Bloodborne is a difficult game, no doubt. If look closely, though, there are ways to make it easier. Boss exploits — aka cheesing — are the stuff of legend in Souls games, but is that cheating?
So far, I haven’t summoned a friend in Bloodborne, and I’m hoping to keep it that way. I’m not against others asking for help, but I managed to fight all the way through both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls on my own, so why not keep the streak going? (Of course, let’s conveniently forget I summoned for the Three Ruin Sentinels and the Smelter Demon in Dark Souls II.)
Summoning is one thing, exploits are another. One is built into the game, another is bending the game’s rules to your own benefit. Then again, it can often feel as though the Souls games themselves are exploiting your habits, tendencies, and expectations, so is it all fair game?
I’d say there’s a pretty big difference.
Warning: Some mild Bloodborne spoilers are to follow.
The game’s second boss, Father Gascoigne, is designed to teach players about effectively using parrying and visceral attacks. The most useful function of your gun is to interrupt an enemy, force them onto one knee, and allow you to gut them for a substantial amount of hit points. Father Gascoigne is easy to beat, once you’ve realised his animations are easily interruptible.
You don’t have to do it that way, and YouTube user Daniel Meyer found another useful method:
If you stand behind a certain set of gravestones, his bullets are deflected, and you can easily hit him from a safe place. With some clever manoeuvring, he’ll just hang out there and it’s all over.
You might be dodging the “point” of this boss using this method, but it’s totally legitimate! It’s making use of the game’s rules in a creative way, and you’ll need every advantage you can get!
What happened to YouTube user Logan Francis is a different story. He’d just finished helping someone else out with a boss, and was looking for a friend to help him do the same. After a few minutes, it was clear no one was going to show up, so he consumed a Bold Hunter’s Mask, which allows him to travel back to the game’s nearest lamp and return to the Hunter’s Dream.
That didn’t happen. Instead, he reappeared from the game’s lengthy loading screen over here:
Somehow, he’d traversed the Nightmare Fog and ended up in front of the boss. It quickly became clear, however, the boss hadn’t really been triggered, but it was possible to attack him.
Francis kept hitting him, and rather than glitching out, he simply died. The battle was “won.”
Oddly enough, this is the boss battle I’m working on right now in Bloodborne. I haven’t tried out the exploit outlined above, but it’s tempting. I could spend another hour figuring out the boss’ strategies and working out the “right” way to take him down, but what if I could wave the exploit wand? Is that wrong? The game has punched me in the face so many times, can’t I punch back?
In my case, no. I won’t use this exploit. I won’t cheese the boss this way. But will you?
Comments
17 responses to “The Argument Over Whether A Bloodborne Exploit Is Cheating”
First one I’m ok with if people want to use it. Cheesy as hell but whatever
The 2nd is clearly an exploit of a bug, so I disagree with using that. Also don’t understand why you would want to. There is no feeling of success, no challenge. Might as well just load up a save game from somebody right at the end and see the final cut scene and say, Yay I completd the game
Some people want to win at any cost. It’s the reason why I kick myself for bring a failure for not being able to beat the intro mission to final fantasy type 0 on Agito difficulty. However there’s another difficulty to challenge now: finis
The second one is straight up cheating in my eyes. If you want to do that sure go for it, but don’t try and claim you aren’t cheating. To me it defeats the purpose of playing a from software game.
I disagree, in the VERY specific circumstance that this guy had, I say fair game. He didn’t purposefully use said item to glitch the boss. No the GAME stuffed up and consumed his item and you expect him to be punished for its mistake? Ridiculous. (I assume he couldn’t leave the area either otherwise people would just run from a boss fight if they were going to lose, I say this because I haven’t played this game and am unsure of the mechanics involved).
If on the other hand mark went and did this glitch knowing full well about it as he does, that would be considered cheating. The same goes for the first one example in the article, he was playing the game as intended, something outside of his control happened that wasn’t or isn’t supposed to. They are the EXACT SAME situation. But knowing about it beforehand and then doing it purposefully is the difference.
The definition of cheating is ” A technique that exploits a flaw or hidden feature in a video game or computer program.” In gaming if you know about a glitch before hand and use it there is no if’s or buts, its cheating because you exploited a non-intentional flaw in the game. When you are the one discovering it, for the first time and had no prior knowledge its simply a glitch, the difference is intent.
Otherwise, in your view both these players (because its the exact same thing) should have “killed themselves” and done it properly, which would be punishing them someone else’s mistake ( the code monkeys).
In terms of morality, that is a personal question. If i had been struggling on a boss for 5 hours and wasn’t even close and this happened i would likely just accept it and move on. On my first attempt? I would probably feel like I didn’t earn it and either kill it legit (if possible) again afterwards, or just feel bad about it because I certainly wouldn’t restart a game over it unless it was only a few hours worth.
ui feel the first one was intended, because Gascoigne has one final form which obliterated said terrain so you couldn’t use it again. It was typical of a souls game, thinking you’re safe when all of a sudden, oh, no. You’re really, really not.
Story 1 – exploit, yes. Cheating, no. He’s using the area to his advantage, it just so happens that invisible walls are working for the player
Story 2 – 100% glitch. Also not cheating.
Most of the time, exploits are cheating. There’s nothing wrong with using cheats in a 1 player setting; you know if you have or not, but there is a different sort of satisfaction to “It is a good day to die” vs playing a game legit.
But sometimes exploits are okay or a matter of convenience. Like if game developers wanted you kill 5000 fireflies individually to get a pet… but you found a way to AOE them to save time… where’s the harm in that? Timesinks can be a dumb design, so I might not feel bad about doing that.
Another great example is fighting games, especially the Marvel(Capcom) ones. I used to think that infinite combos were cheap… and I still do to a degree; they are clearly an exploit. In X-Men vs Streetfighter, one partial solution was to stay out of the corners(like wave dashing, this teaches you the importance of positioning), but every character had infinites too, so it was somewhat fair. In Marvel vs Capcom 2, there was mainly only 4 practical infinite combos… and they were very specific and not always integral to gameplay(if you do Magneto’s, they can escape around 40 hits, and so the idea is to “reset” the damage and counter by repositioning yourself quickly and trying to trick the opponent). Cable on the other hand has an exploitable super where he can quickly shoot everything in front of him. Sentinel has extremely high health and damage and ranged attacks and can fly extremely quickly… but he can also get additional attacks/blocking if he gets hit a certain way(the unintentional/exploitable unfly mode). Storm can run away to an exploitable level or rush in almost as good as Magneto. Strider can kill you by chip damage if he gets in and makes you block Dr Doom rocks. The end result was an AMAZINGLY GREAT game which people played for over 10 years. The exploits made the game fun and added to the skill curve. Ironically it’s fair because a lot of characters are unfair. UMvC3 is the same. The games are certainly unbalanced, with an approximate 0% chance of being rebalanced… but the consensus is that to make it a better game, the crappier characters need to have more exploitable features rather than have the OP characters nerfed. Also, not everything is okay; some things are banned in tournaments because they are gamebreaking. These include things like handcuffing(Guile in SF, Gambit or Ruby Heart glitch in MvC2), Shin Akuma in whatever SF it was(10:0 matchups vs everyone but himself due to the double air fireballs), and there is a limit on the dead body infinites in MvC2(to the corner only or maybe from one corner to the other).
TLDR: Depends on the situation/game/number of players.
If you need an exploit to beat king logarion (or whatever his name was) then I wonder how you got to him in the first place 😛
Dodge left, stabby stabby repeat. When he leaps, give it a second or 2 then dodge backwards. If you get hit by it heal up. If you do die, the run back is all of 3 minutes factoring in load times
I remember one boss in Demon’s Souls I was able to weaken from behind the fog door by somehow shooting arrows through the fog door.
I am of the opinion that if the game allows it, then go for it.
These games have always had ‘creative’ means of clearing a lot of bosses… And a lot of them get patched if they’re clearly game breaking and can be reproduced.
As for the cheese method on some bosses, like the first one shown in this article…
I think they are absolutely intentional, there’s simply no way something that obvious was overlooked. They can also help newer and not-so-skilled players out by giving them not only some ‘safe’ spots to attack bosses from, but also learn more about the bosses without constantly stressing out about being killed.
I remember from my first experiences with Dark Souls 1 that some of the ‘cheese’ methods were the best way to learn bosses properly, so next time I came through to face that boss it was a fair bit easier to do the fight ‘properly’.
I might add the Father Gascoigne fight actually has a secret-ish method for staggering him a few times without ever using your gun to counter his attacks, as vague and spoiler free as I can get it… You should find it from exploring the city before you even go face him.
SPOILER****
Yep you can get a Music Box from Gascoigne’s daughter very early on. It confuses him and causes him to stagger in the first faze. She says “daddy forgets who we are and we play this song to help him remember us”.
I used this method with two helpers. I wound up the box and we took turns smashing him.
I bought this game last night.. Never knew a thing about the series.
I can see how people love this game but for me its just damn way too hard.. Im not an rpg game player AT ALL but thought id give this a try. Im just finding it way to hard and I suck at games that have that rpg element of sub menus upgrades etc.. Think ill just stick to my wii-u, Kinda wish I had the ability to mentally soak in these styles of games as most seem to be going this way.
Using the environment to your benefit is one thing but purposely having an enemy glitch out and become unresponsive during an encounter is another thing entirely.
If it were unintentional I’d roll with it I guess. A one off. Particularly in a souls game including Bloodborne. But then again I haven’t beat any of them. Not even close.
I suck at these games.
It might fall into the category of stabbing Father Gascoigne through the tombstones, but I am constantly backing up into halways and doorways and using the thrusting R2 atack with the sword form of the Kirk Hammer(tt) . This works great against multiple enemies, I sometimes wonder if I’m playing the game in the correct spirit, but I’m having fun, so I guess it’s ok!
Games are MEANT to be fun.
first clip – did the same thing used the tombstones as a buffer – phase 3 he hits like a truck and then its up to you as those tombstones count for naught.
second clip – that’s just a bug. happened to my friend. he helped a few guys with the boss to learn the fight he then went to hunter mask his way back to refill on potions. the game glitched and all of a sudden vicca amelia was in front of him and he was like wtf? killed her – prey slaughtered. not his fault. bad coding.
Patched in 3…2….1….