
Bloodborne creator Hidetaka Miyazaki: ‘I didn’t have a dream, wasn’t ambitious' - alacritythief
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/bloodborne-dark-souls-creator-hidetaka-miyazaki-interview
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WillPostForFood
Great quote from Miyazaki, who rose from programmer to president of the
company.

 _“Now I’m president,” he says, “I get to meet a lot of other company
presidents. They’re such weird people. I’m fascinated by them.” With a smile,
he adds: “I use some of them as enemy characters in our games.”_

~~~
Filthy_casual
This quote reminded me of an anime/manga called Attack on Titan, where it's
said that its creator draws inspiration for Titan looks from bullies that had
in his school years.

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Filthy_casual
>But Miyazaki had a problem: at 29, he was too old to apply for graduate
positions and too inexperienced for anything else. “Not a lot of places would
take me,” he says. “From Software was one of the few.”

Career switchers who are slow to find their knack in life deserve a fresh
start. I say that from the position of being one. Talent _does_ exist among
the people who are trapped in mediocre, unfulfilled lives, and all they look
for is their chance to shine.

I bloody love Dark Souls and Bloodborne.

~~~
kleer001
I am considering a career AND industry change, and I'm almost 40. Can you give
me some general advice or pointers about career switching. I'm not entirely
sure why I would think you might have a basis, just reaching out.

~~~
rokhayakebe
This is not an advice, but just a comment. I think many software engineers
would KILL it if they worked for small mom and pop shops, or small practices.
They could help turn many $500,000/year businesses into several times that
revenue. Plus they would have WAY more autonomy then working at startups and
tech companies, which in my opinion are just factories.

~~~
TheCowboy
I agree with you, but there are a lot of catches when dealing with small
businesses. They don't apply to every business, and my experience could be
anecdotal. But there is an argument to be made that some of these businesses
remain small for a good reason.

The first problem with many of these small businesses is they don't want to
pay market rates for people with the skills and talent. If you do generate
that much revenue, it's not guaranteed that you'll be brought up to a market
rate.

You might not even get credit for achievements, where people view you as a
commodity worker. You'll encounter owners or employees who know just enough to
be dangerous, and therefore don't value the skills you bring to the table.
Their son knows some HTML, how hard can it be? You can't build Facebook or
automate all of their business processes in a weekend?

You'll be caught in situations where your time will be micromanaged to the
point where you can't be productive. The farther away a business gets from
software, the less experience management has with managing software projects
and the people who work on them. It's difficult to get autonomy for a project
that might take days and weeks for tangible results, when most people are used
to being able to see the progress and results more immediately. They won't
understand everything or anything you're doing and may doubt you actually know
what you're talking about or understand their needs.

Your "maker's schedule" will be sliced and diced into useless microblocks of
time. Because you know computers, you'll be tasked with keeping printers and
desktops running. You will be the first person people disrupt throughout the
day with any issue.

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devindotcom
I've been playing Bloodborne every evening for the last week or so, and it is
tremendous. It's the only game that __minor spoiler __has ever gotten
Lovecraftian horror correct in a really convincing way. The tone is pretty
much one hundred percent on target.

I'd love a couple of my cosmic-horror-loving friends to play it, but it is
_fucking_ hard. I'm not sure they'd make it to the first boss, to say nothing
of past it and the next however many there are.

As someone else points out, it may unfeasible for you to get a copy of your
own (it's a PS4 exclusive), so you can of course watch others play - but
seriously, it's not the same thing. Creeping around corners waiting for an
ambush, inspecting hideous statues, hearing the slither of some nearby yet
hidden hostile creature - the mindset you enter while playing is important to
the consumption of the content. Watching another play, you don't quite have
that. If at all possible, don't watch, just wait for your chance to play it -
outside of Dark Souls and to some extent its prequel and sequel, it's pretty
much a one-of-a-kind experience.

~~~
doktrin
> I'd love a couple of my cosmic-horror-loving friends to play it, but it is
> fucking hard. I'm not sure they'd make it to the first boss, to say nothing
> of past it and the next however many there are.

> outside of Dark Souls and to some extent its prequel and sequel, it's pretty
> much a one-of-a-kind experience.

Weird. Bloodborne is the first of the "series" that I've even been remotely
tempted to play. The combat mechanics look fresh and exciting. Every video
I've ever seen of its predecessors featured gameplay that looked boring and
clunky (even if challenging).

~~~
cdr
The combat in Dark Souls was amazing. The hitboxes were so finely tuned you
could just about dodge by a hair. The Artorias boss fight was the most fluid
battle I've seen in a game, though maybe Bloodborne can top it. The PVP was
absolutely great also, with skill-intensive counters for everything meaning
the most skilled player almost always came out on top.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWLsLb-
tK8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWLsLb-tK8A) (audio possibly NSFW)

~~~
alacritythief
The hitboxes are done very well in Bloodborne, to the point where the
Bloodborne subreddit has dubbed it "hitbox porn".

Examples:
[http://gfycat.com/FlatOffbeatDrake](http://gfycat.com/FlatOffbeatDrake)
[http://i.imgur.com/WWUzhSe.gifv](http://i.imgur.com/WWUzhSe.gifv)
[http://gfycat.com/LinedCookedKoodoo](http://gfycat.com/LinedCookedKoodoo)

------
sergiotapia
This game is just phenomenal, I find myself thinking about the game and it's
creatures late at night while trying to sleep. It has a quality to it that
requires your undivided attention and I think that's why it permeates so
easily into your psyche.

If you haven't tried it out yet, do yourself a favor and at least rent it.
It's one of the best game to come out in the past decade. You'll hear people
whine about it being hard, but it's not like that. It's fair. You mess up you
will be hit. If you're patient and time your movements you'll glide through
the areas and make the game seem like a typical hack n slash. You will make it
look easy.

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izacus
Does this game also require you to pointlessly repeat large chunks of levels
after death on bosses like the Dark Souls games did?

~~~
mreiland
Yes, coupled with a 30 second load screen after every single death. I've never
played any of the other games, but I can tell you after playing this for a
while that this game is not for me due to how they implement the difficulty.

Just to give you an idea, it took me 7 or 8 years to beat Kingdom Hearts 1
because of how bad the camera was. I got to a point where I just walked away.
I really dislike games that are difficult due to ackward controls, cheesy
mechanics (such as enemies popping behind you in an area you just cleared),
that sort of thing

I played it for a few hours but I got tired of things like

\- you roll and the camera lifts up so you're staring down at yourself and can
no longer see the enemies you rolled from

\- if you hit the enemy at the end of your range your attack pushes them back
further than your characters steps forward so you miss the followup attack and
they end up killing you (or hurting you badly).

\- Sometimes when you attack an enemy they'll slide sideways (I say sometimes,
I mean quite often). I've seen them slide so far they slide behind the camera
at which point you're guessing where they are based upon where they
disappeared.

\- Your attacks do random amounts of damage. Sometimes it takes 3 hits to kill
a mob, sometimes 4 or 5. But because every attack uses stamina, you really
want to use as few attacks as possible and sometimes you die for it because
that 1 random enemy required an extra hit. I never figured out why.

\- the healing items appeared to give a random amount of health back.

\- Some of the level designs appeared to be such that it maximized the pain of
the camera. One enemy in particular I'm thinking of is big and surroundedin by
innumerable unbreakable boxes and such. He wasn't that difficult himself, but
being able to avoid his attack successfull due to the aforementioned boxes,
etc, was a tedious chore.

I can see the appeal to the game, but it just isn't for me. And this is coming
from a guy who plays most games on hard. But there's a certain kind of
difficulty I don't enjoy and unfortunately this game lands right square in the
middle of it.

edit: The thing that caused me to respond in the first place.

The game moves slow overall. You kill an enemy, he drops loot, but not
immediately, so you end up waiting to see if he dropped loot. If he does, you
run to the body, hit X, wait for the confirmation to pop up, hit X again, and
then eventually go on about your day. When you're playing the same level over
and over again it gets _really_ time consumingly tedious. Add on to that the
30 second load screen (that's not an exaggeration) and you have a game that's
pure tedium (atleast for me).

~~~
anon4
_Your attacks do random amounts of damage_

No, it matters which part of the weapon hits the enemy. With the hammer for
instance, you really need to aim it right - to hit the enemy with the head
part and not the hilt part.

Some of your other gripes can also be summarized as "you must become
proficient at the mechanics" and the rest is fucking bullshit which Miyazaki
put in because he hates you.

~~~
mreiland
I figured that's what it was, but I couldn't ever see it. Someone else created
the character so I didn't choose the weapon, but it was a long whip/blade
thing that would open and close (for faster/slower attacks). It may just be
harder to see with that particular weapon, I did actively try and check if
that was the case.

For the point about the mechanics, there are some mechanics I simply don't
want to deal with because I don't personally find them fun. The designers are
free to design the hit system so that the enemies have a tendency to slide
back towards the camera. I'm just as free to avoid the game because I don't
want to get good at turning my analog stick at just the right angle because
they slid back in a way that makes no sense.

That isn't me attacking the game, there are obviously a lot of people who
really like the game. I've been gaming since the Atari days and I've grown to
have my own set of likes and dislikes for games.

I will say there was something really addictive about the game. I wanted to
keep playing despite the frustration, but the frustration itself was due to
mechanics I simply don't like (and the slowness of the play is a _huge_ pet
peeve of mine. I played Tales of the Abyss on emulator because I couldn't deal
with the slow load times on the actual PS2, I actually stopped playing the
game because of them).

OTOH, I ordered my PS4 from Amazon and it bricked w/i 6 hours of getting it,
so maybe if I put in a bit more time I'll learn how they want you to play the
game... We'll see, I could not believe it when the PS4 shut off and refused to
start up again.

~~~
anon4
Haha, yeah, I can see where you're coming from. The game really is meant to be
bullshit and to hurt you. From what I've seen though, Bloodborne has a lot
less bullshit mechanics-wise than the previous games. Just look at the Capra
Demon fight from Dark Souls: small room with pillars all over, one huge boss
and two attack dogs crammed in there with you. Your weapons bounce back when
you hit the geometry; theirs don't. Have fun. Also: The Archers in Anor Londo.

For me though, that's part of what makes it special. It wouldn't feel so good
actually getting past the obstacles if it was fair.

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doctorpangloss
If you want to see more of the game but find it too cumbersome to buy, I
started by just watching it on Twitch[0].

[http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Bloodborne](http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Bloodborne)

~~~
philtar
How would it be too cumbersome to buy?

~~~
jmgao
It's a PS4 exclusive, so anyone who doesn't already have the console have to
buy it ($400) to be able to have the privilege of buying it.

(it was worth it)

~~~
ekianjo
There's some chance it comes on PC later on. Maybe. Just like Dark Souls did.

~~~
simias
Dark Souls never was an exclusive and it was published by Namco. Demon's Souls
would be a better comparison and it was never ported to the PC unfortunately.
Sony is publishing the game and I'm not sure it would be in their best
interest to have one of their only notable PS4 exclusives available on an
other platform.

