![traitor lord hollow knight traitor lord hollow knight](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bytm86xgZBI/maxresdefault.jpg)
But yeah, if the diffulty turns to frustration, all the immersion is broken, so it’s a really delicate balance. The difficulty and the mechanics that you lose all your geo when dying played a huge part in that experience for me, I think, that made it all the more immersive. What a journey, that was one of my favorite video game experiences ever. I found the tram pass and made my through the ancient basin to the edge of the kingdom and looped back around to the eastern end of the city of tears, areas which I all hadn’t discovered before. And that was only the start, since I still had to find my way back. The relief I felt when I found the first bench was incredible. No way out the way I came, no idea where to go, lots of hard enemies, death pits, darkness and creepy spiders all over the place. Then I fell into a deep black hole and everything went up to 11 really quickly.
![traitor lord hollow knight traitor lord hollow knight](https://i.redd.it/vr4qnnw5kpl41.jpg)
I remember the game giving me a warning before entering the deep nest and I thought to myself “well, how bad can it really be?”. When I played it, I was fully immersed, not only due to the great world design, but also because the stakes of dying can be really high, depending where you are at the game. That’s a perfect description for hollow knight in my eyes. I like the term “primal video game experience”. But I do understand the potential for frustration. Especially the harder platforming challenges, as there are upgrades later on that makes these significantly easier. For most challenges, there is an alternative route, or so many other things to discover that it’s okay to leave some things be for later. Everything from the their color scheme, the traveling circus caravan, the music, and the integration of death and decay into prolonging the Nightmare Heart is completely counter-cultural to Hallownest, the kingdom of dead gods and walking husk, a kingdom that struggled so hard to live forever.Īnyways, all I really wanted to say is that if any bug other than Ghost walked into the troupe’s tent and met Grimm, they would probably run right back out screaming that they met the equivalent of the devil himself.That’s actually what I really liked about hollow knight. There is also the culture of the Grimm Troupe, it really clashes with that of Hallownest. Do flames represent ruin and destruction in Hallownest? Or maybe something related to dark magic? Some of the dialogue with Brumm and the White Lady seems to indicate that this ritual is committing a taboo against the kingdom, and maybe nature itself. Flames may also represent something different in Hollow Knight, seeing as Grimm seeks to “consume” the flames of dying kingdoms in what is often regarded as a “ritual.”.
![traitor lord hollow knight traitor lord hollow knight](https://i.redd.it/b0avzdvpcl731.png)
Spider legs? The creatures of Deepnest seem to reinforce that spiders/Weavers are fearsome predators to common bugs, so that is another quality Grimm has in common with predators in Hallownest.Even a small bat in human terms would probably seem like a giant man-eating dragon to a bug. Bats? Many bat species are insectivores.Grimm seems to be an unsettling mixture of creatures and concepts that should terrify the bugs of Hallownest! So many monsters across mythology are just amalgamations of what we fear disguised in human form, be it features like claws or fangs, or mysterious forces like death and magic. He is literally supposed to be a monster to bugs, just like how vampires or werewolves are monsters to humans.
![traitor lord hollow knight traitor lord hollow knight](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CxDncNMCYgk/maxresdefault.jpg)
He isn’t supposed to be a bug, he supposed to look like a bug’s worst nightmare. I think I realized why Grimm doesn’t look like any bug we see in Hallownest, or a bug at all.