Highlights
- Hollow Knight: Silksong may benefit from a single, large-scale DLC approach like Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree.
- Team Cherry could recapture Hollow Knight’s magic by focusing on quality over quantity in their DLC strategy.
- Streamer attention on Elden Ring’s difficulty has renewed interest in the game, a strategy that Team Cherry could adopt for Silksong.
As far as follow-up releases go, Hollow Knight: Silksong is one that has been cooking on the slow burner for a long time. The hype train for the highly anticipated sequel rises and wanes with each major passing showcase where nothing happens, with Team Cherry’s conspicuous silence at Nintendo Direct dashing fan hopes after a fresh wave of expectation. However, its protracted absence doesn’t mean its popularity is waning, not by any stretch. And if the developer takes a leaf out of Elden Ring‘s playbook, it may buy much-needed time and relevance for when Silksong is eventually ready to be rolled out.
Games that prove especially difficult to complete are seeing an elevation in status and clout in the industry, and more developers are cashing in on the trend that the Soulslike genre kickstarted with Demon’s Souls back in 2009. FromSoftware has dominated this sphere in the past and is continuing to do so with Elden Ring, but Hollow Knight managed to carve out a staunch following for itself in a crowded range of AAA competitors with its Metroidvania gameplay. It’s why Silksong is so highly anticipated, and despite several disappointments since its announcement in 2019, Team Cherry could recapture the magic that made the original Hollow Knight so special by going down the Elden Ring route of a mega DLC.
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Silksong Could Benefit from A Pivot in DLC Approach
It’s not often that content packs further the base game’s offerings with more than extra story credits, but the original Hollow Knight excelled in this regard, especially in the Grimm Troupe and Godmaster DLCs. Some of Hollow Knight‘s best endings were added through the Godmaster DLC, while the Grimm pack brought new enemies that stretched the limits of players’ skills. It’s hard to say which was more challenging between the base game and DLCs — some even say the added content was tougher to get by. Elden Ring‘s Shadow of the Erdtree is perceived in a similar light, and it gives Team Cherry something to think about.
Hollow Knight‘s four DLCs came out within eighteen months of the base game; a remarkably short turnaround for additional content. All four contributed in their unique ways to making Hollow Knight the complete package it eventually became, but Elden Ring proposes a new and direct method of attack. Elden Ring was confirmed to only be getting one DLC — a decision that raised eyebrows concerning leaving a ripe post-launch campaign on the table. Naturally, after a steaming launch in February 2022, interest waned as months turned into years while Shadow of the Erdtree was still being developed.
Less Quantity, More Quality is the New Watchword for Soulslike Games
However, the singular DLC has proven to yield dividends for FromSoftware, with the gameplay trailer reveal in March renewing interest in The Lands Between and doubling Elden Ring‘s player count on Steam. Since its release, it has proven to be one of the hardest singular pieces of gaming to beat, with popular Twitch streamers like Kai Cenat even resorting to hiring therapists to rant about the sheer difficulty. The extra media attention from streamers has been invaluable for Elden Ring‘s hype bump, and it’s a strategy that Team Cherry could adopt with Silksong.
Like Elden Ring, Hollow Knight had notorious bosses that weren’t for the faint of heart, and the DLCs added an extra layer of difficulty, albeit on a smaller scale than Shadow of the Erdtree. Consolidating Hollow Knight‘s content packs into a singular campaign like FromSoftware did in Silksong is an obvious play for Team Cherry, especially given the traction Elden Ring has regained. A solitary large-scale DLC could expand Hornet’s story without breaks and perhaps even surpass the original Hollow Knight, and it’s an option worth exploring for the developer. It’s still unclear when to expect Silksong, but Shadow of the Erdtree has already presented a viable blueprint for its post-launch.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Developer(s)
- Team Cherry
- Publisher(s)
- Team Cherry
- Genre(s)
- Metroidvania
