Prior to working on Final Fantasy XVI, Naoki Yoshida and his team worked on a canceled IP that shared similarities with Bloodborne. The project was in development and got canceled prior to Bloodborne’s announcement. It wasn’t an RPG, but rather an action-focused game. It had the same style of fighting, with a melee weapon paired with a gun. Moreover, it took place in a gothic setting.
There were some noteworthy differences that set it apart from Bloodborne. There were sci-fi elements added to the mix, and the game had a bigger focus on multiplayer, with asymmetric teams, much like in Evolve. To this date, the devs wonder how the final game would’ve turned out.
A cross between Bloodborne and Evolve certainly sounds compelling on paper, but that’s not a surefire measure for success. It’s likely that the Bloodborne-like project was ultimately scrapped and altered to set the foundation for Final Fantasy XVI’s combat. Going by the combat sections seen in the trailer, Final Fantasy XVI does appear to be more action-focused than any Final Fantasy game before it, and the canceled project was also along similar lines.
Bloodborne is a 2015 action role-playing game for the PlayStation 4 developed by FromSoftware and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Bloodborne takes the player’s character, a Hunter, through the decaying Gothic, Victorian-era–inspired metropolis of Yharnam, which is plagued by a blood-borne sickness. The player’s character unravels the city’s mysteries while fighting animals and cosmic creatures in an attempt to uncover the root of the epidemic.
Players fight a variety of enemies with swords and firearms while exploring different locations, interacting with non-player characters, and solving the city’s mysteries. Bloodborne was first under development in 2012 under the codename Project Beast. It was inspired by the literary works of authors H. P. Lovecraft and bears many similarities to the Souls series of games by the same developer and director.
