FEAR THE OLD BLOOD

The dark magic of Bloodborne lingers, even as FromSoftware moves on to pastures new

- Simon Parkin

Down by the old canal in Central Yharnam, past the shambling crows and the groaning, curfew breaking villagers, there is a window that wriggles with candlelight. You can’t enter; iron bars and taut chains hold back the city’s tide of filth. But approach in good faith and you may talk to the girl who sits, unseen, on the warm side of the pane. She doesn’t tell you her name (eventually you’ll see it’s kinder that way), but she does share with you her problem.

A while ago the girl’s father sharpened his axe and, like you, set out to join The Hunt: a vigilante effort to rid Yharnam’s streets of the infected souls that keep daughters locked indoors. When he did not return, the girl tells you, her mother left to find and fetch him. Neither parent has returned yet. So the girl waits, anxious and alone in the house, too afraid to stay, too afraid to leave, condemned to the unbearable purgatory of the abandoned child. Might you, she pleads, hunt for her lost parents?

You will know Viola, her mother, by her red brooch. You will know her father, period. Finally, through the window, the girl passes you a delicate music box, which tinkles a melancholic tune when cranked. With this device, she explains, her parents will know who sent you.

When, an hour or so later, you meet Father Gascoigne, you assume he is just like you. He wears the same sort of highwayman’s hat, and a similar heavy leather trench coat. He wields the same kind of frightening weapons: an overengineered axe in the right hand which can, by some Yharnam mechanic’s workshop tinkering, switch between short- and long-range forms, and a blunderbuss in the left.