My friend and I were inspired by the cosmere questionnaire I asked her last week, and since she's been watching me grind out p5 bindings for a while now, a similar exercise in Hollow Knight felt only fitting...
Q: What is the name of the kingdom where the game takes place?
"Oh, I know this! It's Hollownest." [Final answer?] "...Hallownest?" [That's it.] "Something like that."
Q: What are your five favorite bosses?
"Hmm. The Magnificent Moss Charger. Uhhh.... I know I got the first part wrong."
"Hornet, cause she's cool, and she makes cool noises, and she has a red dress."
"The... NKG, the, what does NKG stand for? I forgot... *laughing* The first thing that came into my head was Nightmare King Game, that's not his name!"
"The evil Markoth. The one everybody hates." [He's your favorite?] "It's one I can remember."
"And, Absolute Radiance, which is cool cause she's... what's the word I'm looking for... I'm tired... and it feels late... I know the word... dramatic!"
Q: Do you know any of the tribes that inhabit this kingdom?
"I mean, I could take a good guess. You told me some of them, but it was a long time ago. There are the people who live in the sewers, and I saw one of them recently and it was like a pink oozy thing kind of like a leech, but I don't think that's the people who live down there." [Yeah, you got one, that's the Flukes.]
"I mean, I can take a fair stab and say that there are probably some flying creatures around." [Some of them are just regular types of bugs.] "Yeah. I'm probably thinking way too hard about it. For some reason I was like, you know what makes the most sense? Is I should try to figure out the types of bugs from the four genres from Avatar: The Last Airbender. There are air bugs, that fly, and there are water bugs, probably like the little mosquito that's in here that I want to kill. And fire bugs, although I don't actually know what would go into that category. And then, like, I don't know what an earth bug would be."
"Oh, I know what an earth bug would be! The Dung Beetles. But that's what made sense in my head, cause I'm kind of tired."
"I don't know, like, bees?" [Yes, there are bees.] "Oh, cool, okay!"
"I bet there's like, do you know the insects that there are like a billion of them and they're everywhere all the time? I bet there's some kind of insect like that." [What bugs are you talking about?] "I don't know. There are just some bugs that are everywhere all the time." [...What?]
Q: What's a higher being? Can you name any?
"Absolute Radiance! Oh, I actually don't know the difference between Absolute Radiance and regular Radiance, so conceivably possibly both of them. I don't know, Godseeker kind of seems like a higher being, but I bet she's the kind of higher being who wants to believe she's a higher being and actually isn't." [You have her vibe down.] "Hey, let's go!"
"Uhh, I don't know. The main character's parents are probably higher beings? Oh, his mom is one, I think. I don't remember any... you told me the story of the main character's parents, but unfortunately I don't remember it quite well. All I remember is that the main character's dad is dead and his mother is some kind of living tree that's in one of the rest stops in the background of a pantheon challenge. [The next question was going to be, What do you know about the player character's backstory? So do you want to tie this into that?] Oh! Well, I've heard it before but I don't remember much of it right now. So, we're going to go with: People wanted to create beings that didn't have souls, but were still alive, so, an ethereal-looking white tree and a dude who seems pretty dead created-- had sex with each other and other people, and got a weird race of hollow knight creatures, one of which was Hornet, one of which was the Hollow Knight, presumably some failures because those are the people you're fighting, yeah.
Q: Which boss is described as the "kindly god of bravery and honor"? [All the bosses are called gods.]
"I bet it's Sly. Sly's seems pretty cool."
Q: How do you feel about the Pale King?
"Dude's probably bad. Boo. Booooo. What's that line from the Princess Bride? Booooooo." [I think she just says Boo.] "I think there are more words to it, though. Filth. Slime." [That's your Pale King take?] "Yeah."
Q: Can you name any charms? What do they do?
"Where's that one that you were doing the other day, that you kept mentioning? It was like, Peaceful Harmony or something, and you were trying, it was granting the enemy the ability to avoid hitting you sometimes. There was also the one with the spiders, the one with the creepy little babies which I never saw, but I presume they are creepy, ... and then there are the ones that improve your nail, but, when you always look through them you go, -These all are useless! So, I presume that most of them are useless, except in extremely specific situations." [Calling me out!]
Q: What is the point of rancid eggs? [I just wanted your take.]
"Well, I guess it would have to be just to... what's the word I'm looking for? ...to like, smell out your enemies. Right? because, then they couldn't stand the smell. So, you know, they'd leave you alone. That or they hatch some sort of evil being. Or somebody gets rejected by society." [?]
Q: Do you have any least favorite bosses?
"Well, Markoth, of course, because he seems like a dick, and his shield is, just, his shield is cool, but in practice it doesn't work." [Yeah, cause I killed him!] "Yeah."
[Any bosses that you think are boring?] "Oh, the egg sac one. That one's kind of boring. But you did say that in specific situations it is actually hard."
"Whatever one... the one you fight first is. He seems pretty easy and I also don't really like his design, but that's just my personal opinion. He kinda looks like a flying anteater, but less cute." [... ... what?] "Anteaters are really cute, I'm pretty sure... I think that bug is supposed to be modeled after a mosquito, but, to me for some reason he's always looked like an anteater." [Sure.]
Q: How many areas of the game can you name apart from Godhome?
"Hallownest is the whole thing, and there's the sewers... I bet they all have really cool fancy names, but I don't know the cool fancy names..."
"There's the one you were going to the other day, like, The White City, not Lord of the Rings... and it was really cool."
"I'm sure there's some sort of anthill type thing?"
"Maybe, like, a world of grubs somewhere? Who are probably being feasted on by the flying insects from the Air Nation?" [...It's not even called the Air Nation in Avatar!] "The Air Nomads from Avatar... I'm tired."
Q: Would you like to take a guess at a Precept of Zote you have not seen?
"They're sort of a weird cross between Lorenzo aphorisms and things that actually make sense. I bet one of them is, like, I don't know, Keep Your Feet Clean, like, your feet specifically, for no reason, or a really stupid reason. Because then your head will be clean. I don't know, and you can think better. Kinda feels like a thing that Zote would say.
Precept Fifty-Eight: Keep Your Feet Clean, and Your Mind Cleaner. Like that. Or maybe something like...
Precept Fifty-Nine: Make Sure You Eat All Of Your Cheese. Otherwise, Demons Will Come And Find You. I don't know."
[Beautiful.] "Quotes to live by."
