Earlier today, we learned how there’s reportedly nothing happening at Sony regarding Bloodborne, which comes as no surprise to anyone. The game’s been stuck in PS4 hell since its launch in 2015 and was never ported, updated, or remastered for modern machines. Thankfully, the community’s got our back.
As our Scott Duwe already wrote up, Bloodborne is seemingly not moving an inch, with Sony apparently caring little about porting or remastering the title for the time being. That’d be funny if it weren’t so confusing, as Sony seems willing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into failed live-service projects like Concord rather than earning a bucket load of free cash by releasing Bloodborne on PC.
Anyhow, we’ve all heard that story today, and have been hearing similar ones for quite some time. Bloodborne is in stasis, strapped in the Hunter’s Dream, never to come out, be updated, remastered, or ported. But what is out and progressing rapidly is PlayStation 4 emulation on PC, tailor-made to allow people to run Bloodborne on their machines.
I’ve followed ShadPS4, as the project is known, for over two years now, steadily scouting out how Bloodborne runs on PC these days. And I can tell you it’s almost as good as it gets. With high resolutions, a frame rate the official version of Bloodborne can only dream of, and only a handful of audiovisual glitches that players have ways to solve, Bloodborne on PC is a perfectly viable way to play.
That is, if you have a machine capable of emulating one of the most complex architectures in the industry’s history.
And even if you don’t, there are probably myriad patches, plugins, fixes, and tweaks you can employ to make Bloodborne run smoother, if not altogether perfectly. No matter how it runs, though, it’s probably still miles ahead of the PS4 version of the game, which is stuck in a low 720p resolution that YouTube doesn’t even consider HD nowadays, running at a locked 30 fps that it fails to maintain most of the time.
As the video above indicates (thanks GAMESMARK), you can have the game work at 4K, with mods improving graphical fidelity and lighting, as well as running at a smooth 60 fps. It’s the superior experience, the issues you might encounter be damned. With time, Bloodborne on PC will only become better, and it has already surpassed the original version in more ways than one.
So, instead of waiting for Sony to remember it owns the IP, do yourself a favor and boot up Bloodborne via an emulator and enjoy the best Lovecraftian horror game you’ve ever experienced.
Note: Emulation itself is a legal practice, but pirating software is not. If you wish to play the game via emulation, you will have to procure the files from a legitimate copy you yourself have purchased and own. Destructoid does not approve of nor condone piracy. Buy the game, get the files, and play however you want.
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