Bloodborne – still PS4 only (pic: Sony)
A reader is frustrated that Bloodborne is getting on for a decade old and it’s still not received a remaster or even a PS5 update.
On March 24, 2015 Bloodborne was unleashed upon the world. As far as I am concerned it is the best video game ever made and one of the most all-round impressive experiences in any creative medium. The gameplay is great – the more aggressive action style is much more fun than either Dark Souls or Elden Ring – but it’s the atmosphere that makes it so amazing.
The phrase cut with a knife has been around a long time in regards to atmosphere, but I never really understood it until I played Bloodborne. Exploring the city of Yharnam, never knowing what will jump out at your next or what new horror you’ll encounter is an incredible sensation. Bloodborne has the most realistic setting of any From Soulslike, in that it’s a relatively modern city inspired by Edinburgh and other European cities, but it’s just so bleak and desolate and unknowable.
Then you explore further and get out into the countryside and things start to melt your mind. It feels like you’re exploring a dream (a nightmare really) that resembles the real world but where nothing can be counted on to be real… or safe. The point at which you realise that Lovecraftian gods are involved is handled so well. I’ve never felt such an icy chill of fear from picking up a little virtual note from the ground.
Bloodborne is an amazing game that I would recommend to everyone. Yes, it’s difficult but slightly less so than other From games and if you’re sick of those I’d say it’s the most different while still being similar in style and tone. It’s not perfect though. The original version had frustratingly long load times and frequent, if relatively minor frame rate issues. There were also some bugs and the Chalice dungeons never seemed to quite work the way they were intended.
None of these were serious problems, especially at the time, but they are the sort of things that could be usefully fixed by a PlayStation 5 update. Surely Sony could have had one ready for the launch of the PlayStation 5, since it’s one of their most critically acclaimed games and many others received 60fps updates very early on. At this point, a full PlayStation 5 remaster would be fully justified, especially if it’s one of these semi-remakes that are getting popular at the moment.
So have Sony done this? No. What have they done instead? Nothing. They’ve never mentioned the game at all in the PlayStation 5 era, so far as I know. They’ve never explained why there’s no next gen support and certainly never hinted at a remaster, remake or sequel.
There have been rumours that Sony has had some kind of falling out with FromSoftware but there’s never been any evidence of this and since Sony made a major financial investment in them last year I’m going to assume that’s not true.
So why has nothing been done? Considering how quickly they had them ready for much lesser games, at or soon after the launch of the PlayStation 5 I’m going to assume that a 60fps patch isn’t that difficult to do. In fact, according to modders, all it needs is two new lines of code and Bloodborne could be running in 4K and 60fps. So why hasn’t this happened?
There’s been a lot of talk recently about game preservation, with EA and others shutting down servers and delisting games, but the issue isn’t always that extreme. Sometimes games get ignored and overlooked simply because they’re not easily available anywhere or are just not being promoted.
Sony are constantly pushing potboilers such as Horizon Zero Dawn in your face but they appear happy to pretend Bloodborne doesn’t exist. It’s frustrating and it’s unfair and I’m not sure they can be taken seriously as a console manufacturer if they purposefully don’t promote one of their best games, just because it doesn’t sell quite as well as some of their others.
By reader Gambon
The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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A reader is frustrated that Bloodborne is getting on for a decade old and it’s still not received a remaster or even a PS5 update.