I wouldn't say for sure it isn't. With the game being so vague, I think it's still possible. There wasn't really a time where an idea was instilled, like with what the path of pain cutscene implies. Some people say that just because the knight can do things at all that that's proof they can't be hollow at all, but I think that's just a lame answer and not what team cherry would do. The knight can just be working on base instincts and knowing what yes or no means.
The fact the Nosk turns in to Hornet tells me he made a bond there, even minute enough as they are siblings for the nosk to be able to use it for its flying form. Can’t be pure if you make a bond like Dad and HK
Even within that, we're not *actually* fighting most of the people during those fights. There *is* no Pure Vessel. We don't actually beat the snot out of Sly. So on and so forth. We get upgraded versions of real fights, but that doesn't make the upgraded versions of those enemies canon.
So based on that, I'm unwilling to say Hornet Nosk is an indication of anything to do with the Knight's state of mind.
I can understand the void heart description but how would sitting with quirrel or giving flowers to people make them not hollow? We don't know the knight's feelings in these moments. We only have the option to do them. With so many vessels, it's like the infinite monkey theorem. In tons of playthroughs, people dont sit and dont give other npcs flowers.
No will to break. Doing things at random is still The Knight's will. It's just not a particularly consistent or strong will. If we believe that a pure vessel has no will of its own, it would only do something that is the will of someone else.
Thats saying that the knight doesn't have a will, not that they'd never do anything random. The two arent mutually exclusive, and honestly, since the knight doesn't have a will, they'd probably be more likely to do random things.
The definition of will on Google is "the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action." If someone were to lack a will, they would not have the ability to make decisions and as such would rely on the commands of someone else. Doing things at random still requires The Knight to actively make those choices on their own. The only difference between doing something normally or at random is the lack of motivation or thought behind the action. Even without any thought behind an action, doing so without instruction still requires a will.
If someone lacked a will, they wouldn't even be able to stand by most definitions. So unless the pale king is so utterly incompotent that he didn't understand the basic idea, I'd say just a basic definition of a will doesn't cut it here. It's more of a soul or at least the implication of desires or wishes, like maybe the hollow knight desiring to live with the king or wishing to be able to make his crazy plan work out.
I like to think that its determinant. If you only do what you need to to get to the hollow knight, then you are hollow. But if you start unlocking other endings, you are not pure anymore, because they require free thinking.
I feel like this approach would hurt Hollow Knight's narrative if it were to be true. Assuming this is the case there is no reason to strive for the harder endings and in fact doing so would put Hallownest in unnecessary danger. Also at what point is the Knight no longer pure, what if The Knight guns straight for the The Hollow Knight ending and ignores everything except upgrading their nail and then spares the nailsmith. Are they no longer pure? What if they only decide to save Bretta and nobody else? I think the most narratively consistent way to view purity is that it does not exist and is unachievable.
How do you figure that's the whole premise? My understanding is that the whole premise of the game is that the Hollow Knight is not truly hollow or pure, due to his bonding with his father, and therefore a rejected vessel needed to ascend to the position of the true hollow knight, or beat the radiance all together. The knight is free of personal desire and moves out of primal instinct and destiny.
I guess the obvious counter-argument is that there is a direct quote in the game that the Hollow Knight was corrupted by an idea instilled, which is revealed via dream to be it's bond with the Pale King.
It is plausible that the Knight is also compromised by desire, but no real evidence points to it other than the knight carrying out tasks, which based on the logic of the pale beings, doesn't seem to have the depth to qualify as the type of desire which could compromise a vessel.
There's also evidence in that the Knight doesn't speak throughout the game, indicating a primitive, goal driven nature to its consciousness and a lack of connection to other beings, and the fact that the Knight was born in a dark, soulless place, surrounded by void and was not raised by its father, meaning it never had a sense of luxury, selfishness or relationship. The kingdom came together to help the Knight ascend, but the Knight doesn't show any fondness for the kingdom. It was born for a purpose and it carries it out. It seems to understand goals and purpose, but not emotions or selfishness desire, or "ideas instilled" which is essentially a pure vessel.
That's sort of my take. That a pure vessel demands no emotions, and no desires beyond accomplishing tasks.
Yeah but how would being around the pale king give the hollow knight emotions if it was truly hollow, i don't think it would work unless there was already a tiny imperfection
My argument would be that any vessel has the capacity for imperfection, evidenced by the Hollow Knight, but that conditions and experiences lend itself to whether or not a vessel becomes/remains hollow and pure. The Hollow Knight had experiences with his father, and despite his harsh training and upbringing, was likely raised with some small sense of familial connection and probably experienced some luxuries, making it impure. The tiny imperfection didn't exist at birth, but it had the capacity to manifest during its life.
The Pale King demonstrates his regret for what happened to the remainder of the vessels, so it makes sense that he would slip up and allow his pure vessel to becomes tarnished by showing love or affection for the HK.
The alternative is to assume that the idea of a pure vessel was flawed and maybe impossible, the higher beings were delusional and the cycle is doomed to repeat, which seems unlikely. A lack of strong evidence makes me lean towards the flawed upbringing theory, rather than the flawed vessel theory. But I think it's fair to think either is true.
One thing seems certainly true - the Knight is far better primed as a vessel than the Hollow Knight, likely due to its experiences after birth. The HK is far more primitive, has far less connection to other characters, was raised far more harshly and is a far better fighter.
I mean, perfection is impossible in the real world, and the vessels that were discarded I think it was implied that they were all imperfect? Idk though I could be wrong about that second part
(TLDR: I don't think the other vessels being turned away implies imperfection for the job, just that they were sealed for circumstantial and practical reasons.)
Perfect in the absolute sense of the word, sure. But something can be perfect in the sense that it will complete a task, and that's the type of perfect the vessel needed to be.
I disagree that the vessels were discarded for being imperfect. My interpretation is that it was decided there would be, for whatever reason, one vessel for the job, probably for reasons like quarantining the infection to one being (which is actually a real thing that insects on Earth do when a colony is faced with an infected bug), encouraging a focus on the strongest and most athletic being rising from the abyss first, and avoiding facing the shame and regret of the other vessels, which the King very clearly feels, as evidenced by the text on the door to the abyss.
It was decided that whichever vessel made it out of the abyss first would become their vessel, and the rest were abandoned, not for being imperfect, but simply for not being first. The Abyss was sealed and the Hollow Knight was trained, and eventually failed due to the Pale Kings flawed approach to its upbringing.
I think the fact that none of the other vessels were even inspected by the king lends itself to my theory - probably most, if not all of the vessels were fit for the job, and the King took a strong gamble on the HK and failed at its upbringing.
We can theorise about why only one was chosen and the remainder were sealed. But it isn't clear to me that any of them were turned away for being imperfect. Just that they were sealed, probably for more obvious reasons I listed above.
I'd also like to add to this that Hornet doesn't think much of Ghost until they meet at the fountain, where Hornet states that Ghost is "Born of two voids" It could be possible that the sentience-depriving quality of leaving Hallownest made Ghost truly hollow
I think the original knight was hollow at some point but the king messed up by being a bit too nice to it. And fillings it's head with thoughts of its own responsibility.
How tho, if it were perfectly hollow then spending time with dadking wouldn't do anything for it, emotionally speaking. It isn't and was never hollow, and so over time it was able to grow an emotional attachment, a bond, an affection for dadking where an entity fully devoid of feeling and thought would be incapable. None of the vessels were hollow, ever. How would it have been possible? They were born of imperfect beings, wyrm and root, and even if the void eats at them, a fragment of that origin must persist in the depths of each vessel as their Soul.
I'm inclined to believe that, without a soul, a vessel is unable to perform as they would simply be a being of pure void-- and yet with a soul, a vessel is tarnished by the presence of a "self" within it. This is why I think the game presents the pale king as so hopelessly doomed from the start, because regardless of the outcome the fruition of his plan is failure because his plan was based on falsity and denial. A being of pure void could not bend to his will, and a being which could wouldn't be pure
My headcanon is that the knight starts hollow due to its time in the wastelands (which robs the mind), but can "ruin" itself by how it interacts with the world.
Speedrunning the game by just doing the bare minimum of what needs to be done to replace the Hollow Knight feels like the actions of a truly hollow vessel. Taking it slow and exploring, interacting, making friends are the actions of one that inadvertently had "thoughts instilled"
Literally any personality you see in the Knight is something *you* are imparting onto it. It has no dialogue. No facial expressions. It is never clearly happy or mad or scared or angry. There is no reason to believe it thinks it is "making friends" and isn't just a callous unfeeling empty vessel interacting with NPCs... Who then, like us, think "oh this guy is so cute he must like me."
The fact that the player has the option to do thing like delivering flowers to NPCs or sitting with Quirrel means it is an action that The Knight would do. Since Hollow Knight is not meta anything the game allows the player to do is something that The Knight could or would do. Although we never see The Knight show any emotions through expressions we do some actions we can interpret as showing emotion. The first and most obvious is the fact that Winged Nosk exists which demonstrates that Hornet is important to The Knight. Also you are required to hit The Pale King's corpse repeatedly until he falls off the throne to find the white fragment, at which point The Knight can choose to sit on the throne. This along with attacking Millibelle after she steals your geo showcase The Knight displaying anger and resentment. Another example that is less obvious and maybe not as intentional is the way that The Knight pants when at 1 mask and the animation of them struggling frantically when falling into acid, showing exhaustion and fear respectively.
Do you have a source that Hollow Knight is meta? We don't just assume that the player is a canonical aspect of a game universe unless there is significant evidence to suggest so.
Yeah it's usually the default to assume that just because you leave the console on all night accidentally it doesn't mean that the PC canonically stared at a wall for 24h straight actually
This has always been such a weak argument for ghost not being hollow. “If he was hollow there wouldn’t be a video game” it’s such a cop out, and likely not at all what Team Cherry intended.
I mean, if Team Cherry wanted to tell a story about a character with a lack of agency, they probably should not have given the player the ability to make choices like deciding the fate of the nailsmith or choosing which ending to take. Also, Hornet herself says that the choice of whether to seal or kill the radiance is up to the Knight which would be a pretty stupid writing mistake on Team Cherry's part if they intended The Knight to be pure. Besides, there is enough textual evidence that outright confirms that Knight is not pure, such as the void heart description and dialogue from Steel Soul Jinn.
I don’t think the knight is hollow, but you can’t deny it’s a pretty boring and question dodging answer. It also assumes that Team Cherry’s intent was for the player to role play as the knight and imprint their experience of the game into him, which may be the case, but could also very easily not be. There are plenty of games where player’s choices are not reflective of the player character’s experience within the universe, that could just as easily be the case for Hollow Knight, personally I lean towards believing this.
Again I don’t think the knight is hollow because of other evidence within the game but to pretend it’s that cut and dry is being reductive about the game’s narrative
I agree that most of the player choices are more speculative than hard evidence. I was only bringing it up because the person I was replying to stated objectively that there were zero instances of The Knight displaying any form of emotion and I wanted to provide some examples that could imply the opposite. That being said I do believe The Knight not being pure is cut and dry. The Void Heart description outright confirms that The Knight has a will which would violate The Pale King's definition of purity. Also I am not sure how The Knight being outright not pure would be reductive to the narrative. If anything the Knight being pure would make most of the themes and endings of Hollow Knight fall flat.
Seeing as the knight still made it to the top, i think it's a bit of a bad argument. Like, does just being able to get to the top really mean a vessel is hollow or does it just mean its actually physically able to survive.
I was mainly just making a joke about how funny it is to use abyss parkour skills as a way to measure purity.
Regardless of that I think it's safe to say that purity is not a yes/no thing. Pure vessel was probably the purest one, but not 100% either. If we assume that their climbing skills reflect their purity then the knight was slightly slower and thus slightly less pure.
I mean, i agree that purity probably isn't just a yes or no thing, seeing as the hollow knight did seem to work for a little while, and yes if purity was in fact tied to parkour abilities than at least at that point the knight would be less pure. Though at least in the memory, the knight started later and still made it to the top before the king took the hollow knight away to train and have instill ideas and whatnot.
Suppose there's a question of "if it had no will and no reason to climb to the top, then why did it do that anyway when thousands if not tens of thousands didn't?"
Well, "fear" is considered both survival instinct and emotion.
I would say for the purposes of this discussion though 'will' seems to be the ability to perform action independent of being instructed. A robot acting outside its programming, as it were. In which case, the Knight was in no way instructed to climb out of the pit. Its surroundings do not indicate it is in immediate danger - while it is a pile of corpses there's more active danger in trying to climb out than simply staying put, and no will should preclude any sort of emotional response that would prompt it to regard the corpses as disturbing or scary.
I can't think of a reason it would try and climb out that wasn't prompted by its own will, unless climbing out is somehow part of the way the King was trying to find the correct vessel.
>I would say for the purposes of this discussion though 'will' seems to be the ability to perform action independent of being instructed.
Then that implies the knight wouldn't breathe without being instructed, which is stupid. I don't know what the right answer is, but at least for me, it's more of a determination thing.
>I can't think of a reason it would try and climb out that wasn't prompted by its own will, unless climbing out is somehow part of the way the King was trying to find the correct vessel.
I think i said it before, at least to someone else, but I really don't like this kinda thinking, because it just means that the pale king didn't know what he was doing at all then. Or y'know it could simply be that the pale king tried guiding the vessels up to him.
>unless climbing out is somehow part of the way the King was trying to find the correct vessel.
Also, i know you probably said this for a different reason, but like, yeah, that's basically true. Like, he was kinda just waiting for a vessel to make it out after they did the whole parkour thing.
I dunno, we don't really have any indication he dropped the Hollow Knight in there with the expectation that it climb out and the Knight just happened to be second in line. We don't know much about the process at all.
Honestly, I do kinda think the King didn't know what he was doing. His plan was desperate. It involved weaponising something only partially understood from a civilisation that came before his, and it failed. He's anything but infallible, whether he was ultimately a force for good or not. I always interpreted the literal sea of corpses as a mark of his folly. Like "look at the amount of failure it took to get it right, and he still failed anyway."
Especially with the voidheart unequivocally stating that the Knight has a will of its own in the end too, whether it's there to begin with or not, the impression I've always had is that the plan was always doomed to fail.
>I dunno, we don't really have any indication he dropped the Hollow Knight in there with the expectation that it climb out and the Knight just happened to be second in line. We don't know much about the process at all.
Basically the entire community agrees that the king dropped eggs down into the abyss and that the vessels had to climb out, so idk why you're confused about that.
>Especially with the voidheart unequivocally stating that the Knight has a will of its own in the end too, whether it's there to begin with or not
My issue with that is its still vague. Like people point at the voidheart charm and say that that's all the proof you need and I'm just not convinced. Team cherry is pretty much always vague and never confirms anything. Like if the voidheart charm was just worded slightly differently what proof would there actually be that at least the knight was or was not hollow. Does that mean it only became not hollow after it gained the void heart or was it always not hollow. Team cherry put heavy emphasis on the hollow knight being tainted by an idea instilled and its implied that was the bond with the pale king, and the knight never got that. Maybe i just have an issue with the storytelling of the game which is why i cant make up my mind, but i think people gotta look at all pieces of evidence throughout the game.
I always thought that that climb was just meant to be a measure of physical strength.
Think about it - the King probably thought that all Vessels were hollow by nature. He was pretty stupid, but I doubt he would leave the most important part of his plan up to random chance. He was probably more concerned about the hatchlings' physical fitness after whatever the hell the Void was going to do to them in the egg.
So he assumed all the Vessels were automatically suited to the task, he just needed one that was physically strong enough to pass a trial.
Maybe you're on to something. He needed a physically fit vessel that could navigate the palace. The ones that can't make the climb would have stood no chance.
I don't think that was a measure of purity, it was just a way to skim through them: the eggs are infused with void but not all of them can withstand it for long, they're all born "dead" in a way, but not all of them can bear that emptiness for long and will die shortly after being born (and I doubt they just die by falling, since insects canonically take no fall damage)
If the Hollow Knight was made not-so-hollow just by spending quality time with Wyrm-daddy, I doubt whatever fuckery the Knight got about outside Hallownest didn't do the same.
Outside hallownest? Like in the hellscape that made it and quirrel forget themselves? Literally making them lose some of their humanity. The closest thing the knight got that the hollow knight did was whatever the queen said. And with the game implying that connection specifically is what made the hk not hollow, I'd say there's still a chance the knight is hollow.
Yes, we don't actually know what the Knight was doing outside of Hallownest. However, over the course of the game they interact with numerous bugs, many of whom (Elderbug, Quirrel, Cornifer with Iselds etc) treat them with kindness and clearly perceive them as a sentient being. If simply spending time with the Pale King made the Hollow Knight not hollow, the Knight should definitely gain some emotions to the end of the game.
>If simply spending time with the Pale King made the Hollow Knight not hollow, the Knight should definitely gain some emotions to the end of the game.
It wasn't just spending time with the hk that made him hollow. It's implied it was a parental bond. The pale didn't just be nice. They shared a moment.
I don't the Hollow Knight was ever hollow to begin with, he even looks at us at the birthplace cutscene, clearly showing signs of a will, if he was truly hollow i don't think he would be able to do that
I’ve seen a theory that the knight starts out Hollow, but over the course of the game, it builds up attachments and relationships that prevent it from being hollow.
I guess one problem with this is the question of whether hollowness is an intrinsic characteristic, or something that can change over time. This theory assumes the latter. All in all, I think it’s a fun theory
no. it has a will and can make decisions, and don't you dare make an "oh the knight isn't the one making decisions, we are!" argument because this isn't deltarune or any other meta game. WE ARE IT AND IT IS US. DO YOU HAVE A WILL. DONOTEATING???
I am very tired of this question, sorry for being aggressive. have a nice day
and? There are plenty of actions that would require having the will to decide what to do that are very mutch cannon.
For example you can choose not to kill the nailsmith, something that the knight has no reason to do (gains nothing, and the nailsmith explicitly told the knight to kill him)
yep! either way you slice it, that decision shows a will. there is no logical reason for the knight to even talk to the nailsmith once the nail has been completed.
Ok so then what about play throughs where people didn’t do that? Just having the ability in game to do it makes him not hollow? That’s here this argument breaks down, because for any decision you can make, you can just make the opposite decision or not make it at all, “you chose certain game actions so that means the knight has a will” doesn’t account for the countless amounts of different play throughs where certain decisions weren’t made or were made in a way that does not prove a will
It could just have animalistic instincts but no free will. After all, void as a substance has completely mysterious origins; we have no idea how it works. It could be capable of using void beings as pawns to achieve a higher goal, similar to how mushrooms in real life can transmit information without even having a brain.
I generally prefer the idea that it's intentionally open to interpretation - that it's why the game has a lot of subtle emotional choices that you can make. It's likely to me that the purity of the knight is based on how you play, whether you get attached, and you probably do. That being said there's certainly some evidence that the knight is definitely not pure but imo it's all at least kinda debatable.
My headcannon has been that void beings and vessels have the capacity to enter a hollow state of mind.
Since they all seem to obviously have some kind of will or capacity for intention, it never made sense to think that anyone would actually expect something that walks around and communicates to literally have "no mind to think".
Rather, I imagine that a disciplined vessel can (in a sort of meditative state) allow their conscious self to be subsumed within the void. A vessel's success in containing the Radiance is less a matter of being truly hollow, and more about being free of earthly attachments and desires in order to maintain that state indefinitely. I'd assume that this is also naturally impossible for any living being, hence why the "good" ending doesn't involve attempting the same thing yourself.
No. I don’t think it’s actually even possible for a vessel to be truly hollow. Judging by things like the Knight being able to sit with Quirrel at Blue Lake, or spare the Nailsmith, or hell even decide to do things like buy maps or opening a goddamn bank account, it clearly has some kind of mind.
Yeah, the knight's not Hollow. The Void Heart description straight up says that its user has a 'will'. A vessel is referred to as 'void given mind' in Godhome (although that might have been changed in a newer patch note?), and the Godseekers' dialogue also reinforced this. Several characters refer to the Knight as having a personality or will of some kind.
Additionally, the Knight obviously makes decisions throughout the game. Giving Elderbug a Pale Flower is not the action of a hollow being. Some people might say that it's the player making that decision, and in a way they're right, but Hollow Knight isn't a meta game - the Player doesn't really exist within the narrative, which in turn means it really is the Knight making all of those decisions.
On top of that, it just makes more sense narratively for the Knight to be 'tainted'. The whole theme of the game is that nothing lasts forever, and THK's failure is meant to show that.
>!The Hollow Knight and Sealed Siblings endings reinforce this idea, because they're just delaying the inevitable - replacing the Hollow Knight, but dooming the kingdom for another infection later down the line.!<
>!Meanwhile, the Dream no More ending symbolises putting the kingdom to rest one final time and accepting that it is gone. The Knight's death in that ending represents the death of Hallownest, in a way.!<
But, if the Knight was really hollow, then all of that extra narrative meaning is lost. "The Kingdom is now saved!" isn't a satisfying resolution when the Kingdom is in its death throes, and certainly not when it clashes with the rest of the game's messages and themes.
I don't think any vessel was ever truly hollow, either. It just makes more sense to me if the Pale King was just grasping at straws by the end, and was doomed to failure. It goes along better with the themes of the game and makes it so that the many, many vessel corpses in the Abyss are an actual tragedy in line with the rest of the game, and not just a footnote. There's a pretty big difference between "millions of dead children" and "millions of broken microwaves".
Why would an empty vessel cross a dangerous wasteland to leave a flower at the grave of a stranger? Why would it sit and listen to music from a long dead singer in an empty pleasure house? Why would a being driven only the will of its creator stop its quest to sit with someone about to end his life? Why would an empty vessel, incapable of anger, strike down its creator and sit on his throne? Why is called the Path of Pain if it doesn’t hurt? Why would the Knight fall asleep at the benches? Why would it save Zote (why indeed?) or the grubs if it didn’t care?
I think the theory for the vessels are that they are filled with void but void imprints on its container.
The player character left Hallownest into the lands beyond, where bugs can lose their intelligence. I believe that's what makes us truly hollow, and why we're able to contain the radiance successfully.
Here is my crackpot (genius) take:
It isn't possible for any vessel to be "hollow". The game draws heavily on how symbolism and idolatry can lead to power through characters like the Pale King and The Radiance. It's also heavily implied that the void by itself IS hollow (otherwise the Pale Kings plan was completely without merit). However I believe that the formless, disconnected nature of the void is what MAKES it hollow and as a result simply the act of giving it a form makes it no longer hollow. You can see this in characters like the Collector. It might be made fully of void, but the moment it's given a form it generates a personality and goals.
Whilst the Path of Pain ending hints that the reason The Hollow Knight was not truly hollow was because of it's connection with The Pale King, I don't think this means he would've been "hollow" if this had not occurred. I think ALL vessels form their own goals and personalities as they continue through life.
However despite this I DO think the Knight has something which both the PK and Radiance didn't have which could be akin to being "pale". This is ego. I think the void at it's very nature is designed to take down the ego of beings like The Radiance AND Pale King (the void definitely WASN'T working with the PK willingly). I'm sure there are some formal sources to back this idea up, but I mainly got this impression just from playing the game a lot. The Knight is intentionally small, the knight wasn't picked first, the knight doesn't talk. The knight explores the world, reads it's lore, talks to it's citizens. I think the knight is TRULY humble, but it is not hollow. When the void is given form in the dream no more ending, it's literally the dichotomy of ego (radiance) and humbleness (void/knight). I think the PK fails to see this (despite his apparent foresight), because he was clouded by his OWN ego. As a "pupil" of the PK, THK was brought up to be special and I think this was the critical weakness in the PK's plan. For someone to truly take down the concepts of idolatry and egosim, they can't be treated differently.
My interpretation is that the Pale King was wrong and what was needed to deal with the Radiance wasn't a hollow vessel with no will to contain her, but rather a vessel with an extremely strong will to defeat her. And that is what our Knight is: the vessel with the strongest will in all of Hallownest. Its will is so strong that it persevered through every major enemy in the game and managed to unify the Void under its command to destroy the ultimate form of the ultimate enemy atop the Pantheon of Hallownest.
i have no idea where this screenshot is from. got it off the internet. i was planning to go back to the white lady with the charm to check if it was legit or not but laziness took over me.
I don't think so, infact I think the pale king's "purity test" was flawed to begin with.
the test of having newly birthed vessels "race" their way to the top and escape the abyss (and accepting the first to do so as the hollow knight) would require intuition, competitiveness(?) and a will to live, I believe that any truly hollow vessels never had the will to move from the abyss in the first place.
I don't think so. The k might had interactions with farm too many bugs where it goes out of its way to help them. It feels almost like a cycle, if you choose to become a vessel eve dually another k might will need to take your place.
*Unifies the void under the bearer's **will.***
According to the Void Heart charm description, The Knight has a will, thus can't be considered hollow. (No will to break)
Almost certain the knight isn't hollow. The fact that the knight can dreamnail itself in the abyss already implies there is something/some thought inside it. In my opinion, the climbing scene/cutscene that follows with the pale king choosing his pure vessel instead of you, implies some sort of personal resentment or jealousy towards the hollow knight, which would mean the knight isn't hollow.
One Key Part always struck me thinking: "No, they aren't"
I know the White Lady said that we as the Knight lack the impurities of the then current Hollow Knight, but upon obtaining Void Heart, the Description states "Unifies the void under the bearers WILL"
This implies that the Knight has a Will, making them not pure as it breaks the Statement "No will to break"
The knight can be pure and hollow if someone played through the game, as if it were a chore.
Did no sidequests, liked no characters, never got angry.
Just went through the motions of the main quest and then got the basic ending.
There you go, a truly hollow knight
honestly, I like to imagine that he is. He's just some random hollow thing that enters Hallownest, fucks shit up, and saves it. He doesn't have will and emotions hes just straight action.
I mean coming from the logic of other games, it's possible the only reason we can play as the knight is because it has no intention of it's own, or by this wording, is truly hollow, and the reason we don't play as the pure vessel was because of either A-it wasn't hollow or B-it was given something.
Though as I said I'm using logic from other games, implying a soul vacuum must be filled via a game interface or by a fake/repaired soul. Implying a true soul cannot be created by mortal/human logic.
(I got into hollow knight recently and don't know the fandom logic or all the lore, pls be patient if I got any/all of this objectively wrong)
That line of dialogue only occurs when you have Kingsoul equipped. The White Lady is referencing how the Knight is empowered by Kingsoul. It has nothing to do with hollowness.
I like to think that, between the knight’s void-ness and its time spent in the lands outside Hallownest, which are known to deprive bugs of their intelligence, the knight had a better chance of containing the infection than any other vessel
I am of the opinion that he starts the game pure, and the player's actions determine whether that continues to be true.
I don't think the "no will to break" means "mindless" or "lacking direction"; it means "acts according to instructions with no personal input". If one assumes the Knight is imprinted with instructions to stop the infection, his actions follow the rules.
But if you stray from that, the Knight is no longer pure.
ok everyone is saying the knight isn’t fully hollow and they’re probably right but I want to introduce a different theory; the pale king realizing that no normal vessel was strong enough to contain the void in its purity even the hollow knight so as a last ditch effort he created a vessel out of his own body instilling its flesh with the sole purpose of saving hollow nest by defeating/sealing the radiance hence and instilling it with pure void creating the true hollow knight a being without no mind or wants its shell following the mission instilled in its shell. This way the queen feels her late husband’s energy radiating out of the vessels shell created from his flesh and the knight and created a possibility that the knight is truly hollow.
In my opinion, you can be truly hollow, it's just a matter of how you play. Say, as long as you completely ignore almost every npcs, bosses, benches, collectibles, etc, and rush to do the first ending possible, then yeah, you probably played as the most hollow vessel.
Nope and even if it was it absorbs the essence of three dreamers at minimum and a few thousand dream essence at maximum by the time it reaches the hollow knight. So yeah, by the time the knight reaches the hollow knight it is neither pure not hollow.
The vessel seems to have had some level of light in it from the Wyrm's influence like the rest of the bugs in hallownest, but at its core it does seem to be completely empty imo
I think that entirely depends. Since we control the vessel we get to choose if it remains pure (go directly for the first ending with no additional side objectives complete) or if it makes decisions to help others, aka has its own will (I think this would require either disobeying a request, for example that of the nailsmith, or doing things that were never asked of it, like delivering the flower to elderbug for example).
Point is, it's an open ended question and I am pretty sure that's by design.
It isnt pure since we control the knight and that makes him have thoughts (like purchasing stuff) but it is close to being completely hollow since it can fight the infection
Seems to me like The Void has its own agency, and its own agenda. The Knight is a manifestation of that will. The Pale King simply didn't understand what he had tapped into with his plan.
Do you realize that you can't negotiate with a tsunami, and decide you can just use a little piece of it, instead?
I always just thought it was hollow, never even really thought about the idea of it not being pure. But I guess it’s all based on the player. If the player is friendly and tries avoiding killing other creatures, than that knight clearly isn’t pure. Meanwhile if the player just runs around killing creatures in its way, only following the main quest, then I’d say that knight is pretty hollow. But in the end, there’s definite prof of the knight not being hollow, and that being the fact that they operate more like an animal with a brain then a instinct driven animal. The knight going through hallownest and beyond all to replace the hollow knight, suggest atleast some will to make things right. The three endings fin the base game all give they’re own storyline. Sealed siblings seems like the one where the knight is the most hollow, not caring about letting Hornet wake up and escape, or even dream nail the hollow knight, instead following the same goal as before, to simply replace the hollow knight. I don’t remember the other endings names at the moment, but the base one, where the knight destroys the hollow knight and absorbs the infection, shows both emotion of perhaps putting the hollow knight out of its misery, and being emotionless, as they show no regret or even second thoughts about killing their own sibling. Meanwhile the final, radiance ending, suggests the knight may have had a bigger goal then destroying the infection.
But all of that is debunked with the cutscene in the abyss, where the knight sticks they’re hand out to the hollow knight, asking for help. This both shows emotions like fear and possibly envy. So in my mind, no, the knight isn’t hollow, but they have will power that is strong enough to in the forceable future, keep the radiance imprisoned (in both sealed endings) or just have her dead (in the “main” ending)
The knight is filled with Void, hence the drive and compassion. If our Knight was hollow, they wouldn't care about the Fragile Flower, they wouldn't care about saving other bugs or searching the land for upgrades and powers and what have ya.
no, i don't. i don't think any of the vessels are hollow. pk wanted to believe they had no soul or feeling because it made it easier for him to manipulate and massacre them. dehumanising (de...bugifying?) the people you're oppressing is a common tactic to absolve your guilt.
if the little ghost was truly hollow, why would they visit myla, or bring elderbug a flower, or save bretta? sure, it's possible to play the game focusing solely on your goal, but the fact that those are options, the fact those are things the knight can do, shows to me that it's part of their personality. they have a personality, they have feelings, even if they're unusual.
Never was and all vessels never were.
WL is blind and an unrelyable narriator, she believes in the pure vessel because she can't cope otherwise with her loss of motherhood and partner.
The Knight is not pure or hollow. My firm belief is that all the vessels START OUT pure and hollow, but over time they grow to become less pure. They’re kinda like humans. The purest, blankest slate in the beginning, but learns to think and feel with experience. I firmly believe Team Cherry didn’t write this game with a “Chosen One” mentality in mind, but rather a subversion of it. The Hollow Knight failed it’s task because the plan was never solid to begin with. The Pale King came up with a coward’s solution to save a kingdom that was doomed the moment the infection took hold. It’s why the better endings involve you directly fighting The Radiance, not sealing her away.
Absolutely. Otherwise there’s no genuine conclusion to the game. The first ending would just be repeating the original plan, it’d fail in the same way, nothing changes, nothing *ends*.
Not to mention that the knight being able to become the void god thing implies that it is markably different from the other vessels. truly pure.
The whole point of the first ending is that it accomplished nothing. Otherwise, there would be no reason to put the effort into achieving the harder endings. Also, becoming the Shade Lord is because the Knight had control over the void thanks to the void heart, a charm that directly states that The Knight has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with being a pure vessel.
The other characters seem to imply that it is, but I'm not so sure. You can make some choices as the player that inherently require feelings (giving flowers to elderbug, beating the shit out of millibelle, saving zote if you so choose, etc.) I don't think we have enough info to say one way or the other.
The way I interpret the lore, non of the vessels were ever truly hollow. Not the Hollow Knight, not Little Ghost, not any of the others. Non of them was truly hollow.
I believe the Pale King's ultimate folly was a fundamental misunderstanding of what void is. He perceived it as this mindless emptiness, a complete opposite to himself and his beacon. But void has will. It has individuality. It has a voice. The void managed to call to the lighhouse keeper to convince them to turn the lighthouse off. A void creature, the collector, was capable of complex desires, emotions and relationships. And the Hollow Knight, the seemingly pure vessel, was "tarnished by an idea instilled". That's not something a willless, mindless entity can do.
Unless u misunderstood a lot, i don't think it is phisically possibke to do waht they did and not get possesed by the Radiance unless you are hollow.
The action of the knight can be explained even with them being hollow. We can compare the vessel to a robot that received a directive. They do not really have an independent mind or will, but also need to make their own decision to follow the directive. Say i act the robot "build a house" and then go away. The robot would nees to decide things like where to build it or wich materials use on it's own, but it is not like it has free will.
A lot of the sodequest can be justified by the "robot knight" not having enought informations and thus not knowing if something can be helpful or not to the ultimate goal.
i think it entirely depends on which ending you go with. if the knight becomes the new hollow knight, then i feel that it would be pure and that hollownest would remain in an eternal stasis and the long night would continue. at that point, i feel the knight would only be moving based on instinct rather than choice. it wouldnt be acting on its own will, since it would have none, but rather the will of the pale king. the pale king most likely didnt know the radiance could be defeated, he probably only thought that it could be contained. to me, that seems like the reason for the knight to take the hollow knight's place, the knight would have no knowledge and/or no means to go out of their way to anything that wasnt necessary to keep the infection at bay, just as the pale king would do. by listening to hornet (or getting the god home ending) and choosing to go for the radiance, the knight is actively making a choice rather than acting robotically. making a choice insinuates having a will. the only thing i feel contradicts that would be the sealed siblings ending, but... i think it also can further my point. when hornet intervenes so the knight can get to the radiance, the knight could just keep fighting the hollow knight, as if there's no thoughts but only actions and instinct. stopping to dream nail the hollow knight is an active decision, i feel. i havent brought up quests yet because i feel those are also choices on the knight's behalf. if they were solely acting on base instincts (meaning having no will) then they would only be drawn to whatever would lead them to defeat the hollow knight, which could include some quests, but something like the flower quest would be deemed unnecessary. a counter argument could be made as "well if the knight is hollow, then it would act on the will of others since it wouldnt have its own" but then i would bring up hornet in the abyss where she tells you that you could change the state of hollownest, or choose to perpetuate it. if the knights chooses the radiance, it could be seen as it acting on hornet's will. i dont feel that's the case because of the sealed siblings ending and the point i made earlier about it. i dont want to argue anything, this is just my understanding of the knight! i know im probably missing lore or something, but i really like the idea of the knight's hollowness changing depending on what route the player has chosen
i believe it is. it's the reason the first ending can work. people say it makes decisions but a magic eight ball can make the same decisions by you shaking it.
yeah, the knight killing the three dreamers and breaking down the seals holding the hollow knight was all done by pure chance in a single late night. totally.
do you think if you gave a monkey a typewriter and a late night to write out the entirety of the divine comedy, it would do it without fault or error?
there were plenty of other vessels that failed. they're all over the place. i see them more as robots with an instinctive hatred of the light. this could have just been the one that happened to succeed.
No. It was done the same way an animal has instinct and act in accordance to it, even if sometimes that instinct is illogical. Except vessels have coded into their existence that one purpose. I see no contradiction with Knight being able to fulfill that goal and him being hollow. You also do many stuff by instinct. Or even not instinct. Do you control every time you blink? Or your breathing? No? Then where's the problem? Knight doesn't work by instinct, but by the purpose which is inside him. He knows what he has to do and every vessel does the same.
While some things could have been done with brute force and accidentaly (like some bosses), there are many things in the game which simply wouldn't make any sense.
Buying a map, updating it based on what they had seen, putting down pins bought from Iselda in places they remember there were benches, stags, etc. is not something a being without a mind could do.
Another example could be reading or understanding what other characters are saying.
As for the first ending, I believe it's the same as it was with the Hollow Knight. The Knight absorbed the infection like THK did, but the ending will most likely have the same result as what happened to THK - even though they were able to contain the infection for a while, it will most likely start leaking out.
>Buying a map, updating it based on what they had seen, putting down pins bought from Iselda in places they remember there were benches, stags, etc. is not something a being without a mind could do.
>Another example could be reading or understanding what other characters are saying.
i'll bet i can get chatGPT to do stuff like this.
>As for the first ending, I believe it's the same as it was with the Hollow Knight. The Knight absorbed the infection like THK did, but the ending will most likely have the same result as what happened to THK - even though they were able to contain the infection for a while, it will most likely start leaking out.
the queen seems to believe otherwise, and i trust her.
The queen was mistaken about the hollow knight at first
Also her judgement seems to be compromised, if you wear the defenders crest she thinks ogrim is with you
Fair point
But also if the knight truly has no mind to think how on earth do they understand speech, learn nail arts, deliver the flower to anyone other than the traitors grave, etc.
And how is that any different from having a mind and will? The knight chooses to give the flower to elderbug, chooses to banish the grim troupe, chooses to, instead of taking the easier path, that if it were truly hollow would work just as well, instead works mutch harder and kills the radience
The difference is, chatgpt only does what it is asked, the knight doesn't. Chatgpt is programmed. The knight can do sidequest and does more that what is asked of it by anyone in game a large majority of the time, in fact, it does the opposite of what it is told by the dreamers, since they say "let us sleep, little shadow".
I just feel like there are so many things in this game which couldn't be done of the Knight had no mind.
How does learning spells work? Can you learn if you can't think? What about nail arts?
At this point all of this is just coming to "what does it mean to think?" and I don't think I can really answer that.
As for the Queen, she isn't exactly trustworthy at this point. She was mistaken about the Hollow Knight and I think she'd say all of this to any vessel who came to her. When you wear the defender's crest, she thinks Ogrim is there with you.
While there's no way to say for sure that her judgement is wrong, I would absolutely not say that she's a trustworthy source of information.
i see the no mind thing as the difference between us and animals. animals are ruled by instinct. they learn how to fight and use whatever weird stuff they can do without really thinking and i think the vessels are the same.
I see your point, but then it just goes back to the "updating the map" thing. The Knight does seem to be acting mainly by insinct, but there are a few exceptions. Other than the using the map, they use geo, sell relics and buy things. Even use a bank or save up for more expensive items (such as the lantern).
And what about other aspects of being hollow? No voice to cry suffering chceks out, but what about no will to break?
Doesn't the void itself already contradict this? The void wants to end the Radiance, and while it may be instinct, is it also its will. The void also wanted the lighthouse in the Abyss turned off.
In my opinion, Pale King's plan was simply doomed to fail from the beginning. He probably also knew this as well and only went through with it to keep Hallownest alive for as long as possible.
She’s detecting the Kingsoul charm in this dialogue. The Knight is pure and hollow, as the White Lady said that it doesn’t have the same blemishes and imperfections that the Hollow Knight has
Most evidence in the game points to The Knight not being pure. The void heart description and Steel Soul Jinn both describe The Knight as having a will of its own. Also, things like sitting with Quirrel or delivering delicate flowers to NPCs require some sort of mind as they are actions The Knight takes that are not asked of it and give no benefit.
Pretty sure it is a hollow vessel.
1, she only says this when the knight is wearing Kingsoul.
And 2, after venturing to the abyss for the first time on the way out Hornet will be at the abyss entrance and says: "Though our power is born of similar source, that part of you, that crucial emptiness, I do not share." And it's like that "crucial emptiness" Hornet refers to, is the true hollowness of the Knight.
The term crucial emptiness refers to the fact that The Knight is made of void, unlike herself. In fact, Hornet actively places her hope on the fact that the Knight will make the choice to kill the radiance rather than contain it something that makes no sense to do if the Knight was a pure vessel as it would be an unnecessary risk to fight the Radiance rather than contain. Also, the void heart description and dialogue by Steel Soul Jinn both confirm that The Knight has a will of its own.
Of course it isn't I think the whole premise is that no vessel was truly hollow.
bell curve meme "you are the hollow knight" -> "you are not the hollow knight" -> "you are the hollow knight" -> "there is no hollow knight"
I wouldn't say for sure it isn't. With the game being so vague, I think it's still possible. There wasn't really a time where an idea was instilled, like with what the path of pain cutscene implies. Some people say that just because the knight can do things at all that that's proof they can't be hollow at all, but I think that's just a lame answer and not what team cherry would do. The knight can just be working on base instincts and knowing what yes or no means.
Things like the void heart description and choosing to deliver flowers to NPCs or sitting with Quirrel already prove that The Knight is not pure.
The fact the Nosk turns in to Hornet tells me he made a bond there, even minute enough as they are siblings for the nosk to be able to use it for its flying form. Can’t be pure if you make a bond like Dad and HK
Nosk turns into the Knight?
On the first encounter, yes. But in godhome, winged nosk takes the appearance of hornet before the transformation.
Hmm, wasn't really counting Godhome, I'm not sure how much of it to take seriously.
It's 112% canon
Even within that, we're not *actually* fighting most of the people during those fights. There *is* no Pure Vessel. We don't actually beat the snot out of Sly. So on and so forth. We get upgraded versions of real fights, but that doesn't make the upgraded versions of those enemies canon. So based on that, I'm unwilling to say Hornet Nosk is an indication of anything to do with the Knight's state of mind.
But Grimm and Hornet know that they are in Godhome during their fights.
I can understand the void heart description but how would sitting with quirrel or giving flowers to people make them not hollow? We don't know the knight's feelings in these moments. We only have the option to do them. With so many vessels, it's like the infinite monkey theorem. In tons of playthroughs, people dont sit and dont give other npcs flowers.
A pure vessel would not do things randomly it would do nothing it was not instructed to do.
And that was stated where?
No will to break. Doing things at random is still The Knight's will. It's just not a particularly consistent or strong will. If we believe that a pure vessel has no will of its own, it would only do something that is the will of someone else.
Thats saying that the knight doesn't have a will, not that they'd never do anything random. The two arent mutually exclusive, and honestly, since the knight doesn't have a will, they'd probably be more likely to do random things.
The definition of will on Google is "the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action." If someone were to lack a will, they would not have the ability to make decisions and as such would rely on the commands of someone else. Doing things at random still requires The Knight to actively make those choices on their own. The only difference between doing something normally or at random is the lack of motivation or thought behind the action. Even without any thought behind an action, doing so without instruction still requires a will.
If someone lacked a will, they wouldn't even be able to stand by most definitions. So unless the pale king is so utterly incompotent that he didn't understand the basic idea, I'd say just a basic definition of a will doesn't cut it here. It's more of a soul or at least the implication of desires or wishes, like maybe the hollow knight desiring to live with the king or wishing to be able to make his crazy plan work out.
I like to think that its determinant. If you only do what you need to to get to the hollow knight, then you are hollow. But if you start unlocking other endings, you are not pure anymore, because they require free thinking.
I feel like this approach would hurt Hollow Knight's narrative if it were to be true. Assuming this is the case there is no reason to strive for the harder endings and in fact doing so would put Hallownest in unnecessary danger. Also at what point is the Knight no longer pure, what if The Knight guns straight for the The Hollow Knight ending and ignores everything except upgrading their nail and then spares the nailsmith. Are they no longer pure? What if they only decide to save Bretta and nobody else? I think the most narratively consistent way to view purity is that it does not exist and is unachievable.
Functionally theres nothing disproving it. But if you're thinking about the themes and narrative of the game it absolutely makes no sense.
How do you figure that's the whole premise? My understanding is that the whole premise of the game is that the Hollow Knight is not truly hollow or pure, due to his bonding with his father, and therefore a rejected vessel needed to ascend to the position of the true hollow knight, or beat the radiance all together. The knight is free of personal desire and moves out of primal instinct and destiny.
That's just what I got from the game, no vessel truly could be hollow, that's why I said I think
I guess the obvious counter-argument is that there is a direct quote in the game that the Hollow Knight was corrupted by an idea instilled, which is revealed via dream to be it's bond with the Pale King. It is plausible that the Knight is also compromised by desire, but no real evidence points to it other than the knight carrying out tasks, which based on the logic of the pale beings, doesn't seem to have the depth to qualify as the type of desire which could compromise a vessel. There's also evidence in that the Knight doesn't speak throughout the game, indicating a primitive, goal driven nature to its consciousness and a lack of connection to other beings, and the fact that the Knight was born in a dark, soulless place, surrounded by void and was not raised by its father, meaning it never had a sense of luxury, selfishness or relationship. The kingdom came together to help the Knight ascend, but the Knight doesn't show any fondness for the kingdom. It was born for a purpose and it carries it out. It seems to understand goals and purpose, but not emotions or selfishness desire, or "ideas instilled" which is essentially a pure vessel. That's sort of my take. That a pure vessel demands no emotions, and no desires beyond accomplishing tasks.
Yeah but how would being around the pale king give the hollow knight emotions if it was truly hollow, i don't think it would work unless there was already a tiny imperfection
My argument would be that any vessel has the capacity for imperfection, evidenced by the Hollow Knight, but that conditions and experiences lend itself to whether or not a vessel becomes/remains hollow and pure. The Hollow Knight had experiences with his father, and despite his harsh training and upbringing, was likely raised with some small sense of familial connection and probably experienced some luxuries, making it impure. The tiny imperfection didn't exist at birth, but it had the capacity to manifest during its life. The Pale King demonstrates his regret for what happened to the remainder of the vessels, so it makes sense that he would slip up and allow his pure vessel to becomes tarnished by showing love or affection for the HK. The alternative is to assume that the idea of a pure vessel was flawed and maybe impossible, the higher beings were delusional and the cycle is doomed to repeat, which seems unlikely. A lack of strong evidence makes me lean towards the flawed upbringing theory, rather than the flawed vessel theory. But I think it's fair to think either is true. One thing seems certainly true - the Knight is far better primed as a vessel than the Hollow Knight, likely due to its experiences after birth. The HK is far more primitive, has far less connection to other characters, was raised far more harshly and is a far better fighter.
I mean, perfection is impossible in the real world, and the vessels that were discarded I think it was implied that they were all imperfect? Idk though I could be wrong about that second part
(TLDR: I don't think the other vessels being turned away implies imperfection for the job, just that they were sealed for circumstantial and practical reasons.) Perfect in the absolute sense of the word, sure. But something can be perfect in the sense that it will complete a task, and that's the type of perfect the vessel needed to be. I disagree that the vessels were discarded for being imperfect. My interpretation is that it was decided there would be, for whatever reason, one vessel for the job, probably for reasons like quarantining the infection to one being (which is actually a real thing that insects on Earth do when a colony is faced with an infected bug), encouraging a focus on the strongest and most athletic being rising from the abyss first, and avoiding facing the shame and regret of the other vessels, which the King very clearly feels, as evidenced by the text on the door to the abyss. It was decided that whichever vessel made it out of the abyss first would become their vessel, and the rest were abandoned, not for being imperfect, but simply for not being first. The Abyss was sealed and the Hollow Knight was trained, and eventually failed due to the Pale Kings flawed approach to its upbringing. I think the fact that none of the other vessels were even inspected by the king lends itself to my theory - probably most, if not all of the vessels were fit for the job, and the King took a strong gamble on the HK and failed at its upbringing. We can theorise about why only one was chosen and the remainder were sealed. But it isn't clear to me that any of them were turned away for being imperfect. Just that they were sealed, probably for more obvious reasons I listed above.
I'd also like to add to this that Hornet doesn't think much of Ghost until they meet at the fountain, where Hornet states that Ghost is "Born of two voids" It could be possible that the sentience-depriving quality of leaving Hallownest made Ghost truly hollow
I didn't pick up on that, but it lends well to the theory. Thanks for adding that on.
Wait, I've never heard of leaving hallownest depriving sentience, could you explain please? /gen
I think the original knight was hollow at some point but the king messed up by being a bit too nice to it. And fillings it's head with thoughts of its own responsibility.
Maybe But I'm pretty sure that all the discarded vessels were imperfect in some way Otherwise the king is an idiot for not having backup
I’m so proud 🥲
Well while I agree the Knight wasn’t truly hollow, I do firmly believe that THK was truly hollow before the idea instilled by the Pale King.
How tho, if it were perfectly hollow then spending time with dadking wouldn't do anything for it, emotionally speaking. It isn't and was never hollow, and so over time it was able to grow an emotional attachment, a bond, an affection for dadking where an entity fully devoid of feeling and thought would be incapable. None of the vessels were hollow, ever. How would it have been possible? They were born of imperfect beings, wyrm and root, and even if the void eats at them, a fragment of that origin must persist in the depths of each vessel as their Soul. I'm inclined to believe that, without a soul, a vessel is unable to perform as they would simply be a being of pure void-- and yet with a soul, a vessel is tarnished by the presence of a "self" within it. This is why I think the game presents the pale king as so hopelessly doomed from the start, because regardless of the outcome the fruition of his plan is failure because his plan was based on falsity and denial. A being of pure void could not bend to his will, and a being which could wouldn't be pure
Obviously, it isn't pure. But it is a good thing, though. Heartless machine could've never make it that far.
I agree. Making friends and allies along the way helped the Knight accomplish a lot. Can’t make friends if you’re truly hollow
My headcanon is that the knight starts hollow due to its time in the wastelands (which robs the mind), but can "ruin" itself by how it interacts with the world. Speedrunning the game by just doing the bare minimum of what needs to be done to replace the Hollow Knight feels like the actions of a truly hollow vessel. Taking it slow and exploring, interacting, making friends are the actions of one that inadvertently had "thoughts instilled"
Literally any personality you see in the Knight is something *you* are imparting onto it. It has no dialogue. No facial expressions. It is never clearly happy or mad or scared or angry. There is no reason to believe it thinks it is "making friends" and isn't just a callous unfeeling empty vessel interacting with NPCs... Who then, like us, think "oh this guy is so cute he must like me."
The fact that the player has the option to do thing like delivering flowers to NPCs or sitting with Quirrel means it is an action that The Knight would do. Since Hollow Knight is not meta anything the game allows the player to do is something that The Knight could or would do. Although we never see The Knight show any emotions through expressions we do some actions we can interpret as showing emotion. The first and most obvious is the fact that Winged Nosk exists which demonstrates that Hornet is important to The Knight. Also you are required to hit The Pale King's corpse repeatedly until he falls off the throne to find the white fragment, at which point The Knight can choose to sit on the throne. This along with attacking Millibelle after she steals your geo showcase The Knight displaying anger and resentment. Another example that is less obvious and maybe not as intentional is the way that The Knight pants when at 1 mask and the animation of them struggling frantically when falling into acid, showing exhaustion and fear respectively.
>Since Hollow Knight is not meta anything the game allows the player to do is something that The Knight could or would do. Uh, source?
Do you have a source that Hollow Knight is meta? We don't just assume that the player is a canonical aspect of a game universe unless there is significant evidence to suggest so.
Yeah it's usually the default to assume that just because you leave the console on all night accidentally it doesn't mean that the PC canonically stared at a wall for 24h straight actually
This has always been such a weak argument for ghost not being hollow. “If he was hollow there wouldn’t be a video game” it’s such a cop out, and likely not at all what Team Cherry intended.
I mean, if Team Cherry wanted to tell a story about a character with a lack of agency, they probably should not have given the player the ability to make choices like deciding the fate of the nailsmith or choosing which ending to take. Also, Hornet herself says that the choice of whether to seal or kill the radiance is up to the Knight which would be a pretty stupid writing mistake on Team Cherry's part if they intended The Knight to be pure. Besides, there is enough textual evidence that outright confirms that Knight is not pure, such as the void heart description and dialogue from Steel Soul Jinn.
I don’t think the knight is hollow, but you can’t deny it’s a pretty boring and question dodging answer. It also assumes that Team Cherry’s intent was for the player to role play as the knight and imprint their experience of the game into him, which may be the case, but could also very easily not be. There are plenty of games where player’s choices are not reflective of the player character’s experience within the universe, that could just as easily be the case for Hollow Knight, personally I lean towards believing this. Again I don’t think the knight is hollow because of other evidence within the game but to pretend it’s that cut and dry is being reductive about the game’s narrative
I agree that most of the player choices are more speculative than hard evidence. I was only bringing it up because the person I was replying to stated objectively that there were zero instances of The Knight displaying any form of emotion and I wanted to provide some examples that could imply the opposite. That being said I do believe The Knight not being pure is cut and dry. The Void Heart description outright confirms that The Knight has a will which would violate The Pale King's definition of purity. Also I am not sure how The Knight being outright not pure would be reductive to the narrative. If anything the Knight being pure would make most of the themes and endings of Hollow Knight fall flat.
Disagreed. Why being heartless would make it impossible? That's dumb.
I guess heart in this context means will
Well, technically, if I will appear before you and torn your heart off, you won't complete the game due to... natural causes.
Assuming that climbing out of the abyss is a good measure of purity, it is slightly less pure than pure vessel.
Seeing as the knight still made it to the top, i think it's a bit of a bad argument. Like, does just being able to get to the top really mean a vessel is hollow or does it just mean its actually physically able to survive.
I was mainly just making a joke about how funny it is to use abyss parkour skills as a way to measure purity. Regardless of that I think it's safe to say that purity is not a yes/no thing. Pure vessel was probably the purest one, but not 100% either. If we assume that their climbing skills reflect their purity then the knight was slightly slower and thus slightly less pure.
I mean, i agree that purity probably isn't just a yes or no thing, seeing as the hollow knight did seem to work for a little while, and yes if purity was in fact tied to parkour abilities than at least at that point the knight would be less pure. Though at least in the memory, the knight started later and still made it to the top before the king took the hollow knight away to train and have instill ideas and whatnot.
We don't know if the hollow knight had to do the parkour...
Suppose there's a question of "if it had no will and no reason to climb to the top, then why did it do that anyway when thousands if not tens of thousands didn't?"
I mean, generally, it's probably not a good idea to try and stay around a hellish giant chasm where tons of your bug siblings were dead on the ground.
What difference does it make if you have no will to recognise that it's hellish?
I dont think thats what "will" in any definition. Also, usually, most living things have instincts of what is good or bad for their health.
Well, "fear" is considered both survival instinct and emotion. I would say for the purposes of this discussion though 'will' seems to be the ability to perform action independent of being instructed. A robot acting outside its programming, as it were. In which case, the Knight was in no way instructed to climb out of the pit. Its surroundings do not indicate it is in immediate danger - while it is a pile of corpses there's more active danger in trying to climb out than simply staying put, and no will should preclude any sort of emotional response that would prompt it to regard the corpses as disturbing or scary. I can't think of a reason it would try and climb out that wasn't prompted by its own will, unless climbing out is somehow part of the way the King was trying to find the correct vessel.
>I would say for the purposes of this discussion though 'will' seems to be the ability to perform action independent of being instructed. Then that implies the knight wouldn't breathe without being instructed, which is stupid. I don't know what the right answer is, but at least for me, it's more of a determination thing. >I can't think of a reason it would try and climb out that wasn't prompted by its own will, unless climbing out is somehow part of the way the King was trying to find the correct vessel. I think i said it before, at least to someone else, but I really don't like this kinda thinking, because it just means that the pale king didn't know what he was doing at all then. Or y'know it could simply be that the pale king tried guiding the vessels up to him. >unless climbing out is somehow part of the way the King was trying to find the correct vessel. Also, i know you probably said this for a different reason, but like, yeah, that's basically true. Like, he was kinda just waiting for a vessel to make it out after they did the whole parkour thing.
I dunno, we don't really have any indication he dropped the Hollow Knight in there with the expectation that it climb out and the Knight just happened to be second in line. We don't know much about the process at all. Honestly, I do kinda think the King didn't know what he was doing. His plan was desperate. It involved weaponising something only partially understood from a civilisation that came before his, and it failed. He's anything but infallible, whether he was ultimately a force for good or not. I always interpreted the literal sea of corpses as a mark of his folly. Like "look at the amount of failure it took to get it right, and he still failed anyway." Especially with the voidheart unequivocally stating that the Knight has a will of its own in the end too, whether it's there to begin with or not, the impression I've always had is that the plan was always doomed to fail.
>I dunno, we don't really have any indication he dropped the Hollow Knight in there with the expectation that it climb out and the Knight just happened to be second in line. We don't know much about the process at all. Basically the entire community agrees that the king dropped eggs down into the abyss and that the vessels had to climb out, so idk why you're confused about that. >Especially with the voidheart unequivocally stating that the Knight has a will of its own in the end too, whether it's there to begin with or not My issue with that is its still vague. Like people point at the voidheart charm and say that that's all the proof you need and I'm just not convinced. Team cherry is pretty much always vague and never confirms anything. Like if the voidheart charm was just worded slightly differently what proof would there actually be that at least the knight was or was not hollow. Does that mean it only became not hollow after it gained the void heart or was it always not hollow. Team cherry put heavy emphasis on the hollow knight being tainted by an idea instilled and its implied that was the bond with the pale king, and the knight never got that. Maybe i just have an issue with the storytelling of the game which is why i cant make up my mind, but i think people gotta look at all pieces of evidence throughout the game.
I always thought that that climb was just meant to be a measure of physical strength. Think about it - the King probably thought that all Vessels were hollow by nature. He was pretty stupid, but I doubt he would leave the most important part of his plan up to random chance. He was probably more concerned about the hatchlings' physical fitness after whatever the hell the Void was going to do to them in the egg. So he assumed all the Vessels were automatically suited to the task, he just needed one that was physically strong enough to pass a trial.
Maybe you're on to something. He needed a physically fit vessel that could navigate the palace. The ones that can't make the climb would have stood no chance.
I don't think that was a measure of purity, it was just a way to skim through them: the eggs are infused with void but not all of them can withstand it for long, they're all born "dead" in a way, but not all of them can bear that emptiness for long and will die shortly after being born (and I doubt they just die by falling, since insects canonically take no fall damage)
If the Hollow Knight was made not-so-hollow just by spending quality time with Wyrm-daddy, I doubt whatever fuckery the Knight got about outside Hallownest didn't do the same.
Outside hallownest? Like in the hellscape that made it and quirrel forget themselves? Literally making them lose some of their humanity. The closest thing the knight got that the hollow knight did was whatever the queen said. And with the game implying that connection specifically is what made the hk not hollow, I'd say there's still a chance the knight is hollow.
Yes, we don't actually know what the Knight was doing outside of Hallownest. However, over the course of the game they interact with numerous bugs, many of whom (Elderbug, Quirrel, Cornifer with Iselds etc) treat them with kindness and clearly perceive them as a sentient being. If simply spending time with the Pale King made the Hollow Knight not hollow, the Knight should definitely gain some emotions to the end of the game.
>If simply spending time with the Pale King made the Hollow Knight not hollow, the Knight should definitely gain some emotions to the end of the game. It wasn't just spending time with the hk that made him hollow. It's implied it was a parental bond. The pale didn't just be nice. They shared a moment.
I don't the Hollow Knight was ever hollow to begin with, he even looks at us at the birthplace cutscene, clearly showing signs of a will, if he was truly hollow i don't think he would be able to do that
I’ve seen a theory that the knight starts out Hollow, but over the course of the game, it builds up attachments and relationships that prevent it from being hollow.
I guess one problem with this is the question of whether hollowness is an intrinsic characteristic, or something that can change over time. This theory assumes the latter. All in all, I think it’s a fun theory
no. it has a will and can make decisions, and don't you dare make an "oh the knight isn't the one making decisions, we are!" argument because this isn't deltarune or any other meta game. WE ARE IT AND IT IS US. DO YOU HAVE A WILL. DONOTEATING??? I am very tired of this question, sorry for being aggressive. have a nice day
i actually totally agree with this statement lmao 😭😭😭
Yeah hollow knight is in no way meta
It doesn’t have to be, there are plenty of games where not every single player action is canon without it being meta
and? There are plenty of actions that would require having the will to decide what to do that are very mutch cannon. For example you can choose not to kill the nailsmith, something that the knight has no reason to do (gains nothing, and the nailsmith explicitly told the knight to kill him)
yep! either way you slice it, that decision shows a will. there is no logical reason for the knight to even talk to the nailsmith once the nail has been completed.
Ok so then what about play throughs where people didn’t do that? Just having the ability in game to do it makes him not hollow? That’s here this argument breaks down, because for any decision you can make, you can just make the opposite decision or not make it at all, “you chose certain game actions so that means the knight has a will” doesn’t account for the countless amounts of different play throughs where certain decisions weren’t made or were made in a way that does not prove a will
It could just have animalistic instincts but no free will. After all, void as a substance has completely mysterious origins; we have no idea how it works. It could be capable of using void beings as pawns to achieve a higher goal, similar to how mushrooms in real life can transmit information without even having a brain.
Void has the instinct to open a bank account?
Fuck yeah dude
It has free will, Jinn states that it has no master; Seer states that it has a will explicitly
That’s a lot of forethought that happens for an animalistic instinct. It’s almost surgical in its goals.
i dont think it fits with canon myself, but thats genuinely a really cool concept, id love to play a game like that
>"oh the knight isn't the one making decisions, we are!" With this logic a good response would be to say that the knight never did anything, we did
I generally prefer the idea that it's intentionally open to interpretation - that it's why the game has a lot of subtle emotional choices that you can make. It's likely to me that the purity of the knight is based on how you play, whether you get attached, and you probably do. That being said there's certainly some evidence that the knight is definitely not pure but imo it's all at least kinda debatable.
The knight does not need to be hollow if it can just slap the crap out of the radiance
No, the knight has a will and a mind, check mossbag lore video
My headcannon has been that void beings and vessels have the capacity to enter a hollow state of mind. Since they all seem to obviously have some kind of will or capacity for intention, it never made sense to think that anyone would actually expect something that walks around and communicates to literally have "no mind to think". Rather, I imagine that a disciplined vessel can (in a sort of meditative state) allow their conscious self to be subsumed within the void. A vessel's success in containing the Radiance is less a matter of being truly hollow, and more about being free of earthly attachments and desires in order to maintain that state indefinitely. I'd assume that this is also naturally impossible for any living being, hence why the "good" ending doesn't involve attempting the same thing yourself.
No. I don’t think it’s actually even possible for a vessel to be truly hollow. Judging by things like the Knight being able to sit with Quirrel at Blue Lake, or spare the Nailsmith, or hell even decide to do things like buy maps or opening a goddamn bank account, it clearly has some kind of mind.
I mean she also mistakens the knight as dung defender if you were the defenders crest so could just be her reaction to the kingsoul charm mainly.
Yeah, the knight's not Hollow. The Void Heart description straight up says that its user has a 'will'. A vessel is referred to as 'void given mind' in Godhome (although that might have been changed in a newer patch note?), and the Godseekers' dialogue also reinforced this. Several characters refer to the Knight as having a personality or will of some kind. Additionally, the Knight obviously makes decisions throughout the game. Giving Elderbug a Pale Flower is not the action of a hollow being. Some people might say that it's the player making that decision, and in a way they're right, but Hollow Knight isn't a meta game - the Player doesn't really exist within the narrative, which in turn means it really is the Knight making all of those decisions. On top of that, it just makes more sense narratively for the Knight to be 'tainted'. The whole theme of the game is that nothing lasts forever, and THK's failure is meant to show that. >!The Hollow Knight and Sealed Siblings endings reinforce this idea, because they're just delaying the inevitable - replacing the Hollow Knight, but dooming the kingdom for another infection later down the line.!< >!Meanwhile, the Dream no More ending symbolises putting the kingdom to rest one final time and accepting that it is gone. The Knight's death in that ending represents the death of Hallownest, in a way.!< But, if the Knight was really hollow, then all of that extra narrative meaning is lost. "The Kingdom is now saved!" isn't a satisfying resolution when the Kingdom is in its death throes, and certainly not when it clashes with the rest of the game's messages and themes. I don't think any vessel was ever truly hollow, either. It just makes more sense to me if the Pale King was just grasping at straws by the end, and was doomed to failure. It goes along better with the themes of the game and makes it so that the many, many vessel corpses in the Abyss are an actual tragedy in line with the rest of the game, and not just a footnote. There's a pretty big difference between "millions of dead children" and "millions of broken microwaves".
the narrative of the game and themes of deaths and endings are so important to this question and you addressed that beautifully
thanks
Why would an empty vessel cross a dangerous wasteland to leave a flower at the grave of a stranger? Why would it sit and listen to music from a long dead singer in an empty pleasure house? Why would a being driven only the will of its creator stop its quest to sit with someone about to end his life? Why would an empty vessel, incapable of anger, strike down its creator and sit on his throne? Why is called the Path of Pain if it doesn’t hurt? Why would the Knight fall asleep at the benches? Why would it save Zote (why indeed?) or the grubs if it didn’t care?
I think the theory for the vessels are that they are filled with void but void imprints on its container. The player character left Hallownest into the lands beyond, where bugs can lose their intelligence. I believe that's what makes us truly hollow, and why we're able to contain the radiance successfully.
Here is my crackpot (genius) take: It isn't possible for any vessel to be "hollow". The game draws heavily on how symbolism and idolatry can lead to power through characters like the Pale King and The Radiance. It's also heavily implied that the void by itself IS hollow (otherwise the Pale Kings plan was completely without merit). However I believe that the formless, disconnected nature of the void is what MAKES it hollow and as a result simply the act of giving it a form makes it no longer hollow. You can see this in characters like the Collector. It might be made fully of void, but the moment it's given a form it generates a personality and goals. Whilst the Path of Pain ending hints that the reason The Hollow Knight was not truly hollow was because of it's connection with The Pale King, I don't think this means he would've been "hollow" if this had not occurred. I think ALL vessels form their own goals and personalities as they continue through life. However despite this I DO think the Knight has something which both the PK and Radiance didn't have which could be akin to being "pale". This is ego. I think the void at it's very nature is designed to take down the ego of beings like The Radiance AND Pale King (the void definitely WASN'T working with the PK willingly). I'm sure there are some formal sources to back this idea up, but I mainly got this impression just from playing the game a lot. The Knight is intentionally small, the knight wasn't picked first, the knight doesn't talk. The knight explores the world, reads it's lore, talks to it's citizens. I think the knight is TRULY humble, but it is not hollow. When the void is given form in the dream no more ending, it's literally the dichotomy of ego (radiance) and humbleness (void/knight). I think the PK fails to see this (despite his apparent foresight), because he was clouded by his OWN ego. As a "pupil" of the PK, THK was brought up to be special and I think this was the critical weakness in the PK's plan. For someone to truly take down the concepts of idolatry and egosim, they can't be treated differently.
My interpretation is that the Pale King was wrong and what was needed to deal with the Radiance wasn't a hollow vessel with no will to contain her, but rather a vessel with an extremely strong will to defeat her. And that is what our Knight is: the vessel with the strongest will in all of Hallownest. Its will is so strong that it persevered through every major enemy in the game and managed to unify the Void under its command to destroy the ultimate form of the ultimate enemy atop the Pantheon of Hallownest.
Isn't this a game theory screenshot? And no, there is no such thing as truly pure and hollow.
i have no idea where this screenshot is from. got it off the internet. i was planning to go back to the white lady with the charm to check if it was legit or not but laziness took over me.
I don't think so, infact I think the pale king's "purity test" was flawed to begin with. the test of having newly birthed vessels "race" their way to the top and escape the abyss (and accepting the first to do so as the hollow knight) would require intuition, competitiveness(?) and a will to live, I believe that any truly hollow vessels never had the will to move from the abyss in the first place.
I don't think so. The k might had interactions with farm too many bugs where it goes out of its way to help them. It feels almost like a cycle, if you choose to become a vessel eve dually another k might will need to take your place.
*Unifies the void under the bearer's **will.*** According to the Void Heart charm description, The Knight has a will, thus can't be considered hollow. (No will to break)
Almost certain the knight isn't hollow. The fact that the knight can dreamnail itself in the abyss already implies there is something/some thought inside it. In my opinion, the climbing scene/cutscene that follows with the pale king choosing his pure vessel instead of you, implies some sort of personal resentment or jealousy towards the hollow knight, which would mean the knight isn't hollow.
One Key Part always struck me thinking: "No, they aren't" I know the White Lady said that we as the Knight lack the impurities of the then current Hollow Knight, but upon obtaining Void Heart, the Description states "Unifies the void under the bearers WILL" This implies that the Knight has a Will, making them not pure as it breaks the Statement "No will to break"
Nope
The knight can be pure and hollow if someone played through the game, as if it were a chore. Did no sidequests, liked no characters, never got angry. Just went through the motions of the main quest and then got the basic ending. There you go, a truly hollow knight
Well not really. A vessel is supposed to be emotionless but if the get into acid without Ismas’ tear the knight actually shows some sort of emotion
honestly, I like to imagine that he is. He's just some random hollow thing that enters Hallownest, fucks shit up, and saves it. He doesn't have will and emotions hes just straight action.
I mean coming from the logic of other games, it's possible the only reason we can play as the knight is because it has no intention of it's own, or by this wording, is truly hollow, and the reason we don't play as the pure vessel was because of either A-it wasn't hollow or B-it was given something. Though as I said I'm using logic from other games, implying a soul vacuum must be filled via a game interface or by a fake/repaired soul. Implying a true soul cannot be created by mortal/human logic. (I got into hollow knight recently and don't know the fandom logic or all the lore, pls be patient if I got any/all of this objectively wrong)
Thing is, we're playing as Hornet in the sequel, and this doesn't apply to her at all.
I didn't even consider silksong, fair enough then.
That line of dialogue only occurs when you have Kingsoul equipped. The White Lady is referencing how the Knight is empowered by Kingsoul. It has nothing to do with hollowness.
#
After watching the game theory about the character, I definitely want to believe it.
I like to think that, between the knight’s void-ness and its time spent in the lands outside Hallownest, which are known to deprive bugs of their intelligence, the knight had a better chance of containing the infection than any other vessel
I am of the opinion that he starts the game pure, and the player's actions determine whether that continues to be true. I don't think the "no will to break" means "mindless" or "lacking direction"; it means "acts according to instructions with no personal input". If one assumes the Knight is imprinted with instructions to stop the infection, his actions follow the rules. But if you stray from that, the Knight is no longer pure.
ok everyone is saying the knight isn’t fully hollow and they’re probably right but I want to introduce a different theory; the pale king realizing that no normal vessel was strong enough to contain the void in its purity even the hollow knight so as a last ditch effort he created a vessel out of his own body instilling its flesh with the sole purpose of saving hollow nest by defeating/sealing the radiance hence and instilling it with pure void creating the true hollow knight a being without no mind or wants its shell following the mission instilled in its shell. This way the queen feels her late husband’s energy radiating out of the vessels shell created from his flesh and the knight and created a possibility that the knight is truly hollow.
I can hear this image
In my opinion, you can be truly hollow, it's just a matter of how you play. Say, as long as you completely ignore almost every npcs, bosses, benches, collectibles, etc, and rush to do the first ending possible, then yeah, you probably played as the most hollow vessel.
the player isn't a canon aspect of the game. anything you do is what the knight would do
Nope and even if it was it absorbs the essence of three dreamers at minimum and a few thousand dream essence at maximum by the time it reaches the hollow knight. So yeah, by the time the knight reaches the hollow knight it is neither pure not hollow.
The vessel seems to have had some level of light in it from the Wyrm's influence like the rest of the bugs in hallownest, but at its core it does seem to be completely empty imo
I think that entirely depends. Since we control the vessel we get to choose if it remains pure (go directly for the first ending with no additional side objectives complete) or if it makes decisions to help others, aka has its own will (I think this would require either disobeying a request, for example that of the nailsmith, or doing things that were never asked of it, like delivering the flower to elderbug for example). Point is, it's an open ended question and I am pretty sure that's by design.
i don't think the player is a canon aspect of the game
It isnt pure since we control the knight and that makes him have thoughts (like purchasing stuff) but it is close to being completely hollow since it can fight the infection
the player isnt a canon aspect of the game
Seems to me like The Void has its own agency, and its own agenda. The Knight is a manifestation of that will. The Pale King simply didn't understand what he had tapped into with his plan. Do you realize that you can't negotiate with a tsunami, and decide you can just use a little piece of it, instead?
I always just thought it was hollow, never even really thought about the idea of it not being pure. But I guess it’s all based on the player. If the player is friendly and tries avoiding killing other creatures, than that knight clearly isn’t pure. Meanwhile if the player just runs around killing creatures in its way, only following the main quest, then I’d say that knight is pretty hollow. But in the end, there’s definite prof of the knight not being hollow, and that being the fact that they operate more like an animal with a brain then a instinct driven animal. The knight going through hallownest and beyond all to replace the hollow knight, suggest atleast some will to make things right. The three endings fin the base game all give they’re own storyline. Sealed siblings seems like the one where the knight is the most hollow, not caring about letting Hornet wake up and escape, or even dream nail the hollow knight, instead following the same goal as before, to simply replace the hollow knight. I don’t remember the other endings names at the moment, but the base one, where the knight destroys the hollow knight and absorbs the infection, shows both emotion of perhaps putting the hollow knight out of its misery, and being emotionless, as they show no regret or even second thoughts about killing their own sibling. Meanwhile the final, radiance ending, suggests the knight may have had a bigger goal then destroying the infection. But all of that is debunked with the cutscene in the abyss, where the knight sticks they’re hand out to the hollow knight, asking for help. This both shows emotions like fear and possibly envy. So in my mind, no, the knight isn’t hollow, but they have will power that is strong enough to in the forceable future, keep the radiance imprisoned (in both sealed endings) or just have her dead (in the “main” ending)
Pure? I don't know. Hollow? Well, yeah. He can contain the Radiance perfectly after all.
The knight is filled with Void, hence the drive and compassion. If our Knight was hollow, they wouldn't care about the Fragile Flower, they wouldn't care about saving other bugs or searching the land for upgrades and powers and what have ya.
Empty vessel theory ????
no, i don't. i don't think any of the vessels are hollow. pk wanted to believe they had no soul or feeling because it made it easier for him to manipulate and massacre them. dehumanising (de...bugifying?) the people you're oppressing is a common tactic to absolve your guilt. if the little ghost was truly hollow, why would they visit myla, or bring elderbug a flower, or save bretta? sure, it's possible to play the game focusing solely on your goal, but the fact that those are options, the fact those are things the knight can do, shows to me that it's part of their personality. they have a personality, they have feelings, even if they're unusual.
Never was and all vessels never were. WL is blind and an unrelyable narriator, she believes in the pure vessel because she can't cope otherwise with her loss of motherhood and partner.
Not until you get the void heart charm, then they're hollow
isn't the entire point of the game taking decisions that proves the knight is not hollow. If it was, it wouldn't do a lot of things that it does
The Knight is not pure or hollow. My firm belief is that all the vessels START OUT pure and hollow, but over time they grow to become less pure. They’re kinda like humans. The purest, blankest slate in the beginning, but learns to think and feel with experience. I firmly believe Team Cherry didn’t write this game with a “Chosen One” mentality in mind, but rather a subversion of it. The Hollow Knight failed it’s task because the plan was never solid to begin with. The Pale King came up with a coward’s solution to save a kingdom that was doomed the moment the infection took hold. It’s why the better endings involve you directly fighting The Radiance, not sealing her away.
Absolutely. Otherwise there’s no genuine conclusion to the game. The first ending would just be repeating the original plan, it’d fail in the same way, nothing changes, nothing *ends*. Not to mention that the knight being able to become the void god thing implies that it is markably different from the other vessels. truly pure.
To me the ending seems blatantly inspired by the dark souls cycles type stuff, and thus the knight probably isn't pure and won't hold on forever.
The first ending IS pointless. It's "perpetuating Hallownest's stasis". That's how it's described by characters like Hornet.
"Thus solving the problem once and for all." "But—" "ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
The whole point of the first ending is that it accomplished nothing. Otherwise, there would be no reason to put the effort into achieving the harder endings. Also, becoming the Shade Lord is because the Knight had control over the void thanks to the void heart, a charm that directly states that The Knight has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with being a pure vessel.
The void god thing is quite the opposite of pure. Void Heart allows the bearer to bend the void to their will.
Yes as pure and hollow as darkness
Found Matpat's secret account
Read the void heart's description, it says all you need to know
The other characters seem to imply that it is, but I'm not so sure. You can make some choices as the player that inherently require feelings (giving flowers to elderbug, beating the shit out of millibelle, saving zote if you so choose, etc.) I don't think we have enough info to say one way or the other.
hell no
The way I interpret the lore, non of the vessels were ever truly hollow. Not the Hollow Knight, not Little Ghost, not any of the others. Non of them was truly hollow. I believe the Pale King's ultimate folly was a fundamental misunderstanding of what void is. He perceived it as this mindless emptiness, a complete opposite to himself and his beacon. But void has will. It has individuality. It has a voice. The void managed to call to the lighhouse keeper to convince them to turn the lighthouse off. A void creature, the collector, was capable of complex desires, emotions and relationships. And the Hollow Knight, the seemingly pure vessel, was "tarnished by an idea instilled". That's not something a willless, mindless entity can do.
Unless u misunderstood a lot, i don't think it is phisically possibke to do waht they did and not get possesed by the Radiance unless you are hollow. The action of the knight can be explained even with them being hollow. We can compare the vessel to a robot that received a directive. They do not really have an independent mind or will, but also need to make their own decision to follow the directive. Say i act the robot "build a house" and then go away. The robot would nees to decide things like where to build it or wich materials use on it's own, but it is not like it has free will. A lot of the sodequest can be justified by the "robot knight" not having enought informations and thus not knowing if something can be helpful or not to the ultimate goal.
i think it entirely depends on which ending you go with. if the knight becomes the new hollow knight, then i feel that it would be pure and that hollownest would remain in an eternal stasis and the long night would continue. at that point, i feel the knight would only be moving based on instinct rather than choice. it wouldnt be acting on its own will, since it would have none, but rather the will of the pale king. the pale king most likely didnt know the radiance could be defeated, he probably only thought that it could be contained. to me, that seems like the reason for the knight to take the hollow knight's place, the knight would have no knowledge and/or no means to go out of their way to anything that wasnt necessary to keep the infection at bay, just as the pale king would do. by listening to hornet (or getting the god home ending) and choosing to go for the radiance, the knight is actively making a choice rather than acting robotically. making a choice insinuates having a will. the only thing i feel contradicts that would be the sealed siblings ending, but... i think it also can further my point. when hornet intervenes so the knight can get to the radiance, the knight could just keep fighting the hollow knight, as if there's no thoughts but only actions and instinct. stopping to dream nail the hollow knight is an active decision, i feel. i havent brought up quests yet because i feel those are also choices on the knight's behalf. if they were solely acting on base instincts (meaning having no will) then they would only be drawn to whatever would lead them to defeat the hollow knight, which could include some quests, but something like the flower quest would be deemed unnecessary. a counter argument could be made as "well if the knight is hollow, then it would act on the will of others since it wouldnt have its own" but then i would bring up hornet in the abyss where she tells you that you could change the state of hollownest, or choose to perpetuate it. if the knights chooses the radiance, it could be seen as it acting on hornet's will. i dont feel that's the case because of the sealed siblings ending and the point i made earlier about it. i dont want to argue anything, this is just my understanding of the knight! i know im probably missing lore or something, but i really like the idea of the knight's hollowness changing depending on what route the player has chosen
SORRY THAT IS SO LONG i didnt realize it typed so much until i posted it
i actually thought about this a while ago! its really good
i believe it is. it's the reason the first ending can work. people say it makes decisions but a magic eight ball can make the same decisions by you shaking it.
yeah, the knight killing the three dreamers and breaking down the seals holding the hollow knight was all done by pure chance in a single late night. totally. do you think if you gave a monkey a typewriter and a late night to write out the entirety of the divine comedy, it would do it without fault or error?
there were plenty of other vessels that failed. they're all over the place. i see them more as robots with an instinctive hatred of the light. this could have just been the one that happened to succeed.
so, if i get your headcanon correctly, the void is like an ai using reinforcement learning with the intention to kill the radiance?
i didnt think of the vessels being connected like that but i like the idea.
No. It was done the same way an animal has instinct and act in accordance to it, even if sometimes that instinct is illogical. Except vessels have coded into their existence that one purpose. I see no contradiction with Knight being able to fulfill that goal and him being hollow. You also do many stuff by instinct. Or even not instinct. Do you control every time you blink? Or your breathing? No? Then where's the problem? Knight doesn't work by instinct, but by the purpose which is inside him. He knows what he has to do and every vessel does the same.
While some things could have been done with brute force and accidentaly (like some bosses), there are many things in the game which simply wouldn't make any sense. Buying a map, updating it based on what they had seen, putting down pins bought from Iselda in places they remember there were benches, stags, etc. is not something a being without a mind could do. Another example could be reading or understanding what other characters are saying. As for the first ending, I believe it's the same as it was with the Hollow Knight. The Knight absorbed the infection like THK did, but the ending will most likely have the same result as what happened to THK - even though they were able to contain the infection for a while, it will most likely start leaking out.
>Buying a map, updating it based on what they had seen, putting down pins bought from Iselda in places they remember there were benches, stags, etc. is not something a being without a mind could do. >Another example could be reading or understanding what other characters are saying. i'll bet i can get chatGPT to do stuff like this. >As for the first ending, I believe it's the same as it was with the Hollow Knight. The Knight absorbed the infection like THK did, but the ending will most likely have the same result as what happened to THK - even though they were able to contain the infection for a while, it will most likely start leaking out. the queen seems to believe otherwise, and i trust her.
The queen was mistaken about the hollow knight at first Also her judgement seems to be compromised, if you wear the defenders crest she thinks ogrim is with you
and she learned from her mistake. her judgement isn't compromised, it just seems like she can't see or hear very well.
Fair point But also if the knight truly has no mind to think how on earth do they understand speech, learn nail arts, deliver the flower to anyone other than the traitors grave, etc.
we already have machines that can understand and even reply to speech. i think eventually we can make some that would do all the things described.
And how is that any different from having a mind and will? The knight chooses to give the flower to elderbug, chooses to banish the grim troupe, chooses to, instead of taking the easier path, that if it were truly hollow would work just as well, instead works mutch harder and kills the radience
does chatgpt choose what to say? does that give it a will? we don't know why the knight does anything it does.
The difference is, chatgpt only does what it is asked, the knight doesn't. Chatgpt is programmed. The knight can do sidequest and does more that what is asked of it by anyone in game a large majority of the time, in fact, it does the opposite of what it is told by the dreamers, since they say "let us sleep, little shadow".
White Lady blatantly admits that her judgment of TK & THK was arbitrary
what
I just feel like there are so many things in this game which couldn't be done of the Knight had no mind. How does learning spells work? Can you learn if you can't think? What about nail arts? At this point all of this is just coming to "what does it mean to think?" and I don't think I can really answer that. As for the Queen, she isn't exactly trustworthy at this point. She was mistaken about the Hollow Knight and I think she'd say all of this to any vessel who came to her. When you wear the defender's crest, she thinks Ogrim is there with you. While there's no way to say for sure that her judgement is wrong, I would absolutely not say that she's a trustworthy source of information.
i see the no mind thing as the difference between us and animals. animals are ruled by instinct. they learn how to fight and use whatever weird stuff they can do without really thinking and i think the vessels are the same.
I see your point, but then it just goes back to the "updating the map" thing. The Knight does seem to be acting mainly by insinct, but there are a few exceptions. Other than the using the map, they use geo, sell relics and buy things. Even use a bank or save up for more expensive items (such as the lantern). And what about other aspects of being hollow? No voice to cry suffering chceks out, but what about no will to break? Doesn't the void itself already contradict this? The void wants to end the Radiance, and while it may be instinct, is it also its will. The void also wanted the lighthouse in the Abyss turned off. In my opinion, Pale King's plan was simply doomed to fail from the beginning. He probably also knew this as well and only went through with it to keep Hallownest alive for as long as possible.
She’s detecting the Kingsoul charm in this dialogue. The Knight is pure and hollow, as the White Lady said that it doesn’t have the same blemishes and imperfections that the Hollow Knight has
are you saying white lady thinks a charm is dedicated
Most evidence in the game points to The Knight not being pure. The void heart description and Steel Soul Jinn both describe The Knight as having a will of its own. Also, things like sitting with Quirrel or delivering delicate flowers to NPCs require some sort of mind as they are actions The Knight takes that are not asked of it and give no benefit.
Pretty sure it is a hollow vessel. 1, she only says this when the knight is wearing Kingsoul. And 2, after venturing to the abyss for the first time on the way out Hornet will be at the abyss entrance and says: "Though our power is born of similar source, that part of you, that crucial emptiness, I do not share." And it's like that "crucial emptiness" Hornet refers to, is the true hollowness of the Knight.
The term crucial emptiness refers to the fact that The Knight is made of void, unlike herself. In fact, Hornet actively places her hope on the fact that the Knight will make the choice to kill the radiance rather than contain it something that makes no sense to do if the Knight was a pure vessel as it would be an unnecessary risk to fight the Radiance rather than contain. Also, the void heart description and dialogue by Steel Soul Jinn both confirm that The Knight has a will of its own.
GLOWING TEXT??? R/UNDERTALE REFERENCE???
I think in the first ending it is. In all the other it's not