Hollow Knight: Silksong is wholly unfamiliar. Hornet is a new protagonist in a foreign land, and by extension, I'm a stranger. It doesn't help that I haven't played Hollow Knight since 2018 – I held off on replaying it because I naively thought that Silksong was perpetually right around the corner (laugh all you like). But ironically, this sense of venturing into the unknown – like stepping into a vastness that's multitudes greater than little Hornet – is the only thing that feels familiar.
Part of that sensation is akin to starting Hollow Knight again. That makes sense. But it also rekindles memories of playing Dark Souls for the first time, of taking my first tentative steps forward in Lordran, which was different to any adventure prior. It felt like stepping into a world that had lived before I arrived – a world so old that its inhabitants had already atrophied, decayed, before I found them. But it also had an edge, with FromSoftware's punishing mechanics both cruel yet entirely at home in the world it inhabited.
