The Grub Ending (Opinion)

[Smortsompt]

I honestly feel that that the ending for collecting all the grubs is an awful ending, not only story wise, but also a mean kick in the stomach to the players that honestly decided to persue these creatures in order to save them.

You see, imo I think a game should try to immerse you into a story, to make you care for their characters and the world that surrounds you. If you are talking about Hollow Knight, a game that clearly prefers the subtle way of telling the story of the game trough its visuals and few dialogues, then i think it's primary focuse should be precisly that, to engulf the player into it's world.

The Grub ending has got to be one of the worst decisions that was iput into the game, since it completly removes you from that same immersion making you feel that all the work you had so far, all the hours you putted into the game searching for these creatures, were a waste of time. It reminds you that this is a game and that decisions were made when making this game. And if I am thinking that this is the case, then it's because I am not immersed, it's because the game lost me completly.

The world of Hollow Knight cleary presents this "end of the world cenario" where everyone is pretty much infected and gone insane. Along your adventure you start finding these baby creatures, grubs, that are stuck inside containments. They are clearly trapped, and sad. When they see you, they get imidiatly happy, as they say a ray of hope that they might be freed. It's dificult not to get attached to these little creatures. So in the early of the game there is a place with an old grub, that must be their grandfather or something, with a lot of tiny "houses" where the baby grubs live. No dialogue is presented, but you get the clearly get the idea. Find these poor babies, release them and send them back home.

So your journey starts and look all around for them in the hopes that these creature will finally be safe safe. And you do so... and the reward you get from collecting every grub is that the old caterpiller eats all the babies, making all the work that you did feel useless.

Anticlimatic? Yes, a waste of time? YES!

I have seen a lot of arguments brought up because this is supposed to be a metamophorsis, so a next stage for the Grubs per se, because that is the name achivement for completing this storyline is called. But here is my problem with this:

1. It's lazy writting. An achivement is supposed to be an outside reward from the devs from completing certain tasks, and appearently here it is used as a way to tell the players what happened.
2. If it is indeed a next stage, why do you never get to see it? Your last image is from an old larva satisfied that he eat every baby. There is nothing after it. Why not show him getting t turn into another thing?

The achivement explanation seems like an bad excuse from the devs to say "Hey, we know you went through all this work and this is what you get in the end, but don't worry, it's just a metamorphosis". But the deal, is that there was no need for this. You could have just left the babies all happy and that's it. No special ending, nothing. There is no need to do any of this.

But let's say that you want to give these babies a tragic ending, because Hollow Knight loves those and only 2 of these deaths were actually emotive. Why not have the babies get consumed by the plague? Heck, is it ever explained why they weren't infected? Why not have them all leave so they are not in danger? Instead you give the concept of a metamorphosis that, for the record, is something that happens individually, there are no species that actually eat their babies in order to transform. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euuCrnqEoeU

I guess my real problem is that this is not a character side quest like Quirl's story or even Cloth's where finding this characters is something that is already pre-written so you are bound to find them. In this quest, you need to activily search for these babies just to get to this finale. These are 40 hours of work, on a blind run with no previous knowledge of anything, just to find them to get to this ending. And let's be real, was anyone here happy when they found out that their entire work was for this old ♥♥♥♥ to eat every single baby?

To make it worse, the devs don't even give you the satisfaction of killing this ♥♥♥♥♥♥, he is just there, all happy and satisfied. They take away everything from you. It's the same deal with Yume Nikki where you waste your time looking for a bunch of items in a surreal world just for here to kill herself in the end. Am I supposed to feel acomplished? No, I can't see this in any other way the a "design choice" from behalf of the creators.

The story with the collector and what not is actually really great, but it doesnt change the fact that we had to go trough 40 hours of work for this. Make a side story for this with a grampa and a grandson and the collector.

Also, another that amazes me is that the Grubs were suppose to be the mascot of the game. In the special edition they gave you a plushie of this characters. So why even give them an ending like this? Was it to be dramatic? I felt enraged not sad. I felt that going to look for these guys was a waste of time, time I could have putted into playing another game. I delt with every hardass boss fight you threw at me and always felt acomplished. But this? Were do I get the joy from this ending?

Hollow Kight is a great game, but blindly defending every choice the creators make is not good, and this was something that had no reason to be done. It didn't make me feel touched, it made me feel unacomplished.

[Prodicious]

I confess that I was expecting another ending to that, true, but I still think that it wasnt dissapointing, it was worth collecting all those little ones, but maybe we will see the fully stage of the larva in another game of Hollow Knight. We will never know

[minus]

You clearly didn't get the point of Yume Nikki, but whatever.

[arejang]

I'm a sucker for plot twists. I love when the game does something completely unexpected and crossed lines you would never expect them to cross. The earliest seasons of Game of Thrones did this, and it's what gripped me from the very start. Though I'll say some plot twists made me feel more sick than enthralled (see Korea's Old Boy).

For this particular element...uh, I dunno. I felt upset and tricked, but I didn't really cross my mind to blame the developers for that (though looking at the big picture, you should, just like you should blame George RR Martin for things like the Red Wedding... like how dare he, right? lol).

What came most instinctively to me was that none of the denizens of Hollownest were to be trusted fully, which for me anyway, was consistent with the tune sang by so many of these characters, and indeed even the enemies you slay, when they pose to be harmless or even friendly, then immediately turn colors and become hostile (see reanimated zombie husks or grub mimics). For deinzens, you have the giraffe bug in Queen's station, or Maribelle from the bank, or the price-gouging Sly. Once you come across the first surprise, you begin to get the sense that there is more than one layer to most of these guys, like the once former warrior Iselda, now a common shopkeeper .

Like I said, you have every reason to blame the developers for upsetting you, like you should also be upset at every author of every book or producer of every show who did something sickening or unexpected in the name of art. But for what it's worth, to me, for this particular instance, all of this felt consistent to the theme of this game world.

You wrote a very large wall of text to defend your point so I get the sense you feel very strongly about this. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong or really even attempt anything resembling an argument with you. I'll lose every time because this is truly just a discussion about what you think about this game. I think you're fully entitled to your beliefs and I respect that. That's more or less what I want to contribute to this discussion.

[Smortsompt]

Originally posted by Zacharie:

You clearly didn't get the point of Yume Nikki, but whatever.

Apperently I did not, care to elaborate on that remark that I made or is this the extent of your contribution?

[Smortsompt]

Originally posted by arejang:

I'm a sucker for plot twists. I love when the game does something completely unexpected and crossed lines you would never expect them to cross. The earliest seasons of Game of Thrones did this, and it's what gripped me from the very start. Though I'll say some plot twists made me feel more sick than enthralled (see Korea's Old Boy).

For this particular element...uh, I dunno. I felt upset and tricked, but I didn't really cross my mind to blame the developers for that (though looking at the big picture, you should, just like you should blame George RR Martin for things like the Red Wedding... like how dare he, right? lol).

What came most instinctively to me was that none of the denizens of Hollownest were to be trusted fully, which for me anyway, was consistent with the tune sang by so many of these characters, and indeed even the enemies you slay, when they pose to be harmless or even friendly, then immediately turn colors and become hostile (see reanimated zombie husks or grub mimics). For deinzens, you have the giraffe bug in Queen's station, or Maribelle from the bank, or the price-gouging Sly. Once you come across the first surprise, you begin to get the sense that there is more than one layer to most of these guys, like the once former warrior Iselda, now a common shopkeeper .

Like I said, you have every reason to blame the developers for upsetting you, like you should also be upset at every author of every book or producer of every show who did something sickening or unexpected in the name of art. But for what it's worth, to me, for this particular instance, all of this felt consistent to the theme of this game world.

You wrote a very large wall of text to defend your point so I get the sense you feel very strongly about this. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong or really even attempt anything resembling an argument with you. I'll lose every time because this is truly just a discussion about what you think about this game. I think you're fully entitled to your beliefs and I respect that. That's more or less what I want to contribute to this discussion.

First of all, thank you very much for your answer. I was honestly waiting a lot of backlash from what I wrote, not much so constructive criticism which honestly just for that, you have my thanks.

I understand what you mean, but I think with the G.R.R Martin exemple is mostly because you don't have much to do except read his work or watch the series, but this is more related to the type of media then the story in itself. I guess it is that feeling of like "doing a task = reward" and in here the reward was not good. And it's not the fact that it was "a bad ending" it was that it was just... why this? And why even go through the bother of having them all eaten and then give an explanation like "its a metamorphosis" thing? At least let me get the satisfaction of beating him up, as a consumer this was not a pleasurable experience. Which is only more baffling when the rest of the game is really solid when it comes to this reward system.

Like you said, it is a personal thing, and complaining won't do much, but hey, if I get more answers in the same line as yours, then I am happy I did so, at least to understand the rest of the folks point of view.

[khandha]

Um... I think you're missing something. Did you not read the description on the Grubberfly's Elegy charm? I think it explains what's happening pretty well.

The grubs don't die, it's the Grubfather that will die. He's the "cocoon" for the grubs that will turn into grubberflies. This is probably similar to how the Gruzzer's and Gruz Mother work.

I enjoyed it even if we don't get to see the end result.

[arejang]

Well...to be fair, they do give you some pretty amazing rewards for turning in those grubs. A truck load of geo, mask shard, pale ore, and some really useful charms. The only upsetting thing is the bit of lore attached at the end.

[arejang]

Originally posted by svanheulen:

Um... I think you're missing something. Did you not read the description on the Grubberfly's Elegy charm? I think it explains what's happening pretty well.

The grubs don't die, it's the Grubfather that will die. He's the "cocoon" for the grubs that will turn into grubberflies. This is probably similar to how the Gruzzer's and Gruz Mother work.

I enjoyed it even if we don't get to see the end result.

I hope you're right, dude, but the description doesn't exactly state what the 'next stage of their lives' is. Grubfather dying for the next generation is actually mostly conjecture and fan theory. Maybe Grubfather needs that extra protein to become a fly. Mantis feed on each other to ensure healthy progeny. .

I think it was the right move to leave the situation in the form of a question mark. It's really hard to say one way or another what exactly is going on here and what the result will be. We can say it's probable that it's this or that, but it might not be, for instance using terms like 'gratitude' is very odd choice of words for an elegy, but nothing outright says the result is the best outcome we can imagine either. Religious fanatics gratefully die for a greter spiritual cause and we are dealing with anthropomorphized bugs after all. I don't think it's entirely off-color from the rest of the game to get a completely unexpected result.

[khandha]

Originally posted by arejang:

I hope you're right, dude, but the description doesn't exactly state what the 'next stage of their lives' is. Grubfather dying for the next generation is actually mostly conjecture and fan theory. Maybe Grubfather needs that extra protein to become a fly. Mantis feed on each other to ensure healthy progeny.

The name of the charm (Grubberfly) and the image on the charm tells you what the next stage is. The fact that the description is referring to a plural implies that it's the grubs, not the grubfather that will transform. And as I pointed out before there's another grub/fly like species in the game that works in a similar manner. On top of the fact that you can still hear the grubs alive inside the gubfather. Obviously since it's not spelled out exactly in the game, it is somewhat theory. But as there's almost nothing to support that the grubfather kills them and plenty to support the grubs being transformed, it seems clear to me.

[arejang]

Lol, this is so funny how spoiler-y we're moving into here so we're compelled to black out pretty much the entire post. Nevertheless, I'll also follow suit. The gruzmother isn't shown consuming the young, so I don't think the parallel holds quite exactly. I will grant that the description strongly suggests that the grubs transform, not the grubfather, but again there is no outright statement of who exactly is doing the metamorphosis. I think the strongest element pointing towards the many grubs over the one grubfather surviving is the noises inside him.
If we're seriously going to introduce actual real-life biology into a completely made-up game,
digestion kills the prey very quickly. Even if you decided to sacrifice yourself for the greater good,
and determined that you will scream as loudly and as long as you could possibly while you let yourself become someone else's meal, the amount of crushing done by the mouth and the tract leading into the stomach, as well as the sheer amount of acidic gastric juice, you wouldn't stay alive for long and certainly wouldn't be singing by the time you reached an organism's stomach.
So if we're really going down that route, then there's absolutely no way the grubs are a meal unless these grubs have a separate storage container in their biological makeup to safely store the grubs, alive, to digest grubs one at a time instead of altogether like every organism does in our earth. But it's also possible that developers didn't particularly care for biology and just wanted to be as holes and include a sickening picture just for kicks. Eh? Who's to say, lol.

[khandha]

Haha, yeah, I really enjoyed finding and figuring out the lore in this game so I didn't want to spoil it for anyone else. Better to hide too much than to spoil

The Gruz Mother description in the Hunter's Journal says "Bizarrely, this monster does not lay eggs but instead carries its young inside its fat stomach." so I do think it's a plausible comparison.

There are at least two more DLC coming, so maybe someday we'll see for sure what happens to them :)

[arejang]

Originally posted by svanheulen:

Haha, yeah, I really enjoyed finding and figuring out the lore in this game so I didn't want to spoil it for anyone else. Better to hide too much than to spoil :gonheart:

The Gruz Mother description in the Hunter's Journal says "Bizarrely, this monster does not lay eggs but instead carries its young inside its fat stomach." so I do think it's a plausible comparison.

There are at least two more DLC coming, so maybe someday we'll see for sure what happens to them :)

This is a potential example of when biology was ignored for the lore in this game and also leaves room for further dancing around real-life biology just to make fans feel sick or disgusted, lol. The stomach, biologically speaking, is not a container for your progeny. It is strictly the area where digestion occurs since it refers to the organ that produces gastric juice. But I feel most commonly, people refer to the stomach interchangeably to mean either the digestive organ or what I think they mean as the abdomen or the abdominal region. I'll let this one bit slide because English sucks, and we seriously need a better system for medical terminology.

[Goblin Rat Bastard]

I'm gonna use another example here. This is like what happens when you reach the last stag's home. It's empty and all of the stags there (Except for the one who brought you here) are dead. However, if you search around, you'll find empty eggs, and the stag will even mention he feels something. You're not going to see it, but you know that this isn't the end. Eventually, these things will put themselves back together. The stags will live again, the grubs will multiply, ect. ect. However, that won't happen unless you go out of your way to make it happen. To me, that feels satisfying, and gives me another reason to try and wipe out the "source of the infection". A.K.A The Radience

[arejang]

Dude! Spoiler tags! Lol

[Bippopotamus]

oh yeah REEEEAAAAL LAZY WRITING muust say that at the end they all either metamorphosise or PLOT TWIST eaten. realy not everything goes how you want it.