The player can glean that the beasts in the world have something to do with blood, that Yharnam employs a procedure known as blood ministration, and that, ergo, Yharnam may have an affinity with beasts. What it does do is rely on implicit exposition. Paleblood, blood ministration, what contract is the player signing, and why are they looking for paleblood, whatever it may be? The game provides no answers, at least not directly. In no way does the game itself do the legwork. Even when the game provides exposition directly to the player, it largely relies on the player themselves to draw whatever possible meaning they can from it. Looking at this cutscene is necessary to understand how “Bloodborne” conducts the rest of the narrative going forward. The man, whoever he is as he remains unnamed and unseen the rest of the playthrough, signals two other key facts: that the player’s character is an outsider to Yharnam and that the player is undergoing the process of blood ministration for the price of a contract. A blind, wheelchair-bound man signals that the player is seeking “paleblood,” a term never actually defined in the game, and that Yharnam finds itself the host of a practice called “blood ministration,” and that the mysteries thereof can be unravel provided one chooses to look. “Bloodborne,” for the unaware, begins with two cutscenes - the first begins immediately after starting the game. Instead, “Bloodborne” gives just enough information to the player to keep them craving more, encouraging them through both the in-game design and external satisfaction to keep diving ever deeper into the hunt. ![]() ![]() Yharnam positively oozes suggestions of history between the ancient gothic cathedrals, the crumbling structures swallowed whole by gnarled tree roots, the denizens out on an auspicious night, but seldom do those suggestions become anything else but that: suggestions. ![]() While a few instances of direct and explicit exposition are used, those instances are vague and short, lasting a handful of seconds at best. “Bloodborne” takes a unique approach to exposition compared to other pieces of media in that there is hardly any. “Bloodborne ,” however, takes this a step beyond implementing this in the game’s mechanics: it embeds this into its narrative.
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