depressing, as it possibly signifies necessary ignorance in order to retain sanity, to me, it signifies the hope of morning always returning after a dark night. Like the little girl says. "I ain't scared. Morning always comes." In the truth ending, you become a brainded god in a broken world, implying you reset the reality, by thinking on the simplest of planes, consumption. In short, you were a dummy and meddled in shit you weren't supposed to and now you are an even bigger dummy for it. In the 'bad ending' you might free Gehrman, but who's to say killing him didn't move him somewhere even worse? The meaning of that fight is essentially
+darklord884 ...him trying to protect the Moon Presence, if you think about it. If a hunter gets too mad with power, it is up to the hunter's helper to settle things. He's just doing his job, trying to end the hunt and you murder him because you don't want to lose the power the dream allows you to. Since the hunter doesn't speak, motivations might be hard to see, but Gehrman's response makes it clear what he sees in you. In the 'mercy' ending, sure, you don't mercy kill Gehrman, but you are free from the dream to move on and do as you please, with the doll wishing you luck in future endeavors, saying "may you find your worth in the waking world." To me, thoughh, it's not about happy or depressing, but man's wish to meddle in things it doesn't understand. And the mercy ending is the acceptance that "yes, there are things I shouldn't mess with. And I am okay with that." But that's just my interpretation of the story. That's what's amazing about this game (something I find severely lacki
I like to think that the waking from the hunter's dream is just waking from a LITERAL dream, and you actually just fell asleep outside while drunk in a completely normal, non-horrific Victorian world, and you're actually just an old-timey alcoholic
Hey man, just discovered your channel through Line Goes Up, and seeing that you've also made a short video on Bloodborne brought a huge smile to my face. Keep doing what you're doing king.
You are totally wrong about the first and last ending. The first: Gherman says "you will forget the dream". It does not mean you will lost your insight of the world. Eileen, a Hunter of Hunters, said she also was freed of the dream by Gherman. This means she will no longer go to the hunter's deram. But she still remembers about all. Even the doll. About the third ending: Man, read the Trophy. It says that you will lift mankind to its next childhood. Not that you will no longer care about us. I hope I have helped.
Marcos Lima The Childhood Beginning trophy description is very blurry, since nobody knows how much humanity or understanding capacity the hunter has after becoming a slug, we can't be sure that he will care about humanity at all.
Eileen says that's her last time right before she dies and is never seen again. I assumed that meant that when she died right then, she left the dream and that's why she's absent from there on out. That could just mean that you were the first human to truly ascend by becoming an infant Great One, mankind doesn't have to refer to all the people still living just those to come. And remember they are only "sympathetic in nature" which is a vague way of saying "I'd like to help but I have other plans".
She clearly does remember the Dream though. If you attack her when you first meet her and then let her kill you (or legitimately try to kill her and fail) she'll tell you to "tell the Doll she says hello." If she didn't remember the Dream at all, how could she remember the Doll, or that it's alive enough that saying hi to it would be meaningful?
I stubled upon your channel whilst trying to stay awake in a feeble attempt to fix my sleep schedule, and even though I probably won't remember much of your videos I greatly appreciate them. So thank you for giving me things to think about. Sorry for any misspelling, English isn't my first language and I am heavily deprived of sleep.
I always found the idée of there being a good ending in souls games funny even more in dark souls where you becoming a dictator that destroy's humanity and rules over a dark dead world is considered the good ending
I believe people just don't really enjoy the idea of being played or being made a fool. So even though the 'good' ending isn't necessarily good, at least it's a choice you made, the choice of not being a pawn. That gives people a better feeling, regardless of it's consequences...
Whenever someone argues that I'm a fool for choosing such endings, I point out that I'm not a slave if I agree that the outcome is better than the alternative. So what if Frampt wanted me to link the fires in Dark Souls, or the Archangels wanted me to bring peace at gunpoint to the world in Shin Megami Tensei? I truly did think those choices were better (or the one my character would think to be better). And it's not like Kaath or Lucifer weren't manipulating the player in the opposite endings.
The "so what" isn't that Frampt and the "gods" "wanted" you to do things; it's that they try to trick you into doing those things, and under false pretenses, at that. I don't see how you can think Kaathe is manipulative. He doesn't tell you to do anything. All he does is tell you what's actually going on, and that linking the fire isn't your only option.
Not really though. In Dark Souls, the fire feeds the gods and the demigods, ending the age of fire begins the age of humanity. The 'Dark Souls' are humans.
The flames were meant to fade, ending Gwyn's age of light and usher in the age of dark where humanity rules but Gwyn perverted the course of nature and used his own soul to keep the first flame going which is called "the first sin" and in doing so he doomed the world to a perpetual cycle of light and dark "the flames will fade but only darkness will remain" but from the embers it reignites, with the cycle starting all over again so whichever ending you choose they both have the same outcome, that is the so called moral of the story I guess.
there are exactly 4 characters in soulsborne who have the power to actually make a change in the world. gwyn, aldia, gherman and the unkindled. gwyn brought the cycle of fire and dark into being due to his fear of the encroaching dark by burning his lordsoul in the first flame. aldia learned how to smash the cycle, by merging light and dark powers, but he and vendrick were simply too late to have it work. gherman, by contacting the moon presence, birthed the hunter's dream and allowed the moon presence to begin hunting other great ones with the hunters as a pawn. and the unkindled is actually able to end the cycle of fire and dark, and not be too late like aldia and vendrick. all those people, and exactly four of them have enough power to change something. and of them, only one is a player character. feel powerless yet?
You can't possibly predict what the Hunter will do after becoming an infant Great One though. And with the Moon Presence gone the world is bound to change in significant ways. In fact the Hunter killed a bunch of Great Ones and ended the Hunter's Nightmare as well as a few others along the way, so I'd say they did an immense change to the world. At the very least the Hunter's Dream cycle will end.
Yourson Isold sure, but any choice they make will simply result in them following in the footsteps of other characters if they choose to remain in contact with the world. if they choose to help humanity, free of charge? ebriatas and rom beat'ya to it. if they choose to seek a surrogate child? every great one's already doing that. if they choose to say "fuck it" and mind their own business? mergo and the brain of mensis weren't exactly doing anything. if they choose to assault other great ones? the moon presence wasn't doing too bad at that. if they choose to uplift humanity? what do you think ebriatas was doing, just chilling in a cold dungeon? and mother kos was granting eyes left and right if you believe micolash. if they choose to help out, but not uplift? mother kos got killed doing that. if they choose to try and make a child? not only has formless oedon tried, he succeeded in mergo. so did kos. if they choose to make a nightmare and hide in it? mergo, moon presence (which you've inherited), amygdala. if they choose to just chill and fuck around? amygdala's doing that all over the place. ANY choice they make has already been made. the three exceptions to that are ending the hunter's dream, the hunter's nightmare and the nightmare of mensis, which isn't a change in the world it's returning the world to how it was for the millions of years before yharnam existed. the only way the deific good hunter could do something new is by retreating from the world into the dreamlands or beyond, which would mean never making a change in the world again. anything they could do has already been tried. and not just by humans. the pthumeru civilization is much older than the human one, and they were ALL uplifted into kin when their queen got pregnant with mergo. so not only is you uplifting a species not new, the last group has gone nearly extinct for trying it. can you name a change the hunter could make in the world that hasn't already been attempted, isn't currently being attempted or doesn't mean just returning the world to how it used to be?
You are making a leap in logic there. You assume that "if someone tried it before it's not a change to the world" which is completely off the mark. Yes, Kos and Rom tried to help humans, but failed to do it right (and Kos got killed for it too). The Moon Presence used pawns to kill other Great Ones, but for reasons that we don't understand and that might have been none beneficial to humanity. What if this time only those get killed that are "harmful"? Even if the Hunter infant Great One does the same things that have been done before, as long as they *actually succeed* for once it will have a strong impact on the world. For one they might not let themselves get killed like Kos. They might be able to help humanity in ways that don't result in Scourges and curses. You have to understand the main difference to most other Great Ones here. The Hunter does not become just Kin, like Rom and most Phtumerians. They are a full-fledged Great One, with the power of the Moon Presence and the knowledge of *what it is to be human*. That is an entirely different perspective from almost all other Great Ones. The brain of Mensis as far as I know is the only "human turned Great One" that ever barely succeeded aside from the player character, but it was a failure in almost every regard aside from ascending. It couldn't do anything. Let's rectify that. Wouldn't a being like that with knowledge of both worlds be much more adept at bringing meaningful change?
Yourson Isold i'm not assuming that "if you tried it before it's not a change in the world", i'm assuming that "if you tried before and nothing happened, or if you tried before and failed because what you attempted was either poorly thought out or impossible, it's not going to lead to a change in the world". kos and ebriatas tried to help humans and were killed for it because they were alien and scary. what, you think the hunter's squid body is less scary than either of them? especially if you imagine what they might grow up to be. if they try and help, someone's gonna try and kill them, and eventually, someone will succeed. rom is in a slightly different boat since rom was brainless and couldn't choose to help or not. who's to say a great one is harmful or not? who's to say the humans below won't take offense? how do you know that the moon presence wasn't just killing harmful ones? because let's run down the list. the only one it wants you to kill is mergo, who is currently the medium in a ritual by a group of maniac who have boiled people alive in blood and are currently attempting to beckon the moon presence into dark designs based on madness and an incomplete understanding of the rituals needed to ascend. mergo's constant crying, the fact that he hasn't grown up despite being hundreds of years old and the fact that his mother's stomach area is coated in blood constantly shows that something went _seriously_ wrong with mergo's birth, same as with the orphan. and, based on the cutscene from after the orphan's battle, we know that killing these children isn't necessarily a bad thing. plus, mergo's crying can be heard after the wet nurse battle, so he did survive in one form or another, but can no longer be abused by mensis. was assaulting mergo a bad thing? and keep in mind, that's the only great one you were aimed at. moon presence doesn't care about any of the others, except maybe itself. what do you mean "actually succeed"? kos DID succeed, multiple times! kos granted eyes to rom, ascending a being. kos created an entire village of ascendant beings, the fishing hamlet. kos is the only great one to have a child who actually matured into a proper great one. it's entirely possible that death for the child is part of the great one's reproduction, since both times we see a "child" ascend, the "parent" is dead. that's the hunter and the orphan by the way. ebriatas also succeeded. so did amygdala, seeing as their goals mostly seems to be "fuck around". the moon presence succeeded, multiple times since both djura and eileen are previous hunters of the dream. almost EVERY great one succeeded on their apparent goal! if they were able to help humanity without scourges (curses in bloodborne happen when you piss off a great one and it takes it out on you), why hasn't any other great one or kin been able to do so? other great ones and kin have tried to help, yet the chalices and the chalice dungeons are filled with mentions of past civilizations that fall to the scourge of the beast, some that ascend and all of them eventually fall. _"with the power of the Moon Presence "_ no. great ones are almost always unique. most of them probably aren't even the same species. so no, the hunter doesn't have the power of the moon presence, they just used the moon presence to evolve. the brain of mensis isn't an evolved human, it was created from scratch. no, i don't know how mensis did it, but they did. probably had something to do with mergo. and it wasn't powerless, it was bound to the nightmare and rotten due to imperfect creation. had it been made properly and not enslaved, it would've been the equal to every other great one. and if it wasn't able to do anything, explain how it grants you the moon rune. and yes, i know those are the words of the great ones, but they're the words of the great ones _translated into a script humans can understand_. it would be me doing the equivalent of giving an alien species that communicates via bioluminescence a script version of their word for moon. i wouldn't call that "nothing". and as for "a being with knowledge of both worlds etc", formless oedon and mergo. mergo is half pthumeru and both oedon have no form and are thus is omnipresent. they both know everything about the world and understand it. why would you assume that the player would be more effective than either of them at altering the world? more effective than any of the other great ones, most of whom you murder? neither of them managed to do anything more than drive people crazy, create a nightmare realm or two, have some failures at making kids and get a church named after them. none of which i would call "a lasting and significant change in the world". and sure, not just kin. but rom was just kin, and they were arguably more effective at their goal and job than most of the great ones. guess being mostly physical has it's advantages.
Yal Rathol Which is bound to the same leap in logic. You are assuming because it didn't work out well before that it will never work out. That's wrong. We have way too little knowledge of the cosmos and the Great Ones to decide that it can't be done better. Nobody cares if they are alien and scary. Ebrietas was enslaved and used, not killed. That is entirely besides the point. To assist humanity a Great One need not materialize. In fact that's exactly what makes them so hard to kill compared to Kin. Humans have few ways to achieve it and someone who knows how humans think has a better time avoiding it. The most successful at killing Great Ones aren't humans, but the Moon Presence who uses humans. It grants them the requirements for it. That is why I said that we don't know the Moon Presence's agenda. I am not saying that this might not have been its goal as well. I am just saying that there is a better way to go about it than this. What is bad or not in this case is entirely based on humanity's view on it. That is why I said the Hunter has a fresh perspective. The Moon presence definitely thought about what is harmful differently than humans did. What Kos did didn't benefit anyone in the long run. Probably because she didn't even comprehend what humans wanted from her. "Granting eyes" was something she misinterpreted several times as we all know. She got killed because she had no idea how cruel humans could be. This is what I mean by actually succeed: To aid humanity in ways that imrpove them in the long run. To change the world and it's messed up ways. That is not something a Great One can do naturally, because while sympathetic, they do not have the same perspective as humanity. They are either benevolent literalists or push their own super-natural agenda. You are saying they achieved their goals, yet you don't even know what they are. That's a little dishonest of you. Using the Moon Presence as a catalyst, gaining dominion over its realm and the dimension, it is no stretch to assume that the Hunter might turn out similar. But that is just a guess. It still doesn't mean that the Hunter will not grow up to be as strong if not stronger in a different way. I have no idea how Mensis did it either. Which is why I always assumed they just used human brains or a human base for the artificial Great One. Actually you just admitted that I am right. It is rotten, imperfect and generally a failure. It cannot move or use its power. It is the most basic of Great Ones, I suppose. And translating that is just proof that something made by humans that ascended understands both sides better, enough to actually translate between them. Mergo was born as a hybrid, never knowing what it is to be human. Since when was Formless Oedon a human? This is not about genetics. It's about a mindset. An understanding of a how a species thinks. Something born beyond humans has a very hard time grasping how they tick. And even if they could, they did not want to. Unlike the Hunter perhaps? That is why they have the power to change the world more than anyone else. I am not saying they will. I am saying the possibility is very well there and your claim that only Gehrmann had a world changing influence is false.
I like the idea of the main character while losing all human forms of empathy and human tracks of thought to still bind itself to its human past by making a promise to stop the hunt and learn to grow and eventually explore the cosmos and hopefully find out why humanity was chosen to serve these old ones. Course, that would go against the genre and thus be very, very unlikely. But I can dream.
He is called "The Good Hunter" for a reason. I think it is very clearly his intent to protect humanity from the Great Ones. It's not really a happy ending for him though, but it is for everyone else. Because you know, being condemned as the front-line soldier on an endless cosmic war is it's own punishment.
Thank you so much for this minisode. I've always loved your content and now you've also tackled one of my all-time favorite video games! Thanks for your awesome insightful analysis and content, keep up the awesome work!!!
The Great Ones are constantly warring so it seems like the ultimate obvious end goal of getting involved in their war is to become a part of their war. Where do you think the other Great Ones came from? From Soft have made it clear that they are not aliens, ie they are all humans/pthumerians who have ascended.
Kenspiracy Videos - DeadZone Media i believe the only true alien is ebrietas. It mentions in the game that she came from a far away place and couldn't get back. She then got the pthumerians to try to help her back but instead they kept her for her blood which is why you find her under the cathedral
Ebrietas was most likely a Pthumerian and she was found by the Choir of Byrgenwerth. All enemies with grey blood are ascended mortals. There's only one being with paleblood and it's The Perculiar Doll.
I am at level 120 and thats my cap. Dont know where you are getting this "I need a bunch of health to beat cursed chalices" thing from. I too have leveled Vitality but not that much and still am doing fine on my second ever playthrough even in the cursed chalices o-o
I'm so glad you broke this down. I just recently finished watching a let's play of this game and I was really unclear as to what exactly happened at the end (love the game grumps but they are not who I should watch if I want to know lore) and now that I know it in context I think all the endings are much better than I originally gave them credit for. I totally got that Lovecraft cosmic horror vibe from the whole thing, but it's hard to pick up details watching someone else play.
You forgot to mention that the yarnham sunrise ending is also kinda depressing as ...you've pretty much abandoned Gherman in the dream for another century or two....despite granting mercy Gherman has always wanted to leave the dream he just doesnt because he wants to atone for his sins (when he killed kos and beckoned the moon presence) and also because he is a nice guy
I think you made 2 errors. Both Djura and Eileen are hunters who have severed ties with the dream presumably through Gherman executing them there. But they seemingly remember the hunt through they've woken up from the dream. Furthermore, Djura seems to remember the real truth behind the creation of these beasts. So we do wake up remembering at least something. Also, the description from the trophy you get for defeating Moon Presence states that you'll lift humanity to its next childhood which combined with the fact that most Great Ones are sympathetic heavily implies that the Hunter will break the cycle and help humanity.
When you kill Moon Presence and Wet Nurse, the victory box says "Nightmare Slain" rather than the usual "Prey Slaughtered". Combined with the "Great Ones are sympathetic in spirit", I think the explanation that "they are making transcendence(s) go awry" is much more fitting than "transcendence wreaks havoc". With all the consequences of that line of thought.
See, I understood the final ending as me and the plain doll were gonna raise this tentacle baby into a fine upstanding old god who would save humanity. I thought that after I defeated the creature from the moon that it had reverted into a child like form and this was us taking a chance to raise it right
In the end, you have forgotten how much the love were contained in the dolls. If you found a comb at old workshop and give it to her, you strengthen her love toward humanity. Therefore, when you are reborn as a cosmos kid, you will be taught the love, the tolerance, the sympathetic and so much more active feeling from the doll. So, in the end, you can save the humanity, using your own power with the doll's love, by creating a new world that no longer relates to the hunger for blood. You exist, in dream, with the doll for eternity, watch and care for humanity, forever.
I don't know, I think you're taking quite a bit of liberties with your determination of the Great One ending. Consider that this character is still "you". There's no reason to assume that your great power could make you anything less than a benevolent God for mankind if you desire it. In fact, there's reason to suggest the opposite when you consider the Great Ones are said to be sympathetic in nature. I don't know, I always took the worm ending to be the most (potentially) optimistic, selfless ending in any Souls game.
This was the first episode I saw of yours!!! I love the way you approached the lore into the game, and I agreed with your analysis of the endings. But it just adds to the overall atmosphere. I think it shows creators that they can do more than blood-dripping zombies or jump scares to create horror.
Just had to say thanks for the video, man. I absolutely love how you delivered the info. Succinct enough to avoid being a huge bulk yet detailed and thought through enough to be very satisfying. I also enjoyed the little visual aid with the subjects and arrows, it made it more cohesive for me. anyway, thanks again and well done
best game ever. we meed some more one-shot entries like this from From, I could only imagine the other sorts of worlds they could create, hopefully sekiro keeps it up
The ending where you turn into a great one is bad too, because now people will turn into beasts again, undoing everything you did, like killing Mergo. Right?
DomnoSaur not necessarily. the beast scourge is connected to certain kinds of blood, ebrietas's blood turns you into an alien-thing, being boiled in blood makes you into the one reborn and being treated with old blood (which all seems to come from the bloodletting beast, or as he's known in japanese, "the origin of the beast blood") turns you into a werewolf. Unless you got whatever strain of old blood cainhurst has, which makes you a vampire. the great ones aren't triggering the scourge, it's just that the paleblood sky triggered by the moon presence activates the blood as a side effect of washing the masquerade away.
Yal Rathol I'm having a hard time understanding what significance the pale blood sky has. Like, what is Rom and how does killing her reveal the pale blood sky. How is the moon presence involved?
DomnoSaur the paleblood sky (yes, all one word. no, i don't get it, but roll with it) seems to be the symbol of the moon presence. the moon presence, for whatever reason, washes away the illusions and mystical stuff that hides the great ones from those with low amounts of insight. as you might imagine, suddenly seeing the great ones in a lovecraft-inspired work is not a good thing, since that normally drives you stark raving mad. and going stark raving mad whilst filled to bursting with beast blood (you know, like 99% of yharnam is?) turns you into a big, nasty monster. whoopsies. rom, AKA the byrgenwerth spider, is acting as a barrier, preventing the moon presence from acting fully upon yharnam. and yes, only yharnam. at byrgenwerth and cainhurst, the moon is still small and white in the third act, meaning the moon presence is only doing this to yharnam. and rom is kin, which means not really great one, but closer to them than to human. rom seems to have undergone an upgraded version of the procedure mensis attempted. the reason i say this is because apparently kos (or some say kosm) granted rom eyes. mensis tried the same thing and it resulted in, and i quote, "the stillbirth of their brains". now remember rom is called "the vacuous spider". look up what the word vacuous means, and i think you'll start to understand a bit better what rom is. and as for what the moon presence is doing, it seems to be hunting great ones, using the hunters of the dream as its eternally-respawning tools. so, by washing away the illusions, it allows you to enter the nightmare of mensis proper and kill two of the three great ones located there (the brain of mensis and mergo's wet nurse, mergo seems to escape). by calling the paleblood moon, it lets you see the lesser amygdala and avoid them better, though it also alerts them to your presence and they start upping their ante when it comes to killing you dead.
Disagree. Actually there is only one happy ending, it's killing the Moon Presence. You are under the Curse of the Hunter and are doomed to hunt for all eternity until you finally go insane and get thrown in the Hunter's Nightmare by Lesser Amygdalae (That's why you need the eye of a blood drunk Hunter to enter). The big secret behind the story is that this isn't your first time being a Hunter; the developers said some of the lore notes were written by you. This whole game is an endless loop of you beginning a Hunter, killing beasts until you know too much, then you submit and force to forget. All Hunters are drawn to the nightmare so when you "awake" you just become a Hunter all over again. The one behind this charade was The Moon Presence after Laurence, Ludwig, Maria, and Gehrman tore up the Fishing Hamlet and Gehrman slaughtered Kos(or its child). The villagers cursed the Hunter's for all eternity and The Moon Presence heard.
Joshua W gherman and maria didn't tear up the hamlet. that was byrgenwerth before the time of the hunters. and the moon presence didn't curse them, kos did. that curse seems to be the reason everything connected to byrgenwerth is rotting and collapsing in on itself. that curse is eternal, cursing the descendants of byrgenwerth, which means the church, choir, mensis and the hunters. the moon presence happened because gherman and laurence called on it for aid and apparently gherman got stuck. if you catch him talking in his sleep, he says that laurence is supposed to come get him out of the dream. well, we know why he can't. he beasted out and got dragged into the nightmare. and the reason that the "become a great one" ending isn't happy is because there's literally nothing your character can do that isn't already happening. most of the things they could do were being handled by other beings, until you came along and murdered them or murdered their children. you're stuck in a cycle no matter what you do.
Yal Rathol Nope, Gehrman and Maria were the ones that wrecked the Fishing Hamlet. The video shows Gherman walking through (menacingly) the Fishing Hamlet. You know it's him because it's the same clothes, the burial blade, and the peg leg. Gerhman was your traditional beast hunter and have a thirst for blood themselves, so he slaughtered Kos when the church found out the villagers knew of a "God" there (Kos). Maria was a hunter for knowledge as she was the one behind the treatments and constant searching for eyes inside of one's own mind and the atrocities she did, so she was the one that forcibly ripped open the villagers skulls to find eyes. Laurence was the one whom sanctioned the whole crusade. Karma got to their ass because the villagers "cursed" them (whether it was a legit magical curse or not) and those atrocities are how Gerhman and the crew "beckoned" the Moon Presence. The "Curse" was the endless hunt as mr. Moon Presence now draws all hunters into the endless hunt and feeds on their inevitable demise because they lack the mental insight and physical fortitude to stand up to him, let alone see past the charade. You were the only Hunter to achieve the power and insight to stand up to him (assuming you consumed all 3 third-cords for the plot insight). But the Moon Presence was playing a deadly game as well because it created unstoppable killing machines, the Hunter, and it's only defense was wiping their memory so that they start back from scratch since he can't actually kill them. Those who lost their sanity were thrown in the Hunter's Nightmare, which was a horrifying taste of what the forefathers did to create this mess, a nightmarish walk through history.
Joshua W you're making a hell of a leap in logic there. gherman walks into a village though a fog, completely alone with some goal we never learn of in mind, and this means he murdered a great one with the help of maria, ripped some fish-people's heads off and looked for eyes inside their skulls and that all of this was sanctioned by laurence? where are you getting that? here's the facts. kos is dead. byrgenwerth is involved somehow, so is gherman. kos cursed byrgenwerth and all connected to it, creating the hunter's nightmare. maria didn't approve of what had happened and tried to protect the hamlet within the nightmare. kos was pregnant at some point, the only great one to succeed that goal properly. you invade the hunter's nightmare and cut a bloody swath to kos's corpse, killing her orphan and seemingly releasing it to "the sea". none of this implies laurence's involvement. he's in the nightmare because, like ludwig, he got drunk on blood and beasted out, then was killed. maria was NOT behind the research hall experiments, she merely comforts and protects them in the hunter's nightmare, presumably out of pity or kindness. the treatment and experiments were conducted by byrgenwerth and continued by the healing church, leading to the choir and mensis's separate branches of experimentation. such experiments are stated to be part of the reason for byrgenwerth's curse. and there is no hint that she ever laid a finger on the fishing hamlet, only that whatever happened there sickened her so badly that she threw away her beloved hunter's weapon. she's in the nightmare for the same reason everyone else is, she's blood drunk and mad. though she may have entered willingly to act as a guardian for the village. curses are what happens when you arouse the ire of the great ones. they are legit magical. the paleblood moon AKA the moon presence is beckoned with the cries of the nightmare newborn, not by murdering great ones or raping a village. i assume they used mergo or ebrietas in some way to hold audience with the moon presence. and by the way, when gherman talks in his sleep, it's hinted that they INTENDED to contact the moon presence, not that it came down and fucked them up because kos said it should. the curse is the collapse of everything they've built followed by being dragged into the nightmare realm to be tormented by great ones. the moon presence is a rogue agent as far as anyone can tell, since it keeps throwing you at great ones until you kill them dead. and keep in mind that the hunter's dream, the nightmare space controlled by the moon presence, is the ONLY peaceful nightmare realm in THE ENTIRE GAME. why would a creature that's tormenting you create the only friendly place in the entire nightmare? and it's not a matter of simply lacking insight or fortitude. even with 99 insight, you can't stand up to it without the cords. you can withstand the moon presence because, thanks to the cords, the eyes, the blood and the training, you're now mostly great one yourself. and, it's still sustaining you by not simply ripping you from the hunter's dream, which seems to imply some sort of death wish or desire for a proper battle. so you can try as many times as you want, or just leave and grind for a bit if need be. "since he can't actually kill them". except all those times it kills players immediately upon starting the battle? if we're the most badass hunter ever, stronger than maria, gherman and ludwig, part great one, part human, all blood and eyes on the inside, and it can _still_ wipe the floor with us, what makes you think it can't kill a lesser hunter real good? and by the way, everything here is either from dev notes, item descriptions or character dialogue. specifically gherman's sleeptalk, the items found in the fishing hamlet, the eye of a blood drunk hunter, the notes in yarhar'ghul, and i think one note in nightmare of mensis. so no, i'm not guessing at any of this. except the parts that say "probably" or present multiple options, like why maria's in the nightmare.
Gehrman is the first hunter. He, maria, ludwig and Laurence (and maybe willem?) were the first inner circle. They found kos. They finsihed her which angered someone pretty badly I think thats when they got clued in on the existence of great ones which made them find the labyrinth and also which cursed them.(i.e the orphan made a nightmare and made itself the host. later marai got disgusted with what they did and retreated into the nightmare itself (see:micloash does the same, just for anothr nightmare) (every dream needs a host that anchors it.) byrgenwert had the fallin out with ludwig who fucked off and made his own stuff, gehrman after leaving the hamlet, hunting a bit and becomming sad because shit jsut got worse whatever they did, beckoned Flora and became the host for the hunters dream and was tasked with flora to find a moon scented hunter every full moon to kill the child of a great one so that a human woman would become pregnant with an old ones child, closing the gap between humanity and old ones (we kill the child of yharnham, which was ..liike an old one but also not? she was the link between "pthumerians"/humans and old ones. We also may kiill another child and take in that old one-essence) Well the healing churched played with shit aove them, but also ..welll used the scourge as an excuse to off people or to "work with them" (like the church doctors could see the signs of the plaque before it manifested...;) so thts the situation we come in.
gehrman was the first hunter, maria was his apprentice. he was friends with laurence and respected willem. where are you getting that they were "the first inner circle"? laurence abandoned byrgenwerth long before he contacted a great one (except maybe ebrietas), we don't know when laurence and gehrman met, and maria came into the picture much later, after the hunters and the church were somewhat established, hence why she's only referenced as his apprentice, not his "long-time friend", "ally" or "co-conspirator". kos was dead before the scholars arrived, probably before gerhman went to the village. what pissed people off was the violation of the fishing hamlet, which gehrman might have participated in, but we don't know. they found the isz chalice and the bloodletting beast, as well as ruins of pthumeru, which all provide evidence of the great ones, and the isz chalice allowed them audience with ebrietas. this was pretty early on, before they knew about eyes on the inside, and thus before they went to the fishing hamlet. the orphan didn't make the nightmare, kos did. after her death and the violation of the village, the villagers cursed byrgenwerth and all their descendants, creating the hunter's nightmare. so it's either kos or some other great one acting in her name, but it's not the orphan. maria was disgusted by what happened to the village. whether she's in the nightmare voluntarily or because she's blood drunk and was dragged there is unclear. micolash created that nightmare on purpose (hence why he's "host of the nightmare") to contact mergo and create the brain of mensis, since he figured that was the best way to make a great one. and hey, it worked. the brain of mensis is a great one. a pretty pathetic, ruined one, but a great one nonetheless. ludwig was the first church hunter and has nothing to do with byrgenwerth. i think you mean laurence, first vicar. and laurence and byrgenwerth didn't have a falling out, he just figured there was a better way to ascend to the stars than the methods of byrgethwerth and left. but, he and the church always respected willem, calling him "master" and styling their experimentation and robes off those of the school. there's no proof the moon presence's name is flora. "flora" just means "plant life", so she's saying "oh plants of the moon, of dreams..." it's _possible_ that's the presence's name, but without proof, i'll stick with the boss title, 'kay? we also don't know the moon presence's goal. it seems to be hunting great ones, not aiding their ascension, since all it requires you to do is cut a bloody swath towards the nightmare of mensis, carve your way into mergo's loft, murder the wet nurse and silence mergo's cry. that sounds more like "fucking murder that infant great one", not "hey, find more people so we can make more infant great ones". mergo (child of queen yharnam) is a great one through and through. queen yharnam is a pthumerian, an ancient race that almost entirely ascended to become kin, and then almost completely died out. the plague was an accident. they didn't realize the blood of the bloodletting beast (and i know it's from him because in japanese his name is "origin of the beast's blood") turned people into werewolves as well as healed all sickness and injury. they were using it to heal, it's just that years down the line it turns you into a blood-crazed wolfman with superhuman strength. it was after the plague started and gehrman quit that the human experimentation _truly_ started.
Just finished my first play through. And I tells ya what. Such a succinct and well delivered spotlight on what is now one of my favourite games deserves a subscribe. Cheers dude!
I think the infant Great One ending is the best for the Bloodborne world. The trophy states "You became an infant Great One, lifting humanity into its next childhood." Lifting humanity is a good thing hard to see that as negative.
TheJrr Or perhaps they are not, but your mortal mind cannot comprehend the truth? Perhaps if you had leveled up your insight you could see the bar as I do.
Because it's a shitty video, with a lot of errors, and the maker of the video is making a lot of views with it, so he doesn't want to show the dislikes, you know that's bad advertising, it gets you less views when you have a lot of dislikes, simple.
really solid video, man. I spent a whole unproductive day at work watching your videos. Didn't even see the Bloodborne one at first, which is a top five game in my mind. Thanks for the amazing content!
Huh, I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but wouldn't the Hunter still try and get the paleblood after forgetting everything? He's still sick, so wouldn't he just stumble back into the dream again?
no he wouldn't he isn't still sick the blood transfusion cures you from becoming a beast completing the hunt ends your contract and you are free to do whatever
Just found your channel yesterday and been watching several of your videos over the last 8-10 hours, and let me say: you have built something quite special here, and seemingly very honest and smart. Keep up the good work!
Well, our world is doomed too, and we will all be snuffed out by forces far out of our control; those forces just happen not to be sentient in our case. The option where the memories get scrubbed and the character gets to live their life is approximately as good as what we get, really. The ascendance option seems pretty bad though. The little tentacled thing you become really isn't anything like what you were before, mentally or physically, so you have pretty much just killed yourself and replaced yourself with an eldritch god baby.
I like the themes mirrors to the real world....where the less informed you are about the world the happier you can be as you are ignorant to your societies abuses and role in them.
Not sure what you feel he is wrong about. I've played through multiple times and this jives pretty well with my understanding of the overall plot. Folding doesn't go deep into the minutae that can get vague, as you say, but he's got the overall theme down pat.
I don't really see where he's wrong. A lot of the stuff Dan listed is pretty much on the nose, and he goes over a lot of ground that Aegon of Astora and dmcredgrave covered. This is a very streamlined analysis.
He makes a lot of assumptions that conflict with can be learned within the game. The most minor/common one is Gehrman's attitude towards the Doll. I don't find it likely that Gehrman has any sexual attitude towards her, as the Doll is an imperfect duplication of his beloved Maria, whom was ignorant of his "madness". Another mistake is stating that the hunter would not know how "doomed" we are. To even reach the point of escaping the dream, you must first kill the infant Mergo (By killing it's Wetnurse), a Great One. "When the red moon hangs low, the line between man and beast is blurred. And when the Great Ones descend, a womb will be blessed with child. (Byrgenwerth)" The red moon hangs low, and beasts rule the streets. Are we left no other choice, than to burn it all to cinders? (Old Yharnam) The only mandatory final boss the Mergo's Wet Nurse, thus the ultimate goal of the Hunt (At least what Gehrman & Moon Presence expect of you). Both Eileen and Djura both mention the dream, so it's quiet likely they're both able to understand the severity of the situation, to some extent. Another issue is assuming the "Great One Ending", of which the player transcends their mortal coil, does not care about the fate of people. They are "Sympathetic in nature" and this is proven by the existence of the Hunter's Dream, the Doll, the Holy Moonlight Sword, and probably several other things I've let slip from memory. The Hunter's Dream is definitely a construct of the Moon Presence upon Gehrman's request. While it's pretty much confirmed that the Moon Presence is using the Dream and it's hunters as a way to kill Old Gods (Again, killing Mergo is the ultimate goal of the hunt), it still presented Gehrman with what it could only assume that he wanted (At least at the time, and to some extent). To top it all off, the Doll cares for you, a mere human from the start. You need only 1 Insight to talk to the her, and she cares you and the other hunter's before you greatly (At least it is very easy to assume as such, with her dialogue and actions). While that could be because of the Moon Presence, the Doll bleeds Pale-Blood when attacked, but cannot be truly destroyed. You can chalk this up as to give the Player constant access to leveling up, but it's very possible the Doll is the true Great One, even "Greater" than Moon Presence. That it is her/it's will that you are truly enacting, and that no matter your choice, you act in her favor. If she/it display emotions like kindness and concern, why not the player Great One, or any other Great One for that matter? PS: Ebrietas is greatly hinted as displaying strong emotion, for multiple reasons, but is ultimately non-hostile until the player attacks her/it. Do to her/it's location, it's likely that the Church has gained valuable insight by communication, and is obviously heavily inspired by it (The Choir clothes are long and white, like the flesh of Ebrietas).
Fantastic video. You explained everything as perfect as possible. A lot of videos I have seen have got theories wrong (in my opinion ha) but I think you nailed it. Nice work!
after reading the comments, it saddens me to see how few ppl actually understand cosmic horror. yes ,when the Hunter becomes a baby great one, he will evolve humanity, but it is depressing , cuz so little of what makes us human will exist, our emotions would be incomprehensible to our current minds, we wouldn't care in the same way, so to speak. as is said in the video, cosmic horror is basically the idea that we r but pawns in a cosmic conflict between beings we cannot even fathom. in the soulsborne series u the player can asend to a level to either protect humanity (the dark souls games) or become a great one ur self (bloodborne) . the name itself is even significant. I could go on for a while
I've never been a fan of the notion that you literally can't see things you can't comprehend. I've seen it brought up a number of times in fiction and fake history, but never with actual, provable examples. From my perspective, while I may not be able to comprehend what I'm seeing, I will know that I'm seeing "something." People have a long history of claiming that "something's wrong with the world" in the absence of any corroborating evidence, so refuse to accept that the presence of evidence would make them less likely to do so. That's not a slight with the video, of course. It's a conceit from the game itself, and describing it as it has been is true to the source material. I just don't like that conceit in general.
Right, but as you said, people have said "something's wrong with the world" with no corroborating evidence. What cosmic horror suggests is that such corroborating evidence is there, you're just not on a high enough plane of being to comprehend that it's there. Say if we were one dimensional beings. I could be a line segment and think "hm, I feel like there's something else going on here" on a hunch, but I'm not on a high enough level to see the fact that I'm actually a part of a square. Then I could be a square and not realize that I'm part of a cube. It's that sort of logic, and it's why with cosmic horror when you don't have enough "insight" you literally can't see what's in front of you, i.e. a line segment could not see a square if it was in front of it.
Sure, I've heard Neal DeGrasse Tyson say as much, but I still don't buy that. The idea of needing to be on a "higher" plane of existence is based around very loose spirituality arguments which are themselves very often based on circular logic. A thing which has a tangible effect on the physical world is both discoverable and definable by that tangible effect. A thing which has no tangible effect on the physical world, on the other hand, is irrelevant and not worth considering outside of a scientific context. Moreover, what Neil refers to is typically quantum physics and distant cosmic events which are difficult to observe. What that argument is most typically used for - as it is here - is for people with working eyes failing to see creatures which in no way obscure their presence. A gooey monster with a physical presence, including sight, sound and likely smell, is very obviously a thing. A person with working senses will be able to perceive its existence, even if not its exact nature. We're not talking about ghosts and apparitions here. We're talking about physical objects occupying physical space. Things a person can walk face-first into. Unless your story conceit includes a psychic aspect to the creatures, a Shadow-style "fogging of the mind" and direct altering of perception, I don't buy the argument. "The natives had never seen ships, so when Columbus showed up, his ships were invisible to them" as the story goes, and I don't buy it. From the moment we're born, we learn how to recognise unfamiliar shapes, understand unfamiliar concepts and solve unfamiliar problems. Humans are so good at detecting patterns that they're more likely to see them where such don't exist than they are to consistently miss repeated patterns. Consider the concept of intuition. Often-times we make decisions for reasons we can't explain, yet manage to be consistently correct in our seemingly arbitrary choices. That feeling, the notion that a particular choice is "feels good," is not truly arbitrary. It's based on intuitive pattern recognition gained from a process every person does in their head every moment of every day. We're not always familiar with the exact mechanics behind a decision, but we have enough experience with it to recognise the situation and have a rough idea of the likely results from every action we've attempted in the past. If people are convinced that Bigfoot exists, I refuse to accept that they'd miss large, foul-smelling monsters walking among us in broad daylight.
And you're perfectly entitled to not buy into the whole paradigm. I'm not saying that I believe in it's validity as it applies to real life, all I'm saying is that Bloodborne along with other works of Lovecraftian horror draw from this concept. All horror fiction, and fantasy fiction as a whole, relies some suspension of disbelief. when H.P Lovecraft wrote about squishy alien blobs, he didn't actually believe it, he just used the whole "planes of existence" paradigm to write his fiction off of. Ps: you reference Neil here seemingly with the assumption that's where I've sourced these ideas. I've never actually listened to him talk on the subject, I merely rationalized this topic based on my prior background in science and mathematics.
I'm not criticising Bloodbrone, though. Refer back to my original comment - the effect as described in the video is true to the source material and fits the narrative of the game. I just don't like the idea behind it. Yes, it's an off-topic comment. As to Neil Tyson - I'm aware that he's not the first to mention those notions. He's just the only one I could name off the top of my head, from one TV show or other. Could have been his own Star Talk, for all I remember.
I've always struggled with understanding the lore of bloodborne but this as been the best and most informative explanation I've seen so far and it only took nine minutes.
First time watcher, just wanted to say I think you did an amazing job with this video. Your explanation of the games story was succinct, accurate and most importantly of all funny. Fuuuuuuckin subbed dood
