Bloodborne modder discovers Master Willem was intended to be a boss fight
Modder's Knowledge.
If you've played Bloodborne, you'll remember Master Willem as the NPC that sits on a rocking chair beside Moonside Lake in Byrgenwerth. He doesn't do much but vaguely gesture in the direction of where you fight Rom, the Vacuous Spider. But originally, Rom wasn't the only boss planned in this area.
As discovered by modder Lance McDonald, Master Willem was once intended to be a boss himself.
By digging around in the alpha version of the game, McDonald came across items named "Fresh Livers", which at one point were meant to be rewards for killing bosses. The item descriptions for these indicate which boss they're tied to, and lo and behold there's one for Master Willem himself.
In the debug menu for Bloodborne, Master Willem can be switched from an NPC state, to an enemy state. This allows access to dialogue that went unused in the final version of the game, as well as the ability to initiate Willem's boss fight.
In the video below, McDonald shows some of the cut content in action - including dialogue seemingly tasking the hunter with bringing Willem "eyes", as well as a bunch of boss fight moves the NPC was programmed to do.
This isn't the first piece of cut content McDonald has discovered in Bloodborne, his YouTube channel features videos on all sorts of secrets and exploration in the From Software games, amongst others.
Earlier this year, he even managed to mod both Bloodborne and Sekiro allowing him to take control of enemies.
Bloodborne is four years old, yet it still has hidden content being found to this day. I can't wait to see what modders like Lance discover next.