Highlights
- The Undead Giant in Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons is a repetitive boss enemy that appears frequently and can be a chore for returning players.
- The variations of the Undead Giant add difficulty, but the chained version is especially frustrating due to erratic and unpredictable chain movements.
- The Chalice Dungeon boss arenas don't complement the Undead Giant's mechanics well, resulting in uninteresting encounters in plain, open rooms.
The Chalice Dungeons are an often maligned section of Bloodborne thanks to the repetitive nature of these procedurally generated dungeons and their random rewards. Some of the bosses at least stand out as a quality reason for Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons, but many of these enemies fall short among the various repeated challenges such as the Undead Giant that plagues several layers of the Pthumerian Chalice collection.
Relatively innocuous at first, the Undead Giant almost fits somewhere between Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, even including a weak point that would eventually be featured for a boss in the latter title. However, it is both the rapid frequency at which the Undead Giant appears throughout the Chalice Dungeons and the way that its variants grind against FromSoftware's clunky physics that can make this boss a chore on the way down to other challenges like Lady Yharnam or the Loran Darkbeast.
The Undead Giant's Variants Add Difficulty Through Unpredictability
Fighting the base Undead Giant in the initial Pthumeru Chalice Dungeon's first layer is a pleasant surprise, as it sets the player up against a boss that can't otherwise be fought anywhere else in Bloodborne's expansive world of Yharnam. It has just the right amount of strangeness to separate itself from the monsters that had been seen leading up to unlocking the Chalice Dungeons, and is an easy enough obstacle for the introduction to these additional areas. That being said, coming back to challenge the Undead Giant isn't exactly a treat for returning players who have already mastered Bloodborne's combat.
It is the later variants, however, that add an extra layer of challenge to Undead Giant's otherwise simple boss mechanics. There are two additional versions of the Undead Giant that can show up throughout Chalice Dungeons in Yharnam. One of these comes with a large cannon in the center of its chest, which can fire periodically if the player is too far away to heavily punish playing too passively. The final version is easily the toughest in the bunch, as it has a series of chains attached to it that flail heavy weights and slicing blades behind its regular attacks.
While these variations do add some fresh challenge to the basic boss, the chained version of the Undead Giant specifically is a hassle that puts the limits of Bloodborne's physics engine on full display. This is because, while the attacks that spawn the secondary follow-ups are specific and have their own unique telegraphs, the way these chains bounce around is erratic and unpredictable in a way that doesn't appear to be planned by the developer. The result is a struggle against an enemy that doesn't clearly display what it is doing at any one time, which keeps it from reaching the same heights that Bloodborne's best bosses manage to strive for.
The Unfortunate Circumstance of Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons
One key aspect of FromSoftware's boss design that doesn't always get enough attention from fans is the way that the developer usually manages to perfectly fit a compelling arena to compliment the boss being encountered. While there are several negative cases in the developer's catalog, like the shoebox players fight Dark Souls' Capra Demon, the majority of specifically crafted bosses and arenas mesh together pleasantly. However, the Undead Giant is unfortunately made worse by the fact that it is a Chalice Dungeon-specific boss, needing to be designed to fight in a number of plain, open arenas that can hold a variety of separate bosses.
This means that the Undead Giant doesn't get the chance to shine the way it might have had it had an arena built specifically to accommodate the boss' wide swings and corner players as they reach for its weak spot. Instead, the Chalice Dungeon boss arenas are mostly built as one-size-fits-all rooms that any boss can occupy. So, the Undead Giant doesn't get to have a unique encounter like Bloodborne's Martyr Logarius, being left to occupy otherwise boring rooms at the end of repetitive dungeons.
Bloodborne is available now for PS4.
