/lit/ - Literature

>>16448560
I agree with this in large part, but my own experience with the game actually took a little while to unfurl—it took me a while to appreciate what was actually going on.

For instance, i played through the game once initially and thought little of it—mechanically quite brilliant, beautifully rendered, some interesting Lovecraftian themes. Cool.
Return months later after another friend mentions the chalice dungeons—something i had skipped in my first play through. Second time through I’m interested in finding some of the secrets, so i explore more. Exploration pays off; i get better at the game; the game opens both thematically and mechanically. Interesting.
Realize there is something there, begin to scratch a little deeper. This is when i realize that the effort to “figure out” the game, which had now led me to consult wikis online, etc., was actually rolled back into its thematic; the “deeper” you went, the more blood spilled, the greater the insight. Violence and knowledge went hand in hand: the will-to-master, which was a slow grind for me, went with a greater understanding of the game, but also a greater understanding of the violence that accompanies any will-to-truth. Huh—seems like the developers are interested in more than just a game here, something closer to a critique of western mythmaking—Adorno and Horkheimer seem to laugh distantly in the background.

So, again, i agree that it is obviously not of the quality of moby dick, but it does something humanly valuable, it takes up and extends and plays with some interesting western themes in some interesting aesthetic ways.

I’d say, in short: it is worth playing. If you had to choice between bloodborne and moby dick? Or bloodborne and Poe? Yeah, sure, of course I’d choose the latter each time—though this is not to discount the achievement of From Software.