The Semiotic Beast

The Semiotic Beast, available for download here, is a document I wrote to express my thoughts on certain key questions and ideas present in Bloodborne. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki gives several: in interview with Edge Magazine, "What is deep inside of a beast?" and "What is it like to become one?"; and in the "Drained of Blood" interview given for FuturePress' Collector's Edition Guide, he calls attention to "the meaning of the mind's eye and its limitations on people" and "blood and beast transformations".

This is a brief summary of the character-oriented content of The Semiotic Beast.

Characters
An understanding of these themes must naturally proceed from the characters that embody them. In other words, to understand what it's like to become a beast, we should first examine characters that become beasts! A number of the Caryll Runes found throughout the game relate to beasts: Clawmark, Beast Embrace, Impurity and, of course, Beast. Clawmark is especially important to this character study because of its description:

Through this one description, it's clarified that Beast and Clawmark are closely related, but are distinguished by the emotional response they elicit. Whereas Beast produces a sense of horror and rejection, Clawmark instead is inviting and accepting. The true importance of these feelings to beast transformation is immense. To explain, we'll return again to the "Drained of Blood" interview, where Miyazaki discusses the design of the Cleric Beast:

He's partially answered his own questions here: the experience of transforming into a beast is comparable to the action of a shackle, which itself is a metaphor for the two urges (emotional forces!) that struggle inside of a person. The conflict boils down to whether your human urge continues to win the "inner clash"; Beast and Clawmark describe cases in which this urge fails. The former may be obtained from two transformed characters: +20 from the Beast-possessed Soul, and +50 from the Afflicted Beggar (that is, the Abhorrent Beast). The latter's +10% form comes from a Beast Claw-wielder in Yahar'gul, and the +20% from Gilbert after transforming.

Therefore, studying these four characters should prove enlightening. We can only speak to two of them, unfortunately, so let's quickly review the two silent characters. The Beast-possessed Soul is the simplest, because its name tells you virtually everything: this character was possessed by beasthood and became its "avatar", to borrow its internal name (AvatarA). The word choice is very important, informing us that whoever this was before didn't choose beasthood! Rather, they were taken over by it.

The Beast Claw NPC in Yahar'gul is more difficult to unravel. His most notable feature is that he's bare-chested, in contrast to his fellows. Superficially, this makes him comparable to characters like Logan from Dark Souls, who throw away their clothes when they abandon their humanity. The core idea, then, is very intelligible at a glance, but there's another layer that contributes to his role. Thanks to /u/LastProtagonist's retranslation work, we know that the ropes worn by Yahar'gul hunters aren't merely physical defense but 呪い, a "charm, spell, or curse" as he renders it. In keeping with the ideology of the ruling School of Mensis, whose cages "restrain the will of the self", the black hunters all wear ropes as a kind of ritual binding. The Beast Claw hunter lacks these; he's given up his restraints willingly, evidenced by how intact the rest of his garb is (that is, he didn't lose anything else to explosive transformation or damage).

Gilbert's beast transformation is a sad twist of the knife that concludes his storyline, unavoidably: it's a fixed aspect of his character. His death seems to be quickly approaching after we kill Vicar Amelia and progress to the next time of night, and his desperation mounts:

Obviously his grim resignation has broken at the prospect of his own death, and now he wants to be spared his fate, so he calls out to the "gods". When they descend in the final act, he'll be spared death, but it's in exchange for his humanity.

Finally, the beggar is the most vocal case, speaking his mind as he fights us. He audaciously denies his own nature, telling us that he "didn't ask" for his current condition. Remarkably, he can even become a Celestial Emissary if sent to Iosefka's Clinic.

Recall now the runes each leaves behind: the Beast-bearers, the beggar and Beast-possessed Soul, are presented as people overcome by an uncontrollable urge that isn't true to their nature; the Clawmark-bearers are different, having begged for power or intentionally unshackled themselves. This gives us a useful structure to view beasthood in, and especially helps to answer the fundamental question posed by the director: "What is it like to become [a beast]?"