Of course, it's not in any way whatsoever radical to have your players follow along a tightly-scripted path in a video game. It's nothing new, it's nothing that hasn't been a constant (in platformers especially) since...well...forever. So why is it, some five or six hours into my time with Hollow Knight: Silksong, that it's the locked-down and relatively linear nature of proceedings that's got me most excited thus far? Why's it that bit that's got me all worked up to keep playing?
Perhaps it's over-exposure to big noisy AAA monstrosities that's done me in. Reviewing new games these days invariably leads to a whole lot of wandering around huge open worlds, you see. And whether they be set in the past or future, from medieval all the way through to post-apocalyptic wasteland 3000, there's usually a recognisable flow, a loop to even the biggest of worlds encountered, that gives you a lot of room to breathe, and purposefully lets you take your foot off the gas.
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That loop typically sees you learn the gameplay ropes gently through tutorials in the field - usually somewhere safe in the field, mind, like a training area or castle ramparts full of stuffed-sack bad guys. And then we have our story beats and our collectibles, our side missions and our methods of travel all added in, and all of these aspects are layered on in such a way that there's (usually) space to think and get used to things, nice and comfy, as well as some time-outs to settle into your surroundings. Oh look, what a lovely vista.
So, maybe Silksong's grabbed me thanks to too much lollygagging in open worlds of late, alongside a ton of recent roguelike offerings that allow you to navigate in various ways across their maps, honing and swapping so many skills and loadouts, adding/subtracting buffs until it's got your stamp on it. Until it feels like your comfy clothing. Maybe these things have made me a little afraid of a proper beatdown from a proper platformer that's properly bossing me where to go most of the time.
It's a game where every screen is worth your attention - and demands your attention.
Because Silksong doesn't do any of this nice and friendly stuff. It kicks my ass and it sends me back to bosses beyond lines of baddies. It's still got me scrapping with a tiny needle a few bosses in. I'm stuck on a boss and I can't get out! My jumping skills are also underwhelming starting out, so there are sharp deaths and other ignominious endings to my existence around every bloody corner.
And I am thrilled. Absolutely thrilled. And a bit terrified.
Now, I'm not saying this is some super hard game either, because that's a discourse that's happening right now - I'm not really finding that it's doing anything unusual for the genre in this regard. It's challenging, but it should be, and it is in all the right ways, but the tension brought about in me by having lost so much of the usual control...it's got me right sweaty, hen.
In this case, with the hugely talented maestros at Team Cherry on the case, the tightness — the claustrophobia of it all, in places — is so beautifully stage-managed that you can't help but be drawn into the thing. And they do an amazing job of making you want to push through battles, because there's always, 100% definitely, something worth seeing or hearing or fighting to the bloody death around the next corner. It's a game where every screen is worth your attention - and demands your attention.
On a broader note, it's also got me feeling a little guilty that perhaps I've been ignoring this part of games in general. I've allowed myself to become a lollygagger. I've become one of those sorts of gamers who sees a challenge in the distance (perhaps an enemy riding around Limgrave on a horse, as an example - I hate him with a passion) and immediately brings up their map to plot the quickest way to return to vibing with picking berries, riding over NPCs on my horse, and other Sunday-driver-styled activities.
Silksong isn't letting me do any of this. It's making me face my fears, like so many great platformers. What would Mario be without all the awful falling to your death, so vicious and cruel and repetitive and tough at times? Or Celeste! What good would Silksong be if it weren't constantly killing you with all the sharp things?
Team Cherry's majestic use of level design and atmosphere, its properly challenging boss fights, and the ever-present fear of something awful lurking just around the bend, make for a game that, even just six hours or so in, has got me thinking on all the time I've spent letting my edge dull. I mean, I never actually had a gaming edge, or any edge, really, but you tell yourself these things.
It's also got me thinking I need to download Dead Cells again, y'know. I need to get back into Cave Story, and a bunch of other quite challenging platformers that I shrugged and put down because it was easier to stick Assassin's Creed on and spend two hours avoiding everyone while I tried on new outfits. What a fool I've been.