The wait for Hollow Knight: Silksong continues ever onward. The sequel to the hit indie metroidvania is at the top of its fans’ wishlists, but there have been no updates on the game in over a year. It's not clear when the game is coming out, with the rumored February 2022 release date having long since passed. At least fans have a lot of information on Hollow Knight: Silksong to tide them over, including trailers, gameplay, and information on the world and characters that Hornet, princess of Hallownest, will be encountering.
Silksong takes place in the new kingdom of Pharloom, and with that new locale comes a wide variety of friends and enemies. Hornet is more agile than the previous game’s knight, and has access to a wider variety of tools to help her in battle. The world will also feel a little more active than the rotting tunnel system of Hallownest, owing to the towns and side quests that are spread out across the game. This all sounds rather familiar, and Soulslike fans likely see parallels to their own wait for Elden Ring. Now that Elden Ring is out, it feels like the comparisons between it and Silksong are more applicable than ever before.
The Anticipation for Elden Ring and Hollow Knight: Silksong Feels Similar
The long absence between Elden Ring's reveal and release date announcement was painful for many Souls fans. After an exciting E3 2019 reveal, there was no official news of substance until the end of the Summer Game Fest kickoff right before E3 2021. Even though the leaked footage from a few months earlier had made waiting difficult, it turned out to all be worth it when Elden Ring's release date was revealed to be a few months away. Even a small delay shortly before the game's release did nothing to deter the hype, and for a few weeks it felt like the whole industry was caught up in the event that was Elden Ring.
Hollow Knight: Silksong's release date probably won't inspire such widespread fervor, but the celebration will still be hard to miss. The game was first announced in February 2019 with a trailer and developer vlog. A few updates were spread out over the next year, and Edge Magazine got a Silksong cover feature at the very end of 2020. After that, there were no further updates apart from a February 2022 developer message confirming the game is alive. That hasn't stopped fans from being so hopeful for Silksong news that the game trended on Twitter after every Indie World presentation. The pre-release hype surrounding Silksong and Elden Ring is very similar, and will hopefully have a similar positive effect on Silksong's sales once it finally comes out.
Elden Ring and Hollow Knight: Silksong Provide Comparable Innovations
There are a lot of other conceptual similarities between Hollow Knight: Silksong and Elden Ring. These two games are both major expansions on similar titles their developers have released in the past. Elden Ring is an open world take on Dark Souls, but it's unclear how much more open Silksong will be compared to the first Hollow Knight. Even so, the traversal mechanics of both titles accommodate their size. Elden Ring incorporates Sekiro's jumping mechanic, as well as a double jump and sprint in the form of the horse Torrent. Silksong, meanwhile, gives players access to the aerial mobility Hornet had in her boss fights. Players can clamber up ledges as well as airdash and use homing attacks on enemies. This newfound mobility will no doubt make Hollow Knight speedruns even more impressive.
There are some other considerations that both games share. Crafting has become a mechanic, with Elden Ring giving players the chance to bolster their ranged options and weapon augmentations on the fly. Hornet needs to stop at a bench checkpoint to do her crafting, but she can produce a wide variety of Tricks to help her in combat. The increased ferocity said to be in Silksong's combat is another parallel to Elden Ring's increased speed and enemy complexity, and eagle-eyed fans even spotted a Waterfowl Dance-lookalike in Silksong's reveal trailer.
As both games are cut from the same cloth as Dark Souls, more comparisons between Hollow Knight: Silksong and Elden Ring will likely manifest as Silksong draws closer to release. Hopefully, it will pull the same move as Elden Ring and appear with a release date during 2022's E3 season.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is currently in development for PC and Switch.