- Primary Subject: Reassessing whether Bloodborne should be remade in the context of 2026’s remake-heavy industry
- Key Idea: Why the growing wave of remakes is changing the argument around Bloodborne, shifting it from “it should be preserved untouched” to “it now feels unusually neglected compared to peers”
- Status: Opinion
- Last Verified: August 10, 2026
- Quick Summary: The piece argues that while Bloodborne still benefits from its original artistic texture and does not need a remake in the traditional sense, the broader industry shift toward remaking major legacy titles has made its continued absence increasingly strange.
Last year, I argued that Bloodborne did not need a remake. I wasn't being contrarian for the sake of it, either.
The game still played brilliantly, its rough visual texture suited Yharnam perfectly, and I couldn't see much value in rebuilding something that remained so effective a decade after release.
Give it 60 FPS, put it on PC, improve the resolution, and otherwise keep your hands off it. That was basically my position.
I'm starting to think I was wrong. Not completely, mind you. I still don't want somebody sanding Bloodborne down until Yharnam looks like an extremely expensive Unreal Engine demonstration, and the idea that every beloved game eventually needs to be dismantled and rebuilt remains exhausting.
But 2026 has turned into such a remake free-for-all that Bloodborne remaining untouched is starting to look downright peculiar.
Halo: Campaign Evolved, Persona 4 Revival, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, and other returning games are part of an industry increasingly willing to revisit its past rather than leave major releases attached permanently to aging hardware.
Some of these projects are substantially older than Bloodborne, while others arguably have nowhere near its reputation.
Meanwhile, FromSoftware's 2015 masterpiece remains officially stuck with its PS4-era technical limitations, without even a native PC release to show for the eleven years since it launched. The strange thing is that Bloodborne hasn't become worse during that time.
If anything, that's what kept me opposed to a remake for so long. But watching everyone except Sony figure out ways to give old games another life has changed the question for me.
I'm no longer wondering whether Bloodborne is old enough to justify being remade. I'm wondering why one of PlayStation's best games apparently isn't important enough to receive the same treatment as everything else.
Was I Too Protective Of What Made Bloodborne Special?
My original argument against a remake was mostly about preservation.
Bloodborne has always been an unusually grubby game. Yharnam isn't beautiful in the conventional big-budget sense; it is damp, cluttered, oppressive, and sometimes downright unpleasant to look at.
Streets disappear into murky distance, buildings pile awkwardly over one another, creatures look like they have been dragged from somewhere they shouldn't exist, and the whole thing carries the slightly coarse visual character of a game built specifically around 2015 hardware.
I like that about it. That is why the idea of a ground-up graphical remake used to make me nervous. More polygons don't automatically create better art, and replacing every old asset with something technically superior can subtly change the atmosphere that made those assets work in the first place.
It's a little like restoring an old painting until you've accidentally painted a new one. Demon's Souls remains the obvious comparison.
Bluepoint's PS5 remake is gorgeous, technically accomplished, and still one of the easiest games to point toward when demonstrating what Sony's current hardware can do.
But it also prompted arguments over changed designs, lighting, architecture, and atmosphere precisely because recreating something isn't the same as preserving it.
Every improvement requires somebody to decide what "improved" means. I still think that concern applies to Bloodborne.
Actually, I probably care about it more here. The game's horror depends heavily on things being slightly unpleasant and difficult to read.
If you clean every surface, dramatically relight every street, and give every monster a beautiful 4K makeover, you could theoretically make Bloodborne more impressive while simultaneously making Yharnam less convincing.
What has changed is that I no longer think this possibility is a good enough reason to leave the game untouched indefinitely.
There is a huge space between careless modernization and museum-piece preservation, and recent remakes have increasingly demonstrated how much room developers have to operate within it.
Resident Evil has practically turned revisiting old games into a parallel series of its own. Final Fantasy 7 went much further, using its remake as an opportunity to reinterpret rather than simply reproduce the original.
Neither approach would necessarily suit Bloodborne (I certainly don't need three games explaining the childhood of the Cleric Beast), but they demonstrate that "remake" doesn't have to mean mindlessly replacing old graphics with shiny ones.
A Bloodborne remake could be conservative. In fact, I'd argue it should be. Keep the level layouts. Keep the combat rhythms, enemy placements, weapons, animations where appropriate, strange NPC interactions, oppressive color palette, and the wonderfully nasty texture of Yharnam.
Don't redesign things simply because eleven years of technology now make redesign possible. Use modern hardware to strengthen what is already there rather than demonstrate how much of it can be replaced.
I wouldn't have entertained that idea a year ago, yet 2026 has somehow made me curious enough to want someone to take the gamble. This is ultimately why leaving Bloodborne untouched feels increasingly odd in a year obsessed with bringing old games back.
Publishers have spent 2026 rummaging through gaming history for anything worth dusting off.
They have discovered that recognizable games can be enormously valuable when reintroduced thoughtfully, particularly when younger players have heard about them for years without necessarily having an appealing way to experience them.
Remakes are no longer reserved for ancient games whose controls require archaeological training to understand. And Bloodborne is sitting right there. This isn't some obscure PS4 experiment with a tiny audience that would make a remake financially baffling.
FromSoftware's position has transformed since 2015. Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, and especially Elden Ring expanded the studio's audience enormously, meaning there are now plenty of players who discovered FromSoftware long after Bloodborne originally arrived.
Sony owns a game that is more culturally valuable now than it arguably was when it launched, from a developer that has become one of the biggest names in the industry, during a period when remakes are commercially fashionable.
Yet Bloodborne remains the game everyone jokes about before PlayStation presentations because expecting nothing has somehow become part of its identity.
There may, of course, be perfectly boring explanations. Development resources are finite. FromSoftware has its own projects. Sony has its own priorities, and finding the right studio to remake something this closely scrutinized would be difficult.
The closure of Bluepoint following its work on Demon's Souls also removes the most obvious candidate people once imagined handling such a project.
A remake isn't something Sony can summon simply because I've finally changed my mind about wanting one.
But that's different from arguing it shouldn't happen. Perhaps the best argument for remaking Bloodborne is actually the same thing I once used as an argument against it: the original remains exceptionally good.
There is no broken combat system begging to be replaced, no disastrous level design requiring correction, and no fundamental creative mistake that modern developers need to solve.
The real test isn't whether someone can rebuild Yharnam - it's whether they know when to put the tools down. That is a much harder assignment than simply making an old game prettier, but 2026 has convinced me it's one worth attempting.
I used to think leaving Yharnam untouched was preservation - now, watching other classics return while Bloodborne players practically engineer their own way forward, it feels increasingly like neglect.
If Sony can find a developer capable of knowing what not to change (arguably the most important skill here), then yes, remake Bloodborne. I'm finally ready for it. Just don't clean the blood off everything.
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