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Bloodborne

Bloodborne: The Chalice Dungeons

We take a tour through the procedurally generated dungeons heading to Bloodborne.

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We're not particularly good at the Souls games, so it goes without saying that we're also not particularly good at Bloodborne, simply because it's similar in many ways to the hard-as-nails fantasy RPG series. There are, however, plenty of differences too, and for every familiarity you encounter, there's something else that sits in contrast, something that sets it apart.

The most obvious difference is the well-documented Victorian-gothic setting. It looks like Hell spilled over and splashed all over late 19th century London. It's dark and sinister, and full of little details designed to make your skin crawl. The undead characters we encountered were shuffling zombie types, weapon carrying and ambling through the cobbled streets.

It's been a while since we played Dark Souls, and then we played on PC via an Xbox 360 controller, so it took a while to get to grips with it on the DualShock 4. Our initial inability to dodge effectively was remedied when, through experimentation, we were able to map out the controls in our mind's eye. Then it was a case of refining our technique, getting to grips with the new sense of speed.

Movement is largely similar to Dark Souls, although Bloodborne feels faster. There's less defensive play, instead there's a quick-draw pistol that can be used to stun enemies, putting them on the back foot before the attack proper can commence. Therefore it's a more aggressive experience. Attacks are housed on the triggers, and quick rolls and sneaky flanking manoeuvres once again form the cornerstone of the experience. If you've played From Software's games before, you're going to feel at home pretty quickly.

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Bloodborne

We didn't play for a huge amount of time. We stalked through the same section of the night-soaked city, exploring different routes, fighting different enemies (some of which emerged from around corners with lurching attacks), following in the footsteps of our peers by reading the messages left for us and by watching old exchanges play out like ghostly apparitions. We also died quite a bit.

There's different classes, and each has different abilities, strengths and weaknesses. We played with one more focused on speed, while there's another that comes to the table with a huge bloody hammer. Slower, but able to deal massive damage.

Before our hands-on time kicked off, we first encountered the game during Sony's celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the PlayStation. During the introductory speeches at the event, series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki took to the stage to unveil a new feature that's going to feature in the game; The Chalice Dungeons.

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At several points throughout the day, during the presentation and later during our roundtable interview with Miyazaki-san, it was mentioned that this new feature borrows ideas from roguelikes (but it's not actually a roguelike). The main similarity between these new dungeons and the ones in games like Spelunky, is that they're going to be procedurally generated. The similarity ends there in most respects. Perhaps the most interesting feature is the fact that players will be able to lock these dungeons down, saving them so they can be shared with others.

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"It is similar to roguelike games, but it's not the same," Miyazaki-san told us through an interpreter. "Actually how it works is; we call it Chalice Dungeons because you come across chalices that you can perform various rituals on, and that kind of opens up an area of these underground ruins, and that's how they're generated, by coming across these dungeons and doing this ritual. You'll be able to lock and save parts that have been generated, because that's not to lose that aspect of trial and error, and finding things and going back and challenging it again; it's a very important thing for a game like this."

We wondered how they were going to maintain the precision of the Souls games, where expertly constructed areas are approached repeatedly, with muscle memory coming to the fore as players tackle the same punishing enemies time and time again. We're not sure our point came across exactly as intended, lost in translation perhaps, because what we wanted to know was what they were doing with the procedural systems to ensure consistency in terms of quality.

"They are varied and different every time you generate it," we were told, "and that is a new thing for Bloodborne because it offers that freshness and it's a different experience every time you play these dungeons. But it's not a separate mode or anything, it doesn't take away anything from the overall game itself. The fact that you can save them and lock them in place means that you've got the same aspect of trial and error and learning and muscle memory can come into play.

"It doesn't break the balance of the overall game itself, it's not out of place with the rest of the game... It's something that's new, and not something that's going to get stale very quickly at all."

Bloodborne

A big part of this feature is to nurture further growth in a community that will undoubtedly build around the game, much as it did with the Souls games before it. From Software wants to encourage engagement between high level players as well as between relative novices, and they think this new feature will help with that: "By being able to share experiences, or share various information or gameplay in different ways in Bloodborne, there could be a huge number of things that can happen."

"The most simple way to expect what would happen would be, for example, if there's a super difficult, very very challenging area, a group or one hardcore player overcomes that and he might become some kind of legendary player within the community, or some kind of hero because he overcame that boss or situation. That's kind of a very obvious thing to expect, but it's not just that, it could very much be on the opposite side of the scale, where a very small group of not-so-hardcore or not-so-skilled players might discover various things together, and explore how to approach different situations and enemies together and overcome that, or discover something new.

"So this time, with Bloodborne, there's that opportunity for everyone to be some kind of legend, or finding something new, or you being the first person to discover something; it's always a really good feeling. The way the game is set up, and what you can share with other people, gives opportunity - not just for hardcore players but everyone who plays the game - to become the first, or the hero, or the legend. It's very exciting to see. We can't imagine everything or expect anything, there'll be a few surprises that'll come out, and it's super, super exciting to see what will happen when the game is released."

The idea has great promise, because on top of what looks to be a typical From Software experience, there's now going to be a huge volume of player-generated content. It seems like they're expecting the community to vet the procedurally generated levels, elevating the best content to a position of prominence, available for those looking for harder or more unique challenges. Miyazaki and his team were asked how many different variations we could expect to see: "It's not going to be a set number. The way it's generated, players can expect it to be almost infinite. It actually won't be infinite because that's impossible, but it's close to infinite. There's a huge amount of variation."

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We asked what games he considered as inspiration for this mode, and it won't be much of a surprise to anyone to hear that Diablo II was mentioned; its influence can be seen all over the place, not just in the the Chalice Dungeon missions with their refreshed structural design and the ever shifting enemy placement.

We're also going to see plenty of verticality in these dungeons, with up to three layers in each environment. We watched some gameplay, one hunter making his way through a dungeon environment, down towards a boss fight. One eventually became two, with a pair of hunters taking on a huge guard dog. Really, really huge, and covered in flames for good measure. One was the more nimble class, but he didn't do the requisite damage, and it's only when the second player entered the fray, garbed in white and wielding a big hammer, that the giant flaming dog was put down. These new dungeons look like they'll be a great addition, and it feels like they should do as intended; layer in a ton of replayability and additional longevity.

That brings us back to the main game. The standard Bloodborne experience if you will. Although we know now that Dark Souls II is making the leap to current-gen consoles next year, we still were interested to hear why the studio decided to go in a new direction, why they felt better served with Bloodborne than with, say, a true new-gen Dark Souls.

"Bloodborne is something different, and there's actually quite big reasons for that," Miyazaki's translator explains. "This time in Bloodborne it's not set in this typical medieval fantasy setting, it's something that's completely different."

"There's a huge sense of creative liberation, they weren't tied down to what would work in a Souls game setting. This is something that's completely new. For [Miyazaki] and the team that's been something that's been very exciting and very fun to work with. It's almost like they were coming up with things, they're doing whatever they want with the game and they had a lot of fun coming up with these new ideas and the different kinds of imagery in the game. So it certainly does feel great to be back, but just having that fresh slate to work on, and that creative freedom, is probably what's been the best thing for it."

Bloodborne is launching exclusively on PlayStation 4 on March 25. We can't wait.

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