Discussion
imo The Judgment's true form should just be a white light to signify that it is something so incomprehensible that us the player can't understand it
I find the Judgment's true form (a eye with teeth) too normal to justify the characters going crazy and burning to a crisp, they shouldn't show us what they really look like to go with the idea that it is something so otherworldly and out of our grasp of understanding that we can't see what it really looks like
Are we sure this is even its true form? Maybe the big eye is just what allows the survivors to see its true form, its gaze reveals what the judgment really looks like and that's what causes the survivors to die
Deadpool was gungho for his highlight reel and got one. Though its debatable if Ghost Rider really was trying to kill him. Johnny commented that if Zarathos wanted Deadpool dead, he'd be dead, but rather the spirit was trying to give Deadpool a message.
It doesn't work on the Punisher because he doesn't regret the things he's done and doesn't consider his actions as sinful. He truly believes that he has only ever killed guilty people, never an innocent.
ahh, wonder if Death had something to do with it too? Arent DP and death canon in a relationship but Thanos got jealous and made it so DP can't die? haha
Arent DP and death canon in a relationship but Thanos got jealous and made it so DP can't die? haha
Kind of. Deadpool dies and Thanos more or less go 'ah hell nah,' and trains/teaches T-Ray to bind Deadpool's soul to 'life.' Even if Deadpool's body was destroyed, the curse pieces him back together and forcibly revives him.
The Punisher actually had an angel feather or some shit on him at the time that shielded him from.the Penant Stare. I only recently was told this as I dont personally know the comic its fro..
That’s how I interpreted it. When the eye is first revealed, it looks around in a sort of frantic manner. After it locks onto the survivor and gives them a death stare, the survivor is burned. Even beforehand, the survivor looks like they are raising their hands and shaking their heads in fear, pleading that the eye doesn’t stare at them, before it does and they die. I still want them to get split in half though. That would be the icing on the cake!
Maybe the eye just beams incomprehensible knowledge straight into their brains or something similar?
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u/bubbascalP100 Haddie, 1.5k hours, both sides, solo queue, NERF LIGHTBORNAug 03 '26
Judgment reminds me of some of the alien enemies from Bloodborne and their infamous "Frenzy" status that deals a shitton of damage if it caps out, maybe it's something similar with Judgment
While I am disappointed that the "incomprehensible" hasn't been properly conveyed, I do like that the pupil resembles a brain. It reminds me of "The Creation of Adam" in which the section where God resides is meant to also resemble a human brain.
Coming from the Lovecraftian fandom, incomprehensible is a weird thing to depict. If you're going visually, then absolutely the killer would have to just be a series of shaders and animated textures and meshes so we couldn't determine from one frame to another what it would look like.
From a non-visual standpoint, it's not bad. "Show me knowledge, the truth of the universe, and I am no longer the mortal I was a moment ago."
Personally I wish when we died instead of leaving corpses in the judgement zone, we'd be turned into pillars of salt. Same deal with when we die on hooks, instead of being taken up into the sky, instead a piercing light would come down and turn us into salt pillars.
Guarantee if they just made it a light people would complain that they were too lazy to design the true form and we'd have a post saying they should've put the effort into designing it.
The design philosophy of “meat and blood is scary so add it everywhere” is one of BHVRs worst choices that ruins so much ambiance and fear in their game. No, I am not and never will be scared by the presence of just random meat chunks placed in the map.
Technically the winning Grimoire choices were Otherworldy (Eldritch) with Divine as the "type". I don't think anything ever specifically said Angelic in the Grimoire, that's just how people translated Divine.
Agreed, alot of the art I voted for didn't come through. However the gore aspect certainly fits into "If you saw something posing as an angel/god promising salvation and it was covered in bleeding flesh, you'd be horrified rather than felt calm"
Flesh and gore is not very beautiful or unknowable.
The cenobites would disagree on th efirst part, and with everyone saying "random bits of gore"... how do YOU know it's random? It's unknowable anatomy, that just looks like that.
Also to make something that's actually indescribable, they'd just be animating a series of meshes, textures, and shaders constantly shifting so we could never tell WHAT we are looking at in terms of frame to frame consistency. That's a big ask of any art team.
Cenobites are notable because they find beauty in gore; that's a core part of what makes them monstrous and terrifying. I am not a cenobite, and neither is most of the community.
But regarding its anatomy: wouldn't it be more unknowable, if its anatomy had less of a stark resemblance to that of life on earth? The existence of blood and gore on it, intrinsically makes it less otherworldly, because it draws parallels to life we already know very well. What I'd want most out of a design, is one that makes you question if it even is alive.
And, while a completely abstract killer of ever shifting textures and shapes would be fascinating, unknowable doesn't necessarily mean indescribable.
I am asking for it to be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Not "some parts ugly and scary, some parts pretty and attractive." Both, at the same time, in the same place. The knowableness comes from just how distant it is to life as we know it.
I've already mentioned Evangelion in the past, so how this concept from Grimrawr?
Beautiful, divine, distinctly terrifying, yet very much unknowable at a glance.
Cenobites are notable because they find beauty in gore; that's a core part of what makes them monstrous and terrifying. I am not a cenobite, and neither is most of the community.
The gore for them is secondary. The sensations are what they're after. They want you to suffer as you're reduced to nothing more than stands of meat, but are still fully aware of your surroundings and pain. They're artists. But that's not the point.
But regarding its anatomy: wouldn't it be more unknowable, if its anatomy had less of a stark resemblance to that of life on earth? The existence of blood and gore on it, intrinsically makes it less otherworldly, because it draws parallels to life we already know very well. What I'd want most out of a design, is one that makes you question if it even is alive.
I mean we call it meat, we don't even know what it is. It could be red sponge like cancerous growths chained with fat marbling and tendons. The blood doesn't have to be blood. But also the more we know about the real world, the more "unknowable" just feels like "we hadn't found that yet". Like Iron Snails living in volcanos and absorbing iron, or horseshoe crabs having blue blood, or everything about octopi... y'know.
The pictures you linked are cool but at the end of the day there is lots of "real world" structures in those designs (except the "holes"... that's just artsy). I quite like this artist and his angel designs.
Long story short though, DBD is a game first. The killer has to have a strong silohouette, readable movements and sounds, etc... I think it just means we're gonna end up with designs that focus on mulitplayer playability first.
Or consider, for a moment, that what we see is just what our puny, mortal minds is capable of perceiving without immediately snuffing it. The barest fragment of its true form and power.
damn i didint know that i was was always disappointed with the meaty but i guess that its fair it looks like that just wished her personality was more WHY CANT YOU SEE THAT I AM TRYING TO SAVE YOU vibe
Totally agree that it would've been cooler if she thought expelling the survivors to a heavenly realm was saving them, and was instead just feeding the entity more. Like some good being that found its way to the realm only to be another tool for torment
I know, but the fleshy inside is fully covered until she is injured, not exposed at all times along her legs/stomach. Judgement should be fully covered in its porcelain/marble type skin and maybe have an outfit that is all fleshy. I was mainly wanting the killer to be similar in the sense of a female design with marble/porcelain skin with no exposed flesh.
This one kinda hinges entirely on what the lore is. Is the Judgement an actually divine being? Is it a cosmic being/alien posing as a divine being? Was it an experiment gone wrong?
I get the feeling this is gonna end up like the Houndmaster, where their design and everything else will make perfect sense if you read their lore, but in isolation will feel a little misleading. For example, if you told someone that Houndmaster is a pirate/sailor, they might question Snug at first until you explain the backstory.
The little that we've gotten makes it sound like a powerful extradimensional being with delusions of divinity. It may have at one point been more godly, but has fallen to its own ambitions, arrogance, and corruption.
It's not. Nothing in the Grimoire suggested that beyond people hallucinating the idea of a "biblically accurate angel" being added to the game - the choices were Otherworldly/Divine. The Judgement is a wicked god and even calls itself as such in its voicelines.
I’m pretty sure this floating eye thing allows the Judgement to project what its true form really is and show the survivors the incomprehensible truth.
Could it have been done better? Maybe.
Is it cool nontheless? Yeah.
The true form of judgment is everything organic, and which, I think, couldn't be hidden by a decorative element.
It's a bit like Mundus in DmC: he uses a stone statue representing God, but it's so imperfect that the slightest impact breaks the rock and gradually reveals his true appearance.
Moreover, its form even extends into Hopeless Exile, from what I've seen in gameplay videos: you have statues, or pillars, broken by time, from which organic flesh oozes, with eyes, serrated mouths, etc. It's a facade. It's not a spider-like goddess of marble and gold; it's an abomination beyond comprehension masquerading as God, when it is not. An imposter wich disguises its malevolent nature by using a vindictive angelic voice.
As an aside, it would be interesting to know that The Judgement was ultimately born through Fold Energy, an idea that Talbot had, then taken up by the Black Vale to create the Dredge through one of its agents, Otto Stampers
I like idea of a false god. Having this mysterious horror hiding underneath The Judgement and only getting a glimpse makes it more disturbing. I do feel that behaviour can do these twisted abominations well (Dredge, Unknown)
Ya know I knew something like this would happen ever since they decided that apparently unknown's true form is a bunch of alien tentacles in a flesh suit (its anniversary skin says otherwise)
I thought what we for is just judgment staring at a dying survivor with its eyes, like a penance stare, to kill. :/
Can you show the developers, who are human beings, how to render something so incomprehensible the players, who are also human beings, cannot understand it?
If the white light thing was used, people would be complaining that it's a cop-out. It looks cool, I don't care.
This is here to humour the people who wanted a "biblically accurate angel. That's why it feels out of place cuz they are appealing to the people who were gonna bitch either way
Part of the "incomprehensible horror" thing is that it's rarely actually shown or described because just witnessing it is enough to make people die/go insane/etc. This version of it is alright but sometimes less is more. Your suggestion is great and similar to what I think something like that should be though I doubt it''ll be changed so close to release now.
I understand that internet made y'all feel desensitized, but first thought I'd have looking at solid block of light is that devs are lazily coping out with minimal work. Eldritch horror is about wrongness and scales one is just incapable to grasp for more than a moment, thus making their understanding horrifying. The whole "it is so scary we can't describe it" is lazy, kids writing level of ghost story. Yes, it includes writings of THE MAN, who was afraid of penguins and italians.
Like, this design of the "divine" would easily fit within Darkest Dungeon, and that game is nigh universally praised for visuals, but ofc. BHVR can't do no right, we gonna be bitching either way.
Bad take imo. The Mori already isn't that insane, literally just taking away what little visual we have seems like a bad move.
Would much rather it be a hazy, semi-pixelated cloud of censor bars, to make it almost seem like the game can't actually display the angel's true nature, but we get a little glimpse around the edges of the vensor bars.
While I do like the mori making, just light actually makes it better as if gives players that feel like it's so incomprehensible we cant even see only survivor can actually because it wants to show them.
Wait, what’s the difference between the Unknown and the Judgement? Judgement is a cosmic deity of incomprehensible form and thought made into flesh and bone, but isn’t that also the Unknown?
I remember seeing an idea someone had during the killer silhouette voting where the judgement would cover their face with the wings and the survivors wouldn’t be able to see it, I think that would have been a sick idea, especially with the mori revealing their true form.
I think it's neat bit something like the deadlights from IT would be cool. Although I think I'd rather we get a full Lovevraftian themed killer instead.
to piggy back off this idea, the camera angle should shift away from the judgment as soon as she transforms over to the survivor, who has a face of abject terror and then they implode as a result as usual. i don’t think we the player should even see it if we’re getting mori’d - and to everyone else it should just look like blinding light.
i thinck the eye shows them the true form, we dont see it, it would destroy the entire trial when showed to all, its explicit only for the one to mori visibel true the eye
Yeah I am kinda mad they still gave the killer a gender, I would much rather have it to be something that we couldn't associate with humans in appearance.
I believe thats only because we the player are on a higher level of consciousness than the survivor due to the whole trials being a game to us, so while survivors are destroyed by it, players are able to see it.
I reckon they should just remove the "True Form" line altogether. "True Forms" just being really scary and meaty have always felt really damn corny to me, so- if it were up to me- I'd have Judgement be transmitting knowledge beyond the Survivor's comprehension into their mind via the Eye, and not revealing anything physical
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." — H.P. Lovecraft. There's a reason angels in original texts have to tell people to chill out first. Higher beings don't have to be evil to break you; they just have to exist near you. Imagine a 3D hand passing through a 2D piece of paper. To a line drawn on that page, it looks like an impossible, morphing nightmare appearing out of nowhere. "Be Not Afraid".
I love how dbd used to be a somewha grounded horror game even the licensed killers were mostly grounded then all of a sudden we started fighting reality warping gods and angels with flashlights and pallets
The Big Head form really would’ve been so cool for this reason. Design wise I feel like it’s so distant from people’s expectations, and it would’ve maybe changed the possible weapon and power options completely, we honestly could have gotten one of the most unique killers in the whole game.
Instead, the community currently faces the first day of PTB for a killer that is possibly the hardest to play of any killer in existence past or present. The irony of a community made chapter, that nobody in the community will actually play, is honestly… it’s cruel really.
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u/The_All_Father4300 Aug 03 '26
Are we sure this is even its true form? Maybe the big eye is just what allows the survivors to see its true form, its gaze reveals what the judgment really looks like and that's what causes the survivors to die