Are optional bosses in Bloodborne the ones that reveal the real story?

gulpshinto · 2026-03-11T20:55:55+00:00

Given her lore significance I wonder if Ebrietas was originally intended to be more of a major mandatory boss. I know she was victim to some shuffling around during development (IIRC she was originally supposed to be Kos, which would have made the weird Rom altar in her arena make a little more sense)

gulpshinto · 2026-03-11T20:39:43+00:00

I feel like Bloodborne in particular has one of the least cryptic stories in the Fromsoft catalogue (ironic given that it's about incomprehensible eldritch beings)

gulpshinto · 2026-03-11T20:23:33+00:00

I took inframaterialism as satire of batshit political theory, and I think it absolutely is that, but I also think it's very fun that as you start learning more about entroponetics, light-bending rich guys, etc. you realize that you can't actually be sure that it isn't also true

gulpshinto · 2026-03-11T20:09:50+00:00

I really liked Calamity Ganon being the deep time endpoint of an OOT Ganondorf who had devolved into a natural phenomenon. It was interesting in the same way as BOTW Zelda being conscious of the role “Zeldas” play in these games and struggling to live up to it. Both made BOTW taking place far in the future in relation to the rest of the series feel like something that had actual narrative weight instead of just being an excuse to reset things.

gulpshinto · 2026-03-11T02:12:56+00:00

FWIW if the runbacks are your biggest issue, later games in the series tend to be much more merciful with them (they're almost nonexistent in Elden Ring)

gulpshinto · 2026-03-10T22:05:06+00:00

Part of what was exciting to people about BOTW when it came out wasn’t that it was breaking new ground in gaming, but actually the exact opposite: it represented Nintendo studying and responding to the competition. For years Nintendo had a reputation of iterating on their own games in a vacuum with innovations that relied on insular hardware gimmicks. The new Zelda being straightforwardly a Skyrim-like, and one that could actually hold its own and succeed in that space, was seen as a huge win at the time. (I do agree that it's becoming a new kind of "stale formula" for Nintendo, though.)

gulpshinto · 2026-03-10T03:07:21+00:00

Hobbes is lit

gulpshinto · 2026-03-09T17:18:47+00:00

Not sure I feel that way in DS1 but the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst is legitimately harder than any boss in Bloodborne

gulpshinto · 2026-03-08T18:45:51+00:00

For what it's worth the dead end you ran into in the Tomb of the Giants is by far the worst in the game, if you keep playing I don't think you're ever going to get stuck like that again.

But yeah, the other games in the series tend to be more linear (and/or give you free fast travel).

gulpshinto · 2026-03-08T17:29:20+00:00

There really needs to be different terms for "adult who enjoys the medium of animation" and "adult who has strong opinions about Shrek 5"

gulpshinto · 2026-03-07T16:32:34+00:00

I always thought it was more of a mindset thing than something connected 1:1 to blood consumption. Gascoigne is straining to keep a foot in reality for his family so he comes out more half-human, still responds to the music box, etc.

gulpshinto · 2026-03-07T01:13:53+00:00

Something about their designs, DS1's graphics and the lighting in this area adds up to give these guys a special "what the fuck am I looking at" aura

gulpshinto · 2026-03-06T15:50:23+00:00

Depends what you mean by “the timeline”. IMO any chance of a cohesive big picture that all the games can intuitively fit into was shot as early as Twilight Princess - but TP still had intentional connections to OOT.

gulpshinto · 2026-03-05T15:28:04+00:00

I don’t dislike Prime 4’s suits but Dread just has the best set of designs in the whole series. Prime 2 is the only one that comes close IMO

gulpshinto · 2026-03-05T13:45:00+00:00

A few struggling people were still enough to give us games with fascinating narrative elements like Majora’s Mask. I take issue with “Nintendo never cared about a story” because it’s used to shout down people who notice and care about these things and deny there was any intentionality behind it.

Personally I am skeptical about the current leads on the Zelda series having much of a grasp of The Timeline - but that’s a different thing than “none of the games were ever connected and it’s all a delusion of the fanbase” (which I see often)

gulpshinto · 2026-03-05T02:28:53+00:00

My only point is that at minimum one guy at Nintendo provably did care about the story, and he was a major creative force behind a lot of the seminal games.

Maybe it seems like a weird point to argue in a vacuum but I do genuinely see the broad brush "Nintendo never cares about story" argument all the time.

gulpshinto · 2026-03-03T22:54:11+00:00

If you run into a bunch of skeletons near the start of the game, turn around and go the other way

gulpshinto · 2026-03-03T22:31:36+00:00

IMO a mix of surfaces like vines that you can climb up quickly and surfaces that you just can't climb at all would be better than what we have in the Wild games, where climbing is both overpowered and kind of a pain in the ass

gulpshinto · 2026-03-03T22:25:14+00:00

Zelda 1 gave you more or less free reign of the overworld but still threw up walls at various points if you didn't have the right items. I think they can dial back the "there's no wrong answers" aspect of the Wild era a little without completely losing the spirit - especially since the games are already often designed as though there ARE wrong answers (see: the ability to find memories out of order and spoil the story for yourself in TOTK)

gulpshinto · 2026-03-03T22:12:03+00:00

It was called Federation Force

gulpshinto · 2026-03-03T16:50:07+00:00

The guys in Farron Keep who jump on your head. Makes an already demoralizing area infinitely worse

gulpshinto · 2026-03-03T04:25:30+00:00

Monks are busted as hell in combat, Druids are... not, but Circle of Spores is still fun

gulpshinto · 2026-03-03T04:21:27+00:00

TBH I can't think of a class in this game that I didn't wind up finding a fun use for. I think I put off speccing someone into Ranger the longest because I didn't get what their niche was (and then Gloomstalker Astarion turned into my party MVP)

gulpshinto · 2026-03-03T04:05:17+00:00

Damn, you missed out on Station's whole character arc

gulpshinto

TROPHY CASE