Bloodborne’s Gore is More “Artistic” Than Gruesome

From Software’s Bloodborne is nearly upon us and director Hidetaka Miyazaki spoke to Kotaku UK about one of the more essential aspects of the game, namely its violence.

Though there’s undoubtedly a lot of gore in the action RPG, Miyazaki says it’s been done in a more artistic way. “I feel like nobody will believe me when I say this, but I’m a tasteful man and I like to adjust things accordingly; there was very careful management of the boundaries of what is shown. Things like what color the blood would be–we had to really adjust the tone of the red that we were using.”

“But also when creatures are attacked and blood is spilling everywhere, it’s adjusted so that it’s expressed in more of an artistic way than a violent or gruesome way; it’s symbolic. It’s expressed in the way that a painting would show something, not a photorealistic representation. That maintains a sense of terror without being gratuitous.”

Miyazaki also revealed that, “There were many things that needed to be toned down. Bloodborne is set in a nightmarish world, and that sense of horror needed to be expressed, so there are always going to be things that when first created were rather too over-the-top. Where do you set the limitations of what you show visually?

“It’s something that I had to exercise quite a lot throughout the project. I wanted to take a step into that more sinister, gruesome setting and environment compared to the Souls series, but then you’ve always got to be careful of how far you step into it; that’s something that Sony has helped with. We did discuss what the right boundaries were, what would be too distasteful.”

Bloodborne is out on March 24th in North America and March 27th in the UK for PS4.