Hollow Knight Cut Content (EDIT: I know the Hive has a boss now, please shut up.)

get our story begins in the distant past if you're too young to remember 2014 just ask anyone the world was a very different place kids used to spend their free time at a place called Radio Shack famous actor Shia LaBeouf famously decided he wanted to stop being famous Bill Cosby made his way back onto TV but this time it wasn't exactly for advertising jello but yeah other than that and the ISIS invasion of Iraq and that whole Ebola thing and Ferguson 2014 was a pretty good year but the most important event of 2014 happened on November 18th when two Australians going by the names William Pelin and Ari Gibson launched a Kickstarter for a little game called hollow Knight of course we all know about the final product that was created during the eight hundred and twenty nine days between the launch of the Kickstarter and the release of the game but what about the content that was left out a lot can happen in eight hundred and twenty nine days that's like eleven point five one Kardashian marriages well the first thing I do when I start working on a new video is to check the wiki that way I can just copy paste it into my script okay let's see here no wait fuck damn it bingo this is hollow knight cut content now at the time of writing the latest content pack team cherry has released is the grimm troop so it's always possible that some of the stuff mentioned here will get added into the game in a future update team cherry has dropped the trailer for content back three gods and glory and it looks good could use more beretta to be honest but again we don't know what else coming this time around so it's possible team cherry might throw some cut content back into the game so if you see something in this video that is actually in the game please double check before you go to the comment section and call me a stupid asshole I get enough of that at home in Team cherries early Kickstarter updates they showcased a variety of content that didn't make it into the final game spooky dungeons giant bosses whatever the fuck this is supposed to be most of these features actually pop up in the weird and wonderful world trailer that was dropped during the final week of the Kickstarter this video has some pretty neat stuff so let's just start here ten seconds in we can already see a cut enemy this guy first appeared in the third Kickstarter update going under the name blundering Auber Liske it was described as being a careless and clumsy herbivore so yeah he just runs into shit I guess so why did blundering over list get the axe while team cherry briefly mentioned the enemy in an interview they gave on the roundtable live podcast and I think pretty much like every like every every enemy and boss that we conceived and liked that went anywhere past like sketches but once you've already created art for it we used it no actually there's a couple enemies that we didn't use maybe that weird charging thing with a big nose yeah never really had an area yeah there were a lot of enemies they ended up on the cutting that weird charging thing with a nice here's the next interesting scene from the trailer ashram a warrior is holding a spear that has an infected tip and he's talking like a madman you remember the Shrimant warrior right the guy who sounds like Owen Wilson Wow I also wonder if there was originally a plan for a mushroom village with more mushroom npcs in the final game the closest we get is the fungal core but the only interesting thing there is a dead guy who complaints about The Pale King anyway I think maybe this scene was meant to show how the infection messes with the mind I mean if you look at this guy's dialogue he does not sound okay here we can see it there used to be a back stepping mechanic at some point that would have been nice at about 30 seconds in we can see the knight using an ability called to tyrants fist this is clearly an earlier version of the desolate dive they probably changed it after the spell system was more fleshed out because you know you don't really need magic just a fist to things during the fight with The Grudge mother in the Forgotten crossroads we see an interesting statue the statue is of three beings but the one on the right has been broken the two remaining statues clearly represent The Pale King and the white lady the king and queen of hallow nest as for the identity of the third one well I've actually got good news team cherry did an interview on PC Gamer back in August of 2017 where they talked about designing the map of hallow nest in this article team cherry actually provided pictures of old versions of the map one map in particular is full of information about Halle Knight's development but what exactly does a map tell us about this statue well we don't actually give a shit about the map right now but in the margins of the paper that the map was printed on we can actually see a sketch of these three figures in an identical pose and we could see that the figure on the far right looks almost exactly like the hollow Knight so what the fuck does this even mean well it could mean that the Halle Knights adult form was originally the design for another higher being the fact that it's broken makes me think that the higher being is an early version of what eventually became the radiance what's also interesting is that the mandible is shown here look a lot like the structures found in the dream world we don't know when the moths ended up in the game but maybe it wasn't until later in the game's development but it's interesting to think that the hollow night was at one point the true antagonist of the game about a minute in we see something quite strange before using the vengeful-spirit spell the knight has a white circle that rotates around it later on the trailer we see an item in slide shop called the white crystal ring so was this white crystal ring a powerup that allowed the player to charge the vengeful spirit attack I don't think there's any way to confirm this but it's still pretty interesting next we see a pretty crazy ability dream diving so if the knight uses the dream nail on an NPC it slices the poor bastards head open allowing the knight to enter the dream well the dream well is where bugs hopes fears and dreams reside team Cherry's plan was to use stream diving to give the player unique challenges involving stuff like running away from a hoard of invincible flying nightmares or fighting off a group of creatures without using the nail these areas would also give the player unique items and reveal secrets about the NPCs past there's actually a video showing off the dream dive ability on the elder bug the dream world here looks pretty empty I guess the hoard of invincible flying nightmares is off today at the end of the video the knight comes across a younger version of the elder bug the name of elder bugs younger self has become one of the most divisive issues in the hollow knight community is it baby bug maybe child bug maybe his name was elder bug you know kind of like how people name their kids Gertrude I'm kind of bummed that this feature isn't in the final game but I agreed that removing this feature was probably a good idea Hari Gibson explain why this feature was removed in the reddit AMA team cherry held back in August 2017 we did experiment with a full Dream diving system but it ended up feeling really disjointed and distracted from exploring the world the time we saved making dream levels went into more fully fleshing out Halla nest it would have been cool to have these little challenges separated from the main game to try out but then again we already have the fan favorites white Palace and Coliseum of fools for that speaking of things that people love in games the next scene with cut content shows the knight swimming underwater a different game played mechanic like this would have been really cool also it would have made more sense if the jellyfish in the fog Canyon were put in here in the final game they just sort of float around in midair like they own the place assholes anyway the next thing we see in the trailer is a giant fucking spider now that's badass just look at this thing it's huge when you look at all the bosses that are actually in the game they are all pretty small there's nothing like kraid from Super Metroid for example I'm not saying that there needed to be but it would've been cool to see how team cherry handled it and I'm not sure if team cherry had much planned for deep nest at this point but this makes me curious was this boss or any boss for that matter intended to be a boss in beast den well obviously there was what else would be making this noise and don't try to tell me that's just Harris snoring team cherry spiders don't snore I should know I just googled it holy shit this trailer just keeps going doesn't it after the spider boss we see an unused NBC a giant snail it looks like this is an entire village of snails and the shells look like little houses god I wish this place was in the game I know the character design doesn't really fit with the games atmosphere but I don't care this guy's awesome remember that old map of hallow nest I mentioned well it looks like there might have been an area in the resting grounds originally planned for the snails of course this could just be referenced to the snail shamans it's a toss up really next we see slice shop I mentioned the white crystal ring earlier but there are some other items here too they're just proto versions of items that ended up in the game the most interesting one to me is the greed charm this shows us that the charm system has existed since the early days of the game's development now team cherry must have known that the snail was fucking cool because he shows up again and plot twist he has a kid I guess I just love the expression on this guy's face he's just so fucking done with this kid and this is so weird that the other snail has a smaller dialog box in the final game there's almost no instance of multiple characters talking at once other than maybe the dreamers I'm bummed that these guys got the boot but the artwork for the shells is still in the game so who knows in a Kickstarter update posted in February 2017 team cherry mentioned that to new backer design bosses dungeons and a new village would be added to the game later if this upcoming village is entirely new it's gonna have to be pretty damn good to get me to forget about these guys and that's it for the trailer but there are a few other bits of cut content scattered throughout the Kickstarter page first let's look at the stretch goals team cherry set during the campaign the first met stretch goal was the white palace this stretch goal promised to new boss battles the dusk Knight and the King's golem according to re from the reddit AMA the King's golem turned into the Kings mauled enemy but he's not sure what happened to the dust knight the second stretch goal was the addition of four more side quests that included two more bosses within the game the first side quest was titled an ale Smith's obsession this side quest basically would have dealt with what the nail Smith would have done after finishing all of the Knights nail upgrades in the final game the knight is simply given a binary choice to either straight-up murder the nail Smith has requested or leave him alive if the knight leaves him alive the nail Smith will somehow find his way to nail master sheõs house where the two develop a deep love for one another and that's it not much of a side quest but at least now we know what the nail Smith's obsession was art another one of these additional side quests was the hive the hive was described as being a city inhabited by an ancient and proud race at the heart of the city would be a sad truth as well as a boss encounter of course the real sad truth is that there is no boss encounter honestly the hive is a bit of a letdown it is definitely the most underdeveloped area in the entire game I mean come on even cuphead had a bee boss battle no wonder cop had won Best Debut indie game presented by SiC hydro at the 2017 Game Awards team cherry has admitted that they would like to add more to the hive re mentioned in the reddit AMA that they might add another NPC or put in little homes for the bees to live in on top of that re also mentioned a connection between Hornet and Vespa the dead queen of the hive the original idea for Hornet was that she was going to be the child of three Queens she was birthed by Hera queen of deep nest raised by the white lady the queen of hollowness and trained by Vespa the queen of the hive it's from Vespa that Hornet received her current name this makes more sense when you look at the older maps of how honest while the game was still in development you can see here that the hive is actually connected to deep nest in the final game the hive is about as far away from deep nest as you can get which makes this seem less plausible but Ari didn't know if this was still the direction they were taking the character so it's very possible that this connection between hornet and the hive is still canon another one of the side quests was the secret of the stag ways which promised to shed light on the history and fate of the stags I'd say the side quest did make it into the final game with the inclusion of the stag home and the hatched egg hidden within the last side quest is pretty interesting it's called the lantern on the Black Shore the description for this event says travel beyond the city of tears and reignite an ancient flame I assume that this Lantern is the lighthouse found in the abyss and that Black Shore is the lake avoid the boss encounter for this side quest might have just turned out to be the radiance but I'm not sure now since we're talking about the abyss I figured we should talk about the unmet stretch goal for the abyss the abyss expansion would have added four new bosses to the abyss now as we know the abyss has no bosses even though there are creatures there who appear to be alive Ari Gibson filled us in on what the abyss expansion would have been in the reddit AMA he said that the part of the abyss that the player finds is really just the abyss shore and that the player would have traveled into the lake of void to experience the true twisted world of the abyss some have wondered if team Jerry will revisit the abyss in future updates but Ari dismissed the idea in an interview he gave with the creative hustlers show and we could go and do all that but that just means that we're gonna be making hollow Knight for the next four years well we keep adding to it and what we really want to do is do all the holy night that we've promised and the little extra bits that we just really can't help ourselves from doing and close that book for a while and work on something completely different another game but obviously is like something there is its own world and then you know maybe we feel like returning to it in ten years or something and then the abyss might be calling the next stretch goal was to bring holo night to the Wii U so yeah this has been completely dropped and now teen cherry is working on porting the game to the Nintendo switch I think that this is great Halla night is going to get a lot of attention once this happens seeing as a switch has no good games what's that supper Mario Iliad don't make me laugh there was also an unmet stretch goal to bring holo night to the PlayStation Vita but there hasn't been any news on that I guess I'll just have to stick to whatever games people play on PlayStation Vita one last rect goal that was not meant was for the Coliseum of fools it would have added four new bosses and would uncover the mystery surrounding the Colosseum we get a little light on this from guess who are a Gibson he said that two of these bosses are Zoet in the Oh bobbles the other two bosses eventually became enemies Ari also said that the Colosseum still held a mystery but still no word on that I do get a gladiator vibe from this new trailer maybe the call scene will tie in with the new gods and glory update but who knows anyway one thing I should mention is that the Colosseum of fools was originally planned for the fungal wastes lore wise it makes a lot more sense to me that it was placed in an area of the game full of uninfected mantises who believe in the value of strength I can't say I really have a good explanation for the lore surrounding the Colosseum now that it's in kingdoms edge but I will share a brief summary of my thoughts another bit of content team charities during the Kickstarter was a battle with fierce Draya who has gone crazy after the death of the queen of hallow nest of course in the final game DRI is dead and the Queen is still alive now out of the five great Knights talked about in the game the player only gets to fight one of them twice but some have speculated that the other Knights could come as dream bosses however Ari Gibson dashed all hopes in the reddit AMA when he said that the five great Knights would be explored more in the future but not necessarily through dreams one of the biggest pieces of cut content from hollow Knight was an area called the forest of Bones team cherry mentioned this area in an interview on the roundtable live podcast when discussing the origins of hollow Knights map it was like we just had the idea was that you had like the middle area and then you had three areas around it so which is why the original area is called crossroads in the final game and it's gonna have like fungus land rain land bone land or whatever bone land was going to be a massive part of the game with burning tar falling from the ceiling and an area called the holy grounds hidden deep within from the reddit AMA William tells us that ants were originally planned for this area which would have been fucking awesome from the roundtable live podcast as well as an interview team cherry did with PC gamer we have a little bit better idea of what the forest of Bones development was like the area initially started in the top right corner of the map apparently Ahri didn't like the idea of an area with lava being at the top so they moved the forest of bones down to where the ancient basin ended up being according to William it would have been a large maze-like area that would eventually lead to the monarch wings after that the player would have had to then light torches in order to open a gate let's take a closer look at this map and see if we can figure it out the player would have had to enter from deep nest the only other area connected to the forest of bones was the white palace which connected to the city of tears v a one-way elevator the first thing the player would have had to do was probably reach this area right here and get the monarch wings which is indicated on the map by this white circle after that a lot more of the area becomes unlocked the player would then be able to reach these yellow objects which I assume are the flames that William mentioned in the podcast after these were lit the gate here would open up allowing the player access to this enclosed area from there the player would have to reach this green circle which I assume is the King's brand then the player could reach this location which is probably the holy grounds also the abyss and the white Palace would be accessible at this point as well if the player has a Shou - they can go fight this back or boss over here there's also a nail art up here for a move called Skyward slash I think this is a village this looks important but I can't read this shit I think it says King mu and yeah that's pretty much it oh and there's a snail now let's talk about the holy grounds this little area on the map has a picture of a broken dreamer mask which is kind of weird but either way this must be the location of the dreamer for the forest of Bones so which one is it well the word above the mask here says Hagen mole which was actually Harrah's original name this is kind of confusing especially since the holy grounds have mono moans mask plastered everywhere not Harrah's the reason for this is because all of the dreamers had the same mask very early in the game's development okay then so who are these fuckers they kind of look like vessels okay this is probably gonna sound fucking crazy but follow me on this guy's in September of 2015 Rock Paper Shotgun published an article that featured pictures from re Gibson's sketchbook this is cool because re sketches are wire most of the artwork and character designs for hollow Knight came from these enemies we see in the holy grounds can actually be found in this sketchbook the sketch details the animation for one of these enemies spawning into the game not only that but there are notes to these notes detail how a boss fight with a dreamer would have worked it says that the boss fight would be incredibly difficult and that the dreamer could roar to summon minions so in other words these guys are minions who help protect the dreamers so yeah this whole thing sounds pretty weird between this and the broken statue in the church we can definitely tell that Halle Knights story was once quite different it seems like team cherry hadn't quite decided what the vessels were yet moving on we also have pictures from re sketchbook of some of the artwork for the forest of Bones this first drawing shows off these things called bone vines we also see these weird-looking structures here's a picture of one labeled or pillar we don't know much about the pale war found in the final game re Gibson said in the reddit AMA that they were related to the pale beings and that actually makes sense the forest of Bones was filled with giant corpses and as they piled up in this hot area they might have turned into or with superior properties there's also this dope lava fountain and I guess this might be the entrance to the holy grounds and that's about all the information I can find on the forest of Bones but why did he get removed in the first place team chair gave two reasons as to why they cut the forest of bones the first reason was that it would have taken a really long time to finish the second reason they gave was that they thought it would be too much for players to handle those are pretty good reasons I guess cut damn it during the Kickstarter team cherry announced a new pledge tier that allowed donors to make their own dungeon and boss they mentioned ideas like a robot graveyard and even showed off this drawing for a dungeon called the Carnival of crustaceans yeah I know it's super weird but what's cool is the description up in the corner it mentions organ music hanging lights and tents all things that made it into the game with the grim group content pack not the struggling crab boss thing though sorry crab ello there are also a few charms that got left out of the game back in February of 2016 team cherry posted an article announcing the inclusions of the charm system in hollow Knight in this post we see a couple of charms that didn't make it into the final game two of these cut charms are identified as the vengeful swarm and the glass charm unending greed vengeful swarm was a charm that would spawn hatchlings when the knight would take damage so it's sort of like a mix between thorns of agony and glowing womb unending greed is clearly just the original version of fragile greed there's also some charm designs left over inside the game there's a dulled out version of - master and this one kind of reminds me of carefree melody now let's talk about some of the unused content that got left in the game first off we have this unused sprite sheet of a small enemy pretty fucking lame but hey there it is moving on user Casey Ghost released a mod for Halle Knight back in July that gave the player access to some rooms that were left in the game unfortunately these rooms were removed from the game with the hidden dreams update so this mod no longer works with the current version of the game but don't worry you're not really missing out on much some of the rooms are just on textured areas there are also some pretty strange rooms that feature tight pathways one of which stretches on for quite some time these two rooms look a lot like the underwater room from the trailer as well as the room we're in can be found in the game this really long ass room is very similar to the room with une in it but I wonder if this area was supposed to be filled with acid maybe the night reached the bottom of this room where une can give it the ability to swim back up otherwise it's pretty difficult to get out of this area I don't know it's just a theory there's also some cut rooms from Crystal Peaks but there's nothing really that exciting about them I'll show them to you anyway but I don't have anything to say so I'm just gonna play some royalty-free jazz music here we have a room filled with moth statues this area was shrunk down and hidden within the glade of hope in the final game but even in this earlier version there is still a Ledge for the night to stand on so it can dream now this statue it doesn't do anything here but the statue in the finished map tapes the knight to the shrine of believers there's also a test room for the dreamers which contains a static Guardian that we can't interact with he's just sort of showing kind of looks like he's about to flash us the fucking pervert the last room is the most interesting it's the only cut room with an interactive bench and it's full of string and needles which look exactly like the needle that Hornet uses what's even more interesting is that the exit in this room leads to the room in the ancient basin where the white palace once stood but since there's no adjoining exit in this room the player gets stuck is this cut room supposed to be harness room or is it just to show that the white palace had some connection to the weavers in the hidden Stagg station that was added in the hidden dreams update we can see that the thread is still there all right so that's all the boring stuff out of the way now it's time to talk about cut dialogue and trust me boys and girls team Jerry cut dialog from this game almost as much as the sick Hydro 5 sensitive razor cuts away unwanted facial hair while helping you protect your skin from irritation so we're about to go headfirst into some deep hollow night lore if you don't have a good understanding of the lore then well I'm not mad but I am disappointed now I wanted to start off by talking about the elegy of hollowness the first four lines of this poem appear at the beginning of the game but the rest of the poem can only be found by digging into the game's files in fact the elegy of hollowness isn't even a complete poem it literally just stops midway through one of the lines and yet everyone and their fucking grandma uses this poem when they talk about Hall and aisle or so can we really consider these unused lines as Canon at the end of the day what we are really trying to do is figure out what is written in the hollow night lore Bible that's more important than figuring out what is canonical within the game if that makes any sense anyway there's this dialogue from the moss prophet here we get a little insight into what pisses the radiance off she doesn't like it when creatures change form which is probably referring to how the pale king transformed from a worm she's also against stealing soul which is probably referring to how the knight gained soul from hurting other creatures and then she talks about how the only crime a God can commit is by dying is she referring to how the pale King might be dead or is she just saying that she refuses to die herself she caps things off by talking about how the empty ones must be destroyed milah has similar dialogue to this in the final game now the most cut dialogue we have is for the three dreamers in the final release of hallow night the three dreamers talk in brief sentences and their dream nail dialogue is even shorter it's kind of hard to understand in the final dialogue but the dreamers have a debate as to what to do with our little bug buddy here from looking at this cut dialogue it becomes much more clear what was going on here mana mana argues that the knight should be allowed to break the seals on the hollow night while learn argues that the seal should remain since that was the oath the dreamers made to the King Herod uhz n't seem to care said she's only in it for Hornet for example here's a line that was originally meant for Mata Mon the teacher we sealed that plague and thought we'd found an answer but we were wrong our sacrifices what did they win us at Worlds sealed in stasis here's a line from lurin remember our promise sister we three vowed to protect the seal with all our devotion this isn't really aligned from Hera more of a note about what she would say more detach than the other dreamers maybe Ponder's how the hollow night feels after all this time would he make the same choice again first few dialogues are very taciturn there's also a generic line about The Pale King our King appears as a bug and I shall take him as so but his are traits that transcend our kind his is a mind beyond ours duty given form in sleep I shall not look upon his like again the dreamers also had different lines that they would give to the night when found in the dream world here's a line from autumn on only one path I see the seals must break will it bring destruction of course it will bring change to let its to live forever in an unchanging world death I would fear less this line is probably from lurin remember our bond our sacrifice for the kingdom's sake for the one we must protect and again Hera's dialogue is in note form talks about her history as part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer King gave her a child was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away then there's this huge monologue vimana mom now there's a lot here and it's hard to know how much of this still reflects team Cherry's plan for hala Knights story according to maan Amon here the kingdom of hollowness lasted for a very long time and had reached a point where civilization had stopped advancing she also mentions that halan has struggled both against the radiance as well as the void we don't really know the full details of the pale Kings relationship with the void but we do know that the void tries to consume any creature or beings around it the King used the void for his constructs but maybe his tampering put his people in greater risk than we know and what's with we found each other after all was modem on actively seeking the night out did quarrel somehow help with this effort then there's this line which to me is super interesting an empty vessel to bring hope a strong vessel to bring stagnation an enlightened vessel to bring an end yeah this is some Lord of the Rings type shit right here it almost sounds like some sort of prophecy or something now I can see interpreting this in two ways the empty vessel is the hollow Knight the strong vessel is the main character if the player gets the hollow night ending while the enlightened vessel is the main character if the player gets to dream no more ending another way like to interpret this is that the empty vessel is the first sibling ever made the strong vessel is the hollow knight and the enlightened vessel is the player-character okay I have two more lines left to show you these last two are kind of unique not only were they not used in the final game these two lines were completely removed from the game's code after launch which leads me to believe they are super juicy the first one comes from the white lady two halves of a whole you found your way back to me we were so unfair weren't we to cast you out please you must not hate him he did what he thought was right the kingdom had to live okay so this pretty much lines up with what we already know the Kings soul the siblings being locked away but that last line is kind of interesting anyway the last line comes from The Pale King his dream nail dialogue in the final game reads no cost too great but at one point it might have been false one you cannot reach me here well it seems to confirm that the Bell King is indeed hiding in the white palace but who is this false one he's probably referring to the radiance the false god of hollowness right or is he oh wait wait wait a minute as much as I want to get into this right now this isn't the right place for deep lore I'm sorry guys the last thing I wanted to talk about was those sketches that we have from Ari Gibson I showed off a lot of them for the forest of Bones but there are a few more I'd like to share with you this picture has some pretty interesting stuff on the far left we can see a giant bug with ten legs wearing a dreamer mask was there a plan for the dreamer boss to transform and did an actual enemy I mean wouldn't a fight with this fuckface be pretty easy I guess we're in his dream so he could probably do whatever you wanted to us right hit us with a train or something then there's this guy his mask is similar to the mask worn by Hera and the weavers so maybe this was the king of deep nest or something but part of me says this guy might have been connected to the colosseum of fools the symbol for the colosseum also has the six eye hole design and this guy has that same spiked shell that the Lord Fool has and it looks like this guy is presiding over something also here's the trilobite from deep nest and this confirms that something is supposed to come out of that thing over here we see an early design for the white lady in her little kakouton ball thingy now honestly this last image bummed me out this is an early design for Naz so there are two obvious differences here first of all he's got fucking wings second he has a longer tail that he probably used to attack the night with everyone in the hallow night community who likes to shit on mosque he's got such great build-up to his fight and then the fight itself is just lame imagine how crazy the nos can counter would be if it started the same but then he just turned into this fucking Ridley type motherfucker and that's it for this video sorry it was so short to make up for it check out this blog I just posted in this post I compiled all of the evidence I found through this video into one spot it's pretty good to be honest very dense and concise in fact I don't know why I even bothered making this long-winded video I should just stop right now

Channel: mossbag

Views: 1,480,627

Keywords: Hollow Knight, Cut Content, Team Cherry, The Radiance, Pale King, Blundering Oberlisk, Forest of Bones, Hornet, Hollow Knight DLC, Colosseum of Fools, The Abyss

Id: XK82OttWY4M

Length: 34min 19sec (2059 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2018