Witcher storytelling does not spoonfeed the player, in many occasions you will have to pay attention and analyze a quest to figure out that there is more depth into it than what you might have assumed. This is not Bethesda storytelling here.
Witcher has a story you can follow because it is told in a more cohesive way, the context and the timeline of the story are better explored and therefore its more understandable than a game like Bloodborne which is scattered pieces of lore, that you have to put together and maybe will get something that connects.
Witcher writing contains a lot of neat references from various places like classic literature and pop culture and the quests have depth into them that you can talk a lot about them and about what they represent. They tackle upon issues and subjects that are indeed mature.
The main journey itself is also simple, its not overly-complicated or pretentious to keep hammering the player with weird symbolism or abstract theories and concepts, its a simple fantasy epic journey split into three acts and thats fine, there is no need for it to be complex in that regard, its a well made basic main story filled with great side quests that contain decent depth and those are somewhat complex, those are the quests you tackle on your main story journey. What all of this makes, is a quality of writing that is easy to understand and digest for any player and enough depth for anyone looking deeper. And its all mostly written well, you won't find a lot of cheesy writing or superficial dumb themes being barely touched, its mostly consistent all around.
When it comes to Bloodborne the way they tell the story through scattered pieces of lore is very interesting, but looking at the story itself, what does its overall qualities present? its very unclear. Like for example despite watching many video, I still dont get what themes or subjects Bloodborne story tries to explore? how deep the game explores those themes? how much characters develop and interact with the world? they can barely be defined, their characterization is lacking because you dont interact with them much, they do have backstory and they have a quest or a purpose in Bloodborne's world but thats about it. The pacing and the timeline of the story is also very ambiguous, there is nothing clear here, so its all up for interpretation. And they didnt do very good job at explaining the purpose behind the story itself. Also the context of the story itself is minimal, its not rich, basically all that happens in the world of Bloodborne can be summarized with 1 netflix episode, there is not much content.
Bloodborne story is lacking in many categories, like its there but i would always assume its the lore that is the meat of Bloodborne writing, the story itself is rather minimal and basic. Which is fine, the game main focus is the gameplay loop and the atmosphere, the story was never the focus of this game, its never going to compete and beat a long rich story like Witcher which has its roots in Books/Novels of Dark Fantasy genre, there is no way its going to compete with that, objectively speaking from a critical perspective about writing in general.
Bloodborne fans present solid points for their preference when it comes to gameplay and combat, probably also atmosphere, but when it comes to story its not convincing at all, they want to have their cake and eat it too. NO.
blog.playstation.com
.Pennywise
for all the hard work and effort in getting these things done. And I saw you keeping the discussion going too. Well done!
