Team Cherry revealed that they were thinking about making an entirely up-to-date game rather than Hollow Knight 3, but admitted that their only concern was “death.”
It took co-founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen seven years to create Silksong, the hotly anticipated sequel to the hit Hollow Knight – even though they didn’t plan it. While extensive interview with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreierwhere the duo confirmed plans for the Silksong DLC, the conversation turned to what would happen next.
It looks like Team Cherry hasn’t decided yet whether to make Hollow Knight 3 or an entirely up-to-date video game, but Gibson and Pellen If thinking about how much time they even have left to make video games.
“…we have plans to make other games,” Gibson said. “Really the only problem is – as we’ve talked about before – death. It’s not that far off if you spend seven years on the project and potentially add another two. So it would be nice to make a few more games. Apparently our time frame still allows us to fit a few more in. Unless an unexpected tragedy occurs.
It’s a grim thought, but it’s one that’s been on the minds of many famous video game developers. In 2023, ahead of Starfield’s launch, Bethesda development chief Todd Howard said that The Elder Scrolls 6 could be the last game in the fantasy series it develops, given how long the Microsoft-owned studio takes to develop games.
“And when we look at Elder Scrolls 6, it turns out that… I probably shouldn’t say this, but if I do the math, I’m not getting any younger,” Howard said. “How long have people been playing Elder Scrolls? This might be my last game. I don’t know.”
In May, 62-year-old Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima revealed that he had been thinking about his own mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic, during which he became seriously ill. “Turning 60 was less a turning point in my life than my experience during the pandemic,” he said. “At that time, I became seriously ill and underwent eye surgery. Until then, I didn’t think I was aged, you know? I just didn’t feel my age and assumed that I would be able to create as long as I lived.
“But then I got sick and couldn’t create anything. I saw many people around me die during that time. I faced death. Of course, I recovered, but now I was thinking: ‘Wait, how many years do I have left to create a game or a movie?’ Maybe I’m 10 years old?”
Kojima even wrote down some ideas on a flash drive and gave it to his assistant during the pandemic “kind of like a will” at a time when he was worried about his studio Kojima Productions and making sure employees would continue to be paid if he couldn’t make games.
As for Team Cherry, Gibson and Pellen said that whatever they end up with, whether it’s a brand up-to-date game or Hollow Knight 3, will look similar to games the studio has created before.
“We said we would go somewhere else, too,” Gibson said. “Though we’ve also said that these experiences will still involve exploring large worlds full of strange characters, giant bosses and so on. So there will be some bottom line there that people will be familiar with. That doesn’t mean we won’t return to these Hollow Knight worlds. We have ideas for what forms they would take. But we also don’t want to just be the people who create Hollow Knight.”
Wesley is the news director at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. Wesley can be reached at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
