Hollow Knight: Silksong is a thing that exists, and I need it right now.

Hollow Knight was a brilliant game. Easily one of the best Metroidvania games out there. From the gorgeous hand-drawn art style, difficult but fair boss battles, intricate lore and world building, lovable insect-themed characters, and a hauntingly whimsical atmosphere. It has, on several occasions, been described as "A Bug's Life meets Dark Souls" which admittedly sounds like a recipe for disaster, but the lovely people at Team Cherry managed to make it work. Hollow Knight was a massive hit, winning three awards and getting nominated for eight more, as well as selling over 2,800,000 copies worldwide. Very impressive for a $15 game developed by a grand total of three people from Australia.

Imagine the community's collective gasp of excitement when Team Cherry announced they are making a direct sequel to Hollow Knight. Titled, Hollow Knight: Silksong, the sequel started life as one of the five planned DLC packs for the original game, but as Team Cherry worked on it, it spiraled out of control in terms of scope, depth, and ambition. So it was reworked and revived as whole new separate game. Which is very good news for me, because I loved Hollow Knight and would gladly throw more money at Team Cherry if they managed to keep up the quality from the original.

But first, some context on the story. MILD SPOILERS FOR HOLLOW KNIGHT AHEAD. In the original game, you played as the Knight, an enigmatic creature bred by the Pale King, ruler of all bugs, to contain and eventually destroy a goddess of death and disease. When your Knight arrived to the Kingdom of Hallownest, the whole kingdom is in ruin, and all but a select handful of survivors retained their sanity. The Knight scoured every inch of Hallownest, seeking out new spells and items so that it may fulfill its one purpose in life. Contain (or Destroy) the Radiance, the main antagonist of the game. The original game had several different endings, but just about all of them involved the Knight undergoing something that pretty much makes it so they cannot reappear in any future games. Conveniently for all parties involved, there happens to be a fan-favorite character, with a similar skill-set to the Knight, and is in a position to go on a plethora of adventures. We all know who I'm talking about.

Zote the Mighty Hornet. Why is she such a popular character? There's a few reasons. First there's the obvious. She looks like a cooler, slightly edgier Knight, and is female, so she has built in Goth appeal, in a series that is very much inspired by the Gothic fantasy genre. Then there's the less obvious. Her prickly attitude and sleek, elegant design make her surprisingly endearing. And of course, there's the fact that her battle cry gibberish has become a bit of a meme amongst the fandom ("SHAW! ADINO! GIT GUD!"). And then there's people who think that since she is a child of the Pale King that she is a being borne of the Void (read; a living shadow, just like the Hollow Knight). She wasn't. Stop spreading this lie around. The Pale King had an affair with a spider-queen, and Hornet is the daughter of said spider-queen. It isn't hard to imagine how she was conceived. So stop saying she is borne of the Void because she isn't.

Hollow Knight: Silksong takes place after the events of the original game, presumably after the best possible ending achieved by clearing the Pantheon of Hallownest (aka fighting all 47 bosses in the game back-to-back with no breaks), since that ending had a Hornet solo adventure tease. Anyway, Hornet, now princess and protector of Hallownest purely by being the Pale King's last living relative, finds herself in a new Kingdom known as Pharloom. She must embark on a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Kingdom of Pharloom. Which is, in theory, a complete reversal of the first game. Hallownest was almost completely underground, and the Knight had to go progressively deeper down to progress. It appears, based on the description, that Hornet's journey will be taking her primarily upwards. The description also mentions that Hornet is "bound by lineage and guided by the echoes of her past", which, if I am to speculate, tells me the story is going to be more about Hornet's personal story, rather than the story of the world around her.

Interestingly, the trailer starts off with a cinematic of Hornet being carried off, presumably to Pharloom, in a cage. She breaks free, because of course she does, and then we get some game play. We see she has largely the same style of play as the Knight, running around a side-scrolling world with platforming and combat mixed in between. But we also see some interesting game mechanics as well. Hornet can throw her spear, officially known as The Needle, attach a string of silk to it (Hornet, despite her name, is supposed to be a spider), and pull herself towards whatever the spear hits. She also has an air dash ability, the ability to cling to (and climb up) ledges, a parry attack, and some brand new sub-weapons that appear to be a revamped version of the Charm system. And the sub-weapons look really cool. There's a syringe that Hornet can inject herself with to give her extra health, an automated drone that fights independently from Hornet herself, and even some of the crazy super attacks from Hornet's boss battle back in the original game. Such as creating a whip made of silk and slapping everything around her, or creating a spiked ball suspended in midair by webbing that can be use either as a temporary platform or as a ranged attack.

We also got side-quests. And you know what that means! It means my play time is going to triple in length because of my compulsive desire to 100% every video game that I like! ...Within reason. I don't count Achievements Trophies, or the equivalent thereof towards 100% completion. Only goals set up within the game itself count by my standards (beating every boss, collecting every item, etc). I do this because a lot of Achievements have you perform arbitrary, and weirdly specific tasks that make the natural game flow grind to a halt. Anyway, There's a bulletin board you can visit to accept/deliver side-quests. I'm guessing the side-quests will be "Kill X amount of Y" or 'Bring Ole' Billy Bob Joe his favorite coffee cup in 10 minutes or less!". Note: There probably isn't a character in the game named Billy Bob Joe. There should be, it would be great, but definitely an unlikely case. 

 

Overall, the game looks great, and judging from pre-release footage, it looks faster and more acrobatic than the original. It still has the gorgeous hand-drawn art style, though the locations look a bit more vibrant this time around. The locales from the original game were very melancholic and lonely in their design and atmosphere, but the locations seen thus far seem to be more whimsical and fantastic. Now I have a theory on this. Hallownest felt lonely because most of its population was gone. If the citizens weren't killed by the Radiance outright, they were infected and mutated into horrific abominations. But we see several times Hornet interacting with peaceful creatures, at one point visiting a small, but very much alive village. So my theory is that Pharloom is still a functioning society. Hallownest is what happens to an Insect Kingdom after years of neglect. Pharloom might show us what a relatively normal Insect Kingdom in this universe is supposed to be like. And I find that interesting as someone who loves deep and intricate world building and background lore in video games.

One last thing I want to say before I wrap this up. It seems like the graphics have improved. I'm still not sure by how much, but I know that this boss pictured above is in the background while its hand is in the foreground. The original game never had a character whose sprite was partially in the background and partially in the foreground at once. That is something brand-new on the graphics department. But anyway, that's all I have to say about this thing. I'm glad it exists and it is now my most-wanted game of 2020. Also, real talk here. Can we agree just how wrong it feels to type 2020? Not too long ago it felt like 2020 was the distant future, when we'd have star ships and space colonies spanning the known universe, making friend and foe alike with other alien species. But in just a couple weeks it's going to be upon us and we still haven't colonized the known galaxy. I have never been more disappointed in humanity as I have now upon this realization. Anyway, Hollow Knight: Silksong comes out in 2020, but Team Cherry doesn't have an exact date available yet (mostly due to Team Cherry's goal of making sure Silksong matches the quality of the original game and they feel it is only right to release Silksong once it reaches that quality).