Firearms Expert Reacts to Bloodborne’s Guns

This is Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Ordnance at the UK Royal Armory Museum, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from across history and in this week's episode from the release of the Elder Ring DLC , the shadow of the UR tree has We're in the mood for Souls Borns, we're looking at some of the

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from Bloodborne Apologies to the artist in advance of what I'm going to say, but that's the ugliest bus I've ever seen, with luck, that's a badge of honor for designing for This Game and it's not a review per se, we also have another soft episode in the works so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it and of course let us know what other games you'd like us to cover on the comments section.

Below, just towards Jonathan, is a rather attractive flint lock piston. Well, in the scheme of things, flintlock

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generally don't do justice in many games, so in terms of design it's very stylized, but this, believe it or not, is based. in a real flintlock gun design in the Balkans in that region and they have a particular style of gun in their details, but specifically that kind of metal that looks like a handguard on the top of the barrel is purely stylistic, you don't grab it. obviously, it's a real feature and along with the decoration, maybe its shape, but it's very stylized.

I have a gun of this, it's actually from Kosovo, so it's not quite, it's in the right ball park. and gives you the correct type. This is the real version of what's in the game, but it lacks that classic Eastern European feel if you like Mediterranean area decor and has the basic lines of a flintlock gun. lock gun that we see in the game, so it's a very good example of a real world thing heavily modified by fantasy. It is important for me that I have the main parts of a flint lock present and correct, very well present, so the Flint is missing as the frizen and the pan are often here, this should, of course, should be to use it, it should be famously cocked, uh, dust in the frying pan and the frying pan closed.

I don't know if the game will typically show us that. They'll be modeled in their resting state and they'll stay that way and magically bullets will come out, so I'll see if I can detect them, but the recoil on these things is very low. With a little bit of muzzle rise, they shoot like an extension of your arm, essentially, so they're cocked to their full extent for a Cavalry style pistol, which is what it is, and then they've modeled the side recoil type of something like a Desert Eagle. or something incredibly powerful this isn't this is a magic gun for killing monsters so the recoil can be very high I don't know another real world inspiration here this is I'm not sure what's so big The lever on the side is working.

I might figure it out in a moment, but this basic setup of a gun. The barrel in the hilt next to the blade of a sword, which I should be able to show you a picture of one of ours, I can't get it. right now, but we have two from memory, combination of pistol, sword, short sword, hanger, things that the bit of the gun can't be seen well, there is some kind of mechanism that goes to the muzzle, which I don't understand , there is a visible trigger inside the knuckle guard, so there is a knuckle guard with a guard sticking out and then a double shell guard, which is a little strange.

What is happening there seems to be transforming. Is it an extended cannon? That's what it looks like the barrel extends from the action if you have enough negative space inside the body, the receiver of the gun for the barrels to store in it, you've done something wrong because you need a mechanism there so the Pistols with extendable barrels look cool, but they don't. It doesn't really make any sense. The closest thing we have in real life are sort of pocket pistols that you can screw a barrel onto, but there's already a barrel there. I think that's what's happening.

There are almost literally many types of smoking mirrors here. What the hell is going on with the Gatling gun? So it's interesting that Dr. Richard Gatling exists in this universe, undeniably cool with the big hat, the long coat, whatever weapon is on his right arm, and then an incredibly huge electrically/magically powered mini Gatling gun. The thing about

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with spitting cases is complete nonsense of course, but it's very funny, it makes me sad that the thousand rounds per minute, presumably rifle caliber, Gatling gun does so little damage to these things, even with seemingly magical bullets .

Speaking of Magic Bullets, so I've seen two references, I think now to Quick Silver ammo, as the chemists among you will know that Quicksilver is not silver, you can't just put another word in front of silver and turn it into silver, but Furthermore, Quicksilver is quicksilver shots. Mercury in beings that are vulnerable to Silver presumably wouldn't do much. I mean Mercury is toxic, so it wouldn't do them any favors in the long run, but I don't think that's the effect they're looking for. I think it's a bit of a use of language hoping that you're not familiar with what Quicksilver actually is and I guess I don't see why they've invoked magic bullets in this because the weapons are so ineffective that they would make more sense, especially if you had magic bullets. silver that were super rare and caused a lot of damage and then the common weapons use common bullets and then it would be like dog soldiers, which is the best movie in the world of all time, fight me in which the Silver Bullets be the only thing that can damaging the mp5s and the g3s and things can only set them back which seems to be what we see here and that's actually very consistent with folklore, there's a good loading episode about this by the way where the

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Conventional ones can buy you time, but then it's your um, whatever magical species specific weapon you're using, like a wooden steak or whatever, that can do the real damage, so so far it's not there for me in the LW side, okay? here is this type of spear arm weapon, we have a couple of spear arm combinations in the collection that hopefully we can show you some point, neither of them are very similar to this one, but this is very different . very short, almost more like some kind of path digging tool, actually with a huge spearhead or was it more like an arrowhead which really reminds me of the EDTA gauntlet weapon from Blade 2, which maybe it's on inspired given the theme of the game, so using that to hit this chemical that will kill the vampires here just seems to be doing damage.

I like the kind of finish that shows you're using your own muscles to power it, not just how it's operated, okay, a cannon. one cannon plus five no less because of course the big metal tubes can be upgraded somehow, sorry, too sarcastic, U, it's some RPG, big prototype, firearms, I mean, this is questionably a firearm, it is literally called a cannon, it is of a huge caliber, it looks like something that a non-superhuman wielder would not even be able to grasp very easily. It has too complicated a design. I would say that those flanges, those reinforcements, as we say, exist.

You have seen them. I'm sure I probably passed by a few in Britain because, um. they were used as ballards later, this is not a Bard, this is a weapon now, as for the actual deployment of this weapon, it does what you would expect, what I saw at the top is just some kind of guard or Um , handles and protects more like a shield boss, equivalent to a big gun, there is no visible mechanism, it just magically powers up, just like it magically recharges, it plays its role perfectly well, although it looks like a cannon, uh, the big one CasCal and button on the back.

If I didn't have them we could go, it doesn't seem very Canon, but it definitely does. We have a much more conventional and even larger cannon here on a field carriage mounted rather precariously on some sort of rocky terrain that I wouldn't be happy with that, I'm sure a gunner would be even less happy with um, but the carriage It's a fairly conventional design, it's fantasy, but it's not very, it's not very different from a real country carriage, maybe it would be more recent. From the 17th century or something and the weapon itself also has too many reinforcements and may have a bit too square edge so let's see what the destruction of this is oh dear oh dear that's terrible so I was getting really excited with this impressive field. piece, you know the scourge of 17th, 18th, 19th century foot soldiers and cavalrymen, king of battle, whatever you know, Ultima ratia, all that nonsense and what do we get, but boom, so whoever loaded this thing has very little powder or very little skill.

Because there's almost no gunpowder in that gun and even the explosion of what I think is some kind of projectile, so a hollow iron sphere with explosives inside isn't impressive either, so I don't know if that's a... . joke of the game or maybe it does a lot more damage to enemies, but it's pretty disappointing, okay, so this has some kind of burus inside apparently anyway it's a giant impact weapon with some kind of explosive effect, like a gun on a stick, surprisingly I have something from our world that is a pretty close parallel to this thing called the cash knocker.

It's a little bleak, frankly, I mean, I know guns are often used to kill people, but this is to humanely dispatch animals. this is a trigger plunger that hits on impact and then it's a captive bolt gun, um, so it only partially fires, so it's not a firearm, it's an impact weapon with explosive power, which is what I'm looking at here, so this has a it shoots at the end of the grip and it's all about reach and positioning, but clearly in some kind of zombie apocalypse scenario you can swing this and it has a ton of impact like a big heavy hammer and if you do it you touch It also has a really devastating and powerful piston that shoots out and will crush anything under it, so it's a I don't know what to call it.

I think that's why they called it a knocker. It's really alarmingly similar to who I am. seeing in front of me here, albeit without the magical burning oven and if that's not enough gore for you in terms of aesthetics, how about this one? This is from the beginning of the 20th century, first half of the 20th century. I am not an

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in Humanity. colors but it definitely has that well made brass and wood look, it also has a conventional firearm hammer wrapped here, this fits the aesthetic better, but as far as proportions and maybe effect, I guess they do the same job than the most modern example. fits well, that makes everything I've seen so far look conventional, a one-handed shock-fired armor-piercing rifle, it has some sort of crutch style stock on the back, but our friend here isn't interested in using that shape.

It's very strange, I guess it's some kind of half-pike rifle and I don't see how to shoot it accurately, since a rifle can't see any sights, it has the stock, but it almost looks like an armed crutch. To me, I'm not sure what kind of spikes are halfway, I guess if you're supposed to push that towards an enemy, well, that would make it impossible to pull, well, it's not impossible I guess, but it is harder to take out, not sure what the advantage is there. I mean, historical spears sometimes have spiked tips, but there's usually a reason this seems more like an aesthetic choice.

Apparently it's also a rifle with a gigantic wheel on the side, an impressive piece of design, but we're veering hard towards anime scale and balance weapons here it has a kind of sword handle and pommel almost like a cannon modern automatic, but it has an Al Barrel octagon that instantly says 16th, 17th, 18th century, I don't know what the big wheel on the On the other hand, I was tempted to say that someone didn't understand how a wheel lock works, so we have Design elements of a wheel lock. I have no problem with him being in this world.

I mean, wheel locks were still used for sporting purposes and well into the 19th century, they look cool and in many ways are better than certainly better than matchlocks, um and possibly sometimes better than matchlocks as well. Flint, so it's nice to see the wheel locks here. What baffles me is the gigantic car. wheel on the side I don't know what that does I don't think they misunderstood that aspect of the wheel lock. I think it's an added feature to the smaller wheel they have, they model what they don't have well exactly like flint. The lock is that the dog is just sitting here doing nothing, there is no turning of the wheel, there is no reloading process, there is no sliding tray, so it is the minimum, there is some kind of wheel, there is some kind of dog to the ignition system, but there is actually visual interest.

This is an old gun. This tells you that it is an old weapon. There's no interest here in it actually making sense, but look at the actual gun. Why would you care if it makes sense? Thiswell, this is interesting. I think I like where this is going, it's kind of a well, I won't say steampunk but a fantasy Victorian flamethrower based on some kind of blowtorch SL oil lamp, there is absolutely no need for the projector to spin up when firing that way. I think it might not be my favorite flame effect I've seen so far with gaming flamethrowers, it's a bit like Emerald, it's not that sticky, sticky, horrible fuel-burning thing we've seen so good lately, it's quite, it's a old school version of a flamethrower, it's like a blowtorch, it's not a real effect of a flamethrower, apologies to the artist before what I'm doing.

What to say, but that is the ugliest blunderbuss I have ever seen, I hope it is a badge of honor for designing for this game and not a criticism per se, a big, heavy, square and clumsy barrel, with a strange design , of course, the protagonist doesn't even use it. I don't have a kind of carbine blunderbuss on hand, but we've shown them before in this series and they sound very silly for a blunderbuss, but a lot of them are quite delicate in terms of their appearance, they're designed to be aesthetically pleasing. It's nice to be lightweight, this is kind of the antithesis of that, it's the closest thing to a medieval hand cannon again, but real size and shape, some of them were very large, but instead of being on a stick mid-thigh essentially.

This has a more conventional firearm stop, but there has never been anything like this in history. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you. Okay, blunderbuss again, but in the form of a pistol, that style of decoration on the barrel. It always makes me think of cheap cast replicas, but they exist. We have a number of things in the collection where you essentially start with more metal than you need, remove the metal, and leave those raised bits of decoration behind. One of those things is a Lauren Solo Peter with a lever action and it is beautifully decorated in that style.

I would be interested to know what visual reference was used to create. It is a coincidence? Is it based on a fantasy armor or has anyone seen a real one? firearm with that style of design and extrapolate from there an actual blunderbuss gun, the best I could do on short notice. A couple of pieces are missing. This French piece here, as you can see, is much smaller because for a pistol, it can't be too much. long and heavy, it's actually very very light and pointed, very exaggerated flared snout on this one, I think I think I like it better than the Vulcan style flintlock, it's just a little shorter, I think it makes it look more manageable, oh, I see.

So this is a volley gun, so it fires both barrels at once and then rotates unnecessarily. There is no clear reason for the cannon group to rotate. Swivel cannons are something that rotates. Guns or guns or whatever, you shoot a cannon. Usually with a flint you lock the tray attached to each barrel, so you have double trays and then a padlock behind it to lock the wheel. You would have the whole mechanism back here and the barrels just rotate and all you have is a tray. The point is that you rotate the barrel to fire one shot, you rotate them, rotate them again to fire the second shot or you have them arranged and you fire one and then the other or both at the same time, that's how it is to shoot both at once and then rotate it . it accomplishes absolutely nothing, but it's a neat hat, thanks everyone for watching The Guns of Bloodborne, it was pretty crazy.

I'm sure you'll agree, but it's fun to do, we have here at the Royal Armories three museums that you can visit, if you're lucky, um, if not, um, and we also have a lot of stuff on social media. I myself am on our own YouTube channel. Maybe you'd like to see if you like it, people babble about guns, which is what I do there, but whatever. happens, you're pretty sure you'll see me here again next week at Gamespot