Bloodborne has an emphasis on quality over quantity. But I’d like to talk about one major feature which lacks both. Speaking as a fan of chalice dungeons, I understand the average player’s aversion to them. Your introduction to the concept is a small, sparsely populated environment with weak enemies. There are no secrets; marvel at one or two rooms, throw the lever, kill the boss and repeat… then you stop paying attention. Most rooms in chalice dungeons impress only once. The reason isn’t solely a lack of possible rooms, but lack of detail. There are no organic shapes in chalice dungeons. Everything is arranged in and connects at right-angles.
Warframe is another game with randomly generated levels. Two years ago, Warframe‘s tilesets contained ten or so different rooms, and each level was composed of as many as fifteen rooms. It wasn’t rare to see a room adjacent to two identical rooms. Now, however, there are more than thirteen PVE tilesets with 30+ unique rooms apiece. Each room has multiple permutations with hidden treasure grottos, stealthy side passages, and secret exits, all of which may or may not appear. Warframe also has game modes and mechanics that incentivize exploration (hidden medallions are crucial for those who want access to as many Syndicates as possible). Lore covers every inch of the levels in the form of banners and logos, hinting at culture and possible connections between factions.
Chalice dungeons do become more interesting and sophisticated later on. Many players praise the Isz tileset for its appearance. Depth 5 root dungeons have surprising permutations on rooms. I myself have seen Watchdog of the Old Lords as a mob, in a giant room filled with oil, bone ash hunters, and cannon-wielding giants. Sometimes a subarea before the lamp will bypass the layer’s gate and lead directly to the boss. I have even seen subareas that lead between layers, allowing you to skip a layer and its boss completely.
But these surprises are few and far between. The complexity of the environment generated is based on the difficulty of the dungeon. In a series prized for its environment design, it seems antithetical to reserve all the interesting sights and discoveries until the end. Spending resources to craft root dungeons forces the player to grind for ritual materials if they want to progress to the next standard dungeon, which makes players reluctant to explore at all. The treasure areas in standard chalices contain enough materials that a player will never need to grind, as long as they perform no root rituals, but this is in no way apparent. The frustration players experience with co-op only compounds this. A system exists to help those stuck in root chalices, true, but you can’t have a conversation about the merit of chalice dungeons without someone mentioning the Short Root Ritual Chalice.
And that’s not to speak of the implementation of blood gems; with bosses’ gem drops varying by each individual instance of that boss, uncommon shape drops, and even uncommon gems, every rule laid down by the drop system is violated. Arcane builds have no choice but to endure this rigor, or else their damage pales next to simple and efficient physical builds. This is fun for people like me with an obscene breadth of patience. But most players grind only through the standard chalices for the platinum trophy, or wait for chronic spelunkers to locate bosses with ideal gem drops. There is no profit in exploring – until the end, whereby the system has frustrated you into losing interest.
But this article isn’t meant to chastise. Sure, chalice dungeons seem like a barebones sideshow. But having played a variety of games with procedurally-generated environments, I can say FromSoft is very close to gold. They’ve accomplished in one game what took Warframe‘s developer, Digital Extremes, almost four years to perfect. And chalice dungeons aren’t even the game’s focus. Rather than criticize, I imagine what could be. The main problems are lack of: room variety, possible room connections, organic angles, and adequate rewards. At least enough materials to avoid farming. But the sheer volume of content needed to fix these problems is better described by the word “expansion” than the expansion itself. I don’t want to see FromSoft abandon procedurally-generated environments, but I’m not sold on a Bloodborne sequel either. No, I propose something else.
Older readers may be familiar with an ancient ASCII game called NetHack. Like chalice dungeons, the environments are procedurally-generated. You play a character from a class of your choosing with randomly rolled stats, and then navigate an ever-descending labyrinth filled with traps, treasure and horrifyingly overpowered monsters. You can die from poison while surrounded by slimes on the first floor. I draw the comparison because NetHack has its difficulty in common with Souls games (although far crueler), and the RPG mechanics are nuanced and not directly explained to the player.
Imagine an isometric roguelike by FromSoft in this style. Instead of multiple dungeons, you could navigate a single neverending labyrinth broken into regions (depth), and sections of these regions (layer) could be shared with other players via glyph. Similar to Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, if Bitterblack Isle were randomly generated. There’s danger around every corner. Covenants could become a system of deities that govern multiplayer and confer bonuses. You bleed resources as you progress, opening shortcuts to connect checkpoints for exploring later. Bloodborne attempts to apply these Souls-essential concepts to chalice dungeons, however successful. Many of Souls’ mechanics translate well to a brutal, turn-based roguelike. Know what I say, From? Make a whole game like this, and make it amazing. You are a perfect match for this genre. Trying another gameplay style might even give you ideas to improve the next Souls game, whether or not it’s called “Souls”.
What would you guys like to see in a FromSoft roguelike? Real-time or turn-based? Diablo II-style loot, or fixed-stat equipment with upgrades? What about theme? Tell me your ideas in the comments.
Visit the Bloodborne Wiki
Check out more Game Articles!
15 responses to “Bloodborne & Procedural Environments”
double post
>
Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I really appreciate it! I used those dungeons to make some vids. They’re so cool…… I also found a dungeon with Abhorrent Beast if you’re interested. Now all we need is some Loran Dark Beast/ Blood-letting Beast action and I can die happy.
Edit: Very strange, the AB code you posted, as well as phdnd3w3 are the exact same dungeon. They are literally identical, save some mobs that are switched. It’s very odd. Maybe “boss rush” dungeons have a set layout?
>
I have. Several times. On the most memorable occasion, the chest was placed directly through a door leading to the sarcophagus room in a subarea. The chest was facing away from the door. Couldn’t open it, couldn’t get past it. Tried everything I could think of to squeeze through, nothing worked. Finally took one last look at the sarcophagus beyond, hung my head, and walked away in failure. Took out my frustration on a kidnapper.
>
Yeah, replying to myself… found AB as a mob per the google
x955cvwb
Link to info:
https://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne/comments/3gu6dz/does_anyone_know_a_glyph_that_has_abhorrent_beast/
Some other glyphs in there to try as well.
If anyone is up for some co-op tonight about 1030 pm ET, my name on PSN is same as here, HMU for some fun!
Derek
>
Ask and ye shall receive…
BSB w 2 giants…4n5vdyhj
Check out:
3aj8b9k5
Is fun too… watchdog in swamp area.
I’ve not found the abhorrent beast as a regular enemy in a dungeon. Would love to know a glyph for that one!
Derek
reply to BlitzKeir :I’d rather see handmade quality over randomly generated quantity in games in general. I love games for stories they say, not for insane giant worlds that are filled with values of grey repetitive time consuming content, and bullshit mechanisms. Better illustrate scale of world in few brilliant dialog lines, then actually presenting it in a way, that only consume my time and disturbs me from what the game actually want say towards me.
Honestly, I love the F/R/C Dungeons, they’re the best souls content I’ve ever seen, but the path to them is probably the worst at the same time. Materials that you have to re-search in order to make the next dungeon if you didn’t enter the next story dungeon right away, unbuyable materials that you have already found, the same standard dungeon everytime… The story dungeons are annoying at best.
But the roots…. <3. I’ve had so many amazing encounters in those, some made me laugh in panic upon seeing what they’ve got in store for me, some made me skip the entire area sayin *noooooooooope*… 2 Keepers a Loran Silverbeast and 5 (!) keeper’s hunting dogs in a single room… Fire throwing loran clerics above a room with an abhorrent Darkbeast (that only spawned once? is that normal?) and poison dagger throwing small fry… a long cave with a cannon giant in the middle, a pig at one end and a summoning witch on the other + a bone ash hunter… an Isz dungeon where the small larvae babies where hanging on the ceiling and would drop onto me when close, totally scary as I never expected it.
I’ve tons of such encounters. Did you know that you can reach a maximum amount of blood gems? I reached that twice ….
>
I’ve played through lots of random frc dungeons, and I’ve never come across inaccessible chests… I have had a really hard time figuring out how to get to a chest that was blocking my path into the room it was in, but I’ve later realized that you can break chests without damaging the insides.
>
The enemies you encounter in chalice dungeons are either unfortunate prospectors and their hunter escorts, or the denizens of those old kingdoms before they fell into the Nightmare and became part of the labyrinth. Both are transformed by exposure to the Great Ones. Which is why many enemies only appear in one area. Apart from that, as the labyrinth is half-submerged in the Nightmare, it can’t be taken literally. It’s as logical as the events in Mensis.
Root dungeons contain a lot of glitches, yeah, but that sort of thing is unavoidable in any randomly generated terrain. Remember twenty years ago, when games had cheat codes and could be exploited to hell and back? In the days before online multiplayer, devs weren’t afraid of you breaking games open and tweaking their guts. I like chalice dungeons because they harken back to that. The glitches and exceptions to what were assumed to be ironclad rules – that stuff excites me.
I agree that they are severely limited. They need double the rooms (minimum) and a large number of permutations on the actual room geography. It’s a concept in its infancy. Like I outlined in the article, they’re closer to a truly amazing game feature than people realize. I’d be surprised if they tried to evolve the concept of chalice dungeons; the reception was undeniably bad. But I cross my fingers that they take another chance and try to do it right next time.
>
I agree completely. Root frc’s are the best part of the game. Are you saying that you saw a BSB in a bonus area of a dungeon? I have seen Elder, Descendant, and the Watchdog in a layer 3 bonus area, but I am looking for others. Do you remember the glyph where you saw BSB?
Absolutely worst part of the game to me. Repetitive corridors one like each other, with enemies of all kinds in same room with no meaning or logic in it. Glitch like generated empty rooms as dead ends, inaccessible chests, even doors. Those few story related objects / bosses / enemies can be counted on fingers of one hand and its not really worth effort of diving into chalice dungeons. LOTS OF RUNNING, very little to see and thing about. Very important part for the story, yet very poorly executed.
I think each chalices has a natural progression in which we learn a bit more from their item description and environment. Whether its the statues, the murals or the little minute enemy placements, I think they all serve a purpose. I am disappointed that we are shy of 7 months and have such an inadequate chalice gylphs let alone we haven’t figure out the rules of the drops. Even the amazement of the “Out of Shape” ones which are probably the most rare of them all. Only those who love peering and have godly luck will find them.
Good thing chalices has the bestdrops then, makes em worth doing.
I can see From Creating something as addictive as Diablo.
I’m digging the concept of a procedural Roguelike using the Souls framework. It could be a one off, cheaper title. Just an evergoing layer upon layer dungeon delve for loot and power. Maybe even toss in the classic permadeath option and merge that with FromSoft’s love of shortcuts and levers by making you start from scratch but retaining dungeon progress through the shortcuts you’ve unlocked. Ofc you’re grossly depowered now and lacking in items.
If you think about it they were really close to that with the Chalice Dungeons.
I find the story dungeons boring because they were something I had to do so I could get platinum, but the roots are different. I like to poke about and don’t find boring as they’re what I want to do to see what is there, how diabolical the room is for what I have to fight.
Nothing is more fun than opening a door and hey there are two madmen w fire axes things SCREAMING, enough non summon spiders to crack the floor and when you drop back there’s a beast possessed soul who gets one shotted while you rush in to open the chest/casket to find only a cracked skull wisdom because you already w/e was in the chest/casket.
Or a boss rush area like that one 1 the Pthumerian descendant, a couple of pigs and a pair of witches and their summons already. Let’s not forget that scourge beast and the scourge victims too. The challenge of baiting Babe to knock everyone flying like bowling pins while not becoming 1 of the pins & not getting one shotted by that red robe wearing PITA descendant.
Or chasing the BSB around a swamp area while dealing with 2 cannon giants who somehow NEVER damage the BSB but lock onto you with laser precision.
Derek
Log in to leave a Comment