Something that made me really excited about Bloodborne came a few hours in to play. I’d gotten used to the Hammer Horror aesthetics of the werewolves, the angry villagers with torches and pitchforks. Strange as it may be to say, I saw a statue. And I freaked out because that statue was… Cthulhu? No, not quite. But very similar, something like a Virgin Mary figure with a face that was vaguely melted into an almost octopus configuration.
Then things got even more explicit and I got even more excited because far from merely making a few visual references, Bloodborne went on to draw heavily on the works and ideals of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. (Obvious spoiler warning here for people who haven’t gotten very far in Bloodborne; this is mostly about the latter half of the game)
Who’s H.P. Lovecraft?
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American writer of “weird fiction” – a term which at the time somewhat encompassed but predated all of what we’d consider the now-distinct genres of horror, fantasy and science fiction. In his life, Lovecraft was a virtually unknown pulp writer but has now become known as one of the most influential figures in the history of horror. His writings were extremely personal, channeling his anxieties, fears and nightmares into a new form that he could share with all of us. Thanks, Howard!
Key themes in the writings of Lovecraft’s writings are degradation (moral, physical, mental), the pursuit of forbidden knowledge and the ultimate insignificance of human endeavor in the face of a vast, uncaring cosmos. This last point is absolutely central to understanding it; Lovecraft’s cosmology does not place value on human ideas of good or evil, nor do his deities even much care about being worshiped. They are immense beyond our comprehension, operate on parameters we literally do not have the neurology to comprehend without aneurysm and to describe them as “evil” is inappropriate simply because that would imply too much humanity to their mental processes.
If you haven’t read any of Lovecraft’s writings, it’s worth checking out the following: The Call of Cthulhu (arguably his most famous, an investigation into a strange sea-stone idol), The Shadow Over Innsmouth (concerning the dark secrets behind a small seaside town), The Color Out Of Space (incredibly bleak, about the fate befalling a farming community after a meteorite lands nearby) and At The Mountains of Madness (about an academic exploration of the Antarctic). Cheery stuff, so how does Bloodborne work in Lovecraftian ideals or themes?
Insight: Going Mad From The Revelation
Everything that draws on Lovecraft at some point has to work in the theme of madness; games like Amnesia or Eternal Darkness have “sanity meters” or other mechanics that somehow represent the mental health of your character. Usually, it works like a health bar counting down from full (sane) to empty (insane) with usually the same consequences; for instance, Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy game-overs when you run out of mental health as your character commits suicide. In pen-and-paper Call of Cthulhu, you go so insane as to no longer be playable and are relegated to NPC status. Being exposed to the horror, often looking directly at the impossible creatures or reading eldritch tomes, is damaging to sanity. In the pen-and-paper Call of Cthulhu, Sanity is derived from willpower and is directly opposed to Cthulhu Mythos, a knowledge skill connected to understanding the awful truths of the cosmos; the higher your Cthulhu Mythos, the lower your maximum Sanity can be.
Bloodborne’s representation of this goes in the opposite direction with Insight; rather than “counting down” like most Sanity mechanics, this is a positive value that counts up over the course of the game. The in-game description of the Insight stat reads “The Insight stat represents the depth of inhuman knowledge. Needed to ring special bell, but induces frenzy.” Insight is gained the first time you see bosses, entering new areas and on being subjected to certain attacks and revelations, such as being snatched up by the monstrous Amygdala’s unseen hands. Having higher Insight allows you to see invisible monsters, unlocks certain features of The Hunter’s Dream and changes other environmental features; you are closer to the awful Truth and see more of the world like it really is.
Mechanically, Insight changes two stats; it decreases your Beasthood value and your resistance to Frenzy. Having a high Beasthood increases your physical damage both received and given; it represents giving into mindless violence and bloodlust; as your Insight Sqincreases you become more intelligent and aware of yourself, thus further from the beast. Frenzy is a dangerous status bar that, when filled, causes massive damage to your character; the higher your Insight, the faster Frenzy bars fill up. Things that cause Frenzy are commonly Lovecraft-like horrors; the deformed nightmare-creatures such as the Mi-Go Zombies (I’ll get to that name later) or Brain Trusts; the more knowledgeable you are, the more susceptible you are to succumbing to insanity or psychic assault.
Just like in Lovecraft, as you plumb the depths in search of forbidden knowledge, you become more and more sensitive to its effects. In Call of Cthulhu, it is those most psychically attuned that are most strongly impacted by the titular Call – a telepathic impulse from the sunken behemoth plagues the sleeping minds of every artist, poet and medium in the area. This strongly fits in with the way Insight works, both mechanically and in the lore of Bloodborne.
Polypheman Abominations
Perhaps the most overt ways you’ll see Lovecraft’s influence throughout Bloodborne is in the monster designs and names. While at first you’re fighting rather normal creatures – men with hatchets and torches, werewolves, giant crows – things get stranger and stranger the deeper you go. As you progress beyond the blood-curse and into matters of the cosmos, you begin to encounter things more strange and awful than mere men.
Some creatures are more overt references to Lovecraft, such as the Mi-Go Zombie, a man whose upper torso has swollen out into something multi-eyed and instectile, halfway between a fly and a spider. In Lovecraft’s writings, the Mi-Go were Plutonian aliens that mined on Earth and were capable of extracting human brains and mimicking human speech. Brainsuckers in Bloodborne are men who leech the Insight from you, their physical forms long-limbed and with facial tentacles strongly reminiscent of Cthulhu; they also seem to be references to the Mindflayer or Illithid monsters of Dungeons and Dragons – who are themselves references to Cthulhu.
The Great Ones, Bloodborne’s cosmic deities, seem to be a conflation of the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods of Lovecraft’s pantheon; Rom, the Vacuous Spider’s mindless nature seems to be a reference to Azathoth, the nuclear chaos and “blind idiot god”. The Brain of Mensis’ Nightmare strongly resembles a shoggoth, a formless mass of staring eyes and confused mouths. Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos’s many limbs and general shape are evocative of the time-travelling Yithians. The Moon Presence, who moves and fights like the many wolf-like beasts strongly parallels to the god Mormo, referenced in Lovecraft’s story The Horror At Red Hook. See if this sounds appropriate: “O friend and companion of night, thou who rejoicest in the baying of dogs and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favorably on our sacrifices!” Anyone who’s walked through Yharnam knows how often the barking of dogs is heard, how tombs seem to pervade all parts of the city and, well, the focus on blood is right there in the name! It also works because Gorgo and Mormo seem to portmanteau into Mergo, the surrogate child of the Wet Nurse, one of the final bosses of the game.
There’s a lot more to dig into about where Bloodborne draws on Lovecraftian tropes, but I felt these were the two most important elements to discuss from lore and gameplay perspectives. If you want to know more, leave a comment!
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