#but i liked all of them having a unifying power egg/golden egg theme... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

polly-chan · 4 years

Text

The story of Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania style videogame developed and published by Team Cherry. It introduces a very interesting lore, telling the story of a Knight without a past on a quest to save the abandoned insect kingdom of Hallownest.

In this meta I want to analyze the lore of the entire game, which is very interesting and addictive. Obviously this article is full of spoilers for those who have not yet played the game. Also this analysis is based a lot on what I found written in the Hollow Knight wiki, even if I had some personal reflection.

In the Kingdom of Hallownest there are many different important primordial higher beings, god-like bugs who have lived since the beginning of time, and others who are more recent but who are nevertheless divinized by the inhabitants of the Kingdom. However, for a better analysis we must first introduce a summary of the Hallownest’s history in game.

The Hollow Knight (the one who gives the title to the videogame) is a Vessel chosen by the Pale King to seal away the Radiance and save Hallownest from the Infection. As wiki says, they were the child of the King and the Queen of Hallownest, birthed in the Abyss to be infused with the power of the Void. Because of that we consider them genderless and their birth condition was also supposed to leave them without a mind, will and voice. Thanks to this particular condition, void creatures are the only ones that can contain the Radiance, since the Radiance feed themselves with the light of dreams also distorting them as if they were physical entities. However purity of the Hollow Knight was misjudged because they created an emotional bond with the Pale King who raised them.

“Regardless of their impurity, the Hollow Knight was trained and raised, eventually becoming a fully grown Vessel. The Radiance was sealed within them, and they were chained within the Temple of the Black Egg where they were expected to contain the Infection for eternity. However, because of the aforementioned impurities, the Radiance could still exert influence. It ultimately resulted in the resurgence of the Infection and the Kingdom falling into ruin. Over time, the Hollow Knight disappeared from the fallen Kingdom’s memory. Only the Memorial in the middle of the City of Tears testifies of their sacrifice to save Hallownest. After some time, the Radiance’s power broke out of the Hollow Knight, cracking their shell and fully infecting them. This event was the catalyst that brought the Knight back to Hallownest. The Knight can free and fight the Hollow Knight after killing the three Dreamers who sealed the Black Egg’s entrance” .

The fate of the Hollow Knight is linked to the end of the game chosen by players, because there are different finals:

- by killing the Hollow Knight the Knight takes their place in sealing the Radiance;

- by entering their mind with the help of Hornet the Knight can chase away the Radiance;

- by defeating Absolute Radiance at the peak of the Pantheon of Hallownest the Infection vanishes forever and the Hollow Knight can then be seen walking out of the Black Egg’s temple, freed from the Infection.

Now let’s move on ti analyze the main divinities in the game’s lore.

The Radiance:

“The light. Forgotten. The plague, the infection, the madness that haunts the corpses of Hallownest… the light that screams out from the eyes if this dead Kingdom. What is the source? I suppose mere mortals like myself will never understand”.

The Radiance is a secret final boss and the Absolute Radiance is her final form. She’s one of the higher being god-like bugs above mentioned, opposed to the Void, her ancient enemy. She gave birth to the Moth tribe and because of that they revered her. Unlike the individualist society of Hallownest the Radiance offered unity to bugs at the cost of a mind incapable of thought.

“After the Pale King arrived in Hollownest and expanded the minds of his new subjects, the Moth Tribe turned their backs in the Radiance and worshipped him instead. In doing so, the Radiance was almost entirely forgotten, Yet traces of her memory remained, such as a statue on Hollownest’s Crown. Her memory started spreading throughout the Kingdom, by then in its golden age. Soon, all of Hallownest began to dream of her, appearing to them as a blazing light. These dreams could break the minds of bugs and eventually enslave their wills to hers. But the King and his subjects resisted her memory, which started to manifest as the Infection. The Pale King attempted to stop the Infection by sealing the Radiance within a Vessl. These creatures, infused with the Void to be without a mind and a will, were to be able to withstand the Radiance’s influence. The Hollow Knight was chosen, raised and grown for that purpose. The Radiance was sealed within them, and the Vessel chained within the Temple of the Black Egg. However, the Pale King failed to realise the Vessel’s impurities of mind. Because of this, the Radiance was still able to invade the dreams of bugs. She ultimately wiped out the Kingdom of its inhabitants, whose King had vanished, but left the rest of the land untouched.

Time passed, Hallownest turned into a myth while the Radiance remained sealed. Her influence finally started to break out of the Hollow Knight. She regnited the full power of the Infection, threatening again the land of Hallownest and prompting the Knight to return to Hallownest”.

I found the use of light as a villain very interesting. In fictions light usually wins over darkness as god wins over evil, but in the Kingdom of Hallownest she’s the real enemy, since, in real life, the bugs follow the light blindly. However I’d like to introduce a theory now.

We can consider the Kingdom of Hallownest as built on three levels:

- the higher level is the outside world on the surface and from which the light comes through: this maybe recalls heaven, but as we said for the bugs is more comparable to hell. The vision of something which comes from a otherwordly dimension can drive everyone crazy;

- the middle level is the realm, with its inhabitants;

- the lower level is the Abyss: in fictions the Abyss usually recalls hell but that’s not totally true for Hollow Knight because of different reasons:

i) we can find the corpse of the Vessel used and thrown away by the Pale King, but it’s also the place that gave birth to our heroe, so it cannot be considered totally negative;

ii) the game tells us that the Kingdom of Hallownest is a tribute to all what bugs have been in life and this fills with a different meaning this place;

iii) we can find the Void into the Abyss and thanks to them we can defeat the Radiance forever.

So, in other words, in Hollow Knight’s lore the meaning of heaven and hell is reversed.

If we consider this theory true, we can finally appreciate why Radiance chooses to punish Moth tribe: another recurring theme in the narrative is the God who punishes men who turn their backs. Moth tribe chose the Pale King because he promised wellness, an earthly value, forever. This is clearly a sin and the tribe deserves to be punished.

The Void:

The Void is the substance of The Abyss, most of them is found in a sea at the bottom of the Abyss, but multiple beings exist who consist of Void themselves. The Void is “the power opposed”: it has the ability to oppose the light based Radiance and Pale King, who are both describes as light. When the Knight acquires the Void Heart and learns about their past the Void is unified under their will.

Since the Void completely leaks any kind of emotion and the hope It is capable of containing the Radiance, who feeds herself with dreams as if they were physical entities. Its nature of nothingness allows it to be filled with something and that’s why having been raised by the King made the Hollow Knight feel love and become imperfect.

The Pale King and his Queen:

“The old king of Hallownest… he must have been desperate to save his crumbling little world. The sacrifices he imposed on other… all for nothing”.

The Pale King is considered to be a higher being who used to be the monarch of Hallownest, mate of the White Lady and ruler of the White Palace. We find him dead on his throne in the White Palace. I am sure he died of despair for not being able to find the bathroom in that absurd place he called home and whoever has played that level will agree with me. I mean, the architect should be sued.

As wiki says, he’s an ancient Wyrm who wandered through mountains and across the wasteland until finally stopping by Kingdom’s Edge. Once there, the Wyrm shed the skin and transformed himself into the Pale King. He reduced his form in order to match the bugs of Hallownest.

Contrary to what is commonly said, I don’t’ think he is a higher being for real. I think he was a mortal bug like all the others, but remaining mostly closed in his Palace he was deified by his subjects. As a matter of fact, while the Radiance has never stopped giving her people the light she promised, the Pale King has not kept his promises and if he really was a divinity he would not have died. He symbolizes the earthly power and the aura of divine that hovers around monarchical figures, who do not mix themselves with their subjects, they often make promises that they cannot keep remaining enclosed in sumptuous palaces.

Moreover, the children whom the Pale King and the Queen gave birth to are just vessels, which are mortal remains and not divine spirit: it’s the difference between the mortal body of Jesus Christ (given to him by his mortal mother) and his immortal spirit (given to him by the divine father). In the same way, the Knight possesses the mortal remains of their parents but infused with the spirit of emptiness that characterized their divine nature.

Anyway, the Pale King gives to his people free will, while the Radiance claims intellectual slavery.

The Knight:

“An enigmatic wanderer who descends into Hallownest carrying only a broken nail to fend off foes” – official manual.

The Knight is the protagonist of the videogame. A discarded Vessel, child of the Pale King and the White Lady, born in the Abyss with Void inside their shell. Like the rest of their Vessel siblings is genderless. They embody emptiness: they are not created by anyone except by emptiness itself. They are a messianic figure who bring peace to the Kingdom.

Nightmare King Grimm:

“The expanse of dream in past was split,

One realm now must stay apart,

Darkest reaches, beatin red,

Terror of sleep. The Nightmare’s Heart”.

Nightmare King Grimm is the Dream form of Tropue Master Grimm: “Through dream I travel, at lantern’s call to consume the flames of a kingdom’s fall”. As wiki says, The Grimm Tropue is a mysterious travelling circus from the Nightmare realm to wherever the Nightmare Lantern has been lit by acolytes. They gather Nightmare Flames from ruined lands to fuel the sinister being enslaving the Troupe, the Nightmare’s Heart. The Nightmare is the dimension where the Nightmare’s Heart rests. The Nightmare’s Heart is the proper host of the Nightmare, as the Radiance is the host of the Dream. The Nightmare’s Heart is a higher being responsible for the Ritual of the Grimm Troupe, Grimmchild and Troupe Master Grimm are its spawn.

#hollow knight #team cherry #lore #videogame #indiegame #soulslike #meta #analysis

44 notes · View notes

antagonistchanremade · 5 years

Text

I kinda wanna see a game that has Five Nights At Freddy’s-esque gameplay but isn’t so much a horror game?

Mainly because I actually really dig the FNAF gameplay format, and there are some mechanics that would be a lot of fun with that format but would completely kill the horror vibe.

Like, ultimately, FNAF gameplay is about knowing where to look and when (for this reason, I’ve maintained for years that FNAF trains the exact skills necessary to be good at driving, and I’m honestly surprised this isn’t a more common thought, but then again, I started drivers’ ed around the time FNAF was first getting big so the timing was really good). With the exception of FNAF 4, which I have also maintained since it came out is probably the scariest but also definitely my least favorite, both due largely to relying on audio cues rather than visual information, which I’ll get to in a bit. But even including FNAF 4, it’s still about knowing what to pay attention to at any given moment.

Anyways, in FNAF 1, you have the ability to look at the camera, close the doors, and turn the lights on, but any one of those things drains power; thankfully, you only really need to pay attention to two of the several camera views, Pirate’s Cove (for Foxy) and the camera just outside your right door (for Freddy, who doesn’t appear in the doorway like Bonnie and Chica do). The other cameras aren’t completely useless, since keeping track of where Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy are is generally a good idea, but on the hardest difficulties, it’s honestly not worth it to look anywhere else but Pirate’s Cove and just in your right door’s blind spot.

In FNAF 2, you can’t close any doors, and there are effectively three of those doors, but you can put on a mask that makes most of the animatronics ignore you (the three exceptions being Golden Freddy, Foxy, and the Puppet). Those three have their own counters- Golden Freddy only appears randomly after you look away from the camera, and will kill you unless you instantly look back into the camera. He also existed in FNAF 1, but he was a lot rarer and the game didn’t officially acknowledge his presence, being more of an easter egg than anything. Anyways, Foxy is then countered by flashing the flashlight in his face a lot, and the Puppet is what ties FNAF 2 together- you need to go to the gift shop’s camera view to wind his music box. This means that FNAF 2 suffers the same flaw as FNAF 1, in that ultimately, there is one (not even two this time) camera view that is really necessary, and worthwhile at the hardest difficulties.

In FNAF 3, there is ultimately only one robot that you’re worried about, Springtrap, and he isn’t coded as simplistically as the others. You have two closable doors, but only one can be closed at a time; the third door is always open. And there are the failing systems; your defense systems will often crash, and won’t operate until you restart them, and while you’re restarting them, you’re a sitting duck, unable to do anything else. And most importantly, the main defense you have against that robot is to lead him on a wild goose chase throughout the facility. There is a decoy system that will attract him to other rooms, though whether or not it will actually work depends on where he is and where you try to attract him. So, they’ve finally solved the problem of “you really only need one camera view”.

Then, FNAF 4, the black sheep of the family. It’s based on audio cues instead of visual ones. This is scarier because your average gamer’s hearing isn’t as good as your average gamer’s eyesight, and it’s a really weird thing to train yourself around, and you have to listen really closely, which means focusing, which means getting caught further off-guard by the jumpscares. And it also has a mechanical impact- it takes longer to identify the audio cues, and because you’re so focused on listening to them, you have less time to pay attention to the other threats. This is why FNAF 4 isn’t as good for drivers’ training, and why it’s my least favorite- it’s more slow-paced, which gives you more time to get paranoid (better for the scares) and less time to constantly juggle five different things in a panicked stupor.

After that, Sister Location... doesn’t actually have a unifying theme, each night is something completely different.

Until you get to Custom Night, which plays more like what you’d expect from FNAF, but of course adds new features. There’s lolbit, who corrupts all your systems until you type L-O-L on your keyboard; there’s the babies, who sap your power until you shock them through the camera; you have three closable doors; there’s an animatronic that will walk across your office randomly, and if you click on her nose she’ll go away, but otherwise she’ll kill you once she makes a full lap; there’s a lot of weird shit.

Then there’s Pizzeria Simulator, where you have two (or was it three? I don’t remember, I’ve only seen one full playthrough of it when it first came out) doors to deal with and a number of ways to keep the animatronics away from you, but also, all of your systems make noise that attract animatronics, and will do so further if you accept any sponsorships (which help you in the tycoon game aspect of the game).

Then there’s the two more recent ones, Ultimate Custom Night and Help Wanted, which both balance returning concepts from the previous games and new ones. However, I don’t actually know them as intimately as I do the others, I still haven’t seen a full playthrough of either one. The actual story of FNAF ended with Pizzeria Simulator, which made it harder to keep up with other people’s playthroughs.

Anyways, I first started wanting to see FNAF-esque concepts in a decidedly non-horror game when I started exploring the world of FNAF fangames like Five Nights at Wario’s, which had their own interesting mechanics within the format of FNAF. Also, I read on the wiki about FNAF 2′s equivalent to FNAF 1′s Golden Freddy- not FNAF 2′s Golden Freddy, but the Endoskeleton, who, like Golden Freddy in FNAF 1, was mostly an easter egg; and how he’s ultimately helpful, since he can ward off other animatronics. And that got me thinking about systems where there are animatronics that are actually on your side, where you can keep a hostile animatronic away from you by deploying a friendly one. Maybe the friendly one will stop a hostile animatronic in its tracks, sending it back to wherever it came from, but it usually wanders around on its own with no set path, and you can use some sort of system to direct it, but it can’t travel immediately, so you either have to predict where hostile animatronics will be, or you have to make sure that the hostiles stay in one place until your ally arrives.

#fnaf

3 notes · View notes