Yet another cut Bloodborne boss has been unearthed and restored by modders
The Loran Cleric is all fired up.
It's been almost half a decade since From Software's masterful Bloodborne was released unto the world, but dedicated code sleuths are still unearthing tantalising glimpses of content cut from the final release of the game - this time in the form of yet another axed boss fight.
To date, Bloodborne players have restored everything from an option to murder a still-alive Maria in the clocktower to evidence that, at one point, Annalise the Queen of the Vilebloods was to have had a familial connection to Maria and The Doll. A number of excised boss battles have also been re-implemented, including one based on Master Willem, a gargantuan snake ball, and now a boss variant of the Loran Cleric from the Loran Chalice Dungeon.
The Loran Cleric boss is, from a visual perspective at least, almost identical to its standard counterpart, dressed in robes with twisted horns jutting from beneath its hood. However, while the basic variant is a bit of a pro with the fireballs, the newly discovered boss, intended to be encountered at the end of the Loran Chalice Dungeon, ramps up the fire attacks considerably.
As discovered by Bloodborne tinkerer Foxy Hooligans - a member of the Tomb Prospectors Bloodborne community that successfully uncovered another extremely rare boss, previously thought to have been cut - the Loran Cleric boss AI is still more or less intact.
Although it's stuck to the centre of the battle arena and cannot move around when re-implemented in-game, the aggressive boss variant tosses out fireballs of various configurations and emits a fiery area-of-effect attack with lethal abandon. You can see the battle, restored using a jailbroken PS4 and DSTools modding tools, in the video above.
Is the supply of Bloodborne's undiscovered secrets finally running low? Almost half a decade after its release, the logical answer would be yes. Somehow though, given From Software's ambitions and the community's dedication, I suspect the reality is very different.