Even stacked against other games from the legendary FromSoftware, Bloodborne has kept in the highest regard and long been at the top of fans' wishlists for the increasingly common remaster treatment for formerly exclusive PlayStation titles. In the modern era of leaks and insider information, Bloodborne's name has often been thrown around as the potential next-up for Sony to exhume with a fresh coat of paint, but unfortunately those rumors have remained just so.
Since its release in 2015, Bloodborne has been something of a catch-22. A masterpiece in terms of gameplay, style, and design, FromSoft's faster-paced take on its Souls-like subgenre has been hampered by technical limitations. As a PlayStation 4 exclusive locked at 30 frames per second, revisiting the game in 2023 is a stark reminder how far games have come in the last five years. While still aesthetically beautiful and impeccably well-crafted, it is hard to go back to a 30 FPS game after playing at 60, 120, or 144.
For Bloodborne Fans, Hope Springs Eternal
To bring Bloodborne up to gaming's current technical standard is a dream, and due in part of that, rumors of a Bloodborne remaster have cropped up frequently over the years. One of the first came in Summer of 2020 when the streamer CaseyExplosion divulged that a Bloodborne PC port announcement was imminent. The event the announcement was earmarked for would go on to be delayed and eventually come to pass without a peep regarding Bloodborne, but the rumor lit an inferno of speculation that would prove impossible to douse. In October 2021, podcaster Nick Baker reiterated CaseyExplosion's claim, mentioning that the Bloodborne remaster was already completed. Whether this was founded on legitimate insider information or hearsay is still unknown, but neither claim proved to amount to anything substantive.
A month before Nick Baker's bold claim, the infamous Nvidia GeForce Now database leak provided the internet with a laundry list of unreleased, some unannounced games, including a handful of PlayStation exclusives set to make the transition to PC. Bloodborne was nowhere to be found in the Nvidia leak, though Demon's Souls was, and the list eventually proved to be at least partially prophetic. Instead of focusing on the absence of Bloodborne in the leak, optimistic fans took the tidings of first and third-party Sony titles unshackled from their initial consoles as an omen of inevitability. A Bloodborne remaster and PC port makes almost too much sense, but what makes it such an easy choice for the treatment is also, for now, keeping it from fruition.
The Outlook for a Bloodborne Remaster Remains Hazy
Rumblings of a Bloodborne remaster were renewed in late May 2023 when Lance McDonald showed off a PC build of the game on Twitter, along with claims that they had seen the build during its development. A bold statement that, like so many others, does not seem to warrant much merit. McDonald's tweet featured years-old footage from a developmental build of the game that in no meaningful way signifies Bloodborne is headed to PC or slated for a remaster. For now and the foreseeable future, the only way to play Bloodborne on PC is streaming over PlayStation Now.
Noted insider and games journalist Jeff Grub struck at the root of the issue on a podcast in late 2022. According to him, The source code of Bloodborne is incredibly difficult to emulate or iterate upon, hacked together in a way that would be a monumental challenge to remaster without starting from the ground up. An outsourced developer such as Bluepoint would need the close supervision and guidance of FromSoft to accomplish the feat, but the legendary studio currently does not have the interest in devoting the resources to make that happen. However, priorities are prone to change, and once Armored Core 6 and Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC are off its plate, who knows what FromSoft will do next.
Bloodborne is available now for PS4.
