In February of 2019, Team Cherry officially announced a sequel for their beloved cult classic,
Hollow Knight. What originally was a stretch goal on their Kickstarter for a 2nd playable
character in the base game morphed into a full-fledged follow up titled Silksong.
And since then no one’s really talked about it.
*some sort of montage of people freaking out about it*
Few games have produced a community as dedicated and passionate as Hollow Knight’s—and for anyone
who's played it, it’s pretty easy to understand why. From the sense of wonder and curiosity
that comes from exploring Hallownest to the triumph felt when besting extremely difficult,
yet still fair bosses, the game is filled with fulfilling design that respects those playing
it. It is a 15 dollar title with more polish and quality playtime than 99% of games out there, and
when considering that it was developed primarily by 4 people, it’s hard not to be awestruck by its
existence. Playing it feels like being a part of something special because it kind of is.
So because of all of this, fans obviously wanted a sequel. While it has only been 2 and a half years
since Silksong was announced, due to knowledge of the second campaign from the Kickstarter
as well as just general excitement from those who finished Hollow Knight still wanting more,
for many, it has been closer to four and a half years, which...is kind of a long time.
Now in terms of game development, it’s really not that long, especially when considering the
size of Team Cherry, but for fans who really want more Hollow Knight, it has felt like an eternity,
leading folks to grasp onto any crumb of information in hopes that it will give some
indication of when it might come out. This sort of response certainly is not unprecedented. Recently
both Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild 2 had long periods of fans anxiously awaiting some sort of
announcement of a release date or year until trailers eventually dropped for both. Really,
while some communities are louder than others,
this kind of anticipation comes with pretty much any property that people are attached to.
Overall, I think there’s a lot of value to waiting. It allows you to feel excitement
about what’s to come, which sometimes can be almost as enjoyable as the thing
you’re waiting for. The wait allows it to feel like an actual reward,
making it stand out more and giving you a sense of fulfilment. I think this is part of why I
find yearly releases to often be underwhelming. There’s never a long enough wait to get invested,
and as it leads to a series having so many games, it’s hard to care about any individual title.
A good wait helps put you in the best mindset to experience something. It gives time to actually
care. To be invested. And this goes for pretty much everything in life,
whether it be waiting for a game to come out or waiting for your dinner to be done.
Raz: That reminds me: okay google, set a reminder to take
the enchiladas out of the oven in 10 minutes. Google: Setting a timer for 10 minutes to take
out the Angelinas. Raz: ...thank you.
Of course, there are downsides to it too,
namely that it often ends in disappointment because we don’t have enough information.
Waiting for stuff when you have no idea how long you’ll have to keep waiting, kind of sucks. When
everything is out of your control, it can be hard to temper your expectations and excitement.
When looking at these long, unknown waits, there seems to be a pattern with how folks
generally respond. It starts off with earnest excitement but as the wait gets longer and longer,
that excitement slowly shifts into either resentment or indifference.
There’s an oft quoted passage from Patrick Rothfuss’s first novel, The Name of the Wind
that relates to this idea: "When you wait a few span or month to hear a finished song,
the anticipation adds savor. But after a year excitement begins to sour."
While the timeline for any individual will always be different, it is hard to maintain
excitement forever and eventually, most people’s interest will fall off in some way. It’s natural,
but unfortunately it can lead to a fair bit of toxicity. This passage in particular comes up a
lot from fans of Rothfuss’s series The Kingkiller Chronicles because it has been over a decade since
the last entry came out. In that time, many have gone from eagerly awaiting the third book
to attacking Rothfuss anytime he does anything that isn’t related to writing it. There’s a sense
of entitlement that certain fans feel. They put dozens, maybe even hundreds of hours into reading
and rereading the books. They spent time thinking about its themes, characters and mysteries. They
invested themselves in the series, and because of that, they feel that Rothfuss owes them,
and unfortunately some people lash out because of that feeling. Which by the way, don’t do that.
Personally, I don’t think that Rothfuss owes his fans a third book. He’s a creative person
with many interests and callings, and he should be allowed to live his life how he
wants. Just because he started something doesn’t mean he has to finish it quickly
or honestly even ever. Although I would be devastated by that. While readers may
feel some sense of ownership over his work due to how they related to the material,
at the end of the day, it’s his story, and he can do what he wants with it. So if he thinks
it’s best to take his time with it, that’s what he should do. With that said, I do understand and
have personally felt the disappointment that comes from having no idea when a thing you care so much
about will be released. It’s painful when that anticipation you once found joy in begins to sour
because if you can’t be excited anymore for a thing you’ve been looking forward to for years,
who’s to say you’ll feel anything at all when it actually comes out.
Regardless of whether or not folks pass through the resentment stage, after a long enough wait,
the vast majority of people will end up in a place of indifference or even complete apathy. Interests
change and at a point there’s only so much energy you can spend on waiting for something.
I imagine a lot of us have plenty of upcoming games, shows, movies,
and books that at one point were all we could think about, but now almost never
give a second thought. And I don’t know. It’s kind of sad, but it’s also just how things go.
In the past few months, two properties I used to adore finally released projects that I had long
convinced myself would never happen. The first was Psychonauts 2. I played the original around the
time it came out in 2005, and immediately fell in love with it. I found the humor, the characters,
and the general concept so intriguing. As soon as I finished it and it ended with a tease for
a potential follow up, I was completely on board for a sequel. I brainstormed potential directions
the series could go and what types of minds you might be able to explore. I thought about what
the Psychonauts organization might be like. And then a few years passed. Occasionally there’d
be a rumbling that a sequel was coming, but nothing ever materialized. And then a
few more years passed. And then I didn’t care. Even when the crowdfunding campaign launched,
I still wasn’t convinced that it’d actually come out because especially at the time,
a successful kickstarter or uh fig, wasn’t a guarantee that a game would actually be made.
It wasn’t until a month or so before it came out that I actually believed it was coming out.
The second was the TV adaption of Brian K Vaughn’s comic Y: The Last Man. I got into the
series near the end of its run during a time where post-apocalyptic fiction still seemed fresh.The
humorous yet terrifying tone interested me, and after finishing it, I thought it would be a great
comic to adapt into a movie. And apparently so did other people as New Line Cinema acquired the
rights. I spent countless hours thinking about what they might change to fit the film format.
I even did a bit of fancasting, which by the way, my pick for Yorick was James Roday Rodriguez who
played Shawn Spencer in Psych. And then a few years passed. Every time there seemed to be
progress with the production, it inevitably stalled. Then a few more years passed and my
casting choices had almost all aged out of the roles. And then I didn’t care. I only realized
that it even existed because of a promoted tweet I saw pretty much the day it dropped.
As it turns out both Psychonauts 2 and the Y: The Last Man adaption are
pretty good. Psychonauts 2 might be the best 3D collectathon I’ve ever played
for whatever that’s worth, and Y: The Last Man is an intriguing modernization of the original
story with incredible chemistry between its leads, at least from what I have seen so far;
who knows it could still get bad. Or cancelled, apparently...damn.
Both exceeded my expectations because by the time I experienced them,
I didn’t really have any expectations left. I thought they would never happen; and not only
had I stopped caring about the possibility of them actually coming out, but also, as time went on,
I stopped caring as much about the original thing I had fallen in love with. I became a
bit disillusioned with each franchise, and moved on to new passions. The versions of myself who
couldn’t stop thinking about Psychonauts 2 and Y: The Last Man are strangers to me.
And in a weird way, a part of me wonders if that actually helped me enjoy them more.
That certainly sounds backwards, but I do remember some of the wildly unrealistic expectations
I had for each of them, and I think that is a potential downside of leaning into anticipation:
that being the risk of falling victim to the hype. Whether it be expectations you set yourself or
ones introduced to you by others, when you spend a fair amount of time excited for something,
you’re gonna have specific expectations, and as it turns out...there’s a chance those will be wrong.
I will never know for sure, but honestly I don’t know if the version of myself who was looking
forward to Psychonauts 2 or a Y: The Last Man adaptation would have been satisfied with whatever
came out. I wonder about that a lot with various projects I once looked forward to but then lost
interest in after assuming they’d never happen. For example, if The Last Guardian had come out
when I still cared about it at all, I think would have despised it, because what I had built up in
my head was essentially Shadow of the Colossus 2, which The Last Guardian very much is not. I
didn’t even get around to it until years after it came out because of little I cared anymore. And
for me, going in not caring at all about it, proved to be an incredible way to experience
the game. I had an open-mind and wasn’t upset that it wasn’t the game I had wanted it to be.
I felt a similar way about the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. It departs a fair bit from the source
material, and I know for certain that the version of myself from 2005 who had just finished his 3rd
playthrough and was hoping beyond hope that a remake might be on the horizon would have had a
fair amount of righteous anger about the direction FF7R ended up going, but me today, didn’t really
care, so I actually found the changes intriguing. Now, I don’t know that all the choices made were
the best, but I walked away largely enjoying it, and I definitely wouldn’t have back then.
It’s the weird thing with indifference. You inherently care less, and while that
means you probably won’t invest yourself as much in whatever you're engaging with,
it also puts you in a spot where it’s hard to be disappointed simply because of that lack
of investment. I’ve overhyped games for myself far too many times. I did it with Resident Evil
5 and GTA V and Far Cry 4 and Fallout 4 and it’s a bummer because while I do think those
games are pretty flawed, if I hadn’t made so many assumptions of what they might be,
I know I would’ve enjoyed them more. That’s why as soon as DLC for Outer Wilds was announced,
I did everything in my power to not think about what it would be like because I knew if
I hyped myself up too much, I’d risk walking away disappointed. And I didn’t. It’s great. Honestly,
hype is a dangerous thing as expectations can so easily cloud our judgement. When
anticipation is fueled too much by hype that is when things typically go astray.
To be clear, I don’t think the best way to experience something you’re extremely excited for
is to wait so long that you stop caring anymore, but it is nice to remember that even if a game,
film, book or anything else really misses your window of excitement,
there’s still a chance you’ll enjoy it in a different way down the line.
What’s hard is that there isn’t a great way to wait for things, and as I said before,
it’s even worse when you don’t know how long the wait will be. You can try to manage expectations
and all that, but a) it’s hard to not be excited for something that you’re excited for and b)
if you do push that down too much, you miss out on the fun of the anticipation. Ultimately,
when it comes to a wait, there’s a sweet spot, and whatever that amount of time is depends on each
individual’s temperament and life experiences. Regardless of how much time actually passes,
that sweet spot is when you’ve had long enough to build up a healthy sense of anticipation,
but not so long that that anticipation sours.
As for Silksong, I think it’s still in that sweet spot. Hell, I just finished most of the optional
content in Hollow Knight for the first time, so I’ve still got a bit before things turn. As a fan,
I obviously want to experience things when I’m most excited to do so. As a creator though,
I know there’s more to it. There is a lot of pressure when following up something
that’s beloved by so many, and you wanna get it right. You wanna make something you’re proud of.
And maybe part of getting right comes from releasing at the perfect time, but also
in 30 years, no one will care how much time passed between Hollow Knight and
Silksong...unless it still isn’t out by then. What people will care about is the game itself,
and by the sounds of it, Team Cherry is doing everything they can to make it what they want it
to be. And I think as fans, that’s what we should really hope for. It doesn't make it easier though.
So, look. If you’re waiting for Silksong or The Doors of Stone or god-forbid, Half-Life 3,
cherish that excitement if you can, don’t hold the wait against the people making it,
and hope that some version of you will find joy in it whenever it comes out.
Google: Take out the Angelinas
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