Actually I Think I Do Want To Ramble A Little More On The Subject.

Actually I think I do want to ramble a little more on the subject.

While I do love making buzzsaw jokes (especially after completing Path of Pain, like, the fuck?) I do also think the layout of the Dream White Palace wasn't intentional. If he did it after that horrible cry came out of the Black Egg temple the first time when Holly was starting to crack, he must've been in a fucking state.

Like imagine you convinced yourself that what you're doing is for the greater good, that this being that you do love (even if you're denying it to yourself) that you thought was emotionless, a blank slate, only does as is told, has no hopes, thoughts, aspirations, merely exists, suddenly with one cry proves you wrong.

Just imagine that horrible realization that you were wrong about them (you always were, you ignored all of the signs they were alive) and you damned them to a fate worse than death. Eternal imprisonment sucks too, but since they're an unfeeling creature, it's fine, right? Nope. Definitely not. It was not fine, even if they were an unfeeling creature, but now it's even worse because the infection is eating at them now.

All of those children left to die in the abyss? That all happened for nothing.

Those dreamers you made to sacrifice themselves to keep people out? They're now the only thing holding the vessel inside of their prison but they sure as hell are not containing the infection. That too was all for naught. Your daughter lost her mother for no reason.

You did this all to save so many people, your entire kingdom of Hallownest. You choked down the guilt of your decisions because it would save the kingdom. Now you find out it was for nothing.

I think anyone would break, and break the King did.

By that point, there was no one left to stop his spiral. The White Lady was gone, most of the knights too, his council, everyone. No one was left to stop him from making extremely irrational decisions, including putting his palace into the dream realm to flee from the infection along with anyone inside. As he runs into his throne, trying to somehow run from the guilt, the grief, the horror, the palace twists. It becomes extremely hard to follow him, almost impossible. He makes it to the throne, the Kingsmoulds loyally guarding the outside...

It's there he breaks. He spirals. He falls into a deep despair.

I personally think the Pale King died of grief, and with that death, left his surviving children the monumental task of cleaning up the mess left behind.

Tags

hollow knight pale king hk analysis some good food

WELCOME TO MY PRESENTATION

(Also thanks for the excuse to draw my Vessel sona)

Don't get me wrong I don't hate Nosk, they're one of my favorite characters in Hollow Knight and media in general. I absolutely adore the concept behind them and the SUSPENSE through those tunnels leading to the big reveal still remains one of my favorite scenes to come back to in HK. The design and concept behind them is very neat and the overall feeling of that first time you enter the arena and see that cutscene is just. Wonderful.

That said, my issues are all about the actual fight. Specifically the attacks.

Nosk has arguably one of the most interesting buildups to a fight in HK, and is in one of the most creepy areas of the game, considering the arena and atmosphere of the fight too, I was expecting this to be a hard boss. I was expecting really difficult and potentially creepy attacks. The OST is one of the most anxiety inducing tracks in the game. Yet the entire fight just amounts to them.. running around? Occasionally jumping onto the ceiling? It feels like a rip off.

Nosk literally only has three attacks and they're all easy to dodge/cheese, if they were just small parts of the fight, it'd be fine, but instead 50% of the fight is just Nosk running across the arena, which is easy to dodge with or without the use of hiding under the platform(still one of the funniest ways to cheese a fight honestly).

Nosk has a bunch of hanging CORPSES in their den, so I thought that maybe they'd have a close up attack where if you got too close it'd trigger them swiping close range, kind of like this:

I Would Love To Hear Your Thoughts On Nosk If You Ever Got The Time To Erite About It. Your Artwork Of

Extremely low budget explanation but STILL

The attack with screaming and the infection getting everywhere? NICE! Nosk on the ceiling shooting orange juice at you? GREAT! But the fact those are basically the only two good attacks in this fight with THREE really just. It weighs it down for me man.

By this point in the game(I mean I had to Google where Nosk was since I only saw art of them on my first playthrough since they're hidden), plenty of bosses had phases, too. I feel like the fight could've easily been more anxiety inducing if they had a few phases.

For example:

Phase one - same as current fight + close range attack

Phase two - running attack happens less, potential variations of other attacks, speed up things a bit

Phase three - more orange juice, maybe webs(since that's how the other creatures in the background appear to be captured), could potentially do some jumping version of the running attack(like jumping around the arena aggressively making them harder to do damage to without being hit)?

I'm obviously not a game designer, but I do like rambling about things and potential ideas that could happen to make things better.

The Nosk fight on its own isn't even terrible, it's just the fact that it doesn't live up to the buildup of the way to the fight and the cutscene in the beginning, let alone the absolute panic the OST makes me feel.

Oh and don't even get me STARTED on Winged Nosk. HOW DO YOU MAKE SOMETHING LESS TERRIFYING BY ADDING WINGS IM IN GENUINE SHOCK

I know I probably repeated myself a lot and this is very scattered, but I hope that you somehow enjoyed seeing me ramble aggressively about a fight in a silly bug game that I think has issues anyway.

In conclusion Nosk has an amazing concept, design, OST, atmosphere, and some alright attacks, but really could've benefitted from some more attacks/phases.

I wrote more about this fight than I did for my English essay on Thursday so I don't know what that says about me but do with that what you will

Tags

hollow knight yes boss fight hk nosk the fight really is a let down compared to the suspence of the build up no offence to TC since there are plenty of amazing boss fights but still Nosk is a dissapointment

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cousinofmycousin

1 year ago