Hollow Knight: Silksong, the highly-anticipated follow-up to the indie smash hit, Hollow Knight, has gotten delayed (via Team Cherry), missing its expected release June 2022 – June 2023 release window as revealed in the latest Xbox showcase, and now fans will likely have to wait a bit longer to get their hands on the game, as a new release date has yet to be announced.
Last June, Xbox made a bold gesture of transparency by showcasing games that were expected to hit the shelves soon (as in not much later than when the showcase aired). Xbox probably did this to avoid letting the hype fizzle out by making fans wait longer than necessary, which is why it kept the announcements (and the revealed release dates) limited to a 12-month window and not any longer than that.
During the show, Xbox unveiled a bunch of games that are now out and about, including The Callisto Protocol, High On Life, Atomic Heart, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Pentiment, and more. As usual, Game Pass made it possible for gamers to get their hands on these titles right after launch. However, and despite Xbox's best-laid plans, some games have fallen short of its intended and calculated goals.
For instance, Ark 2 has been postponed until 2024 to ensure it's polished to perfection, while Starfield is now slated for a September release. Hollow Knight: Silksong seems to be joining the ranks of delayed titles as well, and to be honest, this doesn't come as a huge surprise since there was hardly any marketing buzz leading up to June.
We were even starting to fear that the game was stuck in development hell, but fortunately, according to Matthew Griffin – the PR representative for Team Cherry – this is not the case. In fact, the game may have evolved beyond its original scope, as his words state that the game has gotten "quite big", which could be why it's taking longer to release.
The word "big" is certainly not a small word, and it's leaving us (or me) scratching our heads, wondering what it could possibly mean. Thinking about how it compares to its predecessor, I recall how some die-hard fans have done their math and tried to measure the size of Hollow Knight's Hallownest in feet (and Flukemarms), crunching numbers and performing complex calculations beyond the capability of any normal Metroidvania fan.
One fan went so far as to spend an entire month taking screenshots of a single location in the game to get an idea of the map's size. And the aforementioned fan, whose Reddit account has since been deleted, estimated that the map could be as large as a giant apartment building, which means that Silk Song could be at least two buildings in size, or even as large as the Congress Building! Although other recent games like Afterimage have set the bar high in terms of size, it seems that Silk Song is gearing up toward a whole new standard for Metroidvania games.