Hollow Knight: Silksong ratchets up everything from its predecessor. The world is bigger, more detailed, and more dangerous. Team Cherry co-founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen recently spoke about some of their thinking behind making the Metroidvania Soulslike sequel harder, and what players can do to navigate the higher difficulty.
âHornet is inherently faster and more skillful than the Knightâso even the base level enemy had to be more complicated, more intelligent,â Gibson said during an interview at the ACMI Game Worlds exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, according to reporting by Dexerto. Even basic enemies in Silksong hit harder and can be much more aggressive. Thatâs because the hero Hornet is much more agile, and Team Cherry wanted to balance that out with more effective adversaries.
âThe basic ant warrior is built from the same move-set as the original Hornet boss,â Pellen added. âThe same core set of dashing, jumping, and dashing down at you, plus we added the ability to evade and check you. In contrast to the Knightâs enemies, Hornetâs enemies had to have more ways of catching her as she tries to move away.â
If you keep dying, go somewhere else
That was essentially what Gibsonâs advice seemed to be from the interview. He argued that Silksong is much less controlling than its predecessor when it comes to where the player can go and explore at various points in the game. âThe important thing for us is that we allow you to go way off the path,â he said. âSo one player may choose to follow it directly to its conclusion, and then another may choose to constantly divert from it and find all the other things that are waiting and all the other ways and routes.â
The logic is reminiscent of Elden Ring which, despite its punishing enemies and brutal boss fights, was arguably more inviting than previous FromSoftware Soulslikes because the open world allowed players to approach each challenge in unique ways. In addition to being able to grind additional levels, they could also explore off the beaten path until they found a weapon or spell that would tip the balance of power in their favor.
âSilksong has some moments of steep difficultyâbut part of allowing a higher level of freedom within the world means that you have choices all the time about where youâre going and what youâre doing,â Gibson said, adding that players âhave ways to mitigate the difficulty via exploration, or learning, or even circumventing the challenge entirely, rather than getting stonewalled.â
A clash of design philosophies
There was recently a mini-debate about whether Silksong is actually harder than Elden Ring. The Washington Postâs Gene Park came down on the side that it is. I would agree, though I think thatâs in part because Elden Ring isnât necessarily one of the harder games out there. Elden Ring is just a hard game that happened to sell over 30 million copies, meaning that its reputation is partly derived from tons of people who wouldnât normally play a Soulslike actually giving it a try.
Ryan Thompson, an assistant media studies professor at Michigan State, teased out what I thought was an interesting observation about one of the core differences between Silksong and Elden Ring. Itâs not just that one is a 2D side-scroller and the other is a 3D open-world RPG; itâs also the way the roots of those genres diverge. â3D games are designed for you to win eventually,â he argues. â2D platformers are originally designed to take your quarter and tell you to piss off.â
Thatâs an oversimplification, but a helpful one when it comes to a Metroidvania Soulslike like Silksong. As the genre name denotes, it has its feet in two related but distinct traditions. One is 8-bit action platformers of the NES era that seemed to be perfectly content if the kid they were sold to was never able to beat them. The other is a baroque RPG adventure in which the expectation is youâll be able to level up or learn your way out of any challenge.
Silksong is as much a 2D bullet hell game as a Metroidvania, maybe even more so. The margin for error on screen is more circumscribed than in its 3D counterparts, and its arsenal is more streamlined. Itâs borrowing from Castlevania III: Draculaâs Curse more than Dark Souls, and the result can be more uncompromising. That might be easier to accept if Silksong didnât also tell an evocative and whimsical story thatâs constantly dropping devilish obstacles in your path. But Iâll take that challenge over the original Mega Man any day.
