Hollow Knight

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After getting into the lore of Hollow Knight but not playing it (I do this a lot), I was wondering if there are any other Hollow Knight fans on this forum.
I feel a special connection to the vessel concept that I'll get into if you want to know. (But it means we have to discuss spoilers for the game's lore.)

I am a fan of Hollow Knight. I have beaten the game, although I have not finished the Hunter thing because the last enemy is in the difficult arena, and not the god level difficult stuff. I do recommend playing it.

I do believe that my signature is currently a quote from the game, in reference to The Grimm Troupe. I was sort of obsessed with just that part of the game, it has an awesome soundtrack for its boss.

It was my favourite game of 2017. There were some minor things I didn't like in the original, like the lack of map features, and the simplistic combat, so I'm looking forward to Silksong and hope those things get a bit improved. I'd say that's probably my most anticipated game at the moment.

I'd love to play, don't get me wrong. But I'm visually impaired as well, which makes certain gameplay mechanics harder to utilise for me. I do play video games (the Splatoon series, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Among Us to name a few) but there are some games with mechanics that I have a hard time with. The combat system and difficult platforming in Hollow Knight are, unfortunately, a couple of those.
RE: Grimm Troupe, their lore, design and music is really cool but I prefer the Vessels due to a personal connection with the concept.

I'm hyped for Silksong too! The lore looks very promising and I can't wait to find out what's really going on with Pharloom!

I am trying to generalise the concept of the vessels. The radiance was poisoning Hollow Nest, so the Pale King came up with the idea of creating vessels to contain it, which were by having his children with his queen hollowed out and filled with the void so that they would be pure without feelings that could be corrupted. He unfortunately put a bit too much love into the vessel that succeeded, the Hollow Knight, and was imperfect to hold back the infection. The Knight is another vessel that somehow made it out of the Abyss after it was locked, aiming to kill the Hollow Knight to take its place, or preferably take out the Radiance itself.

One thing I only appreciated a little later was the concept that the Vessels themselves are genderless (non-binary), noted by Hornet being referred to as The Gendered Child.

The line 'Soul of Wyrm, Soul of Root, Heart of Void' is a perfect way to describe them and also succinctly shows why I like them so much.
Wyrm/Pale King is science and knowledge
Root/White Lady is empathy and emotion
Void is the core of the self/identity
I feel like I'm made up of those components - a strong desire for/love of knowledge and science, high empathy, and a unique identity that makes me stand out like a sore thumb. (Of course this won't work for every autistic person but it does for me.)
RE the idea that only a truly hollow being could contain the Radiance, I believe that the Pale King's criteria were actually wrong. See the explanation I agree with here.

I always assumed that if the Knight/Ghost had became the new vessel for the Radiance, they too would eventually leak it like the Hollow Knight. My take was the difference in beating the Radiance itself were a few things. One was having a dream nail, which I think is actually an essence of empathy within the Knight. The other was that it was not a single act of one person, but involves all the siblings, from Hornet holding down the Hollow Knight, and all the others as shades of void, and as the void drags the radiance down.

The Pale King probably would have been terrified by the idea of the void having such a will. The game lore does have a weird concept of good vs evil. The largest villain is the Radiance, which is light, and evil. The Pale King is also light and has some stumbles. The Void is like an essential aspect in stopping the Radiance, Deepnest is pretty dark too and is such a part to seal away, not to mention Hornet is of Deepnest. And the Grimm Troupe, which give off major creepy and evil vibes, but my assumption has always been that it is not evil, but a necessary part of cleaning fallen kingdoms of some toxic aspects.

Agreed that without the dream nail and unity of the void, it wouldn't have happened. But also what if the Knight's greatest desire was to seal the Radiance? Wouldn't that be a loophole? Can't infect someone if their desire is to seal you, right?
I think the void has some kind of sentience and therefore will (void tendrils, lighthouse keeper being called by it to turn off the lighthouse) though maybe not emotion as such...

I think that there is something about the void just naturally lashing out at everything and anything, that there was no unifying sentience to it. I believe that it was only after getting something like the void heart, after which the void no longer mindlessly lashes out at you. It is something the Pale King could not used or foreseen, since it only seems available after the Knight has seen everything, which takes some guessing of what the Knight actually thinks.

I think the theory that the Radiance could be held indefinitely by such a vessel was a the theory of the Pale King that might never have worked, because such a vessel probably would never exist, because the Radiance would eventually infect and leak out again, such be with the Hollow Knight. The same would probably eventually happen with the Knight also. It is just perpetuating the flame, as Dark Souls would say.

Perhaps you're right RE: the vessels and the 'perpetuating the flame' effect. (I'm also a fan of Dark Souls lore but I'm definitely not playing that one - a famously hard video game series where visuals are key? No thanks! Not to say that I have no vision, it's noticing/having to keep on your toes that's the problem for me there).
Are you excited for Silksong like me? Do you browse the spoilers we have (also like me, I'm a sucker for lore) or not?

Wait, you like Hollow Knight but have no interest in Dark Souls? That seems really odd to me, since the former is so indebted to the latter with its influence.

@ Enigmatic_Oddity
I am pretty sure that NaturalEntity said that they liked Dark Souls similarly to Hollow Knight, and that they are just not the type to be able to play them. Which is fine.

@ NaturalEntity
I have looked a little at some promotional footage or something for Silksong a while back, but I am not staying glued to every piece of information I can get a hold of, I will wait for it to be completed before getting hopes up into reading the lore. I am in a somewhat similar place in looking forward for when the next From Software game comes out, Elden Ring, which so far seems to have the similar sort of lore style that makes things like Dark Souls and Hollow Knight so good. And of course worth mentioning the likes of Bloodborne and Sekiro.

My first foray into these sorts of games were when I picked up Dark Souls 2, and could not really get into it, the game just felt punishing with its difficulty and not fun. It was only after getting a free download for the first game and following someone else explain how the mechanics work and the types of lore that are sprinkled through for someone interested in it, that I was really sucked in. Rather than just being in for some kind of difficulty, there was more an element of fun in learning to work within the mechanics of the game, so that something that should be hard kind of becomes like a learned skill that it is fun to overcome.

One reason I do feel a strong connection to the Grimm (Nightmare Grimm) boss fight was that it was difficult, very hard to overcome, but eventually lives up to its promise, along with its music, that it plays out like a dance. Where you don't focus on the almost impossible seeming whole of the performance, but practice the right step to recognising each sign from the opponent. And I think that it is a key part of the fun in these kind of games, where a lot of the fun is learning to handle the mechanics, even if you think that you would not be a fit to games that you assume just torture.

mentioning another indie game, I could not recommend Celeste enough, which even has mechanics that can help people who might have some form of disability. The game also practically encourages failure, that to never feel disappointed by your death count, because each one is not really a moral failing on the player, but pretty much a badge of honor of one more example where you tripped but picked yourself up anyway and gave it another go. No one likes losing, but Celeste was such a game that put more in words where difficult games like Hollow Knight can be, it also has an amazing message around anxiety.

Back to Hollow Knight, the game fits well into the Metroidvania types of games, I think where really large parts of the game can feel too intimidating at first, but you can gain confidence over time. That especially felt relevant with the Deepnest sections, which are super unsettling with their reduced vision, constant feeling that things are creeping all over the place, and enemies that don't play by the same rules as other by how deceptive they can be. Also interesting how the area kind of gets tied in the lore as you find out to Hornet, where one of the big defenders of all Hallownest has that element of creepiness as a part of her.

Thank you, Bradleigh. Enigmatic Oddity, here are my exact words on the subject:

Thank you also for the recommendation. I may well take a look when schoolwork has lessened a bit. One thing I really like about the Souls series and Hollow Knight is that there is no clear right or wrong black and white perspective. There's just lots of shades of moral grey, some darker than others. The Radiance is the darkest grey in Hollow Knight, but her anger is at least in part legitimate. The Pale King is only slightly lighter due to the whole vessel thing and frankly quite arrogant belief that his civilisation could and would last forever. The White Lady is less grey due to her regret over it and work to guide the Knight, but is still grey nonetheless. Grimm is also grey, and as you said, his troupe's work appears to be an aspect that is in some way integral to the world.
You're quite right about NKG and regular Grimm being dances - they are parts in a ritual after all and maybe that is fun in a sense to learn the moves.
Hornet is a little creepy but I also like her character a lot. I like how Deepnest's unsettling nature is portrayed as natural and not something to be eradicated, only defended against when need be, as well.

My take on the largest moral ambiguity of The White Lady is less about her part in having young that were hollowed out as sacrifices, but that there is a small bit of perversion in her desire to continue to produce offspring, that she acknowledges herself that she would find it hard to just continue create children for little reason than her own desire. Whether that itself is born out of her regrets of what was done to so many of her offspring, she placed seals on herself to prevent the temptation. I only just thought that The White Lady's desire to birth kind of sounds familiar to the Lovecraftian monster Shub-Niggurath, aka the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young.

The Pale King does share some resemblance to the likes of Gwyn from Dark Souls. Dark Souls themselves in the fair share of things kind of push towards the comfortable and familiar "age of fire" has gone on for too long, and is having some bad side effects, and the "age of darkness" would probably be preferred. Said age of darkness also known as the age of men rather than the age of gods. And the series kind of pushed the idea of ending a cycle.

On an ironic pivot to me, the actual apparent downside to the Grimm troupe is it too is stuck in a cycle, that those who joined it might not know about when they join. It is the one concern of the member who asks you to try and end it, that he actually empathises for Grimm being a slave to it, "burn the father, feed the child". But the bug is actually even allowed to leave the troupe if you banish it, just without memory for his treachery. Their cycle is instead about the young overtaking the old.

I agree about the White Lady. But the good thing is that she acknowledges those feelings and so binds herself partially in regret but also partially to prevent her urges from getting the best of her. (I don't agree with the 'take the hollow knight's place' thing though. It'd likely only perpetuate the problem as you said earlier.)
Yeah, I can see the similarity between PK and Gwyn. One of the prevalent themes in the later souls games is 'don't perpetuate something beyond its natural lifespan' and it shows with both figures.
I honestly interpreted the Brumm/Nymm thing as the mask Brumm wears tying him to the troupe, so that when you banish it all his memories of it disappear. That's another downside to the troupe - that maybe there was an element of coercion involved in some cases.