The title of the moment, Hollow Knight: Silksongcontinues to be on everyone’s mouth and for a series of excellent reasons. The new result of the effort of Team Cherryalbeit with some flaws, is certainly a very high quality product and an addition of thickness to the ever -growing panorama of the so -called “Metroidvania” games. However, there is another category under which it was classified, namely that of soulslike. And one of the elements of strength of the sub-genre, also present in Silksongis the way the plot is narrated.
From the progenitor Demon’s Soulpassing through Dark souls, Elden Ringthe same Hollow Knight And many other titles, the approach chosen is that of do not tell directly History: the kinematic sequences are few, and just provide a handful of information; The dialogues with NPC (non -playing characters) are short and cryptic, often imbued more than philosophical considerations than of plot elements; In most cases – Silksong It is one of the few exceptions – our avatar does not have a backgroundis a “nobody” catapulted into the adventure. They are the players themselves a having to discover The past, the present and the possible future of the world that are explored. But what are the means made available to them?
First of all, the setting itself, a real narrative archive of Environmental Storytelling. Beyond the individual specificities of each title, in soulslike Reni and nations in ruins are always presented, for some time, due to some catastrophe and trapped in a forced stasis or in a cycle of death and rebirth, which is up to the main character to break or perpetuate. Ruin buildings, forgotten corpses, statues, design of enemies and any other detail provide elements of a story – or stories of whole eras – that players must put together one piece at a time, following the constant red thread of the tragedy and of the meloncholy.
To help them, there are the objects recovered during the adventure, whose descriptions often manage to fill gaps and allow to make connections between beams of information. Last, there is theinterpretation. Given the nature of the settings, many knowledge about what happened in the past have been lost and users will never have complete knowledge. On certain elements, some also of non -secondary relevance, they can only be done theories And speculations that give life to long discussions in the forums dedicated to these games. Sometimes, the answers will come after years of waiting. Suffice it to remember all the hypotheses on the identity of Lord Gwyn’s eldest son in the first Dark soulsreleased in 2011: his true identity remained a mystery until he was addressed directly in the third chapter of the saga, issued in 2016. Or to all the questions left out of suspense until the expansion The Ringed City, Arrived in 2017.
Many consider this indirect narrative one form of lazinessdespite the pages and pages of lore written during development in order to give consistency to the information given to the players. For those who write and for all the fans of the sub-genre, however, not having not served on a silver dish is a form of stimulus to exploration. It gives the hours to dig in the game world a purpose and a sense of satisfaction, when the connections are made.
Is the charm of silenceor rather of that subtle space between said and non-gauge, between the story and discovery, which always pushes to return to find that detail that has missed the first time and to transform itself again from players into narrators.