‘Hollow Knight: Silksong’ creators defend “punishing” difficulty

Hollow Knight: Silksong developers have defended the “punishing” difficulty of the long-awaited sequel.

Hollow Knight: Silksong finally launched earlier this month, eight years after it was first announced. The release was so popular, several digital stores crashed due to demand and more than 4million copies of the game have been sold so far.

However a number of players have complained that the sequel is far harder than the original due to bosses not dropping rewards, the amount of damage dealt by enemies and a reworked health system. Shortly after launch, developers Team Cherry released a new update to make the early stages of the game easier but the later areas are still proving a problem for some.

Speaking at Australia’s Game Worlds exhibition (via Dexerto), Team Cherry’s Ari Gibson and William Pellen defended Hollow Knight: Silksong’s difficulty. “The important thing for us is that we allow you to go way off the path,” said Gibson. “So one player may choose to follow it directly to its conclusion, and then another may choose to constantly divert from it and find all the other things that are waiting and all the other ways and routes.”

“Silksong has some moments of steep difficulty – but part of allowing a higher level of freedom within the world means that you have choices all the time about where you’re going and what you’re doing,” he continued. “[Players] have ways to mitigate the difficulty via exploration, or learning, or even circumventing the challenge entirely, rather than getting stonewalled.”

“[New protagonist] Hornet is inherently faster and more skillful than the Knight [from the original game]– so even the base level enemy had to be more complicated, more intelligent,” Gibson explained. Rather than scaling back Hornet’s powers, Team Cherry’s approach was to“bring everyone else up to match [her] level,” instead.

Earlier this week it was confirmed that Hollow Knight: Silksong shrine guardian Seth is a tribute to a young fan who passed away from cancer.

In other news, God Of War actor Christopher Judge has denied reports he’s set to reprise his role of Kratos in the planned live-action adaptation.

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