/lit/ - Literature

>>16448344
Any book in the Western canon is better. Go back to /v/.

>>16448344
Hey, when is this coming on pc? i dont want to by a japbox for one game.

and idk probably.

>>16448354
I used to think like that, and for the most part still do.
The reality is that bloodborne might be the only video game to actually compete with serious western thought. It honestly stretches the medium far past anything that came before it.
Sure, there is the heavy overcast of Lovecraft and the various vicissitudes and aesthetics of the “eldritch”—but so much more. The nietzschean tones, the will-to-knowledge and power, the creation of a true “unique one”/overman, the eternal return—it is all there.
Thomas Muntzer, the iconoclasm of sacred wood-worshipers, the holy night battles, the solder-saints with robes roiled in blood—it is all there.
The decadence, the promise, the fury, the decline, the collapse, the hope, the faith, the love-that-is-hate—it is all there.

Hell of a video game. Would i call it literature? No, but it is something else, something to be reckoned with on its own terms and as a unique human experience unto itself.

what books are like bloodborne, this is an unironic post. not just lovecraft

>>16448408
gaymers are so fucking retarded go back to r*ddit

>>16448408
B...based

>>16448489
I guarantee i own and have read more books than you.

If you want to equate reddit with juvenile behavior, immaturity, and lacking an open mind, that is obviously where you are best suited, not someone like OP.

>>16448473
Matters, not exact aesthetic wise, but in terms of atmosphere there is some parts of moby dick (as well as other extistentialists works) that make you fell super fuckinh insignificant and tiny in comparison to the absolute. If you want proto-cosmic horror as well as a more in depth exploration of the unknowable and vast and how humans cope and try to do what little they can that is in essense meaningless, that is the avenue you should take. Thematically it also explores the faith, decadence, eldritch, love-that-is hate and all the rest of it that >>16448408 talks about. Though of course its more of a slog and slow burn instead of the instant gratification of these things that is avalable in bloodborn.

Another is Scarlet letter in terms of the more individual torment and struggle.

>>16448408
>it's great because it's derivative schlock

>>16448408
>The reality is that bloodborne might be the only video game to actually compete with serious western thought.

>>16448505
i guarantee you haven't faggot you sit there playing childrens video games all day

>>16448512
This. I was going to say moby dick.

>>16448473
Heart of darkness.
Nietzsche’s works. Heidegger’s critique of Nietzsche—especially in terms of the Cartesian will-to-mastery. “Our eyes have yet to open...”
Some of the histories of the reformation, like parts of R. H. Tawney—that overall feel of leather and metal and blood, of a bible in one hand and a sword in the other, of overcast skies and gnarled heaths and fields of red poppies
Norse mythology
Nightwood
Even some of the more haunting aspects of someone like Eliot’s modernist poetry.
Thomas Mann’s Faustus.
Goethe’s Faust.

There is honestly as lot there. The developers of the game are uniquely educated people.

>>16448344
Is there a novel equivalent to Bloodborne? Think Lovecraft but written well.

>>16448540
Pykewater.com

This is mine.

You can sit down now and stop seething.

>>16448354
>>16448408
Slit your wrists

>>16448408>>16448344

going off what I said here >>16448512 I like bloodborn, but I feel that its main appeal is that it can facilitate a similar sense as you can get from an extistantialist book, but in a more instantly gratifying way. Now this in itself is not a critisism, in fact it is in some ways a plus for it, but personally I do not think it explores these things as thoroughly and deeply as some novels (like the ones i mentioned, moby dick, Scarlet Letter) do. Its greatest assent is that it gives an incaling of these sensations then leaves a good amount of mystery and vagueness to let the mind run. Compartmentalized mystification if you will. I belive that the books I mentioned do the same, and likewise leaves room for the reader's mind to wounder, but gives them a more compelling breadth of ideas to wade yourself into.

So imo, bloodborn is a good primer that more succinctly encapsulates these tones for a more casual audience (which is not bad), But books like the ones I mentioned are more breadthy, more requiring of committal, and fulfilling in its entirety. So its the difference between a solid short story and a more expansive work.

>>16448552
>samefagging and blogposting
kill yourself

>>16448489
Based independent thinker
>>16448505
Cringe lets-books-do-the-thinker

>>16448560
Fuck, I typed too fast
>greatest assent=Greatest asset
>incaling=Inkling

>>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.

>>16448598
>wasting time on childrens video games is valuable
get a job

>>16448614
Wage cuck

>>16448627
neet gaymer

How about just letting a fun fantasy game be a fun fantasy game? I see the same insecurity in would-be "intellectual" gamers who compare their favourite games to great literature that I see in those metal fans who proclaim that metal is "the new classical music".

>>16448598
Oh no, I completely agree. The medium of interactivity lays the foundation for a more audience exploritory sensation that is more interactive than reading into a novel and very much explores a whole new dimention of the actual experience of the work. Its as if you yourself are piecing something together (which can also occur in book form, but the machanism of a game like bb makes it quite compeling and require more initiative). I too created a eventually expanded and redacted narritive over multiple playthroughs that completely changed my outlook on many parts of the story. ANd in that way it felt much more of a lived experienced with less of a devide between the medium and the reader rather than a passive one. Especially when you mention about going to outside sorces, making it so that the experience is not one solely religated to interactivity box, but a full on irl mistery. and actual forth wall breaking scenario. I am thinking like the bumblebee thing from halo 2 or a grand lived mystery.

The levels of how it can be interacted with is amazing in its dynamic, (Which in some part is more a self promped mystery rather than a thing in itself, but the piece of media did spark it).

Its a qualitively different experience that iThouroughly enjoyed. I wouldnt exactly say its better or worse than Moby Dick, personally i think MD has more depth in its actual content, but blood borne is more expansive in its context.

Its like comparing the Mona lisa to a very well done puzzle box. (Those the comaprison is not one to one)

I would say the greatest part of bloodborn is in how you said
>This is when i realize that the effort to “figure out” the game
The figuring it out is the greatest aspect of the experience. THe concepts like eyes on the inside , beasts, and great ones are legitamently neat concepts, but its how they are found out that is the greatest part. those concepts in themselves are better explained in an actual novel, but the method of getting to them in the first place is imo in the interactive medium like that of bloodborne. To understand them kinetically and sensually before intellectually.

>>16448357
it also has the last guardian but you're probably a normie that thinks it was bad

>>16448738
No, its just that I dont care too much about anything else on the ps platform.

>>16448715
To wit: do you think bloodborne’s critique is a valuable or accurate one?
Even if you critique its originality, I think it layers aspects and images of the western conscience—combines different valences of its aesthetic—in some novel and revealing ways. The way it aestheticizes it’s own process of revelation, and how further it runs this process through a gauntlet of blood, really fascinates me as an aesthetic experience. The essence of this experience extends beyond media and genre for me—something like a dark sublime, a sublime-in-negative, the chill-wind of shadow and light.

You are interesting anon. Don’t really game outside of playing bloodborne a while ago and SC2 occasionally now, but would game with.

>>16448344
You can't even download a higher res image and talking to US?

>>16448775
desu, i dont really game much either outside of mount and blade and total war medieval ii mods. Sometimes I will get somewhat autistically into well lore heavy western rpgs games for a few weeks then completely break off due to how committal they are (elder scrolls, Darks souls, etc)

Personally, I dont put too much stock into the idea that Bloodbone has a central concrete critique. Though I understand that there seems to be an underlying sensation of meta consciousness in its use of conceptual particulars. And that looking at it through different paradigms is very much insightful/fulfilling (but I dont think one in necissarily correct). I would agree that there are aspects of it that can be described as "sublime" though. Personally I think this general sensation is in part due to the creators very particular combonation of western and eastern sensabilities. Of course this itself is vague, but imo the Japanese are usually very attuned to aesthetic convention. sometimes thiscan come off as very souless or not very nuanced, but these creators seem to be able to balance this with a western sense of depth in meaning and a deconstruction of aesthetic. However, these creators were able to synthesis both by creating a strong almost myth like sense of aesthetic solidity while also being able to explore its contridictions and means without breaking into janky untonality.

But again, this is simply one lense I have noticed. There are pleanty of western properties that have a strong sense of aesthetic but often lack in depth (like 40k) as well as eastern ones that do the opposite (making it a regional thing may be counterproductive, idk). Personally in my view I usually take a hegelian aproach.

also yah, would game with too.