THE IMPORTANCE OF SPATIAL

CONSTRUCTS IN BLOODBORNE
DES503.2017, Game Design as Culture and Business

Erkang Song

ID: 1605708

ABSTRACT

Bloodborne as one of the nominees for best Game of The year in The 2015 TGA (The Game
Awards), even though it didn’t win the final awards, it gave to the players a totally difference
experience from other 3A games, which they have clear story line or aim instead of a
complex storyline in Bloodborne, as well as the enemies’ difficulty was lower. This game’s
producer — Miyazaki, gives players a world where it is full of dangers, mazy levels and less
obvious story line. The reason why his game is difference from the ordinary RPG game is
because of the unique concept from Miyazaki: “What I want is for our core users to really get
the sense of accomplishment and achievement that comes with overcoming the hardest
challenges a game can present. “(‘Bloodborne’ designer wants to challenge, not coddle,
players, 2017) This concept make the Bloodborne inherit the similar game style from Dark
Soul which is full of depressing environment and unkind to new players. However, there are
some differences between Dark Soul and Bloodborne. Compare to Dark Soul, the function of
attack of players or enemy is quicker, and also the developers encourage players to attack
more often than defending or dodging.

Overall, the spatial construct of Bloodborne perfectly combine the obscure story, the dim
environment and the difficult game mechanic. I will try to explain how the spatial construct
influence the difficulty, the player’s experience and the narrative.

DIFFICULTY IN LEVEL

FUNCTIONAL SPACE OF BLOODBORNE

One point of level design is to add game objects into levels and let players to search for
them. This method of level design is called functional space design, which includes objects,
attributes and states. (Schell, 2015, p.136) These game objects’ have attributes, such as to
attack players, to give players a story clue from his items or cure players. These will enrich
the space in game, and also will help player’s or block players path. In Bloodborne, the aim
of spatial construct is to create more difficulties for players.

From the recent PSN (PlayStation Network) awards statistics, only 33.01% players pass the
final boss. (Bloodborne Trophies, 2017) Actually, one important part in Bloodborne is to
show the difficulty of the minions’ attacking the players, as well as the damage that minions
do. An example is the enemy game object —— Huntsman, who have a sickle and three
basic actions to attack the players at the start of the game, sickle swing, heavy two hand
swing, sickle sweep. (Bloodborne, 2017) The reason this is difficult is why these three basic
attacks have other three extend attacks —— Slow sickle sweep, fast sickle sweep and sickle
combo. And also he uses these attacks randomly. These kinds of attack reduce players’ fault
tolerance rate, and each attacks will give players huge amount of damage. Additionally,
death will let players lose their currency, which is used to improve the players’ stats. These
features make new players afraid to meet enemies, because the cost is unaffordable. At the
beginning of the game, the players have to die once and go to the hunter’s dream to get
equipment, but this experience will give a deep impression to players that they want to stay
away from the enemy. Depends on these features, level designers can use functional space
to change player’s state of mind, making this game become harder.

THE USE OF FUNCTIONA L SPACE

AMBUSH

Depending on functional space, players’ psychology will easily be influenced by game

objects which have special attributes, like enemy hiding behind some objects changing the
attack style to ambush. The book Art of Game Design, talks about four principal mental
abilities that make gameplay possible. These are modelling, focus, imagination and
empathy. (Schell, 2015, p.115) In Bloodborne, they concentrate more on modelling, focus
and imagination. Player have already one of the mental abilities — “difficulty modelling” —
after they die many times from same enemies, who just use one or two hits and then kills the
players. This experience makes them afraid to meet the enemy. However, because players’
attention focuses on the enemies’ damage they try to dodge them while fighting and often
they will easily ignore the enemy hiding in another position in the landscape. On the other
hand, when player walks into a place, where it has replenishments and they will relax after
the hard battle, the enemy will most likely ambush them at that time.

Picture 1

(Bloodborne Walkthrough Gameplay Part 1 - Prologue / Character Creation / First Level (PS4 1080p
HD), 2017)

As shown on the picture 1, this place has medicines and seems without any enemy.
However, there is one enemy hiding behind the box where it is highlighted by a red
rectangle. If the player goes straight forward without any preparations, the enemy will easily
surprise them. The reason why player will go there in an unprepared state is because this
place hasn’t any enemies which can be detected by players easily, and also the supplies on
the ground will misleading the players mind to think that this is a safe place.

The blind area also appears in the picture 2-1 and picture 2-2 as well:

Picture2-1 (Bloodborne, 2017)

Picture2-2 (Bloodborne, 2017)

The place where the red rectangle is pointing at the player’s blind area, after the player pass
by this narrow path, the enemy will suddenly jump out and attack the player. Actually, there
is another road to let the player pass these area, is shown at the red rectangle at picture 3.
There are several enemies waiting at the round plaza, and the situation can be difficult for
the players to fight all enemies at once. Comparing the round plaza, this narrow path has
less enemies and also has some items to collect, so it seems easier to go through the
narrow path than through the plaza, because of this psychology it’s misleading the player to
pass this narrow platform and get ambushed by the enemy who hides behind the wall.
 Picture 3 (Bloodborne, 2017)

DECOY IN SPATIAL
Back to the picture 3, another reason the player will choose this narrow path is because
there is a collection at the end of the path, I highlighted this item with a green rectangle.
There is an article named Immersive 3D World mentioning that, “the players will follow
"bread crumbs" left behind by a fictitious proceeding game character to finish the story.”
(Carson, 2000) The content of this essay is about how to make a good story to absorb
players. However, it is same to use it in spatial construct design. As the picture 4-1 shows
that after the players find the item where it is highlighted by a green rectangle, there is no
doubt that they will go to and collect it. After the player pick the item up, from his right
position where it is highlighted with a red rectangle, same as picture 4-2, an enemy will jump
out to ambush the player. It’s hard to get prepared to defend from this attack or even find the
enemy hiding there when it’s his first time playing, unless the player adjust his camera view
like picture 4-2, before he gets the item. Because after the player picks the item, the camera
view moves towards the front, so they cannot find enemy due to visual limitations by the
camera.

In this part, players’ attention focus on the item, and ignore the trap, where an enemy is
waiting to attack the players. The item is like “bread crumbs” which is making the players to
get the award, falling into the trap.
 Picture 4-1 (Bloodborne, 2017)

Picture 4-2 (Bloodborne, 2017)

There is the same functional space in picture 5-1 and 5-2.

 Picture 5-1 (Bloodborne, 2017)

Picture 5-2(Bloodborne, 2017)

In this area, there is item, which is highlighted by a red rectangle in picture 5-1, that will
trigger an animation and an enemy, which is showed in picture 5-2’s rectangle, will push the
player off the cliff if he tries to pick up the item. Even though it hasn’t a strong impact from
this trap compare with the previous one which I introduced in picture 4, it still shows that”
bread crumbs” have the ability to mislead players.

DANGERS ARE EVERYW HERE

It’s easy to find that when designers design this game’s level, they not only concentrate on
the players’ psychology but also use players’ attention to ignore the potential threat. As I
explain at the beginning of the article, fighting with one enemy will need a lot of attention to
avoid the enemy’s attack. Therefore, it will let the player fall into a mortal trouble if another
enemy ambushes him during the fighting. The reason why players will feel nervous about
this, is that their attention is dispersed by the new enemy and it is hard for them to face
multiple enemies at a given time.

Picture 6

(Bloodborne Walkthrough Gameplay Part 1 - Prologue / Character Creation / First Level (PS4 1080p
HD), 2017)

For example, in picture 6, when players focus towards the enemy and fight with him, is hard
to detect the other enemy hiding behind the car. If the enemy suddenly attacks the players
from behind the cart, it will scare them and disperse their attention.

This is the same as the focus function which feature is included in functional space.
Developers use the enemies to lead the players to have high concentration to cover the
other threats in the level. Additionally, the trap in this game also use the focus function, like
picture 7-1 shows：
 Picture 7-1 (Bloodborne [traps], 2017)

As the player facing the enemy, their concentration reduces their ability to detect the
dangers in environment. It’s not difficult to find that there is a trap over the tree, however the
enemy distracts the player, so he will fall into the trap like picture 7-2.

Picture 7-2(Bloodborne [traps], 2017)

THE HARDEST BOSS FIG HT

There are 17 boss fights spread around the game world. All the boss fights have same
features — boss have a huge body size. The size will add more fear to facing the boss. One
of the ways to deepen the player’s fear is the space where the boss fight will happen. The
smaller the space where the fight is happening, the less area the players can move to avoid
the boss attacks, also the larger space that boss’s attack will cover. Using the first boss fight
as an example, like the picture 8-1 shows:
 Picture 8-1 (Bloodborne, 2017)

This boss fight area is a stone bridge, where is full of effigy and broken carriage. If use the
breadth of this boss to measure the size of the bridge, two bosses can block the entrance of
the bridge. As the picture 8-2 shows that the boss’s attack can easily cover this red rectangle
place if the player is closed to the boss. Meanwhile, the effigy and broken carriage also take
space, they make the bridge become more narrow. The decorative game object has more
attribute in this area, they occupy some space and make it harder for players to avoid the
huge area of boss attacks in this constricted place, and it easily to let players feel nervous to
fight the boss.

Picture 8-2 (Bloodborne, 2017)

FLOW IN SPATIAL CONSTRUCT

In order to design a good spatial construct in a game, a level designer not only needs to
concentrate on players’ psychology, but also needs to concern about what kinds of action
that players will take. With these, the designer can easily set the game object which have
different attributes, such as to use a decorate item to narrow down the space; use collection
item to lure the player to go into the traps; or the enemy who hides behind the blind area.
These game objects give surprise to players, and let players’ mental state always be
between anxiety and relaxed state. This kind of state increases the game’s immersion. The
game’s immersion is called “flow”.

Even though half of the difficulty is from the player being afraid to face the enemy directly in
Bloodborne, but this part of difficulty is not hard to overcome. Whatever the trap or blind
area, or even the numbers of enemy, the player can remember their place. In another word,
players will familiarize this map like where the traps are, and where they will be ambushed
by an enemy after each failure, they will learn from their failures.

During the learning from failures, players need to focus on how to avoid the traps and the
enemies’ attack. At this time, players’ attention will be captured by the game’s content. This
mental state called” flow”, which it means “When something captures our complete attention
and imagination for a long period, we enter an interesting mental state. The rest of the world
seems to fall away, and we have no intrusive thoughts.” (Schell, 2015, p.118). Additionally,
“there is a “flow channel”, which means a narrow margin of challenge that lies between
boredom and frustration, for both of these unpleasant extremes cause our mind to change its
focus to a new activity. Csikszentmihalyi calls this margin as flow channel.” (Schell, 2015,
p.118)

There are three flow channels, however the third flow channel is the most suitable for
players who are playing Bloodborne.

Picture 9

Picture 9 shows that, the flow channel is between the anxiety and boredom, the shape of the
flow channel is like steps, which is challenging during the game. There will appear many
challenges as the players play this game, like more blind area and stronger enemies.
However, the level up cannot help player to get powerful skill. The skill point can improve the
players’ health or defence, but the only useful thing is just can take one or two more hits
from enemies. On one hand, even though there are fifteen weapons which can be collected
by the players, the benefit, which is brought by the weapons, is just changing the attack style
of the players. In another word, level up or get new weapon cannot afford players to
overcome the challenge. The way to help players overcome the difficulty is improving
players’ skills like learning from their failures. Same example from the first boss, it’s hard to
get more skill point or good weapon before the player defeats this boss. So players have to
learn how does the boss attack, and when is the best time to avoid the boss’s attack. After
the player pass this challenge, they think they made big progress and they are eager to find
other challenges.

On the other side, there are plenty of hidden spaces, where players can find a good reward.
For example, there are two giants under a well in DLC Old Hunter. After players defeat these
two giants, they will get a new weapon as a reward. However, the difficult thing is that the
fight with these two giants is the same as a boss fight, the important thing to push player to
keep challenging the difficulty is because of the rewards. The rewards encourage the players
to improve their skills and search more challenging things.

NARRATIVE

INFORMATION IN THE GAME’S W ORLD SPACE

If we separate the level design into two parts, the first parts aim is to show the difficulty, then
the other parts aim is to give players story lines. Next I will discuss how does Bloodborne
use level design to transfer the information to players.

Jessie Shell separates the spatial construct into five parts — Linear, Grid, Web, Points in
Space and Divided. (Shell, 2015, p.331-333) From the spatial construct in Bloodborne, the
spatial construct is combined by Web and Linear. Web’s definition in spatial construct is that
a web arrangement is achieved by marking several points on a map and connecting them
with paths. This is useful when you have several places you want the players to visit, but you
want to give them a number of different ways to get to them. Sometimes there is a
meaningful travel along the paths, but other times travel is instantaneous. Then let’s see the
map from Bloodborne:
 Picture 10( Hypnotyks, 2015)

It shows that the centre of this game’s map is called CARHEDRAL WARD, which connects
with OLD YHARNAM, UNSEE VILLAGE, HEMWICK CHARNEL LANE, CENTRAL
YHARNAM and FORBIDDEN WOODS. Additionally, these branch areas also connect with
each other. There is an impressive example that the connection between FORBIDDEN
WOODS and CENTRAL YHARNAM. The players can find a cave in FORBIDDEN WOODS,
and if the players use the ladder to go up, they will arrive at a hospital’s back door, which is
connect the place where is the start of the game. In other words, FORBIDDEN WOODS is
sit under CENTRAL THARNAM. Because of the seamless link from top to bottom, make the
game map more streamlined and solid.

However, there are some places which are unconnected with the main map but need to win
boss fights and they open new place, these part of area is using Linear spatial construct, for
example after the special event — Blood Moon Phase, there is a door which will open in
UNSEE VILLAGE, this door leads to the boss fight and to a new area. Even a place needs to
trigger some kind of event then it can be travelled by a teleporter, like FORSAKEN CASTLE
CAINHURST. The reason why these part of map separates from main map because of the
narrative.

NARRATIVE

Why does Bloodborne’s map design combine Web construct with Linear construct?

In recent years, designers have concentrated more on the scenario, and try to find new ways
to tell a good story. Comparing to earlier games, like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy which
scenarios are using linear narrative, designers prefer to fragment the story into piece, then
intersperse it into the landscape to let players to collect it. For example, The Witcher 3 have
plenty of books to collect, and these book have full of information to explain the games world
story.

There are no exceptions, Bloodborne also use this way to show players a story. In this
game, each items have detailed information, like where it came from or how it has been
used in the past. Or weird conversations with NPC’s. These game objects which carry some
information and are intersperse in this game world. The web construct not only separate
different environment style, but also separate these game objects into special environment
and then feedbacks more information to the players. For example, there are some key words
in these game — Dream, different faction and time.

There are many times players hear the word” dreams”, like after players die they go back to
a place called Hunter’s Dream, this place can let players to level up or use any teleporter,
and each time after the player finishes level up, a NPC will say “Farewell good hunter, may
you find your worth in the waking world”. (Bloodborne, 2015) After that the player’s character
will wake up on the main map. However, there is evidence to show that player’s character is
still in a dream, that is if the player defeats some bosses like Mergo’s Wet Nurse, there will
see “Nightmare Slain” on the screen. The nightmare exists in a dream, so that’s one reason
why this game world is a dream world.

About the faction information, the players can get information from the weapons or armors.
There is example that after players get Ludwig’s Holy Blade, the description of this sword
shows that it used by a faction called Healing Church.

About timeline in this game, it can be seen through boss fight. From the Daughter of the
Cosmos boss fight, player can find the information about Spider Rom, which can backtrack
the time written on the statue behind the boss.

These key words can be found in the Web construct in map during the player explores the
game world. Additionally, Linear construct gives key clues which are connecting all the key
words, such as Blood Moon Phase. Following the NPC Provost Willem’s hint, player can
meet the Spider Rom, after defeat this boss then it will trigger the Blood Moon Phase and
will unlock a new area NIGHTMARE OF MENSIS.

However, to connect the key words, there are two different story lines. The first is Provost
Willem’s who wants to protect the dream from the nightmare, which is summoned by
Micolash, so he uses Rom to change time line to break Micolash plan until players’
appearance, and Provost Willem trust the players to totally destroy nightmare. The other
story line is opposite to the previous story line, the faction support Micolash’s plan, so they
use Spider Rom to control the time, giving more time to let Micolash finish his plan.

The reason why there are two different story lines, is because all the information is
separately located in the landscape. Players search for information without fixed order, so
the information they get also hasn’t a fixed order. That’s the reason why there are two
different story lines before the players can go to next area to get new information.

In Jessie Shell’s book, there is Venn diagram called “hierarchy of knowers”:

(Shell, 2015)

In this Venn diagram, each circle represents a “knower”, and each point represents some
information in the game — the state of an attribute. In her book, this Venn diagram is using
to explain the players’ relationship in a competitive game. However, even Bloodborne is an
RPG game, it still can use this diagram to explain the relationship between level and
information from scenario.

I simplified the Venn diagram on different players when they get different information from
the map:

Game

Story Information
C from player-2
Information
D A
from player-1

B
Information
from player-2
Each circle is representing information or storyline, which different players may get from the
piece of story, such as B, C, D areas. After different players’ share their information, they will
get more storyline like the A area in Venn diagram. That’s one of the benefits brought by
fragment story, and let players spend more time to search the item and find more information
in the game world.

SUMMARY

In conclusion, it depends on the game designer’s ability to combine spatial construct in game
world with functional space, whatever the difficulty in game or fragment information.
Bloodborne is a game which perfectly combine these two function, and let players’ have
different experience in this game. There are still unsolved mysteries in this game world, the
players still try to find some new information in this game. A group of player found a new
enemy in November 19,2017. (Henges, 2017) After three years later, there is still new
information that can be developed by players, this is also the reason why the level design in
this game make this game successful.
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