Team Cherry's Hollow Knight is generally considered to be one of the best metroidvania-styled games ever made, which is a testament to the talent of the small team which worked on it. Given the first half of that genre moniker, it's easy to draw comparisons between Hollow Knight and Nintendo's classic 2D Metroid games, both action-platformers where players attain new skills as they progress that allow them to explore larger sections of their respective maps. However, when Hollow Knight: Silksong releases, it would be interesting to see it take more inspiration from another Nintendo franchise: Pikmin.
Though Hollow Knight and Pikmin occupy disparate genres; Pikmin serving as more of a real-time strategy game with puzzles based around wrangling its titular vegetable-shaped critters; they have a lot of aesthetic similarities. Hollow Knight takes place in a universe of sentient bugs who occupy a maze of caverns underground, meanwhile Pikmin follows intergalactic explorers the size of bugs who find themselves on Earth. Pikmin has an element of metroidvania-style progression itself, with different colored Pikmin able to access new areas in older locations, so it would make sense for the games to overlap more. Specifically, Hollow Knight: Silksong could make good use of Pikmin's comparative sense of scale.
How Pikmin Plays With Scale
Though they've both been sized up in the Super Smash Bros. series, Olimar; the protagonist of Pikmin, Pikmin 2, and Hey! Pikmin; as well as Alph; one of three protagonists in Pikmin 3; are canonically miniscule. Hocotatians and Koppaites, respectively, are less than an inch tall. Thus, when either species winds up on Earth (called PNF-404) they are surrounded by plants and man-made objects like flowerpots and tin cans that are comparatively giant. Some entire areas are made possible by human constructions, for example portions of the Perplexing Pool in Pikmin 2 and many of its caves are constructed out of ceramic pool tiles.
The original Pikmin has Olimar searching for pieces of his ship, the S.S. Dolphin, which leaves the sense of scale relegated to environmental details. Subsequent entries focus on collecting objects that people can more easily recognize and use to compare sizes. Pikmin 2 is all about finding treasures that are based on real-world objects, for instance branded soda bottle caps and knit gloves. Pikmin 3 follows the three Koppaites as they search for different fruits to sustain themselves and save their home world from a famine.
Having this sense of scale benefits the adventurous vibes of the Pikmin franchise, as it's easier to imagine the uphill battle of being tiny in a giant's world when comparing the protagonists to fruits and playing cards as opposed to their own technologies. That's where Hollow Knight: Silksong could take some cues.
Why Hollow Knight: Silksong Could Benefit From This
While the audience playing Hollow Knight is keenly aware that the world is full of insects like pill bugs and mantises, they never really encounter any remnants of a human society that can give the world a grander sense of scale. This isn't required; searching the remnants of Hallownest is fascinating in its own right because it gives a distinct impression of what the once-thriving kingdom looked like. Humans may not even exist in Hollow Knight's universe, but bringing Hornet to the brand-new kingdom of Pharloom offers the opportunity to see what it would be like if humans did exist.
A human may not have to appear personally in Hollow Knight: Silksong to achieve this goal. Like in Pikmin, Hornet could come across objects like bottle caps left behind by a seemingly alien source. However, there is room for her to encounter beings beyond her comprehension, with Hollow Knight: Silksong taking a page from Little Nightmares by leaning into encounters with massive bosses that the audience recognizes as either human or some other domesticated animal. Some might feel this would take away from the unique, detached universe Hollow Knight established, but it could also be a fun way to add more spectacle and challenge into the anticipated sequel.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is in development for PC and Switch.