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Early Bloodborne Map Found In Dark Souls Remastered, Then Made Playable In GTAV
It's been a big week for Dark Souls Remastered, the newest version of FROM Soft's seminal 2011 action adventure game. Certainly, though, the strangest story cropping up from the game is how modders found early Bloodborne data in the new version of the game and then managed to open it up in Grand Theft Auto V.
Kotaku reports on the strange modding story that begins with a modder named Dropoff, who found the map data inside Remastered's files. Dropoff discovered a file, the seemingly innocuous "m99_99_98_00," which follows a naming structure of test files in FROM's games. Opening this up showed the map data of Upper Cathedral Ward from Bloodborne.
The Upper Cathedral Ward is an optional late-game area in Bloodborne that culminates with the hardest non-chalice dungeon, non-DLC boss in the game. It seems FROM had been planning this area since the original Dark Souls release in 2011. Another Souls modder and data detective, Lance McDonald, posted the findings on Twitter, including bits of Boleteria from Demon's Souls.
Here’s a look at the early prototype of Bloodborne’s “Upper Cathedral Ward” map that was left behind in the Dark Souls REMASTERED files. It was created a long time ago back back when Dark Souls was in development. It’s not new work by the REMASTERED team. pic.twitter.com/BKBVGl1o8t
— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) May 25, 2018
Dark Souls Remastered also contains a left behind copy of a small early chunk of Bolataria from Demon‘s Souls. pic.twitter.com/IivrPAusIq
— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) May 26, 2018
After finding the files, Dropoff extracted the level data and imported it into 3D software that allowed the modder to rebuild it into Grand Theft Auto V. Through this, Dropoff managed to start driving a car through Bloodborne's Upper Cathedral Ward, for which you can find a video below here.
Dark Souls Remastered is currently available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, with a Switch version scheduled for sometime this Summer. You can find our review of the game right here,
[Source: Kotaku]
Our Take
It's utterly fascinating that actual map data for Bloodborne exists in the 2011 Dark Souls and perhaps even stranger that it couldn't be found until now. Does that mean FROM was hammering out Bloodborne concepts then? Or was that area meant for Dark Souls and repurposed for Bloodborne?
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