Hollow Knight fans have been waiting for substantial news on Silksong for over five years. The sequel was announced all the way back in February 2019, and since then, it’s rare for a gaming showcase to pass without countless fans spamming the chat about the long-awaited Metroidvania.
The Long, Long Wait For Hollow Knight: Silksong
Last week’s Nintendo Direct was no different. The stellar presentation had something for just about everyone — a new Zelda where you actually play as Zelda, the first all-new Mario & Luigi game in nearly a decade, the long-awaited reemergence of Metroid Prime 4 — but it didn't have something for Hollow Knight fans. It’s a little sad, and a little funny, but mostly it's just the necessary consequence of a gaming culture that is always searching for something to hype.
As long as I can remember, there's been a game occupying a similar space: hotly anticipated, but elusive. For years, it was Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and then just Half-Life 3, and then just any single-player Valve game. Eventually, Valve returned with enough of a response that fans were mostly satisfied, though a VR game that isn’t called Half-Life 3 isn’t exactly what they were expecting. Elden Ring occupied this spot, too, with fans expecting it to show up at every gaming presentation, then being disappointed when it didn't. Now that Bethesda is working on The Elder Scrolls 6 in earnest, I expect it to take on a similar status (though the reception of Starfield and Fallout 76 may temper the hype). It’s been 13 years since the last game after all.
Other games don’t capture the zeitgeist in the same way, but float in the ether as long-standing rumors. Bully 2. A Metroid Prime trilogy remaster. A Bloodborne PC port. Gaming culture is like a shark. It has to keep moving forward, seeking out rumor chum in the internet waters, or it dies. So, it isn’t surprising that there is a game that players spam comments about during every showcase. It is a little surprising that the game is Hollow Knight: Silksong.
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PostsWhy Hollow Knight: Silksong, Anyway?
Players tend to get really hyped about games that promise to inaugurate a new era in the medium. When I was a kid, it was Twilight Princess, which signaled a new, bigger, better, more realistic Zelda. More recently, the GTA 6 trailer racked up nearly 200 million views on YouTube because every time Rockstar drops a new game, we expect it to push the boundaries of what an open-world game can be. Its games are bigger, more detailed, more packed with stuff to do, and more graphically impressive than anyone else’s in the open-world space. Cyberpunk 2077 achieved similar status for the same reasons; it looked bigger and better than any game we’d ever played.
But, Hollow Knight: Silksong is a sequel to a 2D Metroidvania that weighed in at a whopping 9 GB. I don’t doubt that it will be a good game. It could be a masterpiece. But it is a strange pick for “most hyped upcoming game," one that's at odds with the past 20-plus years of gaming history. It's a little like if Spelunky 2 was giving players Beatlemania-style palpitations. These games are good, but "good" isn't the only factor.
Gaming culture needs this kind of game. Developers and publishers count on hype to sell games (and secure preorders) and events like Summer Game Fest exist to stoke that rabid interest. Gaming YouTubers and podcasters need content. Even old-school magazines need previews to fill their pages. The industry, and the press that covers it, has to look forward. To paraphrase Voltaire, if Hollow Knight: Silksong didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
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