Hidetaka Miyazaki can't help himself and now The Duskbloods sounds even more like a Bloodborne successor: "The Bloodsworn are competing for something known as First Blood"

The Duskbloods immediately looked like an Elden Ring-style open-world take on Bloodborne, though the revelation that it's set to be a multiplayer PvPvE game quickly made clear that it is something fundamentally different. Still, director Hidetaka Miyazaki and the crew at FromSoftware are clearly building on Bloodborne's dilapidated world fueled by powerful blood with the new concept of "Bloodsworn" and "First Blood."

"We tried to extract the sort of romantic aspects we found interesting from concepts such as vampires and 'blood' and reinterpreted them as the Bloodsworn," who are the characters you play as in The Duskbloods, as Miyazaki explains in a new official interview with Nintendo. The title of The Duskbloods directly refers to those Bloodsworn.

"In The Duskbloods, the Bloodsworn are competing for something known as 'First Blood,'" Miyazaki continues. "As human society reaches an end, First Blood flows in an event known as the 'Twilight of Humanity.' The Bloodsworn are summoned to the Twilight of Humanity across a variety of different times and places in a bid to obtain First Blood."

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Collecting First Blood, which sounds somewhat similar to Blood Vials in Bloodborne, serves as the goal of each match. It seems like this whole "blood" thing, er, flows through the entire game.

"In the context of this game, blood is used more conceptually, as opposed to literal meanings like physical depictions of injury," Miyazaki explains with a bit of his trademark crypticness. "Blood symbolizes one of the game’s key themes – the history it holds, the power it passes on, the fates it weaves and the marker of those who have surpassed the limitations of their own humanity."

If the Victorian Gothic aesthetics didn't help give it away on their own, it's seeming increasingly clear that The Duskbloods is following in Bloodborne's footsteps – to a degree where I'm almost surprised the trailer didn't have a "fear the First Blood" line. The Duskbloods is clearly meant to be something very different from Bloodborne in terms of structure, but the 2015 game's spirit lives on for Switch 2.

Hidetaka Miyazaki shares The Duskbloods worries of some Elden Ring and Dark Souls fans: "I personally am not much of a PvP person, and I wanted to make something that's satisfying even for players like me."