So Jeff was wondering about the locked door by that chest in Cathedral Ward. The area right before it is where the Cleric Beast boss jumps from. You can clearly see the bridge you fought him on.

My take is that it used to be a shortcut from Cathedral Ward to Central Yharnam that they decided to take out but in FromSoft fashion leave the command in.

I'll make a video it shortly.

I had come to the same assumption. I was going to see if the Yharnam Stone had any effect on it, but I didn't actually care.

@spoonman671: Yeah I can relate. Miyazaki is very well known for being a masochistic troll. He will put stuff in the game just for...reasons...and let player wonder about it for months and months before coming out and saying that it was just a joke on his part.

I don't think you need to make a video about it, since just about everyone who has played the game will know the door you talk about. I never thought about it being an excised shortcut to the Cleric Beast's arena, though. That makes sense. (Also the Cleric Beast is a dude, for what it's worth).

There's always DLC too.

Dark Souls II had a few oddly placed dead ends as well, don't know if they actually used them for the DLC though.

I've only started Crown of the Sunken King.

Here's a video making about as clear as possible what's on the other side.

The glittering coins can be seen from both sides.

@shadowconqueror: Thanks for the correction. I don't know why I keep referring to him as a her.

Also, I don't know why a lot of people are thinking that Cleric beast is actually Ludwig. I personally don't think it is.

Because you get Ludwig's stuff after beating him and it has been shown that people affiliated with the Church turn to beasts.

Correction. The emblem that gives you Ludwig's stuff is in the Healing Church Workshop. Cleric Beast drop the Sword Hunter Badge which unlocks the Kirkhammer and the Repeating Pistol.

There is also a character using Ludwig's stuff, as well as that Choir-specific flamesprayer, in the Nightmare of Mensis. The badge that allows you to get that flamesprayer is in the area where the Choir made contact with the Great Ones - right after you happen to get the Radian Sword Hunter badge, which is directly linked with Ludwig's Lineage. Their proximity to the Choir and Ebrietas can't be coincidence. If I were to hazard conjecture, I would say that the Choir sent their best and most able Hunter in to destroy the School of Mensis' plans from within, but he ultimately succumbed to madness.

Given that you only get a low-level Sword Hunter badge from the Beast, I see no compelling evidence that the Cleric Beast is Ludwig.

I bet Werner Herzog would love the Souls games. The voice acting often seems straight out of his movies.

Interesting take. I would like to add to if you assumption is correct then I think that the Healing Church's motive in that was driven by jealousy. The School of Mensis and the Healing Church ultimately had the same goal but I think the fact that the School of Mensis had better success in that goal made the other very jealous and probably wanted to be the only figure with that power.

@crembaw: Just as an aside but uh....

The church is the bad guys in this game. The School of Mesis is in fact the leaders of the church. Think about it. Church Hunters were more prone to becoming beasts? Ebrietas one of the first discovered Old Ones is living in the basement of the main Cathedral Chapel. The Yarangul Armor .... is sorted into the Church armor category. If you go into the Unseen Village before Rom goes down you find church hunters dead and kneeling in prayer positions in front of the door that later leads to the One Reborn fight. Who burned down and sealed off Old Yharnam? The Church. All of this f'ed up crap going on is the result of communing with the Old Ones.... who started that whole fiasco of communing with them and consuming their blood? The Church.

As for Ludwig, I suspect he is long dead. The person you fight in Mensis is probably just some nightmare imitation version of him. I think there are only really 4 things you meet in the nightmare world that are "real". Amygdala, Patches (yes his name is Patches check the credits), Mikolash, and Mergo. Amy and Mergo both being Old Ones and Patches and Micolash both being whacked out dudes who summoned them.

@karkarov

'Bad' Guys? There are no good guys, here. Mensis and Byrgenwirth are in relatively certain terms posed in opposition to one another, but that doesn't mean either one's intentions are positive in the slightest. Everyone's using Old Blood to do their own Nasty Biznizz after the Byrgenwerth researchers made discoveries deep in the tombs of the old lords.

I'm not convinced that being nominally connected via the face that hides them, the Healing Church, means the Choir and School of Mensis aren't in opposition. The Choir's job is done. They brought the Old Ones here, gave them an ample population of Beastly Humans to conceive new Great Ones. The Nightmare Frontier is their home. It's intersecting with the real world, and the Great Ones - quite literally - are stepping down from it and transgressing upon the 'reality' of Yharnam. That will give birth to new Great Ones through the plague of beasts; that's what happened to the culture of Loran; that's why Amygdala possesses the Loran Chalice, when by all rights it SHOULD be far, far underground, with the remains of its culture. The Nightmare of Mensis doesn't want that -- well, okay, it does, but only insofar as it aides their own purposes. Look out over the edge of the Nightmare Frontier and you can see the Nightmare of Mensis rising Upward. They came together and absolved themselves of individual identity to create their own proto-nightmare, to elicit a stillborn birth of a Great One. That still birth would give them an umbilical cord, which would grant them the privilege to speak with a Great One. Mensis is an ancient Indo-European word for Moon. Mergo, similarly, means hidden or unknown. Kill Mergo, get the Umbilical Cord, have the chance to meet the Moon Presence. They want to collectively BECOME a Great One.

Apologies for the wall of text.

Awww... too many spoilers here. I can't follow most of the conversation (I just love speculation stuff around souls games, but I haven't finished Bloodborne yet so I can't read it right now).

I saw that video above and I know where that other side is. When you try to open that door it just says "Closed." I've found a couple doors like that- although they are often tied to boss fights. Super weird. I wonder if it's another thing tied to insight somehow- as some things slightly change with insight or so I've been lead to believe.

I don't know. Souls games are weird haha. It's part of why I like them so much.

The door was never meant to be a shortcut. The fact that it's operable but locked is to illustrate how the cathedral ward got quarantined because of the hunt. It's also why the room before is filled with the urns of insence (just like the chapel you actually do manage to enter) to keep the beasts away.

The beauty and curse of these games is that every theory could be potentially right. They leave so few clues and so far and in between that you could connect any loose strand together and make a feasible story out of it.

Given their track record I'm pretty sure it was a technical/design thing where they had it in and decided against it, maybe thinking it would break early game progression somehow. That one area leading from Cathedral Ward is a dead end and makes no sense in the grand scheme of things. Similarly how the Cleric Beast fight is an odd dead end. I just think they didn't want people to have the ability to bypass Gasciogne, and would much rather have them miss the Cleric beast instead - as a lot of people (myself included) tend to do that now.

@humanity: The thing is, it wouldn't really make sense as a shortcut, since (as you point out) Cleric Beast is an optional boss. If you happened to skip the Cleric Beast then came back around that way it would be non-functional as a shortcut until you actually beat the boss (also, it would make very little sense to enter that fight from that side). It could however have been the original path to the cathedral ward, but then they decided to add the Oeden path later. It's impossible to know without actually having been part of the development ofc, but I can see how instead of deleting the obsolete part they might've just gone "ok, let's put a chest with the first available game at the end of it".

@ares42: I just think they got jumped up over there. The route leading to Cleric Beast makes sense while the path leading to Gasciogne less so. There is a bridge that terminates at a drop-off into the sewers and then there is a graveyard at the other end. It's really dumb to talk about how "real" any of this is, but from a design standpoint it's weird that the path linking Central Yarnham and Cathedral ward is an elevator by the sewers and then you have to squeeze through some dingy backalleys and walk past a graveyard. The Cleric Beast approach makes a lot more sense as you're going from one main area to another using this grand bridge that naturally flows into the city.

Generally the level design in Bloodborne is the best I've seen out of all the Soul games and I was constantly very impressed with it, but the beginning area twists and turns a few times too many in my opinion and starts to become sort of a mess. It's a beautiful mess mind you, but it's still a mess.

@humanity: That's sorta the entire point though. If you look at the city design from a logistical view the main bridge and that wide path (on the other side of the door) is obviously the "main street" of the city. So when shit started happening and they decided to close down the district they dropped the big gate (which you see at the end of the bridge) and barred the side-door, closing all traffic. Due to the quarantine you basically end up having to use the equivalent of a "service entrance" to get in. It's basically the sub-plot of the entire starting area.

@ares42: I think calling it a sub-plot is a bit much. Yes there is a lot of neat story hidden here and there but let's not go overboard in reading into every little detail. Sometimes it just is what it is. People often craft insane theories in these games based on 3 lines of dialog and I mean cool, but at the same time give me a break. These games are designed with so much intentionally ethereal information and vague clues that only begin to scratch at the outer edges of something that could be called a real story that the player is almost given free reign to make up the other 80% themselves and they won't be wrong.

So you're not wrong, it most definitely could be what you are saying. It also could be a million other things depending on how you read into it.

@humanity: It's not exactly vague. If you talk to Gilbert (which is basically the Crestfallen Warrior of this game) he first tells you to go to the cathedral ward, and then after beating the Cleric Beast (and discovering the main pathway is closed) he tells you about the alternate route. It's pretty much the "ring the bells of awakening" of this game.

You just blew my mind!

I think you mean Gerhman, and it is obvious they wanted you to originally cross via the bridge and somewhere in the development of the game decided..... no lets make them go through these sewers then through this graveyard. I vehemently agree with Humanity. People make up some insane stuff from basically nothing. People wonder why I don't like Epicname whatever for example? Well beyond the stupid handle I once saw him post a 15 minute video where all he did was talk about one random statue in Dark Souls 1 and started literally spouting pure nonsensical BS to make it sound important. Fishing for views much?

@crembaw: In all fairness there are some good guys in the game. Eileen the Crow, assuming you don't do (or not do) something to piss her off. Willhelm was actually a good guy, remember his password is FEAR the old blood, not drink it like it is going out of style. It is also worth mentioning in the vision of Willhelm he is talking to a student named Laurence who he suspects of betraying him, this student goes on to leave Byrgenwerth.... maybe to found the "Healing Church"? This would imply Willhelm was not down with founding the Church, especially when you consider a member of the Choir is guarding the place and the church forbid travel there all to keep the place (and Willhelm) sealed away.

Meanwhile as hilarious as it is to say this... There really isn't a ton of things flagging Cainhurst as actually being evil. They suffer from "corrupt" blood but who decided they are corrupt? That's right.... the Church. Worst case scenario they are just a second faction that emerged from Byrgenwerth and they tried to follow the same path as the Church just by a different method and as a result the Church decided to take them out.

Lastly there is also all the people who can come to hang out at Odeum Chapel.... minus that one guy. All of them are decent enough sorts and mostly good, if a bit crazy, people. The issue is the Church is definitely a bunch of freaked out loony toon Cthulhu worshipers and they also happen to be the "face" of Yarhnam. So it goes without saying that almost everyone of any importance in the place is actually a murderous scum bag.

Nah, he means Gilbert. That's the name of the dude in the window that coughs a bunch next to the central yarnham lamp at the very beginning. The dude who gives you the flamethrower. He definitely tells you to seek the church to look into the paleblood thing by trying the bridge first and when you tell him it's blocked he tells you about the sewers.

@karkarov: I completely agree that it could've been the original path to cathedral ward, and then they added the Oeden path later. However if you remember back to the alpha six months ago the Oeden path and Gascoigne fight was already implemented in the game, so it seems strange for this very obvious "bug" to have gone unnoticed that long. I guess Gascoigne could've been the optional boss for a long time, only being in there for the quest.

And no, as has already been pointed out, I wasn't talking about Gerhman.

@someguyjohnson: He will tell you that whether you kill cleric beast or not. Way too much crap in this game is totally undisclosed. How do we know the guys name is Gilbert? Oh yeah a strategy guide, sure never says it in game. In other Strategy guide news it also confirms the hunter in Mensis is also not Ludwig. If anything it confirms Ludwig isn't in game period as anything other than a lore mention.

It also confirms my suspicion Laurence was the founder of the church and it is Laurence's skull you channel in the Odeon Grand Cathedral.

It's literally one of the first things he tells you.... You probably already progressed his "story" before you spoke to him the first time.

@ares42: Don't know how you could advance his dialog without talking to him. Maybe I just missed it in the middle of all his coughing/wheezing since I play with subtitles off.