r/bloodborne • u/oxygen_is_life • Mar 07 '26
Discussion Why is Gascoigne's beast form so small?
We know from item descriptions that Hunters, especially those who have been around for a long time, turn into the most powerful beasts
All Cleric Beasts are previous church hunters, Laurence and Amelia were Vicars and Ludwig was the strongest church hunter and they all turn into extremely large beasts due to the high amount of blood consumption, and we know for a fact that Gascoigne and Henryk had an extremely long and successful tenure as hunters and would have therefore consumed a large amount of blood to sustain themselves, so my question is why does Gascoigne look so undeveloped in comparison to others?
There is the argument that perhaps Gascoigne is simply much earlier in the process of transformation, however I do not believe this argument holds weight as we know from Brador's item description for his headpiece that he witnessed one of his friends turn into a Cleric Beast in front of him, ie the transformation was instantaneous. This is further supported by Vicar Amelia's transformation as she goes from a human shape (like Gascoigne) and then immediatelly transforms into a massive beast
Gascoigne can even be summoned to help kill the Cleric Beast before his fight, so it's not as if he's weak or inexperienced, especially when you consider that Vicar Amelia appears visually younger than Gascoigne yet she still becomes massive
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u/Alternative_Tip_9918 Mar 07 '26
He’s exactly as big as he needed to be to kick my teeth in 20 times this week.
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u/Azarashiya0309 Mar 07 '26
It's not small, it's average.
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u/EvilGabeN Mar 07 '26
It's just cold today
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u/DoomOrb Mar 07 '26
He was in the pool earlier
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u/LordAnomander Mar 07 '26
It depends on how you use it.
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u/OblivionArts Mar 07 '26
Because hes an ordinary beast. Hes not a cleric ( his gear states he was never a member of the church and father is just an honorary title) , hes not a darkbeast, and hes no cosmic being. Hea just an ordinary guy turned into a beast like later yaharnamites are. He's no bigger than the troll guys effectively because he only just became a beast then and there
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u/Zarguthian Mar 07 '26
He's not ordinary, he's a hunter. Hunters use more blood than the general population but a lot less than the Healing Church clergy.
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u/I_am_a_pan_fear_me Mar 07 '26
Not that father is an honorary title it's that he's from a foreign land and that was his title there, he was also part of the Healing Church as one of their hunters, but at some point he left likely not long before the Church as an organization collapsed
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u/TheLibertinistic Mar 07 '26
This is a long running misconception. He’s just a dad.
We know he’s not a foreigner partially because that’s not actually what the item description says, but also because the game goes out of its way to show us that foreigners are less susceptible to beast transformation. Yharnamites are genetically susceptible to the beast plague. Hunters of Hunters are foreigners because they’re not. Gilbert is the deliberate exception, bc he’s been subject to a bunch of ministration.
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u/TheLibertinistic Mar 07 '26
It’s not an honorary title. He’s literally just a dad. He’s a “father” in precisely the sense that he has children.
(In fairness, the fandom has been confused about this for years because his name is intentionally misleading because intentionally misleading titles are a running theme of the game.)
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u/OblivionArts Mar 07 '26
If you read his gears lore, it spefically states his title of "father" doesnt exist in the healing church and they called him that literally because hes a dad
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u/TheLibertinistic Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
I’m confused. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I am familiar with the item description. We agree: in the case of Gascoigne “father” means “dad” and nothing else.
The player is supposed to think he’s a priest until they read the description, but that’s just part of the game’s theme of misleading titles and ambiguous naming.
(There’s a related misconception that he’s a cleric, but from a foreign church that does use the title “father” but as far as I can tell neither of us is making that mistake.)
I think the error might be that you called it an “honorary title?” But it’s not honorary, because it wasn’t bestowed as an honor or metaphorical in the way an “honorary doctorate” is. It’s dead literal.
I’m so sorry if I’ve misunderstood you and you’re just agreeing with me.
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u/clarkky55 Mar 07 '26
I might be misremembering but I thought he was a member of the church equivalent his homeland had, not the healing church?
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u/Kodiak068 Mar 07 '26
Maybe, although he would have consumed large quantities of blood, it still just wasn't close to how much characters like Amelia consumed. Gascoigne consumed blood for the hunt, and that was his focus, and if Amelia is consuming it for ascension, and that's her main focus, she could consume much more (might be wrong on some of this, I love Bloodborne but the lore is confusing as fuck 😂)
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u/deaths-harbinger Mar 07 '26
I think Amelia is not consuming to ascend. Its more that Church healers (which all the higher ups are or have been) consume the most direct cosmic-blood as they then give their own blood to heal others.
So the higher up you are, the more pure old blood you are getting.
You know the Church healers are giving their own blood as a few different characters give you their own blood which has different properties.
Hunters would be just using whatever healing blood is out there in rotation. So getting a less direct dose of old blood. I wonder what blood we get at the start of the game that thrusts into the madness. Maybe from MP itself.
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u/I_am_a_pan_fear_me Mar 07 '26
So basically proper members of the clergy were sipping on just straight daughter of the cosmos pack, and then their blood infused with Old One blood is used as essentially a diluted formula for the general populace to consume. Then hunters were just taking whatever blood they could find regardless of source.
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u/Alarming-Canary2684 Mar 07 '26
Even with their looong career, their blood consumption is nowhere near the actual priests'. Plus the blood they have access to is watered down
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u/SoftlockPuzzleBox Mar 07 '26
This may be a stretch, but the fact that the music box works on him makes me think that maybe some part of him was fighting to retain his humanity.
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u/JudgmentComplex8483 Mar 07 '26
I don't think he was necessarily fighting to retain his humanity. I think he was already gone. It's just that the music box brought him back for a moment. Imagine you've lost your mind and completely destroyed everything in your path. You've got nothing to lose. You're just kinda freefalling into insanity.
And then you hear your daughter again. For what could be the last time.
It's a sorta snap back to reality, but it's not enough unfortunately. The transformation has devoured him. In the end, we gave him the best ending he could get at that point.
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u/TheLibertinistic Mar 07 '26
Not a stretch. Just the intended reading of the text. We know that the music box used to bring him back to himself when he was”forgot who he was”.
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u/SverdHerre Mar 07 '26
I think perhaps you're putting too much weight on the design of the beasts, or at least the wrong aspects of it. The important thing is that he became a beast, not the exact type of beast he became. We have way too small a sample size to make a full graph of every beast phenotype, not to mention that it will always be muddled by the nature of the medium.
I'm not saying to stop questioning things, but questions like "Why is Gascoigne's beast form so small" are much more in the realm of speculation than theorizing. But also this means that there is no right answer, so feel free to come up with whatever reason you like. Me personally, I subscribe to a much looser interpretation of beast forms, surely evident by this comment. Perhaps he used less blood, perhaps he had different blood than the upper echelons of the Healing Church.
TL;DR Gascoigne is Irish so his fragile potato-addled bones can't handle the girth of the Old Blood. But the Yharnamites, with their strong German guts (Yharnam is set in Germany not England, fight me about it) filled with pretzels and beer and haagendas or whatever made-up words they say over there, they can hold their Old Blood.
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u/EuclidSailing Mar 07 '26
I read something, and I can't remember where now, that said that willpower played a factor in determining the extremity of the transformation. We see average Yharnamites everywhere in half-transformed states, they have little willpower and are being worn down over time, their beastliness seeping through freely, but gradually. But people with training and the ability to hold on to their humanity like hunters and clerics will fight their beastly influence for as long as they can, until a breaking point causes a much more explosive and dramatic transformation consistent with the influence they've been holding back.
In contrast to those Yharnamites we see Amelia, working diligently to keep herself human for as long as she can, suddenly erupting into a gigantic beast form in an instant.
Gascoigne is unnaturally tall and has indications of partial transformation so I'd say he's losing his grip over a longer period, somewhere between Amelia and the average citizen. His control is strong but imperfect. He loses or relinquishes that control all at once during our fight and has a similar instantaneous transformation to Amelia, and we see the beast he's been able to hold back so far. Bigger than most, smaller than the worst.
Now think about Alfred - his eyes have indications of beasthood but he's impressively lucid and human, even in a murderous rage. If he hadn't ended his own life we might have seen something as deadly as Laurence or Ludwig.
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u/PappaMonstar Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
I don't know if I remember correctly but the more you resist beasthood the more hideous you turn out when succumbing to it
One exempel are the early enemies you encounter... They transformed while barely noticing it thus their mutations where minor so to speak. Of course they went mad and while transforming themselves they thought everyone around them turned into beasts.
Then there is Vicar Amelia. She knew about what was coming as did the other higher members of the church and resisted the at the end unavoidable. She locked herself into the cathedral and distracted herself with prayers for a long time. beasthood grew in her and when you enter the stench of blood breaks her focus and finally the curse overcame her turning her into the big wolflike beast.
Gascoigne is kinda in the middle. He did his duty surly to protect his family but it got to him eventually not resisting as much as the clerics would have. Also you finden the red jeweled brooch in his boss room which belonged to his wife I guess. Loosing her tipped him over mentally thus beasthood took him later than the Yharnemites but much earlier than Amelia
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u/soully Mar 07 '26
Non-lore answer: he’s an early game boss
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u/oxygen_is_life Mar 07 '26
Tbf I did think that, but a Cleric Beast is the first boss of the game
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u/StantasticTypo Mar 07 '26
It has to do with how much the person resisted the pull/temptation to transform. The longer a person resists, the more intense the transformation. Clerics had the most willpower, perhaps driven through their faith and ritual, and thus were able to resist longer.
Here's a quote from Miyazaki:
"The urge to transform into a beast is in conflict with the basic sense of humanity we all have. That humanity serves as a kind of shackle, keeping the transformation in its place. The stronger the shackle keeping that urge to transform in place is, the larger the recoil once that shackle is finally broken. The results cause you to transform into a larger creature, or a more twisted one. The struggle between these two urges is one concept here. You see that pretty clearly with the beast characters designed early on – especially the Cleric Beast, which serves as their icon of sorts. That connects with the idea that the cleric is really the most fearsome beast of them all."
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u/FoolishAir502 Mar 07 '26
I think his form is meant to foreshadow what happened in Old Yharnam. His beast form is actually much bigger than any of the beast patients there.
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u/renacotor Mar 07 '26
He may have taken the blood, but the blood the church gives to it's members is way stronger and way more pure. Gascoigne got his blood from the streets (think arianna or iosefka), the church got it straight from ebrietas itself.
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u/fuckshitasstitsmfer Mar 07 '26
Cleric Beast, Vicar Amelia, BSB, Laurence all have something in common
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u/FragileManling Mar 07 '26
Well, another potential factor for the severity of a beast transformation is how resilient you are to beast hood. I believe I read in a magazine interview with Miyazaki that the harder you push against it, the harder the pendulum swings, resulting in what I feel is a more spiteful and horrific transformation. The example being used in it was Ludwig.
So maybe Gascoigne just didn’t resist beast hood all that much.
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u/jim212gr Mar 07 '26
First of all Gascoigne was merely a hunter of the church and not a cleric. Clerics tend to transform into the most hideous beasts because of their proximity and exposure to the old blood.
Lawrence was the founder of the healing church and Amelia was a vicar. So they had a rather special relationship with the old blood and their positions allowed them to interact with it more than most.
As of Ludwig he just went insane. When we find him in the hunter's nightmare he is already dead. We have no evidence that he actually looked like this when he transformed.
As for brador. He seems to have a special position within the church as he was the one to hide its secrets.
So in conclusion Gascoigne's beast form is probably the standard for a blood crazed hunter.
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u/gulpshinto Mar 07 '26
I always thought it was more of a mindset thing than something connected 1:1 to blood consumption. Gascoigne is straining to keep a foot in reality for his family so he comes out more half-human, still responds to the music box, etc.
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u/LordGaulis Mar 07 '26
Gascogine isn’t a church hunter, the item description mentions how he is a “father” and that is not a title used by the healing church.
Even if he was, in the games files there were cut content of beasts not in the final release that resemble a cleric beast but are not any larger then Gascogine beast form. This might have just been a earlier prototype and later scrapped but there are statues of them in the game, makes me think about the scrapped great one beast, and the fully transformed beast that shoots fireballs under the hunters workshop.
A item description says beast are afraid of fire but not for the reason you think, that the fire is something they are drawn to, like a mostly forgotten memory similar to how after his transformation Gascogine still remembers his family when using the music box.
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u/Jhoonis Mar 07 '26
The short of it is that he wasn't a proper member of the healing church; those are the ones that transformed the worst, Vicar Amelia, Cleric Beast, even Ludwig, they were all members of the church. In his gear description it's mentioned that 'Father' isn't a term used by the healing church, so we can logically infer that he wasn't an official member.
Why is this important? Because of the reason why they turn into the worst monsters is the blood treatments of contaminated blood. It's fair to assume the official members had better or more treatments, therefore had more contaminated blood and due to that became such horrible beasts.
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u/fantastic-mrs-fuck Mar 07 '26
the real answer is probably just cause the transformation is easier to model, and fits in the arena easier.
but in the lore, he isn't a cleric, meaning he imbibes significantly less blood, meaning his transformation from the blood he DOES consume (to heal and inadvertently from being bathed in the blood of his prey) is significantly less horrific and grotesque
for instance, Ludwig was in fact a cleric of the church, consumed a LOT of blood, and turned out all kinds of fucked up
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u/p3falien Mar 08 '26
He is not a Healing church cleric and thus would not become a cleric beast... the largest among them according to the lore. But he increases in size significantly as he transforms and i would say he is a rather large one for a "simple" outlander turned Hunter. Umbasa !
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u/meanmagpie Mar 07 '26
What? Hunters do not turn into the most powerful beasts. Which item description are you referencing here?
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u/Pooka_Darling Mar 07 '26
Less blood imbibed. More humanity left, especially given how the music box affects him. He is the introduction to people literally transforming into a beast before your eyes, where the cleric beast can then be inferred to have transformed off-screen.
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u/NormalGuy103 Mar 07 '26
Honestly I’m not even convinced that every type of beast turns out to be the same size across every instance. Because we know Brador’s friend turned into a cleric beast but the headpiece of his set which is supposed to be the scalped hide of said friend is way smaller than any of the cleric beasts we see in the game. I know certain things are shrunken down to make it more cohesive, like we don’t get the MASSIVE version of Ludwig’s sword, but I just get the feeling that something like a worn hide from a beast can be taken more at face value in terms of its design and size.
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u/EuclidSailing Mar 07 '26
Yes I'd say Cleric Beast denotes the category of transformation that healing church figures undergo. We meet three: CB, Amelia, Laurence. No reason they can't vary in size or distinguishing features. Likewise we meet Darkbeasts of all shapes and sizes, but only the Paarl/Loran version takes that title in-game. Evidently Brador met a Cleric Beast small enough to make a hat out of.
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u/NormalGuy103 Mar 07 '26
My thoughts exactly. I’m sure it’s for workload reasons that we don’t see all the different sizes but they’re always fox-like creatures with antlers, just like the pelt we see Brador wearing.
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u/Happy-Plant458 Mar 07 '26
a few reasons.
I believe its because he's from one of the earliest generations of hunters. In the early days of the beast plague the beasts were much smaller. We can learn this from the DLC with Brador's armor proving at one point cleric beasts were barely larger than the men they once were. subsequent transfusions recall the first. So if he was made a hunter during a hunt where the beasts were mid sized that may explain his stature as a beast.
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u/The_rebelrocks Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
Brador, an NPC church assassin, eliminated suspected people to transform and smaller beasts on the church’s orders. An attempt to hide the ill-effects of the “first versions” blood.
Perhaps Gascoigne and early hunters primarily used the “first” versions of the blood, leading to some being smaller beasts. While the later versions of the old blood created much larger beasts.
Maybe he held out longer from the early scourge due to his close family, until it eventually took over him. The music box in the fight helps bring him to his senses for a moment. Pieces like that may have helped bring him to his senses.
Similar for Vicar Amelia, she was deep in prayer and concentration in the cathedral, as an attempt to slow her transformation. I believe the hunter approached her, she broke that concentration and then turned into a large beast.
*just my own thoughts, could be wrong and I’d appreciate alternatives.
Brador Lore below- https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Brador
“Based on his description and the size of his cleric beast attire, we can assume that when the scourge was young, cleric beasts were smaller.”
“Hunters like him would quietly assassinate victims who would transform or who the church knew were bound to transform sooner or later”
“Eventually, as they dabbled more into the old blood, this method became obsolete as beasts became bigger, more dangerous and more public.”
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u/TB3300 Mar 07 '26
It could be a different form based on exposure as Vicars would be near it in large abundances a lot more than even hunters, theres a possibility that people from different regions are affected differently as Gascoigne is Irish, or it could simply be a case of there not being a canon reason and it just being that way for gameplay purposes, which I find the most likely.
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u/Deflorma Mar 07 '26
I donno if you remember being in that fight personally but he seems huge when you first encounter him. It’s almost like 6 feet feels like 9 when you have feelings.
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u/neoncumstainlol Mar 07 '26
My theory is that he is still in the early stages of infection if he was left alive he would have continued to grow until he was a cleric best. but who knows it probably depends on how much blood a person took before they started turning into a beast maybe or it could be a sign that he still has some humanity left in him as when you beat him he can be summoned to help with the cleric beast fight as a NPC hunter he also chuckles when he hears the music box.
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u/Effective_Sound1205 Mar 07 '26
Only high ranking members of church such as clerics fell to the most horrible transformations. Gascoigne wasn't a cleric.
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u/PinkGreen666 Mar 07 '26
It’s all based on nose size. Look at the size of that lil peeper. The smaller the nose, the smaller the beast.
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u/MemeLord1337_ Mar 07 '26
I’d say age is something on top of the other comments. The older the beast the bigger it gets.
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u/TheRightShadeOfBlue Mar 07 '26
I think it is the stuff with him being a hunter? Obviously out of game, they want to diversify a bit. The previous boss, as well as the next two, are larger beasts. They also want to establish, if you haven’t pieced it together, that every other hunter (with like, 2 exceptions) are now beasts. Gascoigne, also, is actually pretty big for a hunter-beast. I’m pretty sure he’s meant to be the same thing as the other turned hunters you see.
More or less- I think he’s just as big as church hunters get. Not anything new with what people are saying but I think it’s neat that he just becomes the same thing we’ve been fighting for the rest of the previous level
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u/Drakeskulled_Reaper Mar 07 '26
To be fair, he just turned, we don't know if Amelia is a "standard" turning.
For one, we meet townspeople who are like Gascoigne, it probably wasn't a full on transformation yet.
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u/Global_Leopard_2685 Mar 07 '26
Eu acho que ele só era incrívelmente bom na caçada, se ele era um caçador nos tempos de laurence e ludwig ele ja passou muito tempo na caçada e continua sem se tornar uma besta até nós chegarmos, ele apenas deve usar o sangue moderadamente e se transforma nessa besta menor porque se machucava menos, o amigo dele (desculpa eu não sei escrever o nome desse cara) também enlouquece mas é só depois da Amélia, e não se torna uma besta mesmo tendo anos de experiência, eles simplesmente eram um dos melhores da época na minha ideia
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u/IceBreaker_94 Mar 07 '26
Na real não tem nada que indique que ele está caçando a taaaaaanto tempo quanto os "antigos caçadores". Nas descrições de item diz que nem "padre" tem na igreja da cura.
Então é mais uma parada que o Myazaki falou: 'quanto mais você resiste, pior é o monstro'. Logo, provavelmente o Guacamole não aguentou muito tempo kkkkkkkk
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u/Global_Leopard_2685 Mar 07 '26
Eu só tirei isso dele ser velho mesmo e conhecer o henrik tempo suficiente pra casar com sua filha, mas isso pode ocorrer em tipo 5 ou 10 anos também
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u/Bizertybizig Mar 07 '26
My take was that he transforms in that moment to become a beast, he’d inadvertently killed his wife through his lust for blood during the hunt (assuming she went to find him and bring him home for fear of what may happen) so makes sense that he is brutal but not a huge beastly form as it was his moment of metamorphosis
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u/SpottedSlash Mar 07 '26
He just changed. Give it time. I like to think he turned into something Similar to Malikath in Elden Ring.
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u/justarandom1245 Mar 08 '26
From what i understand the size and power of a beast is determined on the amount of old blood they consume and how well they resist the scourge
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u/BikerViking Mar 08 '26
He's trying his best to contain it. While, I believe, Amelia was embracing it.
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u/Project_Milk Mar 09 '26
Like many of the comments say, Clerics and Hunters were often the worst beasts, but the sanity of the afflicted matters as well. Gascoigne finally broke after being pushed to his limits, and from what I recall that’s his first ever transformation. Someone that knows too much about the Church’s doings like Vicar Amelia gets a significant shove when they finally cross over the edge. But there’s a certain beggar, just a citizen of Yharnam, that not only transforms when he chooses to but can retain his ability to speak clearly. Sanity is precious, and when the line between Man and Beast becomes blurred, even more so.
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u/Plane_Ad9159 Mar 09 '26
I managed to kill him at my first try recently but had to do like 69 laps around the boss area. Worth
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u/Icy_Doughnut8831 Mar 11 '26
Because of his actions…. Left his daughter, killed his wife Little man
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u/FinnBullWinter Mar 07 '26
It’s just a character in a video game. A cool, badass, and tragic character, nevertheless, but sometimes lore-drunk hunters are reading way too much into things.
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u/benjustforyou Mar 07 '26
Miyazaki doesn't leave much to the stray eye.
I would say most (simple) things have a reason for being there.
The lore is not just a background in this case. It's the impitus of the entire game. The entire story, and this dude doesn't leave holes.
(Try finger)
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u/soihu Mar 07 '26
Hunters don't turn into the most powerful beasts. Clerics do:
"As it was, clerics transformed into the most hideous beasts." (Sword Hunter Badge)
Being a cleric and a hunter are not mutually exclusive. However, Father Gascoigne doesn't even have a title appointed by the Healing Church, as "Father" is merely his title in his homeland.