you
god damn that's an amazing title screen Grimm troupe is finally here and with it
comes some new lore for us to try and decipher not only do we have Grimm and
his lackeys to discuss but there's also more lore for the Bell King and some new
developments with some of the current residents of howl nest the new lore this
time around is somewhat uplifting but mostly just incredibly depressing then
again given team Jerry's track record are we really that surprised this is the
Grimm troupe explained so what is the Grimm troupe well it appears to be some
sort of traveling circus they appear in game after the Night Lights the
nightmare Lantern which doesn't appear until the night uses the dream nail on
the corpse of a nearby bug this use of the dream nail is important because it
establishes the connection that the Grimm troupe has with the dream world
the hunter's journal entry for the nightmare King contains a quote from
seer she explains that at some point in the past the dream world was split this
split was between dreams and nightmares with the nightmares being sent to a new
realm which we'll call The Nightmare Realm this nightmare realm is where the
boss fight with a nightmare King takes place you can tell from the dreamcatcher
particles that surround Grimm that the essence of nightmares is different from
the essence that makes up dreams going back to seers quote we can see that she
mentions the nightmares heart this heart can be seen in the Nightmare Realm in
fact you can hear it beating as the night makes its way to the chamber where
it fights the nightmare king this nightmare heart or the heart of Grimm as
it is also referred to is the true power of the Grimm troupe so what exactly is
this thing is he a higher being like worm root and light is he just the
Nightmare equivalent of the radiance well the white lady mentions that the
clan and the master are one when talking about the Grimm troupe which does kind
of sound similar to the radiances hivemind and there's the fact that they
both use dreams in a unique way the radience uses them to control bugs
whereas grimm uses them as a way to fast travel between kingdoms finally they are
the only two bosses in the game with full screen title cards so there are
definitely some similarities here but to say that the two are on the
level of power might be a bit of a reach but there is one thing we do know about
the heart of Grimm in order to continue its existence a ritual must continuously
take place to maintain its strength and that's where the knight comes in it's
likely that the Grimm troops ritual has happened many times before and will
possibly continue to happen in the future the ritual is supposed to take
place in the remains of a ruined Kingdom this is laid out plainly by Grimm in his
hunter's journal entry and in his dialogue when the night Meets him the
ultimate goal of the ritual is for the current troop master to die and be
replaced by the Grimm child will become the new troop master Grimm explains this
is all done to prolong the heart of Grimm it is the duty of the one who
begins the ritual in this case the night to feed the Grimm child the flames or
nightmares of the Dead Kingdom which must be collected from the Grimm kin the
troop master and the nightmare King must also be defeated we know all of this
because apparently the Grimm troupe wrote a poem about themselves which
appears in the hunter's journal as a work of art I'd say it's a little too
derivative but in terms of lore it's a gold mine the hunter's journal entry for
the Grimm kin master reads feed the child burn the father this shows that
the current troop master must be killed so his flames can be fed to the Grimm
child there's more evidence for this in the hunter's journal entry for the Grimm
kin nightmare which reads dance and die and live forever the dance refers to
Grimm's first fight with the night die refers to the death of the current
nightmare King and live forever refers to the prolonged strength of the heart
of Grimm through the successful incubation of the new Grimm troopmaster
the nightmare King's dream nailed dialogue during the fight also mentions
in dreams born anew so yeah the heart of Grimm is basically cheating death
through this process of constant rebirth through the Grimm kin that's some pretty
weird shit I don't know what kind of drugs they have in Australia but team
cherry must be getting the good stuff once the Grimm troupe quest is completed
wearing the fully upgraded Grimm child charm while talking to the white lady
will trigger new dialogue she mentions the scarlet letter after seeing a
familiar flame within the grimm child's eyes
implying that the heart of Grimm now resides inside of the Grimm child Brom
also mentions that members of the Grimm troupe are just vessels for the flame
this would explain why the white lady says that the knight and the grim child
are similar they both act as vessels used to contain powerful beings but
although the white lady describes the Grimm troupe as all in one
there is one within the ranks who does not want to participate in the ritual
when collecting the last set of flames then I can find Brom in deep nest where
he confesses his desire to banish the Grimm troupe Brom explains that the
Grimm troupe are trapped in servitude to Grimm and that the endless song of grim
survival should be silenced confessor Gigi mentions that the completion of the
ritual may cause suffering but hollowness doesn't really seem to change
even if the ritual is completed the white lady doesn't even give a fuck if
you help out Grimm or not so long as the night still stops the infection so in
reality the only people who potentially suffer from Grimm shenanigans are his
servants aside from Brahma there's also divine the grim steeds the
grim kin and the grim child who all reside within Grimm's Troop in fact even
troopmaster Grimm himself seems to be a slave to the heart of Grimm just so he
can live forever it's at this point that the player has a choice to either go
back to kingdoms edge and banish the Grimm troupe or return to dirt mouths
and defeat the nightmare king that's right it's like a choose your own
adventure book except that one choice is clearly far worse than the other one
there is no good reason to banish the Grimm troop outside of getting an
achievement if you choose to banish the Grimm troupe you miss out on fighting
the nightmare King and while the nightmare King is frustrating his fuck
he's definitely one of the best bosses in the entire game so what do you get
from banishing the Grimm troupe well you get a new charm that replaces the Grimm
child charm causing you to lose custody of Grimm Junior
but the worst part of it is when Brum comes to dirt mouth under a new name
NIMH confessor GG mentions that the grim troop hide their true identities in
forms dreamed whatever that means maybe NIM was brahms original name
before somehow joining the grim troop dream mailing name reveals that he has
no recollection of his past at all so why is having NIM in dirt now so bad
well NIM brings along his accordion bug thingy and starts playing a
carnival-like rendition of dirt mouth steam so now you've got salut bruh
making endless moaning and laughter sounds though constantly running his
mouth off just off-screen and now this asshat has to play his fucking music
right Nix is a goddamn bench any sort of ambience or mood that dirt mouth once
had is now completely gone I mean no offense to Christopher Larkin or
anything his music is godlike and I masturbate to it all the time but this
is not worth missing a boss for brahms desire to betray his masters a cool idea
and all and I think it might have been included as a way for people to get a
hundred six completion file without having to fight the nightmare King Grimm
cuz you know he's hard as fuck but still it seems a little weird to me before we
move on one last thing Grimm seems to draw some strong
inspiration from vampires during the fight he turns into these things which
are close enough looking to bats and he sleeps from the ceiling like bats do
also the black white and red design is pretty similar to Dracula as well it's
also interesting that Hall Knight is a Metroidvania game and now clearly has
elements that the two series are related to vampires and fucking flying jellyfish
monsters another cool Halloween reference can be found in the game's
code for all of Brahms dialogue inside of the tent his text entries are titled
under I Gor not Brom I Gore's the name of an assistant who appears in several
Frankenstein and Dracula films then there's a carnival theme which is
another scary trope also Grimm's name is obviously referenced to the grim reaper
so yeah a lot different themes were thrown together to
create the grim troops design and lore but hey there's some more to lure stuff
to talk about in this content back the next big piece being the path of pain it
is now possible to re-enter the white palace where a new platforming section
can be found the lore tablet at the beginning of the area informs the player
of the painful suffering that will occur re Gibson did the original layout for
the white palace so if he did the path of pain as well then god damn this guy
really has gotten good at causing suffering he should become a dentist or
something this section of the game features the sealed vessel theme which
plays when the knight is trying to get the void heart this song was really
fitting for that section but here it kind of gets ruined by the fact that we
end up hearing it for so fucking long I spent an hour trying to get through this
section and then I experienced a bug at the end where I couldn't exit the room
with the Kings mold a lot of people experience this bug and team cherry has
since patched the game I didn't wait for the patch though so I just did the path
to paint again on my steel Sol file it was fucking brutal but I finally made it
to the next room I was really excited to see what my reward was gonna be and what
was it
incredible this is huge guys now there's a lot going on here so let's run the
seat down play-by-play just in case you may have missed something
The Pale King and the hall and I are looking off into the distance and then
they look at each other and then the scene ends that might not seem like much
but in terms of Halle Knight lore this is like the fucking Holy Grail first off
this is clearly a memory since we know that the hall and is currently locked up
inside the Temple of the black egg this fact alone is huge the exact nature of
the white palace hidden away inside of the Kings mold at the ancient basin has
been debated for a long time there are basically two schools of
thought on the subject either the white Palace stored here is the actual white
palace meaning that everything inside the White House is real
including the pale Kings withered body or the white palace merely exists as a
memory or dream meaning that the real white palace might have looked different
and that the pale King might be somewhere else
this new cutscene seems to lend credence to the idea that the white palace is
completely fabricated from memories but I don't think we can say that for sure
yet I mean yeah this is a memory but it's clearly different from the rest of
the white palace after all there's a tablet that says it's a memory right at
the start of the path of pain so this does seem to separate it from the rest
of the area so let's talk about this scene when does it take place I think
the best bet is to say that this takes place right around when the hollow
Knight was chosen by the pale King the hollow Knight doesn't look any different
from the cutscene we see in the abyss so it hasn't grown up to the size it later
reaches a pretty popular theory that attempts to explain why the white palace
is filled with a fuck ton of buzz saws is that it served as a test for the
vessels to see if they were good enough to be used for sealing up the radiance
this theory does seem to make sense with a new content maybe the scene takes
place right after the Hall Knight has completed the path of pain proving its
worthiness to the pale King I don't really know if I buy into this theory
but it's interesting nonetheless regardless I think it's safe to say that
this scene takes place pretty shortly after the hollow Knight was chosen to
become the vessel so what exactly is going on here well it kind
looks like The Pale King in the hall and I are sharing a moment honestly I'm
getting a pretty strong Lion King vibe from this sort of like a father-son
moment maybe The Pale King truly cares for his creation he knows that the
hollow Knight has to be used to seal away the radiance but he can't help but
grow attached to his child the white lady mentions that the hollow
Knight was tarnished by an idea instilled could this be that inception
it also makes sense with the halt Knights cut dream nail dialogue where it
says father maybe the hall and I wonders why it's
father chose to forsake it it thought he loved it and of course the pale King
loved his child but what could he do his people needed him after all no costs too
great
honestly though this actually made me really sad everyone likes to say that
the pale King is an asshole and while that may be true this is a really
humanizing moment for him I feel like I understand him a little better now
viewing this cutscene also unlocks a new entry in the hunters journal the new
entries for the seal of binding or sob for short I think it's pretty safe to
assume that the SOB was somehow used in an attempt to seal the radiance inside
the vessel in the Black Gate temple but we do see it pop up in other places too
this seal can be found at the entrance of the path of pain in the room before
the memory as well as inside the weavers den the hunters journal explains that
the sob is used to contain a powerful force or to preserve something of great
importance so it seems like an sob was used to preserve the pale Kings memory
of this moment and it was kept within the white palace as for the sob in the
weavers den well that's a tricky one in this update we do learn more about the
weavers a new charm can be found in the weavers den called the Weaver song the
description for this charm explains that the weavers left hollowness to return to
their old home and aside from the one Weaver that we can see briefly as we
leave the Weaver's den the place does seem abandoned wearing the Weaver song
while talking to midwife triggers new dialogue for her midwife explains that
the weavers used their looms to weave songs shields and even spells did the
weavers create this SOB using their silk it seems possible but if so what were
they sealing well the hollow Knights head can be seen in the middle of the
seal so maybe it has something to do with that unfortunately I think we're
gonna have to play the waiting game for a little while longer
so there's all the big chunks of lore we got from the Grimm troupe but there's
also a few little details worth mentioning at one point Grimm mentions
that the knight is a vessel discarded we already knew this but it's always nice
to have more confirmation another character introduced in the Grimm troupe
is divine the top half of her looks a lot like leg eater but her bottom half
doesn't if the player uses divine to transform all of the fragile charms into
unbreakable charms talking Thule Gator with an
unbreakable charm equipped will cause him to travel up to dirt mouth to seek
out divine and then divine eats him this appears to be an example of sexual
cannibalism where a female will cannibalize a potential mate either
before during or after copulation this practice can be seen mainly in spiders
as well as mantises and some other insects
so while leg eater might no longer be with us we can only hope he was able to
bone one last time and then there's beretta basically if you've unlocked the
grey print so boss fight before this update beretta would sit by zoo
listening to him contently since the release of grim survivor her interest in
zone out dwindles the more you defeat the grey Prince if you were able to
defeat grey Prince so ten times and get the gold Zoet statue beretta will
disappear leaving Zoet to Yammer on to no one elder bug tells us that beretta
left towards the howling cliffs and bred his writings inform us that she has left
to find a new love since neither Zoet nor the night were good enough for her
so who will beretta eventually end up with well there are many eligible
partners still left in hala nest each more becoming than the last honestly
this is one of hala Knights greatest mysteries to date forget about that
peruvian grub shit this is what we all need to be trying to figure out before
content pack 3 arrives one final thing in the room where the dream shield is
located there's a statue that can be dreamed nailed it reads protect yourself
you are our last so what does this mean well it might be referring to seer who
is the last moth well that's about it in terms of lore but this video is running
a little short so I figured I'd share with you my thoughts on the latest
content back personally I enjoyed it very much I know the Grim Reaper quest
stuff is just a glorified fetch quest but my desire to learn more about the
grim never made it feel like a chore and yeah the bosses are really good Grimm is
fun and Nightmare King Grimm is such a refreshing challenge on top of that
there's more lore in this pack than hidden dreams and you know howl nights
lore is kind of interesting I guess so that's always nice I will admit that I'm
not a big fan of the whole getting locked out of
the nightmare king grimm fight i mean in terms of Lauritz a nice addition yeah I
just feel bad for anyone who accidentally banished a Grimm troupe
without realizing that they're missing out on fighting a new boss but other
than that one gripe this content pack is amazing the lore the loot the boss
battles the music it's all top-shelf shit my friends but honestly I think we
all know it the best part about the Grimm troupe update is the knight
finally faces the right way when exiting the tram