After watching some of the streams of the Bloodborne alpha today, I can't help feel that, at least in terms of the multiplayer, the game comes off as a little stale.
I was hoping for some real innovation in this department. So far, things seem pretty much the same, with only superficial differences. Messages, bloodstains, and phantoms are still there, only now the messages appear as a scroll, the bloodstains are a tombstone, and phantoms are more wire-frame. Otherwise, they function exactly the same. Wow, what a revolution!
I haven't seen much of any co-op, but from what I've read, it seems you ring a bell to summon/be summoned. Again, not a huge change.
It might be premature, but it's starting to look like Miyazaki's secretiveness about the multiplayer system was only hiding the fact that there's nothing to hide at all.
It's a shame, because just on my lonesome, I've been able to think up much better things to do with the game. For example, why not ditch the cumbersomeness of selecting text messages and instead let the player hit a button that begins recording their play for 30 seconds. Players could teach other players about secrets and strategies by letting that recording float around the server. Helpful phantoms could be thanked by shaking the controller.
Or how about, for co-op, make it truly seamless by having players enter and exit each other's worlds automatically, without prompting. Determining whether the other player is friend or foe would become a tense, but inevitable, part of gameplay experience. Co-operation would finally have real weight and consequences, as now working together would require an actual bond of trust.
Neither of these things would have been impossible to implement. But instead of pushing themselves, FROM seems to have decided to retread their once revolutionary, but now overly familiar, multiplayer ideas.
