Bloodborne was one of the most beloved games on the PS4. But you wouldn’t necessarily know that, considering that Sony hasn’t done much with the property recently. While Bloodborne is part of Sony’s curated PlayStation Plus Collection, the game doesn’t run at 4K resolution or 60 fps, and hasn’t had any major content updates. Thanks to an active mod scene, however, Bloodborne has just received an innovative new feature: the ability to play the game in first-person perspective.
The mod comes courtesy of Bloodborne enthusiasts Garden of Eyes and Zullie the Witch. You can see the modified gameplay in action on Garden’s YouTube channel. We’ve also embedded the video below:
- Play the best PS5 games
- Also try the best PS4 games
- Plus: I upgraded my PS5 SSD — and the results were surprising
The project is exactly what it sounds like, transforming Bloodborne from a third-person action game into a first-person one. This was a particularly challenging mod to make, considering that the game’s camera assumes that you’ll be in a third-person perspective, regardless of how closely you zoom into the action. As such, Garden and Zullie had to add a pair of disembodied hands and show all the game’s weapons up-close.
Right now, the two modders are still putting the finishing touches on the program. However, the mod will be available via Garden’s Patreon page “very soon,” although certain streamers will gain access to it before the general public.
On his YouTube page, Garden describes the relative difficulty of making a mod for Bloodborne. First-person mods already exist for the Dark Souls series, but all of those games are available on PC. Modifying content in a PC game is, relatively speaking, much easier than doing so for a console game.
“[Making a Bloodborne mod] was not exactly an easy task considering how limited PS4 modding tools are compared to PC,” he wrote.
While Bloodborne looks perfectly playable in first-person, those who choose to install the mod may still have to grapple with some design issues. Bloodborne is an extremely difficult game to begin with; one of the player’s biggest advantages is that he or she can see enemies on every side. Bloodborne’s dodging mechanics are fairly generous, but they don’t do much good if you wind up backing up into a trap, or a ledge, or a horrifying monster.
Furthermore, many of Bloodborne’s bosses are enormous and take up a good chunk of the screen, even in third-person mode. In first-person mode, all you can see is a small chunk of a boss. That’s not nearly enough to intuit what kind of attack the boss is about to use, and whether or not you can evade it.
Still, it’s good to know that Bloodborne’s mod scene is alive and well, at least until Sony decides to give the game some love. Better still: When Elden Ring comes out, Zullie is eager to bring a first-person mod to that game, too:
"I can't wait to bring it to Elden Ring too," she wrote in a comment on Garden's video. At present, she'll have to wait only a few more months.
