Bloodborne may not be connected directly to Dark Souls or Demon's Souls, but that doesn't mean it won't feature all the hallmarks of a From Software game, including the difficulty.
Speaking to VG24/7, producer Masaaki Yamagiwa commented that thanks to the PlayStation 4's enhanced power and new gameplay mechancis such as Regain, Bloodborne will delivery "truly perilous combat".
“We’re trying to achieve and deliver this truly perilous combat to the gamers by two methods. One is through visual representation. We’ve got new hardware, and PS4 is capable of quite a lot of things we weren’t able to do before. The second one is through brand new game mechanics.”
While From Software has no intention of creating a violent horror, their ambition is to have players constantly on edge as they progress through the game.
“We’re not really going for this kind of over-violent horror feel to the game. What we want to do is make the user feel terror at each turn, and once you’re in a combat situation, whatever it may be, that you have a huge sense of relief as well as still maintaining that level of achievement you get from playing something from the Souls series.”
The Korean developer used the graphical prowess at their disposal to advance the renowned Souls style of gameplay.
“When our game director (Hidetaka Miyazaki) thought about how we can maintain that sense of achievement, and how to build up on that from Demon’s Souls… Demon’s Souls already had this extreme difficulty level set, so it wasn’t an easy task for him by any means. He couldn’t really put the bar higher. The difficulty was already at its limit back then. So with the visual representation, offering a different feel, a unique world and unique enemies, we hoped to build up on that sense of achievement after you play through the game.”
Yesterday, Sony released almost seven minutes of Bloodborne gameplay from the gamescom convention last week. During their press conference at the German show, it was announced that the game is set to be released within "the next six months".
It seems that fans of the developer can rest assured that they are going to die in Bloodborne. A lot.