The cultural inspiration to Hollow Knight?

[JOKEZM]

I know the obvious guess would be Germany as Germany has all the cool knights in shining Armor. Or maybe Britain. Then again, there's the answer the option that it's just inspired by darksouls.
What's your idea?

[♡ Katalina Aryze ♡]

Bugs.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Castlevania

[Fracastador]

I'm thinking hollow knight's inspiration is more the accretion of tropes from the fantasy genre in general, rather than a specific culture. You'll probably be able to cite a lot of small influences from various societies and former nations, but I think that it comes by them by way of other stories and games that reference those in turn, rather than from history directly.

[♡ Katalina Aryze ♡]

My personal belief, is that, the armor is just the exoskeleton of the character. Many would argue that it isn't since they can remove the armor but... those words remain to be proven. And it does make sense that the armors would be primed exoskeleton, especially for the bigger insects in the game.

But...

If I have to pick a human culture just for the heck of it, I would say that the fighting styles and characters would be most likely inspired by the Japanese. By the way the Mantis Lords with their ninja like precision, or the Sumo Beetles eith their huge power fallies and such with others. There are characters that resemble samurai, assassins and other things. So you have that Japan as my pick.

[Morphic]

Clearly this game is what happens when someone just finishes a session of Soul Reaver, decides to partake in hallucinagens and watch "A Bug's Life" or "Antz".

I mean c'mon, it's such a blatant copy of Soul Reaver. Dream Nail = the Soul Reaver. Hollow Knight trying to be the "perfect vessel and break the chain" is the same as being a Reaver and breaking the chain of immortality that is stagnating the universe. Don't even get me started on how the Radiance is clearly Kain...

[JOKEZM]

Well, it being inspired by games make a lot more sense I guess. Though Hungry Knight does have a Medieval Britain feel to it. And I'm probably spitting out things the developers never intented.
For fighting styles, the Japanese are pretty obvious, for the armors, I'd say Medieval Norwegian armor as they have the sickest masks.
And the hierarchy is a bit complex but I'm say the king acts like a pharao. As in, they're gods.

[Shrumbuggler]

On the official HK website, the developers describe the game as "An atmospheric adventure through a surreal, bug-infested world."


Emphasis on SURREAL. Trying to pin Hollow Knight's inspiration down to any singular cultural source will only leave us beating our skulls into the pavement.

If you instead wanted to find the cultural inspirations (plural) for HK, the list could probably go on indefinitely, since HK's parallels are much more constructively directed toward other video games, (Soul Reaver, LoZ, Dark Souls, ect.) which are each driven by their own cultural inspirations.


Hollow knight has very clear parallels to european culture (especially in it's gothic architecture) native american culture, eastern culture ect. There's even japanese anime design tropes and characters in there. The list would never end.

Personally I find the parallels between HK's world/characters and the biology of real world insects to be much more interesting, but I guess I just love bugs.

The title is a bit reductive, but you've got a cool idea for a thread. :U

[arejang]

Not only cultural influences, but I imagine some mythological influences are present as well, what with the ghosts and the cyclical narrative that inundates a lot of them.

I don't think a lot of that goes into consideration when designing games like this though. A lot of it is probably included simply because it looked or felt right. This isn't a historical game after all, lol.

[♡ Katalina Aryze ♡]

So basically we could be here all day pointing out cultural influences and not be right. Maybe the developer just drew up something they thought that looked cool and people will assume it's somtething it isn't or that the developer got the idea from something that doesn't really exist. At least it's fun to make something out of nothin, I certainly won't complain about the thread.

The beauty of the forums :)

[Shrumbuggler]

Publicado originalmente por arejang:

Not only cultural influences, but I imagine some mythological influences are present as well, what with the ghosts and the cyclical narrative that inundates a lot of them.

I don't think a lot of that goes into consideration when designing games like this though. A lot of it is probably included simply because it looked or felt right. This isn't a historical game after all, lol.

True dat.

Publicado originalmente por DontBlink +_- UrDead:

Many would argue that it isn't since they can remove the armor but... those words remain to be proven.

Unless i'm just seriously missing something, the only two characters in the game who you see remove their masks are Quirrel (whose "mask" is not even his, and is clearly functioning as an awesome hat.) and the Mask Maker. (Who, apon removal of his mask, immediately questions the player on whether or not his exposed "face" is actually just another mask.)

As for the character's "armor" the game explicitly refers to them as "shells," and I don't recall anyone in the game being able to remove them. (Unless you want to count the HK's, whose bodies are made of void, unlike almost all of the other bug characters.)

Hollow Knight is constantly anthropomorphizing physical characteristics of bugs, like the hollow knight's cloak being very reminiscent of folded wings when in his default position.

I'm with you bro. The game very clearly points to those bodies being exoskeletons.



edit: not to mention that the non-anthropomorphic bugs in the game have the exact same kinds of shells as the humanoid ones; and there's no way those things are dressing themselves in battle armor.

Also, just a note, the skull of the titular Hollow Knight grew along with his void body, being really small in the flashback scene with the king, and noticeably huge at the ending boss fight.

[Janitor Rodrick]

Publicado originalmente por ♡ Katalina Aryze ♡:

My personal belief, is that, the armor is just the exoskeleton of the character. Many would argue that it isn't since they can remove the armor but... those words remain to be proven. And it does make sense that the armors would be primed exoskeleton, especially for the bigger insects in the game.

But...

If I have to pick a human culture just for the heck of it, I would say that the fighting styles and characters would be most likely inspired by the Japanese. By the way the Mantis Lords with their ninja like precision, or the Sumo Beetles eith their huge power fallies and such with others. There are characters that resemble samurai, assassins and other things. So you have that Japan as my pick.

IK this discussion was ages ago but I think your answer is right, I was looking for a discussion like this because specifically I think that many of the characters armour/exoskeletons are very very similar in design, proportions and even colour to Kendo Bogu, the armour that people wear for kendo. The shape of the masks and heads, and many of the bugs body shapes, are very similar to them. Especially the dreamers, they even look like they're wearing the Kendo Do, the chest armour. Idk just noticed this and wanted to write it somewhere.

[mdesaleah]

Since this discussion was bumped.

Its Dark Souls 1, with 2D Metroid movement abilities/level design, and Castlevania customization.

Dark Souls 1 even has a void area, where a knight is corrupted by "the abyss" and you have to defeat his corrupted form after being built up for most of the game.

The Abyss in Dark Souls, and Phazon from Metroid Prime Trilogy were pretty much combined.

[Hotel Security]

I will say the atmosphere and certain tropes are very Souls-inspired:

-The "fallen kingdom" where all the big events happened before the game takes place.
-Little plot and most info being from writings or item descriptions
-Dark areas taken over by nature or corruption
-Use of souls and creatures living on after death.

>The Abyss in Dark Souls, and Phazon from Metroid Prime Trilogy

There's so many games with a "corruption" gimmick that takes over everything. Darksiders 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Control, Okami...I don't think we can attribute it to one source.

[FakeKraid]

I don't know whether it's intentional, subconscious, or totally accidental but frankly Hollow Knight is Buddhist as all hell. The Hollow Knight itself (who is a Ksitigarbha-like figure who "refuses to become a Buddha until there are no souls left in hell") and the Vessel are both enlightened Buddha figures who have "no mind to think, no will to break, no voice to cry suffering" and use divine powers born from that enlightenment (the "focus" of the "higher beings" addressed in the Pale King's inscriptions) to relieve the suffering of the denizens of an underworld with an almost literal "sea of bitterness" in it, that is crawling with hungry ghosts and fallen gods and mired in suffering that springs from desire on every side. It's got themes of life and consciousness separating the citizens of Hallownest from the divine with the Pale King's interference and corruption creeping in once the system became stagnant, bugs trapped in endless cycles of reliving their glories, fears, and regrets in the Radiance's dream world while their bodies corrode from within; all it needs is some prominent lotus imagery honestly.

I don't know Team Cherry, I have no idea if they are Buddhist, admire Buddhism, or don't even care to consider the matter, so I can't say anything about authorial intent, just calling out what I see.

[ImPartySize]

Publicado originalmente por FakeKraid:

I don't know whether it's intentional, subconscious, or totally accidental but frankly Hollow Knight is Buddhist as all hell. The Hollow Knight itself (who is a Ksitigarbha-like figure who "refuses to become a Buddha until there are no souls left in hell") and the Vessel are both enlightened Buddha figures who have "no mind to think, no will to break, no voice to cry suffering" and use divine powers born from that enlightenment (the "focus" of the "higher beings" addressed in the Pale King's inscriptions) to relieve the suffering of the denizens of an underworld with an almost literal "sea of bitterness" in it, that is crawling with hungry ghosts and fallen gods and mired in suffering that springs from desire on every side. It's got themes of life and consciousness separating the citizens of Hallownest from the divine with the Pale King's interference and corruption creeping in once the system became stagnant, bugs trapped in endless cycles of reliving their glories, fears, and regrets in the Radiance's dream world while their bodies corrode from within; all it needs is some prominent lotus imagery honestly.

I don't know Team Cherry, I have no idea if they are Buddhist, admire Buddhism, or don't even care to consider the matter, so I can't say anything about authorial intent, just calling out what I see.

OMG I couldn't agree more!!! I was curious about if it had religious influence and there's nothing explicitly saying that it is influenced by Buddhism nor is it a Buddhist game but when you play it if you know the stories of Buddhism well enough then you tend to see it better. It's quite known that one of the major religions of most Asian countries is Buddhism so even though no one explicitly states the inspiration from or influence from Buddhism its heavily engrained in the culture, so it's almost subconsciously included.