Bloodborne: The Old Hunters number of weapons, difficulty and other Secrets

One of the most exciting games on-hand at this year's Tokyo Game Show was The Old Hunters, the upcoming DLC expansion for Bloodborne. While we learned earlier this week that no further expansions are planned for the game, we talked with series producer Masaaki Yamagiwa about what exactly the team has planned for the expansion, how difficult it will be, and what secrets remain in the main game.

GameSpot: Was the TGS demo made specifically for this event or is this going to be a part of the actual DLC?

Masaaki Yamagiwa: This is a small portion of one of the three new stages that's going to be in the DLC. But we have tweaked a few things in the demo so it's not exactly the same experience you'll have in the main game. The real version is going to be even harder.

Especially the primary boss in the demo, one thing we want to mention is this is not the final version of the boss, so don't take everything you see here as gospel quite yet.

Do you need to have beat Bloodborne to play and access this content, or is this a standalone expansion?

You don't have to have completed the game, but you can't access the DLC immediately upon starting a new game. You have to progress through the story to a certain point and then the DLC will become available.

Is The Old Hunters going to expand the story and lore of Bloodborne, or is the focus more on action and creating an even great challenge?

The focus of the game is as an overall expansion. We want to expand the strategies players can use in battle -- more weapons, more items, that sort of thing. That was our focus with the DLC. That said, the setting for the new DLC is a nightmare where the Old Hunters have been trapped. Among the Old Hunters are people mentioned in the main story; Ludwig is a character who's mentioned in the main story. He is one of the Hunters trapped in this world. In that sense, it is an expansion of the story and you will learn more of the lore and mythos of Yharnam in the process.

Regarding the new weapons, were they things you wanted to include with the original game but didn't have time, or are these creations you came up with entirely after finishing the main experience?

For the most part, the new weapons are weapons that were made after the main game was done and we were ready to work on the DLC. There were a few weapons that were originally going to be in the main game but we weren't able to tweak them up to the level that we wanted to. Once the game was over, we tweaked them and now they appear in the DLC.

For the most part for this DLC, we were done with the main game, we had released the game and we were able to get the feedback from the players and see how the game was received. Based on that feedback, we used our DLC production period to try to implement that feedback and those opinions that we received.

What was the biggest thing that people were saying they wanted to add or change about the game?

I don't know if this was the most common opinion that we got, but we did hear a lot of people saying that they wanted more weapons. So, we definitely wanted to add more weapons for the DLC.

People also wanted more ranged weapons. There were a lot of weapons where it was just a cutting, regular slash action. For the DLC, we added things like the bow to allow for more ranged attacks.

How many new weapons will the DLC add?

Assuming you're talking about both left and right-hand weapons, there are at least 10 new ones. Maybe even closer to 15.

And I assume that includes new weapon and armor sets as well?

Yes. You can actually see some of the new costumes in the demo!

Do you feel like this is going to be more difficult overall than Bloodborne, or is this more on par with the end of the game?

It's intended to have a difficulty similar to the latter portion of the game because the DLC is for people who have progressed to a certain point in the game and are then able to access the DLC. Those people should be able to handle the difficulty.

However, you actually gain access to the DLC a little earlier than I'd recommend going into it. It'll be probably a little too hard for that part of the game, but it's designed to have a similar difficulty to the latter portion of the game.

Without giving away any secrets, one thing that people really love about Dark Souls and Bloodborne is figuring out the game's deepest secrets. . Are there still secrets in Bloodborne that people haven't figured out yet?

Our players are very, very sharp. I'm always impressed with the kinds of things they're able to figure out and they're able to discover. But from what I've heard from director Miyazaki, there are still some things that they haven't completely grasped yet.

And we promise you that we have some very fun tricks up our sleeve for the final version of the game.