![]() ![]() Having beaten the game and figured out its secrets, I know why its map is designed the way it is, but I also know that such a map has prevented many players from being able to see why Hollow Knight is so good. I welcome the chance to once again fall victim to a mystifying metroidvania and scrape and claw my way towards understanding what's going on, where I have to go, and what I need to do.Īll that said-I would be remiss if I did not at least mention that Hollow Knight's map system isn't the most approachable. And if you were to leave this system just the way it is, I wouldn't be mad. One of the best I've ever had from any game.īut I'm just prattling on. But the emotional pay-off of those reveals-of finally understanding both how and (more importantly) why Hallownest has been so carefully designed by a too-proud king seeking to hide his and his people's failures-is incredible. It's an admittedly slow process, and one that doesn't pay off until players have made quite a bit of progress through the game. And if they stop to think about those failures for a moment and try to discern why the game is putting them through such hardship, they may begin to see the dark (but immensely intriguing) narrative slithering beneath its gorgeous visuals and wonderful soundtrack. With each failure in Hollow Knight, the player learns more about the world-maybe they make a discovery of how not to fight a specific enemy or learn where they shouldn't go. First, in failing to understand where they are and what they must do, before then failing to fully comprehend what the unnamed knight truly is, and then finally coming to terms with the failure of not knowing what said character is fully capable of. So it's only apt that the player does the same. In Hollow Knight, its people have learned through failure. A society failed-its people succumbing to a disease as difficult to understand as the fleeting remains of a lingering dream, and as inescapable as a thought you're told not to think. A trio of dreamers failed to contain a nightmare. A father failed to love his children, and then really screwed up by loving the child he shouldn't have. That this is a kingdom built on the remains of failures.Ī king failed to share power. But that confusion serves a purpose-it forces you to fail, early and often, teaching you the most important aspect of Hollownest. Hollownest is a deeply confusing place to explore-as difficult to get through as it would be if someone were dropped into a city in a foreign country without access to Google Maps and told to find their way to a location they've never been to before. Enough times that it may become frustrating. And the first time someone plays through Hollow Knight, they will. The game wants the player to get lost in its world. Hollow Knight's whole gameplay loop is built around this premise. And even once they figure out where they think they are, there's little they can do to know where they are beyond finding a noticeable landmark. When a person opens a paper map in real life, it typically takes them a minute to figure out where they are based on what's around them and where they've been. Most "maps" in games automatically tell the player where they are and immediately reveal what the area around the player looks like once you visit a new location for the first time. ![]() Most video games don't-they have in-game GPS systems. I love Hollow Knight because it limits itself to a traditional map. So it stands to reason that would mean you have elements of the original Hollow Knight in your DNA, including its map. You may be a sequel, but you're a game that started out as an expansion to your predecessor. There is one topic, however, that I'd love to hear more about sooner rather than later: your map. I wish I could see more of you, but I am content to simply know that you continue to exist. Oh, and there were those coded riddles that Team Cherry posed to the community last year-those were pretty cool!įor now, I'm fine with all these small teases. Every once in a while, I hear an update about you via Team Cherry's Discord server, like how you wouldn't be at E3 2021. And then Team Cherry continued to tease me with snippets of information about you in blog posts that stopped in December 2019, as well as articles published in magazines like Edge and (I read them all-my sustenance in these trying times). Following your incredible reveal, we managed to connect at E3 2019-I was amazed to finally play through a portion of Pharloom, a kingdom both eerily similar and vastly different to Hollow Knight's Hollownest. ![]()
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