PlayStation is commemorating 30 years since the PS1 launched in Japan, highlighting important exclusives and thanking fans in a new, celebratory trailer that graciously acknowledges Bloodborne fans’ “persistence.”
“If you know the story, you know it’s about love,” PlayStation’s trailer begins. For the rest of its two-minute runtime, the trailer highlights various values PlayStation apparently associates with certain titles or playerbases — “it’s about family” for God of War fans, “it’s about action” for Call of Duty experts, and “it’s about fear” for Resident Evil Village sickos.
These are all fine acknowledgements, all to be expected. The 2018 God of War reboot is explicitly about father-son bonding, Resident Evil’s evil mommy Lady Dimitrescu certainly instills some excellent fear in my heart, etc. But as an unwavering Bloodborne fan myself, I have to ask PlayStation: why are you doing this to me?
The 30th anniversary trailer lingers on Bloodborne’s introductory Cleric Beast boss fight, showing a player swinging their dirty saw cleaver up toward the monster’s protruding ribcage, thin skin stretched over it like beef jerky.
For players new to developer FromSoftware’s melancholy 2015 game, the Cleric Beast fight is a memorable welcome to the nightmare, but this battle isn’t really “about persistence,” as PlayStation’s trailer says. Or, it doesn’t require more dedication than any other challenging video game fight.
The only thing that truly is “persistent” about Bloodborne is its community’s desperate, years-long campaign for PlayStation to issue a 60fps PS5 patch or remaster.
The #FreeBloodborne hashtag on Twitter is full of broken hearts, memes featuring liquor and cigarettes, and people begging PlayStation to free them from 30fps torment. PlayStation’s 30th anniversary trailer is a tragic acknowledgement that the publisher sees this pain, but seemingly can’t do anything to alleviate it. At least not yet.
A polite rejection could never deter Bloodborne fans under the influence of our collective delusion. “It’s about the 60fps patch for Bloodborne,” says one popular Twitter reply to PlayStation’s video.
