Warning: Parts of the Bloodborne Comics series will be spoiled.
I don’t consider myself a gamer, but the Dark Souls and Bloodborne series is so prolific that even I’ve heard of it and it’s always been a topic of interest to me. When I found out that the latter game had comics from Titan, I was instantly excited that I could participate in the franchise in some way.
While reading, I was blown away not only by the story but how the comics are heavily inspired by the experience of playing video games. Ales Kot, Piotr Kowalski, Brad Simpson, and Aditya Bidikar managed to tell eerie, violent stories while also examining the reality of being a player and video game character through cosmic horror.
The Player Constructs Reality
Arguably the best feature of RPG video games is giving players choices about how to engage with the story and world. Things like sidequests, secret paths, and different endings based on previous play allow the player to create their own experience.
This idea is taken to cosmic extremes in Bloodborne’s fourth volume, The Veil, Torn Asunder. The reader follows a man obsessed with finding the truth of the universe. He believes his world is not the only one out there.
Alongside his memories of Yharnam, he remembers himself being a soldier in our universe, and a deep-sea diver, but he isn’t sure when these things occurred or if they’re true recollections. He feels out of control, and disconnected, and sees these shadowy faces everywhere. Despite this, he must know why.
The story demonstrates this disconnection by having the narration be linear while the panels jump around in time. At the same time, the art utilizes 3 or 4 different layouts with just enough repetition to get the reader comfortable and then break it. In this way, the reader becomes an active participant in this unknown man’s plight.
He jumps through different realities, even entering events from the previous volumes of Bloodborne, but doesn’t come close to the truth until his final moments when he states: “You want the truth? The truth is fate is written. The truth is I do not exist.”
After a few pages, the man addresses the force behind the veil, or perhaps… the reader.
“We are but entertainment. Puppets to those we do not see. And you, there, an adventurer, still thinking you are in of your story, still running away as your world burns down… Well… Are you entertained? It was you, all along.”
The story is abstract, but its a fair interpretation to say this is a story about a character finding out they’re at the whims of a player. This is why the man feels he’s lived so many lives, he is an avatar for someone else.
The Veil, Torn Asunder is truly the magnum opus of these video game-inspired comics. It takes the previously discussed nameless characters and repetitions and digs even deeper by imagining the protagonist as a self-aware video game character. What results is something disturbing, yet insightful.
Nameless Characters
Another common feature of roleplaying video games (AKA RPGs) is the character creation menu. This allows the player to customize their avatar into themselves or anyone they want to pretend to be. Along with appearance, players can typically select different powers and weapons along with naming their characters anything they want.
This is designed this way so that the player can immerse themselves in the game’s world. However, the main character is, while representative of the player, deep down a nameless being in an active world, a mold to be given an identity.
Because of this, these games have to account for endless variations in the simplest way possible. How does a game designer create hundreds of non-playable characters (NPCs) and make their dialogue address players? Players who all have different genders and appearances without breaking immersion?
Give the main character a generic title.
Skyrim has the NPCs call the player “Dragonborn” and in others, the player is called titles like “Hero” or “Champion”. In Bloodborne’s case, the player is simply referred to as “Hunter”. This idea is just one from which the creators of these comics draw inspiration.
In volumes one, three, and four, the reader is introduced to characters who, likewise, are nameless, or at least nameless to those unfamiliar with Bloodborne. The Death of Sleep (Vol. 1) follows an androgynous protagonist called Hunter by everyone, A Song of Crows (Vol. 3) has the masked Eileen the Crow (who is never identified in the text), and The Veil, Torn Asunder (Vol. 4) follows an unidentified man.
These characters are also written in similar styles. First-person caption boxes permeate each panel and the narrative focuses more on their internal strife rather than their relationships with other characters.
This avoids distancing the reader. A name, though essential to most stories, reinforces that these events are happening to someone else. By avoiding them, and using generic titles when needed, these stories act like a video game, allowing the reader to be immersed in a hunter’s boots.
Even the art crafts this lack of identity. The nameless hunter and Eileen both wear masks for almost their entire stories and the protagonist of The Veil, Torn Asunder is a generic, unremarkable man. Removing the face, the easiest portal into a character’s psyche, gives the reader less to grab onto and less opportunity to separate themselves from the narrative.
The panels also utilize bird’s eye views and wide shots equally with close-ups. Many pages feature the city of Yharnam more prominently than the character, making the empty streets and abandoned homes feel alive.
On top of this, the coloring of the city follows a similar palette as the characters, blending them into the background, like they are not an individual, but a piece of Yharnam. When these things are combined, it emphasizes the setting (in a deliciously gothic fashion) and further distances the main characters to place the reader into the story.
Through these artistic choices, Kowalski and Simpson chip away at the fourth wall and force the reader to experience firsthand what the Hunter or Eileen do. The looming presence of a diseased, decaying world is shared by the protagonist and the reader.
Even caption boxes by Aditya Bidikar seem to suggest the fleeting identity of these characters. Their being shaped like torn pieces of paper shows that even the thoughts of these characters are but a speck of dust dancing through the atmosphere.
These techniques are old hat to video games. The characters on-screen are often smaller or in first-person perspective to allow the player to inhabit their avatar. That Kot and company took this idea and shaped it into a comic is brilliant, but they didn’t stop there.
Repetition and Endless Deaths
Video games are built on repetition. Players try levels or stages again and again until they finally gain the skill to win, then move on to harder challenges. Bloodborne is notorious for being extremely difficult, often forcing newer players to attempt battles numerous times.
But what if it weren’t a game, but real life? Imagine you were forced to fight the same monster every day and die painfully without knowing why you’re doing it. Wouldn’t that be a horrifying experience?
This is the hell that each character in the Bloodborne comics must face.
The series expresses this horror in several ways. In The Death of Sleep, it’s very literal (even featuring the infamous “you died” screen from the games) with the nameless hunter attempting the task of finding a citizen with “paleblood” ad infinitum. Meanwhile, in other volumes, it’s more metaphorical.
The protagonists of The Healing Thirst (Vol. 2), a doctor and a priest from the Healing Church search to find the cure for the Ashen Blood disease, which is suspected to come from the Old Blood provided by the church.
To avoid spoiling the story, I’ll simply say that not everything is as it seems and the two characters learn of the repetitive, cyclical nature of blind faith in institutions. No amount of evidence can break the grip that the Healing Church has on the story of this disease, so things will not change.
Much like a player in a video game, these characters learn that the rules aren’t always fair, and sometimes creative solutions are required.
Within this volume, the Bloodborne team also shows this struggle through creative artistic choices. Each issue features multiple pages where a few panels are placed on a black background with Bidikar selecting fonts that look like letters and journal entries. I can’t help but also notice that they look fittingly like a video game dialogue box.
This repeating motif truly enhances the futility that these characters feel when pushing against larger forces. It shows how the characters can only trust their own thoughts against a power that needs these cycles to continue.
In the following volumes, A Song of Crows and The Veil, Torn Asunder, the reoccurring horror is more internal, focusing on memories and dreams. Eileen and the unnamed man go through emotional journeys where they must return to their pasts in loops that change slightly with each visit. They can’t escape their own minds.
How the comic displays this horror is through reoccurring panel sequences in 9 x 9 grids, or similar layouts, that drag out small moments. When these pages return, they are altered slightly, either being interrupted by other images or ending differently.
This sets up the reader to expect a familiar beat, but then swiftly pull them out. It’s like returning to a boss fight after leveling up just to find that they had a second form to defeat. When placed in a comic, it places the reader into the disheartening, fragile world of these characters.
Through a typical video game mechanic, Kot, Kowalski, Simpson, and Bidikar craft a unique, sequential horror experience.
Conclusion
Comics have long taken inspiration from other mediums such as film and novels, but video games are still a relatively new frontier. Plenty of recent comics have video games as a setting or have adapted popular games, but none have snatched the more mechanical and philosophical elements better than Bloodborne.
Kot, Kowalski, Simpson, and Bidikar’s utilization of nameless characters, repetition, and aesthetics unique to games are masterfully employed to create a horror experience that is the best of both worlds. At the same time, the Bloodborne comics also demand that the reader think about their interactions with the characters they consume.
I’m reminded of Art Spiegelman’s The Malpractice Suite which took inspiration from film editing. Spiegelman felt that films had an advantage over comics because shots could be moved around, zoomed in on, or refocused.
He explains in the afterword of Breakdowns “Jealous of my independent filmmaker pals who could shoot footage and edit it after, I wanted to do the same in comics. I reasoned that I could shuffle panels and sequences around after drawing them as long as I used same-size panels on a grid.”
Using this, he created an abstract, absurdist story with panels being pasted on top of each other where familiar images would take on new contexts.
Spiegelman wrangled the ideas of film to create something unique like the creative team behind Bloodborne. In both of these cases, the thoughtful combination of two mediums generates an experience that exists somewhere between and outside of them simultaneously. Bloodborne shows why the possibility of comics is endless when one pushes the boundaries and takes inspiration from unexpected places.