Hollow Knight Cut Content Script

Our story begins in the distant past. If you're too young to remember 2014, just ask anyone, the world was a very different place. Kids used to spend their free time at a place called Radio Shack. Famous actor Shia Leubouf famously decided he wanted to stop being famous. Bill Cosby made his way back onto TV, but this time it was exactly for advertising Jell-O. But yeah, other than that, and the ISIS invasion of Iraq and that whole Ebola thing, and Ferguson, 2014 was a pretty good year. But the most important event of 2014 happened on November 18th when two Australians going by the names William Pellen and Ari Gibson launched a Kickstarter for a little game called Hollow Knight.

Of course we all know about the final product that was created during the 829 days between the launch of the Kickstarter and the release of the game. But what about the content that was left out? A lot can happen in 829 days. That's like 11.51 Kardashian marriages. Well the first thing I do when I start working on a video is to check the wiki, that way I can just copy paste it into my script. Okay, let’s see here. Oh wait, fuck! Dammit! Bingo. 

This is Hollow Knight Cut Content.

Now at the time of writing, the latest content pack Team Cherry has released is the Grimm Troupe,so it’s always possible that some of the stuff mentioned here will get added into the game in a future update. Team Cherry has dropped the trailer for Content Pack 3, Gods and Glory™. And it looks good. Could use more Bretta tho. But again, we don’t know what all is coming this time around, so it’s possible Team Cherry might throw some cut content back into the game. So if you see something in this video that actually is in the game, please double check before you go to the comments section and call me a stupid asshole. I get enough of that at home.

In Team Cherry’s early Kickstarter updates, they showcased a variety of content that didn’t make it into the final game. Spooky dungeons, giant bosses, whatever the fuck this is supposed to be. Most of these features actually pop up in the Weird and Wonderful World trailer that was dropped during the final week of the Kickstarter. This video has some pretty neat stuff in it, so let’s just start here. 

Ten seconds in, we can already see a cut enemy. This guy first appeared in the third Kickstarter update, going under the name Blundering Oberlisk. It was described as being a careless and clumsy herbivore. So yeah, he just runs into shit, I guess. So why did Blundering Oberlisk get the axe? Well Team Cherry briefly mentioned the enemy in an interview they gave on the Roundtable Live Podcast. 

“And I think pretty much every enemy and boss that we conceived that went anywhere past sketches that once Ari created art for it, we used it. No actually, there are a couple of enemies that we didn’t use, maybe. That weird charging thing with the big nose?”

“Yeah, that never really had an area anyway. There were a lot of enemies that ended up on the cutting room-”

[Extremely Edgy Emo Music]

“That weird charging thing with the BIG NOSE?”

“Yeah, that NEVER REALLY HAD AN AREA ANYWAY.”

♫All around me are familiar faces.♫

Here’s the next interesting scene from the trailer. A Shrumal Warrior is holding a spear that has an infected tip, and he’s talking like a mad man. You remember the Shrumal Warrior, right? The guy who sounds like Owen Wilson. I also wonder if there was originally a plan for a mushroom village, with more mushroom NPCs. In the final game, the closest we get is the fungal core. But the only thing interesting there is this dead guy who complains about the Pale King. Anyway, I think maybe this scene was meant to show how the infection messes with the mind. I mean, if you look at this guy’s dialogue, he does not sound okay. 

Here we can see that there used to be a backstepping mechanic at some point. That would have been nice. At about 30 seconds in, we can see the Knight using an ability called the Tyrant’s Fist. This is clearly an earlier version of the Desolate Dive. They probably changed it after the spell system was more fleshed out, because, you know, you don’t really need magic just to fist things.

During the fight with the Gruz Mother in the Forgotten Crossroads, we see an interesting statue. The statue is of three beings, but the one on the right has been broken. The two remaining statues clearly represent the Pale King and the White Lady, the King and Queen of Hallownest. As for the identity of the third one, well, I’ve actually got good news. 

Team Cherry did an interview on PC Gamer back in August of 2017 where they talked about designing the map of Hallownest. In this article, Team Cherry actually provided pictures of old versions of the map. One map in particular is full of information about Hollow Knight’s development. But what exactly does a map tell us about this statue? Well, we don’t actually give a shit about the map right now, but in the margins of the paper that the map was printed on, we can actually see a sketch of these three figures in an identical pose. And we can see that the figure on the far right looks almost exactly like the Hollow Knight.

So what the fuck does this even mean? Well, it could mean that the Hollow Knight’s adult form was originally the design for another Higher Being. The fact that it’s broken makes me think that the Higher Being is an earlier version of what eventually became the Radiance. What’s also interesting is that the mandibles shown here look a lot like the structures found in the Dream world. We don’t know when the moths ended up in the game, but maybe it wasn’t until later in the game’s development. But it’s interesting to think that the Hollow Knight was at one point the true antagonist of the game

About a minute in, we see something quite strange. Before using the Vengeful Spirit spell, the Knight has a white circle that rotates around it. Later on in the trailer, we can see an item in Sly’s Shop called the White Crystal Ring. So was this White Crystal Ring a power up that allowed the player to charge the Vengeful Spirit attack? I don’t think there’s any way to confirm this, but it’s still pretty interesting. 

Next, we see a pretty crazy ability: Dream Diving. So if the Knight uses the Dream Nail on an NPC, it slices the poor bastard’s head open, allowing the Knight to enter the Dream Well. The Dream Well is where a bug’s hopes, fears and dreams reside. Team Cherry’s plan was to use Dream Diving to give the player unique challenges involving stuff like running away from a horde of invincible flying nightmares or fighting off a group of creatures without using the nail. These areas would also give the player unique items and reveal secrets about the NPC’s past.

There is actually a video showing off the Dream Dive ability on the Elderbug. The Dream World here looks pretty empty. I guess the horde of invincible flying nightmares is off today. At the end of the video, the Knight comes across a younger version of the Elderbug. The name of Elderbug’s younger self has become one of the most divisive issues in the Hollow Knight community. Is it Babybug, maybe Childbug? Maybe his name was Elderbug. You know kinda like how people name their kids Gertrude. 

 I’m kinda bummed that this feature isn’t in the final game, but I agree that removing this feature was probably a good idea. Ari Gibson explained why this feature was removed in the Reddit AMA Team Cherry held back in August 2017.

“We did experiment with a full dream diving system, but it ended up feeling really disjointed and distracted from exploring the world. The time we saved making dream levels went into more fully fleshing out Hallownest.”

It would have been cool to have these little challenges separated from the main game to try out, but then again, we already have the fan-favorites White Palace and Colosseum of Fools for that!

Speaking of things that people love in games, the next scene with cut content shows the Knight swimming underwater. A different gameplay mechanic like this would have been really cool. Also, it would have made more sense if the jellyfish in the Fog Canyon were put in here. In the final game they just sorta of float around in midair like the own the place. Assholes.

Anyway, the next thing we see in the trailer is a giant fucking spider. Now that’s badass. Just look at this thing, it’s huge! When you look at all the bosses that are actually in the game, they are all pretty small. There’s nothing like Kraid from Super Metroid for example. I’m not saying that there needed to be, but it would have been cool to see how Team Cherry handled it. Now, I’m not sure if Team Cherry had much planned for Deepnest at this point, but this makes me curious. Was this boss, or any boss for that matter, intended to be a boss in Beast’s Den? 

Well. Obviously there was. What else would be making this noise? 

[Angery roar]

And don’t try and tell me that it’s just Herrah snoring, Team Cherry! Spider don’t snore! I should know! I just googled it.

Holy shit, this trailer just keeps going, doesn’t it! After the spider boss, we see an unused NPC, a giant snail. It looks like this is an entire village of snails, and the shells look like little houses. God, I wish this place was in the game. I know the character design doesn’t really fit with the game’s atmosphere, but I don’t care, this guy is awesome.

Remember that old map of Hallownest I mentioned? Well, it looks like there might have been an area in the Resting Grounds originally planned for the snails. Of course this could just be a reference to the Snail Shamans. It’s a toss up, really.

Next, we see Sly’s Shop. I mentioned the White Crystal Ring earlier, but there are some others items here too. They are just proto versions of items that ended up in the game. The most interesting one to me is the greed charm. This shows us that the charm system has existed since the early days of the game’s development.

Now, Team Cherry must have known that the snail was fucking cool, because he shows up again, and plot twist, he has a kid, I guess. I just love the expression on this guy’s face. He’s just so fucking done with this kid. And this is so weird that the other snail has a smaller dialogue box. In the final game, there is almost no instance of multiple characters talking at once, other than maybe the Dreamers. I am bummed these guys got the boot, but the artwork for the shell is still in the game, so who know! In a Kickstarter update posted in February 2017, Team Cherry mentioned that two new backer designed bosses, dungeons and a new village would be added to the game later. If this upcoming village is entirely new, it’s gonna have to be pretty good to get me to forget about these guys.

    ♫Memories♫

    ♫Like the coooooorn!♫

And that’s it for the trailer. But there are a few other bits of cut content scattered throughout the Kickstarter page. First let’s look at the stretch goals Team Cherry set during the campaign. The first met stretch goal was the White Palace. This stretch goal promised two boss battles, the Dusk Knight and the King’s Golem. According to Ari from the Reddit AMA, the King’s Golem turned into the Kingsmould enemy, but he’s not sure what happened to the Dusk Knight.

The second stretch goal was the addition of four more sidequests that included 2 more bosses within the game. The first sidequest was titled “A Nailsmith’s Obsession”. This sidequest basically would have dealt with what the Nailsmith would have done after finishing all of the Knight’s nail upgrades. In the final game, the Knight is simply given a binary choice to either straight up murder the Nailsmith as requested or leave him alive. If the Knight leaves him alive the Nailsmith will somehow find his way to Nailmaster Sheo’s house, where the two develop a deep love for one another. And that’s it. Not much of a sidequest, but at least now we know what the Nailsmith’s obsession was. 

[Suggestive music impling that I am taking about sex]

Art!

Another one of these additional sidequests was the Hive. The Hive was described as being a city inhabited by an ancient and proud race. At the heart of the city would be a sad truth as well as a boss encounter. Of course, the real sad truth is there is no boss encounter. Honestly, the Hive is a bit of a let down. It is definitely the most underdeveloped area in the entire game. I mean, come on! Even Cuphead had a bee boss battle. No wonder Cuphead won Best Debut Indie Game, presented by Schick Hydro at the 2017 Game Awards.

Team Cherry has admitted that they would like to add more to the Hive. Ari mentioned in the Reddit AMA that they might add another NPC or put in little homes for the bees to live in. On top of that, Ari also mentioned a connection between Hornet and Vespa, the dead Queen of the Hive. The original idea for Hornet was that she was going to be the Child of Three Queens. She was birthed by Herrah, queen of Deepnest, raised by the White Lady, the Queen of Hallownest, and trained by Vespa, the Queen of the Hive. It’s from Vespa that Hornet received her current name. This makes more sense when you look at older maps of Hallownest while the game was still in development. You can see here that the Hive is actually connected to Deepnest. In the final game, the Hive is about as far away from deepnest as you can get, which makes this seem less plausible. But, Ari didn’t know if this was still the direction they were taking the character, so it’s very possible that this connection between Hornet and the Hive is still canon.

Another one of the sidequests was the Secret of the Stagways, which promised to shed some light on the history and fate of the stags. I’d say this sidequest did make it to the final game with the inclusion of the Stag Home and the hatched egg hidden within.

The last side quest is pretty interesting. It’s called the Lantern on the Black Shore. The description for this event says “Travel beyond the City of Tears and re-ignite an ancient flame.” I assume that this lantern is the lighthouse found in the Abyss, and the Black Shore is the Lake of Void. The boss encounter for this side quest might have just turned out to be the Radiance, but I’m not sure. Now since we’re talking about the Abyss, I figured we should talk about the unmet stretch goal for the Abyss. The Abyss expansion would have added four new bosses to the Abyss. Now as we know, the Abyss has no bosses, even though there are creatures there who appear to be alive.

Ari Gibson filled us in on what the Abyss expansion would have been in the Reddit AMA. He said that the part of the Abyss the player finds is really just the Abyss shore, and that the player would have traveled into the Lake of Void to experience the true twisted world of the Abyss. Some have wondered if Team Cherry will revisit the Abyss in future updates, but Ari dismissed the idea in an interview he gave on The Creative Hustlers Show.

“We could go and do all that but that just means we’re going to be making Hollow Knight for the next four years while we keep adding to it. And what we really want to do is do all the Hollow Knight that we’ve promised, and the little extra bits that we just really can’t help ourselves from doing, close that book for a while and work on something completely different. Another game, but obviously something that is its own world. And then, you know, maybe we’ll feel like returning to it in ten years or something and then the Abyss might be calling.”

The next stretch goal was to bring Hollow Knight to Wii U. So yeah, this has been completely dropped and now Team Cherry is working on porting the game to the Nintendo Switch. I think that this is great. Hollow Knight is going to get a lot of attention once this happens seeing as the Switch has no good games. What’s that? Supper Maario Iliad? Pfff, don’t make me laugh.

There was also an unmet stretch goal to bring Hollow Knight to the PlayStation Vita. But there hasn’t been any news on that. I guess you’ll just have to stick to… uhh… whatever games people play on Playstation Vita. 

One last stretch goal that was not met was for the Colosseum of Fools. It would have added four new bosses and would uncover the mystery surrounding the Colosseum. We got a little light on this from, guess who, Ari Gibson. He said that 2 of these bosses are Zote and the Oblobbles. The other 2 bosses eventually became enemies. Ari also said that the Colosseum still held a mystery, but still no word on that. I do get a gladiator vibe from this new trailer. Maybe the Colosseum will tie in with the new Gods and Glory™ update. But who knows.

Anyway, one thing I should mention is that the Colosseum of Fools was originally planned for the Fungal Wastes. Lorewise, it makes a lot more sense to me that it was placed in an area of the game full of uninfected mantises who believe in the value of strength. I can’t say I really have a good explanation for the lore surrounding the Colosseum now that it’s in Kingdom’s Edge. But I will share a brief summary of my thoughts.

[Oh look, mossbag is stealing another joke from the Simpsons. How original]

Another bit of content Team Cherry teased during the Kickstarter was a battle with Fierce Dryya, who had gone crazy after the death of the Queen of Hallownest. Of course, in the final game, Dryya is dead and the Queen is still alive. Now, out of the Five Great Knights talked about in the game, the player only gets to fight one of them. Twice. But some have speculated that the other Knights could come as dream bosses. However, Ari Gibson dashed all hopes in the Reddit AMA when he said that the Five Great Knights would be explored more in the future, but not necessarily through dreams.

One of the biggest pieces of content cut from Hollow Knight was an area of the game called the Forest of Bones. Team Cherry mentioned this area in an interview on the Roundtable Live podcast when discussing the origins of Hollow Knight’s map.

It was like… we just had… The idea was that you’d have, like, a middle area, and then you had three arounds around it, which is why the original area is called Crossroads in the final game. And it was gonna have, like, Fungus Land, Rain Land, Boneland or whatever.

Boneland was going to be a massive part of the game, with burning tar falling from the ceiling and an area called the Holy Grounds hidden deep within. From the Reddit AMA, William tells us that ants were originally planned for this area. Which would have been fucking awesome. 

From the Roundtable Live podcast, as well as an interview Team Cherry did with PC Gamer, we have a little bit better idea of what the Forest of Bones’ development was like. The area initially started in the top right corner of the map. Apparently, Ari didn’t like the idea of an area with lava being at the top, so they moved the Forest of Bones down to where the Ancient Basin ended up being. According to William, it would have been a large, maze-like area that would eventually lead to the Monarch Wings. After that, the player would have had to then light torches in order to open a gate.

Let’s take a closer look at this map, and see if we can figure it out. The player would have had to enter from Deepnest. The only other area connected to the Forest of Bones was the White Palace which connected to the City of Tears via a one way elevator. The first thing the player would have had to do was probably reach this area right here and get the Monarch Wings which is indicated on the map by this white circle. After that, a lot more of the area becomes unlocked.

The player would then be able to reach these yellow objects, which I assume are the flames that William mentioned in the podcast. After these were lit, the gate here would open up, allowing the player access to this enclosed area. From there, the player would have to reach this green circle, which I assume is the King’s Brand. Then, the player could reach this location, which is probably the Holy Grounds.

Also the Abyss and the White Palace would be accessible at this point as well. If the player has the Shadow Dash, they can go fight this backer boss over here. There’s also a nail art up here for a Nail Art called Skyward Slash. I think this is a village. This looks important but I can’t read this shit. I think it says… Kingmoo? And yeah, that’s pretty much it. Oh and there’s a snail!

    ♫Memories♫

Now let’s talk about the Holy Grounds. This little area on the map has a picture of a broken Dream mask, which is kind of weird, built either way this must be the location of the Dreamer for the Forest of Bones. So which one is it? Well, the word above the mask here says Hegemol, which was actually Herrah’s original name. This is kinda confusing especially since the Holy Grounds have Monomon’s mask plastered everywhere, not Herrah’s. The reason for this is because all of the Dreamers had the same mask very early in the game’s development.

Okay then, so who are these fuckers? They kinda look like Vessels. Okay, this is probably gonna sound fucking crazy, but follow me on this guys. In September 2015, Rock Paper Shotgun published an article that featured pictures from Ari Gibson’s sketchbook. This is cool because Ari’s sketches are where most of the artwork and character designs for Hollow Knight came from. These enemies we see in the Holy Grounds can actually be found in this sketchbook. The sketch details the animation for one of these enemies spawning into the game. Not only that, but there are notes too. These notes detail how a boss fight with the Dreamer would have worked. It says that the boss fight would be incredibly difficult and that the Dreamer could roar to summon minions.

So in other words, these guys are minions who help protect the Dreamers. So yeah, this whole thing sounds pretty weird. Between this and the broken statue in the church, we can definitely tell that Hollow Knight’s story was once quite different. It seems like Team Cherry hadn’t quite decided what the Vessels were yet.

Moving on, we also have pictures from Ari’s sketchbook of some of the artwork for the Forest of Bones. This first drawing shows off these things called “Bone Vines”. We also see these weird looking structures. Here’s a picture of one labeled “Ore Pillar”. We don’t know much about the Pale Ore found in the final game. Ari Gibson said in the Reddit AMA that they were related to the Pale Beings. And that actually makes sense. The Forest of Bones was filled with giant corpses. And as they piled up in this hot area, they might have turned into ore with superior properties.

There’s also this dope lava fountain and I guess this might be the entrance to the Holy Grounds. And that’s about all the information I can find on the Forest of Bones. But why did it get removed in the first place? Team Cherry gave two reasons as to why they cut the Forest of Bones. The first reason was that it would have taken a really long time to finish. The second reason they gave was that they thought it would be too much for players to handle. Those are pretty good reasons I guess… Goddammit.

During the Kickstarter, Team Cherry announced a new pledge tier that allowed donors to make their own dungeon and boss. They mentioned ideas like a robot graveyard, and even showed off this drawing for a dungeon called Carnival of Crustatins. Yeah, I know, it’s super weird. But what’s cool is the description up in the corner. It mentions organ music, hanging lights and tents, all things that made it into the game with the Grimm Troupe content pack. Not this juggling crab boss thing tho. Sorry Crabello.

♫All around me are fam-♫

There are also a few charms that got left out of the game. Back in February of 2016, Team Cherry posted an article announcing the inclusion of the charm system in Hollow Knight. In this post, we see a couple of charms that did not make it into the final game. Two of these cut charms are identified as as the Vengeful Swarm and the glass charm Unending Greed. Vengeful Swarm was a charm that would spawn hatchlings when the Knight would take damage. So it’s sorta like a mix between Thorns of Agony and Glowing Womb. Unending Greed is clearly just the original version of Fragile Greed.

There’s also some charm designs leftover from inside the game. There’s a dulled out version of Dashmaster. And this one kinda reminds me of Carefree Melody.

Now let’s talk about some of the unused content that got left in the game. First off, we have this unused sprite sheet of a small enemy. Pretty fucking lame, but hey there it is.

Moving on, user kcghost released a mod for Hollow Knight back in July that gave the player access to some rooms that were left in the game. Unfortunately, these rooms were removed from the game with the Hidden Dreams update. So this mod no longer works with the current version of the game. But don’t worry, you’re not missing out on much.

Some of the rooms are just untextured areas. There are also some pretty strange rooms that feature tight pathways, one of which stretches on for quite some time. These two rooms look a lot like the underwater room from the trailer, as well as the room where Unn can be found in the final game. This really long ass room is very similar to the room with Unn in it. But I wonder if this area was supposed to be filled with acid. Maybe the Knight reaches the bottom of this room, where Unn would give it the ability to swim back up. Otherwise, it’s pretty difficult to get out of this area. I don’t know, just a theory. There’s also some cut rooms from Crystal Peaks, but there’s nothing really that exciting about them. I’ll show them to you anyway, but I don’t have anything to say, so I’m just gonna play some royalty free jazz music.

[Royalty free Jazz music intensifies]

Here we have a room filled with moth statues. This area was shrunk down and hidden within the Glade of Hope in the final game. But even in this earlier version, there is still a ledge for the Knight to stand on so it can dream nail this statue. It doesn’t do anything here, but the statue in the finished map takes the Knight to the Shrine of Believers.

There’s also a test room for the Dreamers, which contains a static guardian that we can’t interact with. He’s just sorta chilling. Kinda looks like he’s about to flash us, the fucking pervert.

The last room is the most interesting. It’s the only cut room with an interactable bench. And it’s full of string and needles which look exactly like the needle that Hornet uses. What’s even more interesting is that the exit in this room leads to the room in the Ancient Basin where the White Palace once stood, but since there’s no adjoining exit in this room, the player gets stuck. Is this cut room supposed to be Hornet’s room? Or is it just to show that the White Palace had some sort of connection with the Weavers? In the Hidden Stag Station that was added in the Hidden Dreams update, we can see that the thread is still there. 

Alright, so there’s all the boring stuff out of the way. Now it’s time to talk about cut dialogue! And trust me boys and girls, Team Cherry cut dialogue from this game almost as much as the Schick Hydro 5 Sensitive Razor cuts away unwanted facial hair while helping to protect your skin from irritation. So we’re about to go head first into some deep Hollow Knight lore. If you don’t have a good understanding of the lore, then, well... I’m not mad, but I am disappointed.

Now I wanted to start off by talking about the Elegy of Hallownest. The first four lines of this poem appear at the beginning of the game. But the rest of the poem can only be found by digging into the game’s files. In fact, the Elegy of Hallownest isn’t even a complete poem. It literally just stops midway through one of the lines. And yet, everyone and their fucking grandma uses this poem when they talk about Hollow Knight lore. So can we really consider these unused lines as canon? At the end of the day, what were are really trying to figure out is what is written in the Hollow Knight lore Bible. That’s more important than figuring out what is canonical within the game, if that makes any sense at all.

Anyway, there’s this dialogue from the Moss Prophet. Here, we get a little insight into what pisses the Radiance off. She doesn’t like it when creatures change form, which is probably referring to how the Pale King transformed from a wyrm. She’s also against stealing soul which is probably referring to how the Knight gains soul from hurting other creatures. And then she talks about how the only crime a God can commit is by dying. Is she referring to how the Pale King might be dead? Or is she just saying that she refuses to die herself? She caps things off by talking about how the empty ones must be destroyed. Myla has similar dialogue in the final game.

Now the most cut dialogue we have is for the three dreamers. In the final release of Hollow Knight, the three dreamers talk in brief sentences and their dream nail dialogue is even shorter. It’s kind of hard to understand in the final dialogue, but the Dreamers have a debate as to what to do with our little bug buddy here. From looking at this cut dialogue it becomes much more clear what was going on here. Monomon argues that the Knight should be allowed to break the seals on the Hollow Knight, while Lurien argues that the seals should remain, since that was the oath the Dreamers made to the king. Herrah doesn’t seem to care, since she’s only in it for Hornet. 

For example, here’s a line that was originally meant for Monomon the Teacher:

“We sealed that plague, and thought we’d found an answer, but we were wrong. Our sacrifices... what did they win us? A world sealed in stasis."

Here’s a line from Luiren:

“Remember our promise, sister! We three vowed to protect the seal with all of our devotion.”

This isn’t really a line from Herrah, but more of a note about what she would say: 

“More detached than the other dreamers? Maybe ponders how the Hollow Knight (vessel) feels after all this time. Would he make the same choice again?First few dialogues are very taciturn"”

There’s also a generic line about the Pale King:

“Our King appears as bug, and I shall take him as so. But his are traits that transcend our kind. His is a mind beyond ours. Deity given form.In sleep, I shall not look upon his like again."

The Dreamers also had different lines that they would give to the Knight when found in the Dream world. Here’s a line from Monomon:

“Only one path I see. The Seals must break. Will it bring destruction? Of course. It will bring change, too. Let it. To live forever in an unchanging world... Death, I would fear less.”

This line is probably from Lurien:

“Remember our bond... our sacrifice. For the kingdom’s sake... for the one we must protect."

And again Herrah’s dialogue is in note form:

“Talks about her history: As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child. Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?"

Then there’s this huge monologue from Monomon. Now there’s a lot here, and it’s hard to know how much of this still reflects Team Cherry’s plan for Hollow Knight’s story. According to Monomon here, the kingdom of Hallownest lasted for a very long time and had reached a point where civilization had stopped advancing. She also mentions that Hallownest struggled both against the Radiance as well as the Void. We don’t really know the full details of the Pale King’s relationship with the void, but we do know that the Void tries to consume any creatures or beings around it. The King used the void for his constructs, but maybe his tampering put his people in greater risk than we know. And what’s with “we found each other after all” line? Was Monomon actively seeking the Knight out? Did Quirrel somehow help with this effort?

Then there’s this line, which to me, is super interesting. 

“An empty vessel to bring hope. A strong vessel to bring stagnation. An enlightened vessel to bring an end.”

Yeah, this is some Lord of the Rings type shit right here. In almost sounds like some sort of prophecy or something.

Now I can see interpreting this in two ways. The empty vessel is the Hollow Knight, the strong vessel is the main character if the player gets the Hollow Knight ending, while the enlightened vessel is the main character if the player gets the Dream No More ending. Another way I like to interpret this is that the empty vessel is the first Sibling ever made, the strong vessel is the hollow knight, and the enlightened vessel is the player character.

Okay, I have two more lines left to show you. These last two are kind of unique. Not only were they not used in the final game, these two lines were completely removed from the game’s code after launch. Which leads me to believe they are super juicy.

The first one comes from the White Lady:

“Two halves of a whole. You found your way... back to me? We were so unfair, weren’t we? To cast you out. Please, you must not hate him. He did what he thought was right. The Kingdom had to live...”

Okay, so this pretty much lines up with what we already know. The Kingsoul, the Siblings being locked away. But that last line is kind of interesting.

Anyway, the last line comes from the Pale King. His Dream Nail dialogue in the final game reads “No cost too great.”. But at one point it might have been “False one… you can not… reach me… here”. Well, it seems to confirm that the Pale King is indeed hiding in the White Palace. But who is this “false one”? He’s probably referring to the Radiance, the false god of Hallownest, right? Or is he? 

[X-Files Theme intensifies]

Oh, wait wait wait a minute. As much as I want to get into this right now, this isn’t the right place for deep lore. I’m sorry, guys! 

The last thing I wanted to talk about was those sketches that we have from Ari Gibson. I showed off a lot of them for the Forest of Bones, but there are a few more I’d like to share with you. This picture has some pretty interesting stuff. On the far left we can see a giant but with ten legs wearing a Dreamer mask. Was there a plan for the Dreamer boss to transform into an actual enemy? I mean, wouldn’t a fight with this fuck face be pretty easy? I guess we’re in his dream so he could probably do whatever he wanted to us, right? Hit us with a train or something?

Then, there’s this guy. His mask is similar to the mask worn by Herrah and the Weavers, so maybe this was the king of Deepnest or something. But part of me says this guy might have been connected to the Colosseum of Fools. The symbol for the colosseum also has the six eye hole design, and this guy has that same spiked shell that the Lore Fool has. And it looks like this guy is presiding over something. Also, here’s the trilobite from Deepnest, and this confirms that something is supposed to come out of that thing. Over here we see an early design for the White Lady in her little cocoon ball thingy.

Now honestly, this last image bummed me out. This is an early design for Nosk. So there are two obvious difference here. First of all, he’s got fucking wings. Second, he has a longer tail that he probably used to attack the Knight with. Everyone in the Hollow Knight community likes to shit on Nosk. He’s got such great build up to his fight, and then the fight itself is just lame. Imagine how crazy the Nosk encounter would be if it started the same, but then he turned into this fucking Ridley-type motherfucker.

And that’s it for this video. Sorry it was so short. To make up for it, check out this blog I just posted. In this post, I compiled all of the evidence I found for this video into one spot. It’s pretty good to be honest. Very dense and concise. In fact, I don’t know why I even bothered making this long winded video. I should just stop right now.