Silksong Journal, Entry 11

After aimlessly wandering through all of Pharloom without knowing what to do, the game eventually had mercy and offered me a different path for its supposed ending, one that involves something a little too close to Hornet's former home. Thus, I was able to enter the game's third act, which lets you experience the kingdom of Pharloom in a different state. Here I saw parts of the Citadel, went back to Bone Bottom, the Wormways, the Deep Docks and even further below...

As you can see, I'm using the "read more" functionality of this web page for the first time in 17 years... It won't become the default, but it makes a lot of sense for these type of lengthy journals. I've also reached a point in the game that wasn't covered by the trailers and I really don't want the spoil the surprise for anyone who is just casually scrolling over the homepage. But I've implemented this in all previous posts as well.

Well, back to the game, the Caretaker from Songclave had a proposal. One that involves using Soul magic, known from Hollow Knight... What could possibly go wrong? But first you have to get the other parts required for the spell. I had the Seeker's Soul already, but also needed the ones of the Hermit and the Maiden. I totally forgot that the Bell Hermit even existed, where it took me a while to find him again the maze below Bellhart. I somehow managed to always walk past by his nook...

And finally the game truly sends you back to the beginning, to the Chapel Maiden and Weavenest Atla. I find it funny how you can break the things at Bone Bottom that got built here with your help, like the bridge or the statue of the fixer. I was always worried that this will have consequences if you do it, but as I will have learned later, it doesn't really matter whether you do these things or not...

The last thing on the list is Snare Setter tool, which you can already get at the Weavenest after acquiring the double jump. I had completely missed this before, which wouldn't be much of an issue if the tool was there to stay. But you need to it build the trap for the final boss, so you will have to give it up, and therefore I was never really able to use it normally... But then of course, you won't miss what you don't know.

What I will certainly miss is Pharloom in its current state. Well, I didn't really know what I was getting into. But after the introduction of Soul and the fact that the game wants you to get the fleas away from the Citadel first, I had an inkling that it's not going to be pretty...

So, here we are again, back at the Cradle, this time with a clear difference. And unlike in Hollow Knight the game now makes it more than clear that there is a choice at the end of the battle. Press A to Bind or X for Needolin.

But I'm now certain that the similarities between the Grand Mother Silk and the Radiance are very much intentional, because they both meet the same terrible fate, dragged down into the void. The main difference is that there is no void entity here that slaps her to death before. So, she tries to drag Hornet down with her, who then gets saved by Lace after all. What a twist!

And then the credits roll... For another bad ending. The game really got me here good, because during the whole credits I kept thinking about what I could have been missing. I genuinely thought that this was just another screwed up ending sequence and that there has to be a third way. But this is actually the third way and the game is just trolling you here.

Once you return to the file select screen, your profile will be covered in void strings and you have to break it free first, as if this wants to tell you to do so on your own risk. That's where the third act finally begins, called "Abyss". Getting chills yet? Because I certainly did...

Now, this is where the game is taking a dark turn. The Citadel is in ruins and the void has overtaken Pharloom. It is spreading everywhere via the strings of the Grand Mother, taking control of foes and making them much stronger. Silksong is doing what Hollow Knight only dared to ask, effectively exploring the "Embrace the Void" ending, where the void was leaking into Hallownest from the Godseeker. As if Pharloom wasn't already dark enough...

This also this game's own Elun moment. This shift has very much reminded me of Metroid Dread, where in the second half the X are let out of their quarantine. Not only was this an amazing throwback to the previous title, Metroid Fusion, it also turned all the enemies into more much more dangerous variants, covered in black goo.

And this is also the case here. Enemies overtaken by void are nasty. They do double the damage, of course, they tank a lot more, and can perform a number of annoying void attacks. Just when I thought that I could move through most of Pharloom quite comfortably, taking out all enemies with ease, this happens and the game is back to kicking butt. But like with the X, this is a very smart way of increasing the difficulty in the later game.

Hollow Knight also did something similar with the infection, but this was restrained to the Forgotten Crossroads area. Imagine if the infection had eventually grown all over Hallownest, mutating the enemies everywhere... Now that's Act 3!

However, it's not necessarily a permanent change everywhere. You can find "Void Masses", which are turning all enemies around them into the void variants, but once you destroy them, most of them will be back to normal.

While the parallels to the X in Metroid Dread might be coincidental, the Bell Eater boss was a clear reference to Metroid: Zero Mission. This is very much the "Charge Beam Beast" on steroids. Its attacks are quite annoying and tricky to dodge, mainly the exploding poop balls. But as a Metroid fan you have to love the presentation, this was quite fantastic.

It was also fire how the Bell Beast comes to the rescue. And it has little kids now, so cute! Amidst all the horrors of the void, there is at least one positive development in Pharloom. Do I want to know how it reproduced all of sudden? Probably not... But the small fries bring you back to a Bell Station from wherever you are, with some exceptions, like Hornet's upcoming goal.

However, as exciting as this all was, this has caused some "FOMO" inside me. Starting Act 3 is a point of no return and a lot of the environment has changed, mainly around the Citadel. But the target shooting mini-game, for example, is now also in ruins and can't be played any longer. So, I had to look up what I could have been missing.

The game has a rewind feature, where you can reset your save file to certain key points. If I had missed something critical, I could have reverted it to the point where I fought Lace. Still, this would have been a lot of missed progress, including two boss battles and two whole areas, so I wasn't really eager to do this.

You can find an excellent Reddit thread about this topic, which gives you a mostly spoiler-free list of what can be missed. Well, sadly, there is an entire ending that is now inaccessible to me. However, it requires something that I have yet to figure out (which is also the way into the Bellhome outside Bellhart), so I will do this in a second playthrough.

And you can actually fight Garmond, similar to Shakra, which gives you an optional entry in the Hunter's Journal. But it is apparently quite easy to miss this, even when you know about it beforehand, because you can lock yourself out of this battle much earlier by progressing Songclave too far. It's a shame, but neither is worth a rollback at the moment, because I will be playing the game a second time eventually. Plus, I'm just way too excited to explore the third act.

When heading back to Bone Bottom, I made a small detour into the Wormways, because they have also changed quite heavily, but in a very different way. The Lifeblood, or "Plasmium" as it is called here, has spread excessively and also transformed every living being in the area. It turns them into absolute bullet sponges, though I think they simply regenerate and you have to hit them quickly. There is another small boss battle where you have to fight the zombie apprentice, called "Plasmified Zango", which took me forever at first, until I started going at him very aggressively.

But other than the excessive HP, it's very reminiscent of the infection in Hallownest, only in a different color. Hornet even makes such a comparison in the game, as she talks to Zylotol again. You can start another quest here, where this time you have to extract the Plasmium directly from creatures, but as a reward you can now refill it yourself, without the need of returning here. This is great, because it so far had prevented me from using the Plasmium Phial more than necessary. The refill was simply too inconvenient, so this is a nice reward.

But this whole development still leaves a sour taste, as it's perverting a nice thing from the predecessor. As for the void, it clearly has been something evil that was used for the sake of good, where now this evil gets explored in the sequel. The Lifeblood, however, always was portrayed as this beautiful, peaceful thing in Hollow Knight, which you want to seek out, but appearances are usually deceiving. To be fair, this is actually a good tribute and very much in the vein of what the first game liked to do. Take something nice and show you its rotten core.

And since we're on the topic... those three guys really were Snail Shamans! And they've tricked you. Kind of. While they are drawn to the void, they didn't intend things to go this bad, so they are still helping you out to fix things. But for this you need to look at the core problem first, deep down where the void is coming from: the Abyss.

While Hornet never spells out "Hallownest" directly, it became now quite clear that Silksong is indeed intended to be a sequel, because she is already familiar with the void, what it can do and where it comes from, because she has seen it all before. Plus, she compared the Plasmium to other infections that she has witnessed.

The next main quest immediately solves another mystery: the purpose of the diving bell at Deep Docks. I went back to Deep Docks multiple times, because I assumed that I was simply missing something, but sometimes all it needs is a little story progression... Or a lot.

Hornet found herself in the movie The Core for a bit, but through the sea of magma she descends into a familiar place from the first game – the Abyss. And this is somewhat uncanny. While Silksong in its DNA is clearly the same as Hollow Knight, everything in Pharloom was totally new: the environments, the enemies, the bosses, the people, the currency, your items, everything. Save for some Weaver architecture, maybe, and the Plasmium. But the game has always been doing its own thing, up until now.

Now you're back into the same pitch-black environment that was pivotal to Hollow Knight, and are greeted by the first returning enemies: the Shadow Creepers and Void Tendrils. This is not a complaint. I think this is an excellently staged connection between the two games, showcasing the sheer scope of the Abyss and the void. Hallownest and Pharloom are two completely different lands, but deep underneath lies the same terror.

It's not exactly the same, however. In Hollow Knight the abyss was your place of birth and while it was a scary place, it wasn't particularly threatening. You could even calm the Shades after some point, making the whole place mostly peaceful towards you.

That's not the case for Hornet in Silksong, mainly because there are completely new gloom monsters here. The flying ones act a bit like Metroids, eating you whole, though you can dispose of them much more easily, while the large ones spit void all over the place and can even summon their small friends. The reveal trailer already had featured those, but they spit purple acid instead and were shown in a different dark environment, making me thing that the whole Abyss idea only came later in development. By the way, the trailer's music will be featured in the upcoming escape sequence, making it a little bit more enjoyable...

But I liked the scene where Hornet was shouting into the void, questioning the Grand Mother's resolve here, which is causing the spread of the void all over Pharloom. "Just die already or I'll come down to get you!"

She also discovers that the Weavers of Pharloom have been in the Abyss and set another Weavenest here, Absolom. It's an interesting connection, where in Hollow Knight there was also some transition from Deep Nest into the Ancient Basin and a part that looked like it was connected to the Abyss itself (where you can obtain the Sharp Shadow), as if the Weavers tried to get down there as well.

But the most important part is that this is where you can learn the Silk Soar. That's the ability that I was missing and it basically works like the Crystal Heart, only that it shoots you upwards, given that your harpoon can be attached to a ceiling above you. Now that your goal isn't to reach the top of Pharloom any longer, it's okay to have this, I suppose...

It also reminded me of getting the Monarch Wings in Hollow Knight, only on a larger scale. While this was in the Ancient Basin, not the Abyss itself, you also had to drop down into a hole where you couldn't get out of until you got a new ability. And getting the double jump gives you lots of new options, where it's the same here. I've marked so many holes in ceilings on my map that the back tracking will be a feast.

But first you have to return to the surface, which involves a lengthy and slightly annoying platforming section. While I like how acrobatic Hornet can be, I'm sometimes a bit overwhelmed with what I should do when. You have the same abilities as in Hollow Knight, but also the harpoon and the float on top. And you have to be a lot more careful with your double jump timings not to screw up.

Anyway, you won't be able to return there until the end, for which you need to get a Delicate Flower. At least that's Hornet's plan, because she has played Hollow Knight and knows from the ending of the same name that this flower is able to absorb the void. Or maybe it's something that she has learned in her childhood...

But since these flowers don't exist in Pharloom, she wants to enter her own memories and retrieve one from it... Okay, like Killingham does in One Piece? The totally trustworthy Snail Shamans are going to help her with this, but first you need to find three more McGuffins.

With the Silk Soar you can also "steal" the Shaman Crest from them. It's like the exact opposite to the Architect, where this let's you equip three silk skills, but no red tools. It also shoots sword beams, even when you're not at full health, but the range is rather limited and the attack speed is also quite slow. You also can't bind in the air with this thing, so you will drop down to the ground whenever you heal. I'm not sold on this, because for me personally attack speed trumps all, but it might be good in a situation where you can't heal and just want to make good use of your silk skills.

Additionally, I did get the Far Sight from Weavenest Absolom, which you can install into your Bellhome, which is like the only thing that remains unscathed at Bellhart. How lucky for the one who has caused all this mess... What would Hornet do without her own personal spa? But the Far Sight now gives you completion information. You can see how many tools you are missing and your overall completion rate, where mine is at 86% right now. So, just a little more left!