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The infection
https://hollowknight.fandom.com/wiki/Infection
Void
https://hollowknight.fandom.com/wiki/Void
Why they consider you evil also has on the wiki but i give you a resume
The hollow knight is actually sealing the infection while the dreamers keep the entrance of the temple sealed as long as they are on that "dream" you are trying to enter the temple the reason i don't think is ever explained but one thing is clear The hollow knight is weakening and soon the infection would escape anyway (not that others remember)
Also, you might have missed a couple NPCs, or you might want to read their dialogue again if you didn't - Bardoon and Midwife are more hidden than some other NPCs and both have loads of lore in their dialogue. You've already met the White Lady for certain, but she is a massive lore dump, if you can understand what she's saying. You might want a dictionary for that one.
The game taking place in a dying kingdom. Many of the creatures that live within Hallownest are either dead, infected, or incapable of communicating with each other. The few intelligent characters that you meet along the way tend to have little knowledge about the history of the kingdom, and those that do aren't likely to know most of it.
Much of the game's plot also takes place in the past, prior to the events of the game. And just like before, a majority of the bugs that were there to see it are nowhere to be found. The king himself has been implied to either have died or fled. So any clues about what happened are left in the ruins left behind. Just like you, the player, those that're around to explore Hallownest in the present day have to piece together what they're able to find.
Hollow Knight is all about uncovering secrets and exploring a strange and wonderous world. If there was someone around that could just tell you everything, it would break that sense of atmosphere.
As for the cryptic / vague dialogue, I think of two reasons:
i have no problem with none linear story telling.
I have a problem with cryptic storytelling.
90% of all characets talk gibberish if you didn't painstakingly research every word everyone say.
Yes I found bardoon. All I got from him is "something something wyrm, something pale king something something void"
Same crap woth midwife: "something something dark deal. Something something gendered child. Something wyrm.
No one told me anything I could take for face value, no one told any direct information only cryptic hints
its incredibley frustrating that I had to wiki everything instead of letting tbe game show the story. And my question is why tell a story in such a crappy way. It serves very very few people and annoys the hell out of everyone else
Don't use the Wiki, it ruins the experience. It'll all make sense eventually.
Hollow Knight's world is like a puzzle, you have to construct it through different pieces of dialogue and lore points. I felt super confused for the first 5-10 hours of my first playthrough and only afterwards I started realising what was going on.
It also annoys the minority, the story-telling in this game isn't spoon-fed. You actually have to turn on your head to figure things out.
That series has gained huge popularity not just for its gameplay, but the lore surrounding the world the games take place in. (The same goes for all of the other Soulsborne titles, too.) It really isn't as niche as you seems to be implying, when you consider that there are YouTube channels entirely built around analyzing and discussing the games' plots. And those communities can number in the hundreds of thousands, in some cases.
Cryptic storytelling has an audience, and that's why some developers design their storytelling in that manner. Some people really love having to piece together a puzzle and work it out for themselves.
Heck, Hollow Knight has its own unofficial lore channel: mossbag. Whom just recently passed 100K subscribers. Calling that "very very few people" feels like underselling it.
Prwtty sure his 100k subs is proof that most people prefer the story to be spoonfed with his videos.
I understand the appeal of piecing together the story together. But why dont thwy give me SOMETHING that I can work with alone??
Luke how the hell was I supposed to figure out alone that the gendered child is Hornet?
How the hell was I supposed to realize that wyrm is the pale king?
Whu couldn't seer just flat out say "yeah there's this mad moth god called Radiance that's the cause of the infection" that wouldnt reveal much but we would at least know what are we fighting against and what's the ultimate goal.
But Nope instead we get "erm we betrayed the light becausr we felt the wyrm to be brighter and now my tribe is dead"
Games that require the use of the M I N D might not be necessarily for everyone. Comprehension is one the pre-requisites of understanding the plot in this case.
Hollow Knight gives you everything for you to work on alone. It just takes a while to understand.
Have you finished the game?
Did you read the texts that you found scattered across Hallownest?
Did you talk with the npcs?
Did you dream-nail them to learn more info?
The seer literally summarises the whole Radiance thing in one of her dialogue options by the way.
Still could bare make out anything besidrs the fact hollow knight is a vessel to contain the infection somehow but he failed and the infection keeps leaking out of tbe temple.
Also that the Knight you olay as might actually be the pale king or directly related to him.
Everything else i had to look up in the wiki.
Every Vessel is a son/daughter(because they are all genderless) of the Pale King and created on the abyss and the only exception i think is Hornet that is the actual Daughter of the Pale King with Herrah the Beast
"Why do all infected talk about "the light"?" Well maybe because their minds are controlled by The Radiance? You know that one god which seems to be made of pure LIGHT.
Anyway, you shouldn't get frustrated just because this type of storytelling isn't something you enjoy. There are plenty of games with more simple storytelling. But don't say that "a few" people like it. That is just not true.
there is a good reason they are speaking gibberish. It's literally the major turn in the full storyline.
I had a similar experience with Eastward recently. Lovely visuals, great music, memorable atmosphere. The plot, however, is as thin as it is convoluted, and conveyed in an exasperatingly confusing way. Hollow Knight has similar virtues and flaws.
The cryptic, non-linear storytelling isn't necessarily a problem: if it has a point, a narrative that is reliant on themes and implication to carry most of its weight is no better or worse than a linear one… it just needs to be underpinned by something other than a random collection of proper nouns without any connective tissue. The writers of games like Dark Souls, Eastward, or Hollow Knight traffic in looseness of language, vagaries, and deliberate obfuscation to hide a lack of substance—one puts work into sussing out meaning and it's so frustrating when there's nothing at the bottom of the rabbit hole but a bunch of superficial, tired, hand-waved references to tropes about lost kingdoms and dead gods or whatever.
I've heard this disjointed, incoherent storytelling style be referred to as "poetic" and "puzzle-like" but, in my opinion, it just seems like a lazy mush of disconnected information which would have been hard work for the writers to string cohesively into a clearly intelligible story that would stand on its own without the need for external interpretation. So they didn't. Which is why, incidentally, a cottage industry of content creators has sprung up around big titles with obscure narratives whose entire shtick is "explaining the lore", which often entails making stuff up entirely to fill in gaps in the text that make no sense. It's apophenia at work, not solid, artful storytelling.
It's a shame, because these games are fun and good-looking, I just wish there was more to their stories than vague allusions and muddled, poorly strung together plot tidbits.
the op called this a "metroidvania", but excluded Castlevanias as a comparative game for being cryptic?
there is an easy to follow "initial" story/pathing for HK, even being guided to the Dreamers and having the Temple of the Black Egg right at the start.
you may get the idea that there is more to the story than what you learn, but it's up to you to explore further to try to piece that together. it's literally what you described to another game, is it not?
i realize the last user just necroed this thread, and i won't expect you to be jumping on a reply.