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As someone who plays RPGs more than just about any other genre, I'm not really sure why to date I've always struggled to enjoy the Dark and Demon Souls games. I admire the precision of the gameplay, and the reduction of combat down to its purest forms, but there's something about the sheer weight of the games that I find stifling - I just can't bear to live in their worlds long enough to push much beyond the opening hour.Even to a relative outsider like myself, it's obvious that From Software's upcoming Bloodborne is a very different beast from its development ancestors, and yet the lineage is unmistakeable. The game feels - dare I say it - like a more immediately inviting and accessible addition to the studio's canon, while staking claim to a different sort of combat depth that's entirely its own.
Bloodborne's setting, Yharnam, looks and feels like the tobacco-chewing, gunslinging sort of place where Van Helsing might take a safari holiday. Gothic towers rise up from cobblestone covered floors, while gleaming black and silver stagecoaches lie in ruins at the side of the road. The cold, wind-whistling dread of a Dark Souls vista is nowhere to be seen. Instead, there's a bright glimmer to everything, and a sense of silver-plated treasure wherever you look.
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