Stupid character limit. Here is the rest of my argument. Besides my rather longwinded tirade about the Coral forest, I'm mostly fine with the ending. 5: What is even the point of all this? Now it is time to come back full circle and take a broader look at the threads tying this story together. Up until now I’ve concerned myself with specific problems I had with particular elements of this tale whereas now my goal is to judge the product as a whole. Silksong has many themes, some of which I have already mentioned, but the main one is probably about the cycle of abuse and its wide-reaching consequences. Grandmother Silk abuses Lace and Phantom, the Weavers betray Grandmother Silk and eventually Pharloom itself, the Conductors, Archivists, and Doctors of the Citadel mistreat the citizens of Pharloom, and the abused citizens become "infected" and turn against each other. These new themes are fine and dandy but they are massively overshadowed by a pervasive theme of "been there done that". Tell me where we have seen this before: There is a glowing white entity who is trapped yet exerts its will upon an unwilling kingdom. Victims of said control become mindless husks of their former selves. Against this backdrop of terror, a lone person has the power to either continue this cycle or seek reconciliation and truly rescue the citizens of this land. Silksong struggles to lift itself above simply being a thinly veiled rehash of Hollow Knight! All the bells and whistles are merely the disguise to that truth. Remember their promise given all the way back in 2019? [b]“Discover a whole new kingdom! A vast, interconnected world of winding caverns, mossy groves, and gilded cities. Pharloom, a living, breathing kingdom ruled by silk and song.” [/b] Well I guess technically a crippled old man in a coma would still qualify as “living and breathing”. What a joke. I expected populated towns of bugs, not grave keepers tending their crypts! I wanted to explore a region in active peril not yet another fallen kingdom. Couldn’t they have at least left the Citadel untouched? Why did it too have to be in a state of disrepair? Instead of touching more on the elements of this story that give this game distinction such as the Pilgrimage or the fallen neighboring kingdoms, Silksong opts to present a surface level replay of the first game. This mindset was so pervasive that it led to the culling of one of the most visually creative areas planned for the game. William Pellen remarked that the Red Coral Forest: [quote]"went against the narrative that [they] were trying to tell" and going further that “the Coral Forest didn’t fit the atmosphere we wanted for Silksong. It was beautiful, but it didn’t sit right with the rest of Pharloom,”. [/quote] Oh really William, the Coral forest was “too beautiful” but the Moss Grotto gets to make the cut? And Shellwood? Oh let’s not forget about the majority of Hunter’s March as well. Must the entire game be defined by the Citadel’s presence? This answer is a cop out and he knows it. Lost Verdania remained in the game as a fully fleshed out location while conforming to the standards he supposedly has. Now to be clear, I do love the Blasted Steps and the Sands of Korrak areas that ended up replacing the Coral Forest, I’m just trying to showcase the unhealthy mindset that pervaded this project. This interview confirmed all my worst suspicions, namely that it was never their intention to depict “a living, breathing kingdom”. Through its obsession with mirroring Hollow Knight, Silksong is left in this weird limbo state where its emotional impact is constantly minimized by those connections. Its own attempts to compare itself to the original game only ends up killing the momentum. Because at the end of the day I would rather just enjoy the story where those callbacks came from. Conclusion: I was always expecting this game to have a weaker narrative, however the more I reflect on what we ended up getting, the more disappointed I become. Buried amongst the tangled threads of this tale lies the potential for something truly special. A story of a world in the process of being broken by false tradition, of a God that reigns over the living rather than the dead, of an experienced heroine fated to challenge this oppression. In a way though, this is only fitting. Team Cherry wanted to depict a fallen wreck of a kingdom, well they also got a fallen wreck of a plot. Adios Silksong, I hope your choice was worth the cost.