Someone had fun recreating PlayStation 4 masterpiece Bloodborne on PC. But it’s definitely not the version players expected.
god of war, death stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone… These games first released on PS4 are all now available on PC. But, within the catalog of PlayStation exclusives, there is a title that resists a port: Bloodbornea real masterpiece imagined by FromSoftware (the studio that developed the Dark Souls trilogy and will soon be offering Elden Ring). PC gamers have been hoping for this for years, but there’s not a shadow of an announcement. Fortunately, we can count on the community of fans…
On the itch.io platform, we can indeed discover a PC version of Bloodborne (play it, it’s free). But don’t expect a copy-and-paste of the experience available on PlayStation consoles. As she explains in a tweet posted on January 31Lilith Walther, along with her friend Corwyn Prichard, had fun developing a PSX version of Bloodborne, or a truncated adaptation with the graphics of the very first PlayStation (we call that a demake). The result, after 13 months of work, is stunning. And it is clear that the result is up to the jewel of FromSoftware.
This Fake Bloodborne PC Remake Is… Brilliant
Bloodborne on PC
We can play Bloodborne on PC, but you have to go through PlayStation Now, so through streaming…
As a reminder, Bloodborne is a spiritual son of Dark Souls, that is to say an action-oriented RPG with particularly demanding gameplay. It is based on a gloomy universe, with a cryptic narration that instills a feeling of unease in anyone who dares to venture into this real nightmare. Bloodborne is one of the most striking games of the PlayStation 4, and that’s why Lilith Walther wanted to pay homage to it with a very original version. Thus, we should not expect a pure and hard transposition of the original experience, but the most faithful adaptation possible of the first zone of the game with a resolutely old-school feeling.
In an interview with Kotaku in January 2021, Lilith Walther explained: “ I was inspired by screenshots of demake that were very shared in 2015. I saw them and I thought to myself that it should be made into a real, fully playable game. For her, the games inspired by the trilogy Dark Souls have a retro feel, with some fundamental elements that feel rudimentary. This is the essence that drives this project which could very well be released at the end of the 90s, on the very first console sold by Sony. Success is already there: a few hours after sharing her creation, Lilith Walther announced that the milestone of 50,000 downloads had been reached. And, on Twitch, streamers have already seized the opportunity to put on a show with their subscribers.
Besides the deliberately dated and crude graphics (even the opening PlayStation logo looks like it’s displayed on a cathode-ray screen), this version of Bloodborne relies on gameplay designed for a controller without analog sticks. Therefore, you have to move with the directional cross, taking care to swivel the camera to the left or to the right thanks to the two triggers (yes, it’s rigid). It’s a shot to take and some are sure to think it’s unplayable. Despite everything, we find the sensations dear to Bloodbornewith these fights that favor the offensive option and a real sense of timing for the parries.
Sure, it’s a lot less accurate under these conditions, but it’s all there (including the boss fights). This demake of Bloodborne goes so far as to offer an option which makes it possible to extend the loading times (which were for a long time a big defect on PS4), and to offer an arsenal made up of a dozen weapons.
In short, it is cutehoping that this will give developers the desire for a real remake…