Could Bloodborne Be The Anti- "Order: 1886?"

As Paul Tassi reminds us, Sony and the PS4 has a bit of an exclusive problem. Microsoft has one too, of course, but right now, we're talking about Sony. It started at launch, with the passable Killzone: Shadow Fall and the abominable Knack. Infamous: Second Son was just pretty enjoyable, if not spectacular, and Driveclub was an unmitigated disaster. The Order: 1886 is being panned right now, and Sony needs to do some work if it hopes to regain its reputation as the place to go for the best exclusives on the market. It won't have to wait long for another shot, however: we've got Bloodborne coming out next month, and while mass appeal might be a bit of a question, it just might be the antidote to the overwrought and generally boring Order: 1886.

The delays and pseudo-Victorian setting makes the comparison particularly apt: Sony exclusives appear to be going for a certain stylistic consistency, at the least. That's where the similarities end: Bloodborne is a Dark Souls-style third person hack and slash RPG, while The Order: 1886 was a story-driven cover shooter heavy on the cutscenes and low on most everything else. When I first saw Bloodborne, I thought it looked a little silly, what with the hammer/longsword combinations, outlandish monsters, and relatively spartan environments. But in the wake of The Order: 1886, I find myself cautiously optimistic about what looks like a game a little more willing to let the player control the action.

Here's the most important thing: everything I've seen about Bloodborne so far just smacks of videogame. The graphics may be pretty in their own right, but the style is a world removed from the photo-realism attempts in The Order: 1886. In Erik Kain's preview, he praises the same show-not-tell storytelling of the Souls series, again a stark contrast from The Order. The Order suffered from an identity crisis: part movie, part game, unsure of how to pull either one of those off. What I've seen of Bloodborne, however, is at the very least secure in what it is. For one thing, it's called itself "Bloodborne," which is absurd. But like Dark Souls, it seems comfortable to put a great deal of faith in the player, whether in deciphering a complex combat system or parsing through an opaque story. Originality is important when you spend the entire runtime wresting control out of the player's hands, but well-designed systems win the day in a gameplay-driven title. Here's hoping that Bloodborne trends towards the latter.

It's hard to imagine a title like Bloodborne carrying the same mass appeal that I think The Order: 1886 was aiming for, but that might be less important right now. Like Dark Souls it, it's aimed squarely at a traditional video game crowd, which is theoretically the demographic Sony marketed the PS4 too all along. The AAA industry, in general, needs to work a little bit to win the faith of those gamers back, so here's hoping this scratches that itch for at least a moment.

We're all just biding our time until Uncharted 4, of course. I have my concerns about that one too -- the  head, down, super-serious looking Nathan Drake that we've seen splattered all over every announcement for more than a year doesn't mesh with the charming rogue I've become accustomed too -- but I have a good deal of faith in Naughty Dog.