Bloodborne fans feel a little neglected, and rightly so. When the PS5 launched, Demon’s Souls got a complete remake from the ground-up, with 4K resolution, a 60 frames per second frame rate and near-instantaneous load times. Bloodborne, a spiritual successor to the Souls series, got a spot in the underrated PlayStation Plus Collection, and that’s it.
But thanks to some clever unofficial mod work, we can now see what the game would look like in 4K at 60 fps. It’s enough to make us wonder why Sony doesn’t offer something similar officially.
- PS5 restock tracker: Latest updates and where to buy
- Also check out the best PS5 games
- Plus: Bloodborne first-person mod is coming soon — and Elden Ring may be next
Information comes from Digital Foundry, which posted an article on Eurogamer, as well as a video on YouTube. The story of how the 4K/60 fps Bloodborne came to be is somewhat complicated. A well-known hacker named Lance McDonald created a patch to unlock the game’s frame rate last year, but that didn’t do much for the resolution, which was locked at 1080p (and usually reached only 720p, due to hardware limitations).
Now, a second party has built on McDonald’s work and used the PS5’s improved hardware to run Bloodborne at 60 fps with AI upscaling that approximates 4K resolution.
In other words: No, Bloodborne isn’t running at true 4K. And no, it’s not something you can play on your own PS5. But it’s as close as we’ve gotten, and it looks as impressive as you’d hope.
For those who haven’t played it, Bloodborne is an ultra-difficult action/RPG from the team behind the Dark Souls series. It debuted exclusively on the PS4 back in 2015, and it’s been one of Sony’s most acclaimed titles ever since. It had one substantial DLC pack — and that’s it. While the game is readily available and runs well on PS5, neither Sony nor developer FromSoftware have done anything to optimize the game for newer systems. There’s been no DLC, and no news of a sequel, although eagle-eyed players may spot a few story connections in Demon’s Souls.
Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do with the Bloodborne patch information, other than look at it and comment on how pretty it is. Digital Foundry didn’t reveal the exact source for the patch, but did mention that it’s probably running on a PS5 dev kit. Even if the patch were publicly available, getting it to run on a regular PS5 would require a lot of modification. The best everyday users can do is use the PS5 to get faster load times out of Bloodborne, and play with your TV’s upscaling options. The game itself is locked at 1080p and 30 fps.
Every now and then, we hear about a potential Bloodborne PC port or PS5 patch, but so far, nothing has come of them. If you want to know what Bloodborne would feel like as a next-gen experience, my best recommendation is to play PS5’s Demon’s Souls, perhaps with a very speedy character build.
- Upcoming PS5 games; Release dates and what we're excited to play
