Hollow Knight Silksong has the same Soul as its predecessors
I have mercifully spared myself from most Silksong discourse by not looking much at social media, so I'm not sure what people are taking from it other than "more Hollow Knight", if even that. What I'm definitely sure of is that it is one of these. Nothing here is really re-inventing itself. You get an air dash, a wall climb, a double jump; like usual. You explore a vast ruined kingdom or what have you. It is indeed still like Dark Souls (or do the kids mostly use Elden Ring as a comparison now?), and I don't mean the corpse runs.
First, let me be specific about what I actually enjoy about Souls games, because it sure isn't the combat (except Sekiro but that's a different subject) and frankly most discourse about them is kind of rancid and overwrought at this point.
The core appeal of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, et cetera for me is the feeling of exploring and discovering a strange, unknown world. I tolerate other aspects of the games inasmuch as they facilitate this appeal.
Follow-up clarification: the further specific appeal of exploring and discovering the strange, unknown worlds of Souls games is that information is doled out piecemeal across many item descriptions, many forms of non-direct storytelling, and many individual moments of gameplay that cohere into a whole over the course of the experience.
Spoilers for Dark Souls here
At risk of being cliché, allow me to highlight a bit from Dark Souls that most readily comes to my mind to illustrate this point: Havel the Rock.
You're playing the game for the first time. In the first non-tutorial area - the Undead Burg - you come across a locked tower. Unless you took the Master Key at character creation (and let's assume you didn't), it's simply a locked door, and there's nothing to do about it. You put it out of mind and continue playing the game.
A good few hours later, you have perhaps ended up in Darkroot Garden, a forested area beneath the Burg. In a dilapidated fort deep in the garden is the Moonlight Butterfly, a giant bug what shoots you with laser beams. Its soul description reads: "Special beings have special souls. The butterfly's soul is a creation of Seath the Scaleless". Seath is a name you would remember from the opening cutscene; he's a dragon who betrayed his own kind to side with Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. Neat.
Past the Moonlight Butterfly is a long-dead blacksmith whose corpse holds the Watchtower Basement Key, which reads: "The basement of the watchtower forms a stone cell. There are rumors of a hero turned Hollow who was locked away by a dear friend. For his own good, of course". This opens that locked tower in the Burg, and upon entering it you are immediately ambushed by this dude:
At this point in the game he's super tough. He probably kills you in one hit by clobbering you with his big dragon tooth. When you do eventually beat him, he drops Havel's Ring, which reads: "This ring was named after Havel the Rock, Lord Gwyn's old battlefield compatriot. Havel's men wore the ring to express faith in their leader and to carry a heavier load".
So already, we've put some pieces together across probably 10 hours of gameplay. Havel fought alongside Gwyn and Seath against the everlasting dragons, but eventually went Hollow. Rather than kill him, Gwyn had him locked in the watchtower. Out of pity? Friendship? Pragmatism? The ring also says that Havel had men under him; would they have rioted if he was executed?
Anyway, that's a neat little story. You put this dude out of mind, though chances are you're still wearing his ring because it's one of the best ones in the game.
Like thirty hours later, you've finally rung both Bells of Awakening and made your way to Anor Londo, legendary city of the gods. Deep in the central cathedral is a secret room behind an illusory wall, and the multiple treasure chests within contain Havel's armor, greatshield, and dragon tooth club. Makes sense his items would be left here, since he was friends with Gwyn.
But there's one more chest with an "Occult Club" (as in, a big enchanted stick) in it. Occult-element weapons are forbidden because they're super effective against gods like Gwyn. And this one isn't a normal chest, either; it's a Mimic what attacks anyone opening it. Why would Havel have an anti-god weapon with his gear? Was Havel trying to keep his intentions hidden with a booby trap? Was he imprisoned not for his own safety, but for being a traitor? Who can say?
You put it out of mind; you've got bigger problems. Another like ten hours of gameplay pass by.
You're down in Ash Lake: an extremely optional area representing the primordial foundation of the game world, where the final everlasting dragon sits. Off in a hidden corner of this hidden corner is a corpse holding the Great Magic Barrier miracle. Its description reads: "Miracle of Bishop Havel the Rock. Cover body in powerful def. magic coating. Havel the Rock, an old battlefield compatriot of Lord Gwyn, was the sworn enemy of Seath the Scaleless. He despised magic, and made certain to devise means of counteraction."
So... was Havel a traitor? He and Seath, despite fighting for the same side, hated each other to the point where Havel invented new miracles that'd give him a leg up. Did Seath send the mimic to plant false evidence with Havel's items? Was Havel locked in the tower because he went Hollow, or did he go Hollow because he was wrongfully imprisoned for something he didn't do?
I would not describe any of this as part of "the main plot". But three enemy encounters and half a dozen item descriptions across forty hours of gameplay have painted a picture of this extremely minor character and how he connects to the major characters in interesting ways that reveal more about the setting. I haven't even mentioned how this rubs shoulders with the Way of White and all of their shit. And this is happening all over the game, creating a web of hundreds of tiny moments that I find enthralling.
This is Souls to me. As far as I understand the appeal of the series, everything else only matters in service to this feeling. The infamous combat and difficulty are not ends unto themselves, no matter what the "git gud" assholes would have you believe. They are there to add friction, and what friction does is slow you down. And when you're moving more slowly, you become more observant; the more observant you become, the more you start noticing the piecemeal moments of storytelling that string together into a greater whole.
Spoilers for Silksong here
And now that I've spent way too long talking about Dark Souls, I can actually talk about Hollow Knight. Or, I suppose, gesture upwards and say "Hollow Knight works for me because it does that."
Silksong does it too! It's packed with tiny bespoke moments that run the emotional spectrum and mesh into the full package. I love going off into a corner and finding something weird there that makes me recontextualize other parts of the world! It's fine if the reward is mostly lore! Nobody else really makes it work like this!
(And let me be clear: I am not saying that this is a "better" way that ought be how it's done or anything. I am saying it is a specific flavor with its own appeal.)
I think it'd arguably be a fair criticism to say Silksong is just "Hollow Knight but more", but I can't discount the achievement of pulling that off. Yes, it's retreading most of the beats of the first game. It's doing so well enough that I'm not bothered, and usually leveraging its sequel status for good rather than ill.
In Souls and certainly in the first Hollow Knight, you play as the memetic "fucked-up little man" who doesn't really know what's going on. Much of the game is about discovering how the greater cosmology of this charming little bug world is actually kind of dark and depressing. Silksong broadly assumes you're already working with this as a base premise. Hornet herself can certainly tell that the fucked up shit happening in Pharloom probably isn't that far off from the fucked up shit she saw in Hallownest.
Hornet's ability and willingness to speak contributes much more than I thought it might. She reacts to just about everything with a severe stoicism, hitting DCAU Batman levels of comically serious at times. A vengeful god controlling innocent bugs for its nefarious ends? The Space Pirates are experimenting with Metroids? Dracula's back? Ah. A familiar tale, not unlike what occurred in Hallownest.
Her voice rather increases the Metroid vibes in a way that feels very intentional. She reminds me of how I thought of Samus in the old days, certainly pre-Other M and arguably even pre-Fusion: a stone-cold killer who's here to clean up the mess. She's not necessarily going to shoot first, but she's definitely going to shoot last. Unflappable and uninterested in your shit. The Hunter.
When it comes to Samus, I'd say this perception is largely due to her almost total lack of dialogue in earlier games, but Hornet manages it despite constantly engaging in active conversation. Could you imagine playing Dark Souls 2 with your character answering back to all the NPCs and occasionally musing aloud on how this feels like the last time people wanted to link the fire over in that other country? The mood would shatter into a thousand pieces. It's a thin line to walk and Team Cherry does so admirably.
I'd argue it only works thanks to the cartoony "funny animals" aesthetic. The juxtaposition of a dark fantasy dystopia with little talking bugs allows for a greater breadth of emotional tones by just choosing which side to lean on in the moment. Silksong is whimsically charming in a way unavailable to its main inspirations. Sherma's a little guy who sings songs for you! You fight with a little sewing needle! Hornet backhand slaps multiple characters! It's just an inherently goofy game.
Of course, Souls can be - and often is - quite funny, usually at the player's expense; everyone remembers the skeleton in Tomb of the Giants kicking you off the ledge. When I say Silksong is full of fun "moments", I don't just mean lore crumbs. I also mean stuff like this. The game is constantly messing with you, but you're usually in on the joke. "Oh, you assholes," said with a chuckle, not contempt.
It feels like Silksong plays more pranks on the player than any individual FromSoft Souls game ever does. It's mean. Everyone remembers That One Swinging Trap in Bloodborne because it's like the only time it pulls that on you, and it certainly never messes with a lantern/bonfire. Symphony of the Night has a false save room, but it's an ominous pulsating red and literally across the hall from a normal one. Silksong has multiple benches that are actively trapped and will punish you for sitting on them. One bench is broken and you don't find out until after you pay for it.
All the safe checkpoints and fast travel stations cost money to activate. You can pick up an item that does nothing but scream and cry like Baby Mario while you're looking at your menu, and getting rid of it is one of the most tedious quests in the game. You don't get protection from environmental hazards until you've already traversed entire areas where they would have actually been helpful. There are boss runbacks! Even FromSoft has abandoned boss runbacks!!
Maybe I've just played too many games or simply have an off-kilter frustration threshold, but I think most of these things are kind of funny. I obviously support accessibility options of all stripes, but a game being overtly mean by tweaking basic mechanics and genre expectations makes me chuckle. These moments keep you on your toes. Like I said earlier, they make you slow down, and slowing down means all these little moments have the space to land. Plus, you get to laugh with your friends when they inevitably fall for the exact same traps.
You simply cannot braindead your way through the game because you'll get bodied by a stupid fly shooting poison darts at you and fall into the maggot water because you're in the third Blighttown that's been putrefied by the Citadel's industrial runoff. And you'll think to yourself, "these bastards, not only are they a capitalist theocracy but they also hate the environment". You'll think about what was buried here in the poison swamp that the Citadel decided was better forgotten, whether intentionally or through their callous negligence.
The Clockwork Dancers are one of the coolest boss fights in the game, with an immediately understandable concept and escalation. Two enemies move in rhythmic lockstep, forcing you to keep an eye on both at all times. Further phases of the fight increase the pace of the clockwork and their attacks, until you finally deal enough damage to destroy one of the dancers. The fight grinds to a halt, the remaining dancer barely functional without its partner, unable to perform big attacks or keep any pressure on the player. A really neat gameplay moment.
This seeming one-off still has strings that connect to moments elsewhere. The weird mantis caged up in Sinner's Road. The destroyed biodome in the Memorium. If you trek out to the fossilized remains of Verdania, its memory (and accompanying boss fight) has power to sustain Pharloom just as well as others, but even the ancient snail shamans don't remember. All that remained were automatons made to dance for their masters' loathsome amusement, and you made sure those ain't around anymore either.
If you weren't trying to 100% the game, chances are you'd never even come close to some of this stuff. Yet it's still there as part of the game's greater web, waiting to be found. Is it weird to say that this stuff hits harder because it's mostly optional? You could just critical path Silksong, probably not even reach Act 3, and it'd still be a perfectly good $20 search action game. But it rewards observation and active engagement with more of itself, more of this strange textural appeal across dozens of bespoke moments that's sadly (yet understandably) rare among video games.
Possibly my favorite moment in Silksong: randomly passing through the humble first town of Bone Bottom, I check in with the Little Pilgrim who's been there the whole time. He and Hornet have a heartfelt conversation where she entreats him to live for his own sake, not the Citadel's, and they properly exchange names at last. His name on the UI changes from "Little Pilgrim" to "Pilby". Very charming. I sit down on the checkpoint bench.
A Skull Tyrant - an optional boss that the game systems otherwise made clear I'd killed the sole instance of, which in fact triggers this event - charges through town, smashing the bench and killing Pilby instantly. Someone who hasn't played the game probably rolled their eyes just now, but in the moment? This shit is hilarious. Yeah, obviously the precious little boy at the starting town has a big proverbial target painted on his head. I hadn't expected it to happen immediately.
Once you beat the Skull Tyrant, the remaining pilgrims hold a funeral. They ask if anyone knows the name of this Little Pilgrim, and it's entirely possible you simply didn't encounter the earlier conversation. They sing an elegy for him. You can join in with your Needolin. Pilby's corpse is thrown into the deep hole where you first gained control of Hornet and will remain there for the rest of the game.
This textural juxtaposition of serious and silly, optional and compulsory, narrative and mechanics? I think that's "it" right there; the itch only some games scratch for me. That's Bloodborne and Elden Ring. Via different vectors, that's Undertale, Deltarune. That's Hollow Knight. And, of course, that's Silksong. It was worth the wait.
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