Bloodborne, made by the creators of Dark Souls, tells a tale of a city with an infection started by supposedly miraculous healing blood that turns its inhabitants into beasts and the hunters within who have to fight these creatures. These Hunters also have to fight the influence of the Old Blood, resisting the transformation into bloodthirsty animals.
With the release of the Dark Souls series’ spiritual successor, Elden Ring, to rave reviews that contribute to a superlative Metacritic score of 96, the temptation to adapt the dark fantasy of a FromSoftware game to screen is palpable. That temptation is all the more enticing given the popularity of dark fantasy, like with Netflix’s The Witcher adaptation, whose second season had over 2 billion watched minutes within its first week. However, there’s some evidence that despite its groundbreaking gameplay and intriguing lore, the legendary FromSoftware series Dark Souls, and similarly its sister franchise Elden Ring, would be exceptionally hard to adapt to the screen. There is even a compelling argument that Dark Souls shouldn’t be adapted into a movie or show. That same intriguing story can be so dense and esoteric, and so rooted in the specific storytelling tools of video games, that it becomes hard to understand.
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But what makes Dark Souls tantalizing is also true of Bloodborne, similarly striking game with intriguing lore. What’s more, Bloodborne has a story that can be told much easier and with more clarity due to its focus on a single location: Yharnam. The fall of the city to the beast curse and the resultant horror would make for a tense and mysterious story, full of twists and turns, but fundamentally more clear and focused than the generations-long story of the cyclical Dark Souls. As such, here’s why FromSoftware’s Bloodborne would make a great fantasy TV series.
Focusing on the Story of Yharnam
Sony Computer Entertainment
In Bloodborne, the protagonist arrives from a faraway land in the fabled city of Yharnam. They seek a cure to a rare disease that only the mythical healing blood of the city can provide. They are given the cure to their ailment, only to be trapped within a city that is tearing itself apart. Beasts roam the streets and those who hunt them are succumbing to their own strange transformation. They have no choice but to fight these beasts in order to escape this nightmare.
That’s a strong premise for a TV show. The story has a protagonist, usually called the Hunter, who is unfamiliar with Yharnam, so we can explore the setting through fresh eyes, the audience seeing each dreadful beast for the first time with the protagonist. Through them, the viewer can experience a city of constant horror, whose populace shuts their doors and bars their windows at night for fear of both beasts and hunters. They can see the terrible curse that has been inflicted on the city and the characters the Hunter meets can explore life in a city full of cosmic and bestial terror. Yharnam itself is a setting dripping with familiar gothic influences, both in architecture and horror, yet twinged with strange elements of cosmic weirdness and body horror that make it a truly eerie place to be stuck for an impromptu hunting vacation.
Unlike Dark Souls, which is a story spanning uncounted centuries and an entire fantasy world, Bloodborne is primarily about Yharnam and the beast plague. While you would need a setting’s worth of context to start to understand Dark Souls, Bloodborne is easier to buy into. That, however, is not to say that Bloodborne doesn’t have hidden depth. In fact, that’s one of its main draws.
The Mysteries of the Beast Curse and Beyond
Via From Software
While a lot of Dark Souls’ lore comes in rich mythology that rewards players for exploring and asking questions, Bloodborne’s story works similarly, but doesn’t front-load most of its information. This is the best way a TV show about the series could proceed. The viewer, like the Hunter from a foreign land, should initially know very little, but then be able to start unraveling clues. Does Blood Ministration cause the Beast Scourge? What is the Healing Church, and what is its real goal? Who are the Great Ones?
One of the biggest mysteries in the game surrounds the protagonist themselves. As The Hunter, you are incapable of permanently dying, instead able to return to life over and over. This is due to something called the Hunter’s Dream: a strange plane of existence that returns you to life after each death. Home to Gehrman, an old hunter in a wheelchair, and a sentient doll capable of making the player stronger. Questions as to what the dream is and who made it are answered throughout the game, with the player able to find more and more evidence that explains how and why it came to be as they explore. But the important thing is that this information isn’t front-loaded, and instead, you have a chance to wonder, theorize, and ask questions. Some lingering questions may never get a fully concrete answer and in typical FromSoftware fashion much of the story is told in subtext and environmental storytelling, but by keeping an emphasis on telling narrative primarily through visuals and being careful not to over-explain, the Bloodborne show could keep that blend of mystery and depth that the original story is much loved for.
For a show, that bodes very well. Lots of good TV thrives on mystery and the questions asked by the viewer and answered by the show. Stranger Things, another property with nods to horror classics, is an obvious parallel to Bloodborne, with much of the first season of that show revolving around a supernatural mystery.
The Heartrending Character Storylines
One boss you kill in the game is a hunter known as Father Gascoigne. This character became afflicted with the bloodlust that claims many hunters when they spend too long killing beasts. Father Gascoigne was becoming a monster himself. His wife, Viola, played a tiny music box to return him to sanity and on one night when her husband would not return, she went out into the dark to save him. Unfortunately, she does not survive in the streets of Yharnam, and it’s implied that he may have killed her in his transformation into a bestial killer. During the fight, when you play the music box, it is enough to snap Gascoigne out of his animalistic rage for a moment as he fights the beast he has become.
Stories like that would be the heart of a Bloodborne show. The tear-jerking moments that remind you even the beasts are still human. Characters like Eileen the Crow, who is tasked with killing those hunters who become beasts, and Ludwig, the first hunter who disappears and then can be discovered in the DLC The Old Hunters as a mutated creature, have tragic stories that highlight the grim nature of life in Yharnam.
The protagonist themselves offers a unique opportunity. In the game, they are somewhat of a blank slate, but in the show, there would be an opportunity to characterize them. Perhaps showing their fear of being trapped in Yharnam, their attempts to save others from the beasts only to see their best efforts thwarted or their own increasing struggles with their inner bloodlust. A TV show would provide the unique opportunity to dive deeper into these characters, especially the protagonist, than the game was able to.
