Fear the Old Blood: Exploitation and Motherhood in Bloodborne

Fear the Old Blood: Exploitation and Motherhood in Bloodborne

Bloodborne's original cover art

Part I: Summary

Bloodborne is an action-rpg/horror game published by FromSoftware in 2015. A mix of victorian and lovecraftian horror elements, the game takes place in Yharnam, where hunters must fend off a plague of beasts slowly tearing the city-state apart. 

Discussing the plot of Bloodborne is somewhat complicated. Due to the game’s tendency to not give information about the story to the player directly and the resulting need to hunt for much of the lore through analysis of item descriptions and the in-game environment, many elements of this game’s story is difficult to uncover on first viewing, and much of it is left up to interpretation. Despite this, this game does have a clear story, and below is a summary of the game’s main plot that tries to stick as close as possible to either concrete facts about the story or interpretations of it that most of the fanbase agrees upon.

An image of The Hunter's Dream, with the Plain Doll standing near the center.

The plot takes place over the course of a single prolonged night. The game begins with you (the hunter you control is an avatar you make), traveling to the city-state of Yharnam to receive healing blood. However, to be ministered this blood, you must first enter a contract to become a hunter, dedicating yourself to fend off the plague of werewolf-like creatures known as beasts terrorizing Yharnam. As part of your contract, death only results in you returning to a place known as “The Hunter’s Dream,” from which you can become stronger with the help of a living doll (simply called the Plain Doll), and return to the world of the living, alive and well. 

As you progress through the game, you learn that the beasts plaguing Yharnam were once people. Soon afterwards, your hunt leads you to the abandoned college of Byrgenwerth. Here, you learn that the reason people are turning into beasts is because of Yharnam’s practice of blood ministration. The healing blood you came for is in fact the blood of powerful beings known as great ones. Should someone take too much of this place, they eventually become “blood-drunk,” essentially suffering from a bloodthirsty frenzy. Eventually, this blood-drunkenness results in the victim turning into a beast. 

A screenshot from the game's first ending, where Gehrman is about to kill the player character.

Eventually, you end up in the Nightmare of Mensis, where you slay the great one known as “Mergo’s Wet Nurse,” which results in both the death of her surrogate child Mergo and the end of the prolonged night. Before you can escape the night, however, you must first speak to Gehrman, who gives you the option of waking up from the Hunter’s Dream. From here, there are three separate endings, depending on the choices you make. If you agree to wake up, Gehrman kills you in the Hunter’s Dream, resulting in you waking up as the sun once again dawns on Yharnam. However, now that you’re severed from the Hunter’s Dream, you’re left defenseless for when night falls once more and the hunt continues. 

An image of the Moon Presence grabbing the player character to make them her surrogate.

If you refuse Gehrman’s offer, he attempts to kill you anyway. Fending him off results in another great one, the Moon Presence, descending into the dream. Gehrman was her surrogate child, and with him gone, you must take his place as both her surrogate child and the guide for the hunters that come after you. However, there is a way to avoid this fate. Throughout the game are hidden thirds of an umbilical cord (described as the precursor to a great one’s umbilical cord). If you find and consume three of them, you are able to ward off the Moon Presence’s influence and kill her. Doing so results in you ascending and being reborn as a great one, left in the care of the Plain Doll.

Part II: Gender in Bloodborne

Much of Bloodborne’s lore and imagery is feminine. One of the central aspects of the plot, blood ministration, calls back to the archaic medical practice of bloodletting, a practice modeled off of menstruation. Much of the lore surrounding the great ones pertains to motherhood, most prominently through the lore provided by the descriptions of the umbilical cord thirds required to get the true ending. All of their descriptions say that they are the cords every infant great one has, three of their descriptions say that every great one loses its child, then seeks a surrogate, and one says that the cords were thought necessary for a human to ascend to great one status.

Bloodborne’s lore, through the great ones, discusses how power structures exploit women for things such as children and carnal pleasure, their disregard for women’s humanity, and the suffering that this causes. The practice of blood ministration is founded on the exploitation of great ones (most notably the optional boss Ebrietas), for their blood, but said blood is also used in an attempt to make humanity ascend to a higher plane of existence. This ascension involves not just the exploitation of the great ones, but their children as well. These two practices are central to the reason why Yharnam is on the brink of ruin in the game. Through its lore, Bloodborne shows Yharnam’s failing society of exploitation and dehumanization, and though their practices are different from our world, the philosophy underpinning it is not.

Part III: Dystopia in Bloodborne

Most of the problems present in Yharnam can be tied back to two closely-knit organizations: The Healing Church and the College of Byrgenwerth. Church (implied to be Yharnam’s head of state), is responsible for the practice of blood ministration, the cause of the beast plague, and continues to perpetuate its practice even after the beast plague begins. They choose to combat the plague instead by having both citizens and outsiders seeking healing hunt the beasts. Given that these hunters often go blood-drunk themselves, the hunt has failed to actually end the plague. However, the Church still refuses to give up its practice; it’s where their power lies, after all. Meanwhile, the College of Byrgenwerth is focused on ascension, which it tries to achieve by studying the great ones. These studies include the desecration of dead old ones, the exploitation of the living ones for blood and children, and experimentation on humans in an effort to make them ascend (experiments which leave the subject in absolute agony should they fail). Eventually, the College was abandoned, but its scholars simply resumed their studies under the Church, consolidating all of Yharnam’s power in the Church.

The Cover art of Bloodborne's DLC expansion, The Old Hunters

One final aspect of the Church and College yet to be discussed is the story of Bloodborne’s DLC expansion: The Old Hunters. This expansion focuses on uncovering the actions of both organizations at the Fishing Hamlet, a town where the corpse of the old one Kos washed up from the sea. There, they experimented on the locals, killed some of them when they resisted, and then tore Kos’s child from her womb, taking away what small chance it had at life. In response, the villagers invoked the wrath of Kos’s spirit to curse the hunters responsible. Now, those who become blood drunk during the hunt are condemned to forever relive their greatest atrocities after death. This story further cements how every aspect of Yharnam’s sorry state, from the beast plague to the hunt to the exploitation of the old ones to the very hell hunters are condemned to ties back to the Church. It is an organization that seeks to perpetuate its own power, and is willing to destroy the world around it to do so.

Part IV: Class Recommendations and Conclusion

It would be impractical to require students to play an entire video game for the purposes of a class. Even if it was the sole focus of the class, students likely wouldn’t have the time to sit down and complete it (it also doesn’t help that this game is only available on the Playstation 4). However, many videos exist online that discuss this game’s plot, lore, and gameplay.

For a summary of Bloodborne’s main plot, I would recommend YouTuber Fungo’s summary “Bloodborne Lore - Story and Endings Explained,” which does the job in only eleven minutes. For discussing Bloodborne’s themes of gender, I highly recommend YouTuber Honey Bat’s video essay “Visceral Femininity,” which covers every aspect of the game’s feminine imagery and themes, and how they pertain to the story. Finally, the true essence of a video game can be gleaned by either playing it or watching someone else do so. For a playthrough that catches all of the game’s major moments in a (relatively), concise manner, I would recommend RTGame’s video showcasing the highlights of his playthrough. While it’s only select clips of his playthrough, it still covers the major scenes in the game and allows the viewer to get immersed in the game.

While there would be challenges in teaching Bloodborne in a classroom setting, I believe that its focus on the horrors of exploitation, its lean towards the horror genre, and its less direct means of conveying its story makes it a piece that would add a great deal of variety to the discussion of gender in dystopian works, while giving students an opportunity to analyze a form of media not often discussed in academic settings. Bloodborne is a piece of media unlike its contemporaries, and one I think would have much value in a classroom of college students.

Works Cited

Bloodborne, directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, FromSoftware / Sony Computer Entertainment, 2015. Playstation 4 game.

Fungo. Bloodborne Lore - Story and Endings Explained. 2 May 2015. YouTube, Fungo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj15A0g3etg#ddg-play. Accessed 10 December 2025.

Honey Bat. Visceral Femininity: A Bloodborne Video Essay. 5 May 2022. YouTube, Honey Bat, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJVXV14Vv3M#ddg-play. Accessed 10 December 2025.

RTGame. Let's Play All of Bloodborne. 20 February 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fpv00hfOhY. Accessed 10 December 2025.