Solving Bloodborne
Even with all of these lore and story explanation videos I always feel like it's not adding up, like we're totally missing the big picture and the real story has yet been uncovered. I thought a bit about it today at work and I think I've figured out enough that I'm pretty satisfied for once. For anyone who cares, here's what I think Bloodborne's real story is.
I believe this story is very reminiscent of Inception if it was a H.P. horror story. Dreams within dreams and an endless search for reality.
The story begins long ago when people found Pthumerians and through those findings, we found the existence of "Great One's" that live within our dreams. We believed that dreams are planes of existence that lie beyond our own, which is why you can find those "Great One's" there. Lots of things about lore/small details and whatnot happen and it leads into the events told in The Old Hunters.
-----
Everything was going fine until Byrgenwerth heard of a fishing hamlet who worshiped some sort of god or diety with inhuman capabilities. Byrgenwerth hunter, Gerhman, went out there to investigate and found Kos washed up on shore, eaten by many parasites from the inside out. But Kos wasn't entirely dead, it had left behind a single spawn, whom crawled out from it's deceased mother's womb as an orphan and it cried to the sun.
For whatever reasons, Gerhman slaughtered the poor infant and immediately afterwards the sun went down and the moon rose. The people of the fishing hamlet witnessed the heresy and brutal behavior and cursed the fiends(hunters) and all next hunters for eternity. Also witnessing the slaughter was the Moon Presence(Paleblood). It seeked it's own revenge against the hunters as well and created it's own endless cycle to trap all hunters who ever dared to become a hunter, including you.
The "Curse" was the Hunt. Killing the Orphan, inadvertently beckoned the Moon Presence and it's wrath ensnared Gerhman to being his puppet for all time. Paleblood created it's own plane of existence based off of Gerhman's past and created the "hunter's dream". There, Gerhman is forced to train more hunters and serve the Moon Presence. Paleblood creates a contract with the new hunters and locks them in an endless cycle of jumping from dreams upon dreams until they fulfill it's contract(you're enslaved yourself now). The reward for completing the contract is to return to reality and forget the nightmare and hunter's dream, but the reality it offers is yet another cunning fake and you slowly come back to Yarhnam to become a hunter again and again in an endless cycle of dreaming.
Though, when you wake up after signing the contract you find a note on the chair in the clinic. It was confirmed by the devs that it was written by you or previous hunters before. It tells you your REAL objective: To seek Paleblood to end and go beyond the Hunt. The hunter's dream leaves you another note that tells you to find the source of the nightmare or else the night will carry on forever(the curse/hunt). You think that the source is from Mergo's Wet Nurse and you slay it, giving you a 1/3 Umbilical Cord.
Returning to the Hunter's Dream Gerhman thanks you and you can either A) Let him end you so you forget everything and let yourself fall back into being a hunter later on like you did before. Or B) Fight back against Gerhman and never leave the dream, only to be Gerhman's new permanent replacement. Although, if you consume three Umbilical Cords throughout your journey you gain enough plot insight that, not only have you strengthened your body using blood to the unreal levels of a Great One, you have now ALSO elevated your mind to a Great One's level as well and can resist the Moon Presence's influence.
You can see in the outstretch of various dreams all kinds of weird scenery such as ship masts in the Nightmare Frontier (referring to the fishing hamlet), the sound of water dripping in the Research Hall (fishing hamlet), as well as Yharnam underneath the water of the fishing hamlet. Take a look in the Hunter's Dream and you'll see what looks to be support beams in the distance, symbolizing that this is the dream that holds all of them up. The Hunter's Dream is where all of the nightmare's are stemming from, therefor this is the source of the nightmare you need to end.
You have all the mental and physical capabilities of a Great One, and manage to take down Paleblood himself. The one who holds all of this endless charade together and the one who's orchestrating the curse of the endless hunt. After killing it, you find that Paleblood was one of the more aggressive and powerful Great One's out there by the amount of Blood Echoes it possesses (Blood Echoes symbolize beastliness and lust for blood). With that much power and insight on your side you complete your transformation into being your own sluggy Great One and can now transcend time and space like everyone has wished they could do.
----
If you've played the game and you actually read all of that, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed what I think about the story.
1 Comment • Newest first
Nice write up. I agree with a lot of what you said.
Personally I've played through the game twice and most of the time I ended up questioning and requestioning my own opinions on what was going on. In the end I kinda decided that that was largely the overarching theme going on...what you described as its similarities to Inception.
I've since read a lot more into what went on from other sources...however, I kind of think this attempt at finding some theory which unifies everything in the game is problematic. If you follow the way the game evolved in the Dark Souls series - it would seem that a large bulk of the story to make sense of the game itself has yet to show itself. I think in large part we're going to end up having to wait for Bloodborne 2 and maybe 3 or more before we finally see the entire hand From Software is playing with.
Again, nice write up. I enjoyed reading it.
I may add some more of my thoughts later but I need to consider them in light of what you wrote a bit longer to see how I feel about my take, your take, other ideas, etc.
Iono if you're familiar with this guy, but he makes some of my favourite Souls/Bloodborne criticism:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe0DNp0mKMqrYVaTundyr9w
(using the word criticism in the sense that he researches and explains the significance of the plot. Not in the sense that he points out flaws, etc...he doesn't do that, per se.)