8 Video Games Fans Didn't Deserve

FromSoftware released three Souls games from 2009-2014, setting the standard of the last decade for challenging-yet-rewarding gameplay. Bloodborne was marketed as Dark Souls' spiritual successor, albeit with a Victorian Gothic setting and some monster hunting.

However, whilst fans expected "Goth Souls", the marketing intentionally left out the Lovecraftian aspects that shape the game's often sickening lore. Dark Souls had been revered as the new paradigm of world-building, but fans received Bloodborne's story as something... "other".

Rather than pathos for fallen knights and sun lords, it was scornful regard for mutated beasts and their tentacled cosmic "gods". Also gone was the patient gameplay of "block, roll, and attack from behind". With Bloodborne, players had to re-frustrate themselves and learn how to manage the frantic "just attack, you heal when you attack!" methodology.

Skeptics proclaimed, "Why do we have to learn how to play a From Software game again? What is even happening in Yharnam?"

Regardless, Bloodborne redefined what "tough but fair" could be. It gave the gaming world a consistently alienating tone, whilst still commenting on human consequence and tragic ambition as Dark Souls had.

It is Dark Souls' feral cousin, and always part of the family.