Hollow Knight Fans Are Ready to Have Their Hearts Broken Again by Tuesday’s Nintendo Direct

A pair of back-to-back Nintendo Directs have been announced for tomorrow, one focused on indie games and another focused on larger, third-party partners.

Which means that Hollow Knight fans are once again preparing for inevitable heartbreak if Hollow Knight: Silksong doesn’t appear.

If you’ve somehow missed this entire saga, Hollow Knight: Silksong is the eagerly-awaited sequel to 2017 Metroidvania Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight was adored by critics and fans alike (we gave it a 9.4/10), so in 2019 when developer Team Cherry revealed a sequel, it was met with enthusiasm.

When Silksong was revealed, it didn’t come alongside a release window. But ever since its 2019 unveiling, fans have been foaming at the mouth waiting for it to officially come out. We actually saw the game in action back in 2021, and it’s cropped up with new trailers a few times since, but still no word on when it’ll actually drop. At one point, Xbox appeared to confirm that Silksong would drop before June of 2023, but then that didn’t happen. Earlier this year, the game got an Xbox store page on April Fools Day of all days, and you can imagine how that went over. There was nothing at any of the major summer showcases in early June, and then Geoff Keighley had to head folks off before gamescom Opening Night Live and tell them Silksong wouldn’t be there either.

Just to get this out of the way, no Silksong on Tuesday at ONL. @TeamCherryGames is still cooking. pic.twitter.com/FlQHlc26zo

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) August 17, 2024

The result of this long wait is that every single time there’s a games showcase of any kind – a Nintendo Direct, an Xbox or PlayStation showcase, anything Keighley puts on – fans immediately start talking about Silksong. Will it show up? Will they be disappointed again? Almost every time, there’s a seeming consensus it won’t be there, but that vibe tends to come alongside a kind of desperate longing to be wrong. We’re seeing it now, with tomorrow’s Nintendo Direct. There’s a ResetEra poll where, at the time of this writing, 86% of voters are saying Silksong won’t be present. We’ve got tweets:

If there was ever a time for silksong the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell would be it https://t.co/h7M8pKZnEI

— TAHK0 ☕️ (@TAHK0) August 26, 2024

There’s this increasingly desperate meme:

So will Silksong be at either Nintendo Direct even tomorrow? We have no idea. Team Cherry’s been coyly quiet, probably because the studio is focused on the game and can’t get hung up on giant internet mobs of people begging them for news. Perhaps this will finally be the event that calms the Silksong storm and gives us a firm date to hope for. Or maybe we’re due for several more years of Silksong-less winter.

Good luck tomorrow, everyone.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].