Everyone’s favorite video game archeologist, Lance McDonald, is back with a new Bloodborne video. This time, he’s exploring unused dialogues for the Doll, the game’s leveling NPC of 2015. And while the alternative voice acting is cool, it’s what she used to say that really piqued my interest.
Bloodborne, like most games from From Software, is narratively opaque. Story details and plot points are often hidden in item descriptions and side missions that are easy to miss, making each part of the spoken dialogue much more important in order to gather even a fraction of the knowledge. In his video, McDonald explains that the doll originally had much more to say to the player about the world of Bloodborne, and the unused dialogue sheds light on the first details that were not included in the final game.
A good part of the unused Bloodborne The dialogue revolves around the fact that you are possibly playing as someone who is sick and hallucinating on your deathbed. For example, instead of greeting the player as a “good hunter”, the Doll used to refer to them as “the sick”, a name that can still be found in the note templates that players can share between games. She also welcomed the main character to the “nightmare” at the beginning of the game, calling it “a dream of the sick, of those who are on the verge of death”, shedding more light on the strange central area.
Bloodborne it is as fascinating and attractive in its tradition as it is to play with. Avid hunters still discuss the finer points of their universe today, a testament to both How Software was to make the story as dark as possible and the depths of the narrative’s concepts. Although this unused doll dialogue may have nothing to do with the story as it unfolds in the actual game, it does provide an interesting perspective on Bloodborne as a whole and the changes it has undergone throughout development.