Team Cherry isn't done with Hollow Knight: Silksong. In their interview with Bloomberg, they've stated that they already have ambitious plans to add more to the game. The original Hollow Knight also got four content updates, where the Godmaster expansion effectively became a whole boss rush game within the game.
After completing Silksong, here are some ideas of how the new title could be expanded in various ways. Beware of spoilers for the late game!
Pharloom Bay
Over the course of development, several areas of Pharloom have been changed tremendously, like the Gloom turning into Bilewater (with some aspects of it moved into the Abyss) or the Coral Gorge turning into the Sands of Karak. There is, however, one area that got seemingly cut very late in development, where the game's data still include map data and save file backgrounds for it: Pharloom Bay.
It would have been located to the right of Bilewater, where you can even find a gate that could have potentially led into the area, but it's blocked off with rubble as for now. In addition, Alchemist Zylotol mentions "salt-stricken waters at the farthest edge of Pharloom" as the source of Plasmium, probably referring to the Pharloom Bay area. And the Memorium contains the corpse of one of the sea snail creatures, which we saw in the reveal trailer:
The trailer briefly showed the barnacle-covered peer as part of the "new towns". And it looked quite interesting, where it's a shame that this didn't make it into the game. But unlike the other cut areas, it doesn't look like it is amiss as part of some major redesign process. Maybe it is simply a part of the game that they wanted to developer at a later point.
And there is some potential with this. It could dive deeper into the whole Plasmium / Lifeblood threat, which was only explored briefly in the Wormways, maybe with some new bosses and tools that can be fought and obtained here. Early sketches of the game's map even featured a "Lifeblood Spire" at the location of Pharloom Bay, so that's hinting that Team Cherry may have had bigger ideas for this new infection.
The supposed town could also be a place where you can spend a lot of Rosaries, since you will eventually run out of things to buy. In Hollow Knight they added Divine for this, but there is no equivalent to the breaking charms in this game...
City of Steel
Another idea is that Pharloom Bay could ship you to a whole other land, maybe a distant place where they had captured some other Weavers. Well, something like the "City of Steel" might be best reserved for a third game, but who knows how far Team Cherry's current ambitions go? The City of Steel could even serve as a way to re-introduce Steel Assassin Sharpe, who was originally planned for Silksong.
It could also introduce a whole new way of playing the game. The steel folks, like Steel Soul Jinn and Steel Seer Zin, so far only existed in Steel Soul Mode, where your save file erases itself once you die. So, having them appear within the normal game would be weird, unless they are in an area that ties itself to similar conventions.
The City of Steel could be "roguelike", a place where you can't find any benches and that changes each time you visit it, because it's entirely mechanical and constantly shifting. It wouldn't be a normal part of the map, but more of a game within a game, similar to Godhome. Each time you go there, you will be greeted with a new experience, where you potentially run into different foes and bosses.
However, when you find items, you will be allowed to keep them and bring them into your next run, as well as everything that you already have acquired in Pharloom. And this brings us to the next topic...
New Tools & Crests
If they add a new area, like Pharloom Bay, then naturally there needs to be some incentive to go there. And the best way of making it worthwhile for the players is to add new tools to the game. However, right now the game finishes with evened out menus for everything that can be equipped, arranged in rows of three. So, adding only one of something would look ugly in the end... You want three of something!
The red and yellow tools seem like the best candidates for expansions. Currently, there are 18 red, 21 blue and only 12 yellow tools in the game. There is no real need for more blue tools, as it's already very hard to decide between them.
More red tools are always fun, however, and there is already one in the game that gets lost when you enter the third Act: the Snare Setter. Maybe there could be a new Weavenest somewhere, which requires the Silk Soar to get another copy of this tool.
Similarly, there are three different variants of the Silkshot in the game, where it would be interesting if you could find more broken tools to craft the other two. Or maybe you could switch between the variants before equipping the tool, like with the Voltvessels, in that case it wouldn't even require additional slots.
If we're going to Pharloom Bay, then a weapon based on barnacles will make sense, e.g. something that sticks onto enemies and slows them down, before it detonates.
As for yellow tools, they are badly need to be some more interesting options. One idea would be something that increases reach (and maybe speed) of the Clawline, around 25% or so.
Finally, the ultimate reward should be new crests, since they can change your entire playstyle. With new crests there also would have to be additional Memory Lockets to collect. A potential new crest could be the "Assassin", based on Steel Assassin Sharpe, where your needle gets bend for whip-like attacks.
Memories of Battle
The third Act introduces the Elegy of the Deep as a way to explore memories of Pharloom's distant past and glory. It is quite similar to the Dream Nail from the first game and offers the same capability to expand the game in ways that don't need to make real sense. They can add new challenging boss fights and whole areas wherever they see fit by making them part of a memory.
In Hollow Knight this feature was used to add the entirety of Godhome, which housed the Pantheons and the Hall of Gods, as a means to battle all the bosses and some new ones on top. And it's not outlandish to expect something similar for Silksong at some point.
However, having the exact same thing would be lame and the story of the Godseekers was told with the Godmaster expansion. Luckily, the Elegy of the Deep offers a logical way to let the players rebattle all bosses within the setting of Pharloom: Hornet's own memories. You already explore her "Red Memory" in the game with the help of the Snail Shamans, and this idea could lead to an equivalent to Godhome, where you can fight against all of the game's bosses how Hornet remembers them.
This wouldn't even need any convoluted explanations as for how the bosses do re-appear, like with the Godtuner in Hollow Knight. They re-appear, because Hornet remembers fighting them.
And this could even lead to encounters outside the realms of Pharloom. For example, the game's files include battle animations for the Hive Queen Vespa (source), indicating that she might have been originally a boss fight inside the Red Memory. But this fight can still happen inside Hornet's battle memories, where maybe she had also taken on the Mantis Lords at some point...
If Silksong truly follows the "Embrace the Void" ending of Hollow Knight, this could even feature the eponymous Hollow Knight himself, since Hornet faces him at the Black Egg after the Radiance got eradicated. This was a minor cliffhanger and we could finally see how this played out. Even her other brother could appear as a boss, twice, reversing the roles from the first game, which would be super interesting. How is it to actually fight the Knight?
In any case, there are multiple ways of organizing such boss fights. And if Team Cherry were to implement it similarly to the Pantheons, then this would raise some concerns, because the crest and tool system doesn't necessarily harmonize well with such an approach. It would be even worse if there were bindings that lock you out of tools entirely or into certain crests. Finding the right tools and crests for the job is a big part of the fun and a big part of what justifies the harder difficulty of Silksong. It got accommodated to all the new things the player is able to do when compared to Hollow Knight.
Something like the "Hall of Gods" on the other hand would lend itself quite well to that system, where they may even want to put it on the forefront. Here you could just freely experiment with different crests and tools, where depending on the challenge you may even go with something that you usually wouldn't consider.
Instead of the Attuned, Ascended and Radiant variants of bosses, there could "Lost" variants of everyone, where they got possessed by the void. The game even features such "black-threaded" versions of certain bosses already, like the Moss Mother(s), the Skull Tyrant, the Savage Beastfly, and even the Moorwing.
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