Tag: lore

Hollow Knight – A Nail? NO!

Posted on by in Gaming

Once in a blue moon, I’ll find a game that grabs ahold of me and doesn’t let go, regardless of how many hours I’ve poured into it. No game that falls under this special category is ever the same. Which makes sense, after all, we’ve talked about how our experiences are unique on this site before. How I view one game will be completely different to how you, dear reader, will see it. Different characters and their experiences will resonate with me than with you, as our personal history latches onto these plot threads and forms connections. One such game that has captured my attention over the last six months, is Hollow Knight.

Released back in early 2017 by Team Cherry, Hollow Knight took the indie world by storm, with its charming 2D graphics, enchanting worldbuilding, creative mechanics and challenging combat. Falling under the category of “metroidvania”, I was hesitant going into it as I’ve always been a bit crap at those types of games which affects my enjoyment of the game as a whole. However, Hollow Knight surprised me and kept me intrigued from the opening sequence, forcing me to “get good” and push through challenging fights, knowing what was on the other side would be worth the struggle it took to get there.

I see you over there Zote. You stay in the dark where you belong trash man.

You play as the Knight, a feisty little being armed with a nail and a can-do attitude. For reasons unknown to the player at the start, the Knight has found their way to the kingdom of Hallownest, a once vibrant kingdom that has fallen into ruin due to an infection that consumes the minds of those afflicted. The Knight journeys through Hallownest, exploring and combating the dangers of the underground ruins, searching for the truth of what happened and gaining new abilities along the way. Shortly after meeting Hornet, another individual (and the player character of the upcoming sequel Silksong!) who warns the Knight away from their chosen path, the Knight is faced with three spectral creatures – known as the Dreamers.

These three, known as Monomon the Teacher, Lurien the Watcher and Herrah the Beast have been put in a permanent dream state to act as seals on the titular Hollow Knight’s cage – within whom the source of the infection was supposedly sealed all that time ago. Needless to say, it wasn’t a permanent solution since the majority of the world tries to kill you and the evil orange juice that seeps from the forms it inhabits is literally everywhere. So, it’s up to the Knight to venture across the kingdom, wake the dreamers, fight the monsters, and cleanse the infection from the original Hollow Knight in order to save the world. Simple, right? Well… about that.

Tad fourth wall breaking there buddy but true. Now, give me money.

The lore of Hollow Knight is a classic example of the iceberg theory used by storytellers, where only a small percentage of the plot is stated outright and visible for the player to discover on a casual playthrough. Piecing together referenced events from character lines, journal entries and world design leads to yet more questions – something that I, as an endlessly curious individual, absolutely loved. To beat the game normally and never touch the game again would be a massive disservice to the tale that the developers at Team Cherry have woven. There are loads of bosses, collectables, lore tidbits, endings, and paths to follow that you simply cannot cover in a single playthrough. Heck, I’m on my fourth playthrough and still haven’t found everything that I’ve seen others come across in their playthroughs.

The combat is not inherently complicated, it very much follows the tried and tested method of hit the thing till it dies, though some of the bosses could just sit on you and it’d be over faster than you could say “Yikes”. You have a nail (for stabbing), three magic spells (for blasting) and charms that can buff these to a ridiculous level. Like seriously, long nail and mark of pride means I can have a weapon that’s bigger than like two of my character. Overcompensating a bit there, little Knight? Combining charms are the way to victory in Hollow Knight, with some boss fights tailoring themselves towards Area of Effect spells and others just needing a good stabbing to cut them down to size. Or, if you’re really fed up with the fight, just cling to the top corner of the arena and let your minions whittle away at the enemies health. Not that I’ve done that. No siree.

….This is fine.

Plus, there’s always something satisfying about toppling bosses and conquering difficult fights. It’s why games similar to Bloodborne and Dark Souls remain so dominant in the gaming industry – people enjoy a challenge. What I personally think Hollow Knight does better than those games, is it allows you to adjust your fighting style on the fly. There’s no committing to a fighting type at the character creation screen or balancing stats during levelling or having to restart from zero if you decide a style isn’t for you. Instead, you just take off a charm and add another. We all have our preferred play styles of course but Hollow Knight rewards you for being creative, after all, whether you kill the boss with the sheer power of spite or give the boss scurvy and wait for it to die of malnutrition, you win either way.

I want you all to play this game, to get the true ending, to get all 112% of progression ticked off a list and to be jointly outraged and amused by the chaotic memes that the community has come out with (looking at you Pale King memes). Plus, all the expansions with additional bosses are all free so… go punch Grimm in his stupid face and then immediately regret your choices. Go fight the gods of Hallownest and get absolutely stomped by the Pure Vessel. Try the Path of Pain and break your controller in blinding rage. Play ping pong with Zote’s stupid face and read all his precepts for success (seriously Zote has the most written dialogue in the game, and I hate him).

Grimm over here being Edgy TM

Anyways, that’s Hollow Knight, joining Spiderman, Octopath Traveller and the original Spyro trilogy as one of my favorite games.

Till next time,

CaitlinRC

*-*-*-* Personal Update Ahead *-*-*-*

I do apologise for the heavier lean towards podcast episodes and tabletop RPG’s that this year has taken. Between the launch of Dice and Suffering, my frankly bonkers work schedule and trying to find a good balance between my endless personal projects, I haven’t had much time for much else. I love all my projects, so I’m not quite willing to let any of them go just yet, meaning I collectively spend less time on each in an attempt to ensure that I actually sleep at some point (madness, I know).

The support the podcast has been getting is phenomenal, the continual support of MindGames as an entity has been heartwarming and the enthusiasm for my YouTube compilations makes me smile – especially all of your snarky comments.

Regardless! Next week will be the final episode of Into The Waste that we recorded before I decided to put that D&D campaign on indefinite hiatus. I am starting a new world and you’ll get to see that in all it’s chaotic glory in a few months but I thought I’d wrap up the episode I have left in my files and clear the way for a whole new world (cue Aladdin music). Then we’ve got season 2 of Blades In The Dark / The Black Lotus Gambit which is four episodes in as I’m writing this and is shaping up to be a doozy.

If you’re interested in hearing me run my chaotic worlds of TTRPG madness, go look at Dice and suffering on any podcasting platform 😊

If you want to hear what kind of characters I play when someone else is the puppetmaster, I’m a permanent fixture in the Dungeons and Junkiez team over on Visionaries Global Media, where I play anything and everything – from wholesome to psychotic.

*-*-*-* End of Personal Update *-*-*-*

Five Nights at Freddy’s – In Case You Weren’t Already Afraid of Animatronics:

Posted on by in Gaming

One of the main accusations surrounding the gaming industry is that gaming communities can quickly become toxic, putting off many potential players and creating a negative view of the game, including the hard-working developers who created it. These fans adore the game in question but can be overzealous in how they try to encourage others to play it, often resulting in insults and long debates on social media about how their opinion is the only correct one. The game becomes less about its message and gameplay, instead, it is associated with its reputation – be that negative or positive. In 99% of cases, it is only a small subsection of that fan community that causes this negative reputation, whilst the others are all enthusiastic individuals, wanting to share their love of the game and the creative pieces it inspires with others. Now, whilst reading this you’ve probably had a few games come to mind. My mind immediately went to the Five Nights at Freddy’s and Undertale communities, two of the most popular indie games of the last decade.

Let’s put all that negativity aside for the moment and look at what makes these games so popular, so much so that nearly all gamers will have heard of them. I’m going to focus on the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, as that’s the game I stumbled across first, back when it first released and exploded onto the YouTube gaming scene. I’ve always had a soft spot for the FNAF games, not because of the gameplay or the creepy animatronics staring at me through the camera but because of the storytelling involved in it. The simplistic horror games, created by Scott Cawthon, are infamous for their complex timelines and hidden lore. At first glance, the games don’t seem like much but the deeper you look, the more intriguing hints you find towards some overarching plot that nobody on earth seems able to fit together (not even you, MatPat).

The most recent entry in the series adds VR and also a freaky creature nicknamed GlitchTrap that dances menacingly after he kills you so that’s a thing.

You can’t deny how popular the FNAF franchise has become. From the original game, which was Scott Cawthon’s last attempt at video game development, to the VR game that was released earlier this year, there is no real area of gaming community that it has not touched – RPG’s, voice acting, spin-off books, plushies and Funko Pop’s, an endless volume of fan fiction and fan art, to entire games based off the series (though seriously, some of the fan games are phenomenal like TJOC). It is this popularity that drives part of the negativity against it since success comes alongside hate in this world. There will always be someone who doesn’t like what it and that’s fine, FNAF isn’t for everyone! However, the more popular the series, the more people will hate it just for the sake of it.

Anyways, let’s talk a bit about FNAF. If you’ve avoided this game series or just have somehow managed to hide in a cave without an internet connection, let me explain the rough premise of the series. You, the player, are a security guard on the night shift, watching over a pizza restaurant containing animal-themed animatronics that wouldn’t be out of place in a Stephen King novel. The animatronics wander around at night and if they see you, they’ll think you’re an endoskeleton and try to shove you into a suit (spoiler alert – it’ll kill you). As you may have guessed from the name of the game, you stay for five nights during which the animatronics become increasingly aggressive and if you survive, you win! The different entries in the series make use of various mechanics such as audio cues or ventilation shafts, however, in essence, all the entries follow the same formula.

Chica, I am not eating anything with you until you go wash your hands, this place is a health and safety nightmare.

However, if you simply just play through each night and survive the onslaught of jump scares, you would be doing the game a great injustice. No matter how loud the YouTube gamers scream, the gameplay of FNAF isn’t what has made it stand out as an indie game – the lore is. Any observant player of these games would notice the occasional unnerving detail in the background, from strange sounds coming from the animatronics to posters talking about missing children, to offhand comments from the guy on the phone about various incidents and risk of death. As a sucker for a mystery, it’s a franchise that I’ve kept a close eye on. Although nobody is sure what the true story is behind the game series, after all, Scott Cawthon is a wily one, the abundance of theories about these games and the real story it is trying to tell is phenomenal. This is the kind of series where the hex color of a textbox can make the difference between one timeline and another.

I think the reason that this game series intrigues so many people is the concept of things being more than they appear to the naked eye. This is a life lesson that I think we should all keep in mind, especially when it comes to the topic of mental health. It is not an obvious thing. I don’t wander around with a neon sign flashing above my head saying, “suffering from mental health conditions, please don’t upset me,” partly because that’d be ridiculously expensive to maintain and mostly because its not something that I want to advertise. Mental health is an incredibly personal thing, something that we carry with us everywhere, like a part of ourselves. You can look at someone, laughing and joking around with their friends, but have no idea that depression is standing right behind them, just waiting for the right moment.

Are those my eyes??? THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!

You never have any idea what people are going through. If someone chooses to share their pain with you, to entrust you with something so personal, they are placing a level of faith in you that you should never take for granted. They’re sharing a side of themselves with you that they keep away from the rest of the world – much like the axiom:

“The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and your family. The third face, you never show to anyone. This third face is the truest reflection of who you are.”

FNAF takes a leaf out of this book, with its own three faces. The first being the gameplay, which is what most people will see during their first impressions of the series. The second is when you begin to look deeper and uncover the lore hidden behind those terrifying animatronic faces. The final one is known only to Scott Cawthon, the creator. Whatever story he wishes for these games to tell, is for him to know and for us to merely theorize about.

Whether you choose to show your second face to someone, is entirely up to you. All I hope is that you can face your third face and understand it because we can’t learn to trust others if we can’t trust ourselves. Anyways, this was a bit of a weird one, wasn’t it? Next week, maybe we talk Life is Strange or Prey? Up to you guys!

Stay Kind,

CaitlinRC

(Also, if you haven’t seen it, I wrote a piece for CheckPoint who is a mental health charity focused on providing resources and support for gamers and the gaming community as a whole. Go check them out and my article out here: https://checkpointorg.com/what-remains-of-edith-finch-how-family-can-build-us-up-and-tear-us-down/ )