Team Cherry demonstrates the evolution between Hollow Knight and Silksong: "If the Last Judge had existed in the previous game, it would have probably been more of a big, round blob"

Hornet clashes with the pinstress in Hollow Knight: Silksong in a training cutscene.

The Last Judge, the big chapter 1 boss of Hollow Knight: Silksong, is a pretty good encapsulation of how the game's combat sandbox evolved since the original Hollow Knight. Even developer Team Cherry reckons The Last Judge would be a slower, squatter boss if it had appeared in Hollow Knight rather than Silksong.

Team Cherry's Ari Gibson and William Pellen discussed the evolution of Silksong in a recent interview with the ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image) in a guide book available via the centre's online store. In a broader discussion of how boss behavior changed in Silksong – from move select to move-and-movement select under the hood – they single out The Last Judge as an example of Silksong's more agile design language.