Bloodborne: The Doll’s Prayer and What It Says

The Plain Doll in Bloodborne — who levels the player and is the only NPC who consistently acknowledges the player warmly — has a prayer she performs if left alone in the Dream for several minutes. Most players interact with her for levelling and leave.

The prayer is available in text through the game’s audio log data: it is addressed to no deity the game names, and it thanks an unspecified listener for allowing her to feel something — any sensation — despite being made of cloth and sawdust.

Miyazaki has described the Doll as Bloodborne’s most personal creation: a character built around the idea of something that feels emotions it was not designed to have. Her prayer’s unnamed addressee is, within the fiction, the player character — the one person who speaks to her consistently enough that she felt the warmth of repeated contact.

The Doll’s warmth throughout the game is contextualised by this prayer: she is grateful in the specific way that someone is grateful when they expected nothing. Every ‘good hunter’ is her acknowledgment that she was afraid no one would return.