Oftentimes, while a game is being developed, features that the developer originally intended to include end up getting cut, but their presence still lingers in the final product as unused code buried in the game’s files. Over the years, dedicated modders have made a hobby out of unearthing these lost digital relics, and now a pretty major find has been found in FromSoftware’s Gothic RPG Bloodborne: a cut boss rush feature.
The unused boss rush feature was found by Lance McDonald, the same modder who recently discovered a whole bunch of cut content in Dark Souls Remastered. According to McDonald’s findings (which he compiled in the below video), Bloodborne’s boss rush feature wasn’t a simple run-through of all the game’s boss enemies. Instead, it was actually an optional effect that could be applied to the game’s procedurally-generated Chalice Dungeons (there are already several such effects that, when applied, make the dungeons harder but also buff their potential rewards).
As you can see in the video, applying the boss rush affect to a Chalice Dungeon would add a series of special arena rooms into the dungeon where the player would have to fight two powerful boss enemies back-to-back. The presence of the unfinished boss rush arenas is certainly an interesting find, but also not an entirely surprising one since, as McDonald also notes in the video, the boss rush feature was actually mentioned briefly in the original Bloodborne strategy guide. This suggests that Bloodborne was pretty close to being finished when the decision to cut the boss rush feature was ultimately made.
The unused boss rush feature is just the latest in a long series of Bloodborne finds that can be attributed to McDonald. In the past, he has managed to unearth unused maps, enemies, bosses, and even game mechanics that were once part of Bloodborne’s structure but ultimately wound up on the proverbial cutting room floor. Of course, digging up cut content is far from the only manner in which modders have been interacting with FromSoftware’s iconic Souls-borne games.