Make The Caretaker himself do very little damage, if at all. I think it would be a really interesting twist of the first half of the boss fight is just him sitting down, firing off blasts that push your character away until you kill his companion animals. The second phase could involve him standing up and you expecting this powered up boss like usual, only to find out that he really is just a weak and kind old man who only wants you to go away. The difficulty of the second half would be other pestilence mobs running in to defend the guy while you’re just beating on him. I feel like it would hammer home the point of why they’d go out of their way to give this specific guy a funeral, it’s a bit of a disjointed vibe to have him act like a standard boss fight while everything else around it sets it up to be emotionally complex.
i actually really like this idea O_o
it would make for a very rich story context too
i would probably cry while beating the old helpless man
but it would be real
The real boss was the heartbreaks along the way.
This is a really cool idea. You got my vote.
I liked it until you mentioned that hordes of mobs would be a phase too. Aside from a few exceptions, double bosses and especially fights with multiple mobs are usually frustrating and annoying in Souls-like games. We already have the Brood, wich is really lame imo. I hope they focus more on single boss encounters again.