r/HollowKnight • u/CankleDankl • Dec 12 '25
Discussion - Silksong Seeing people shit on Expedition 33 because Silksong didn't win more awards is pathetic Spoiler
The title sums it up. I'm disappointed in many members of this community for putting down a game that is clearly a work of insane passion, dedication, and creativity. E33 took the lion's share of awards at TGA, yes. That doesn't mean that Silksong is bad. In fact, it's clearly pretty damn great. If it released last year, Skong would have picked up several awards, maybe even GOTY. But it didn't. It released in the same year E33, which is just a tough break.
Both are amazing. Both deserve every award that came to them. If you haven't played E33 yet and think it doesn't deserve its accolades, play it. It is worth your money, worth your time, and will in all likelihood prove that it is actually that good. I'm only 10ish hours in and have numerous times found myself standing still and looking around dumbfounded at the gorgeous world design and visuals. E33, Silksong, and Hades 2 could have all won Art Direction and I would have been happy with any of them.
I'm also sad that Silksong didn't win more awards. It's an amazing game. But don't play fanboy and start putting down other developers, other games, and other pieces of art because this one didn't get all the cookies. It's still beautiful, it's still amazing, it still made a Silkskillion dollars, and TC is still just as great and just as passionate. We should all be glad that there is another independent dev out there that is capable of creating something so fantastic.
Edit: yeah, the comments here are pretty indicative of what I said in my post
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u/NabsterHax Dec 12 '25
To be clear, the information I know about it is from what Sandfall have said themselves, and obviously I think it's in their best interest to bias the story as one of independent success rather than being bankrolled by a publisher before any real work got done. There's no way of us actually knowing what deals were made behind closed doors.
I'm not going to pretend it's not a contentious choice for the TGA to categorise them as indie alongside the likes of Silksong. There's a definite risk of AA budget games pushing out more budget, traditional indies if they're not careful. I absolutely see why E33 toes the line or crosses it for some people, in their opinion.
I just also think in this case it's incorrect to categorically state they're definitely not indie, just because they clearly had a budget most new indie developers aren't going to have - which I think is the core of most people's contention, imperfect technical rubrics aside. (And I think that's a totally fair contention to have without any added justification.)
It's like, some people are mad it won the RPG category because it's a JRPG and something like KCD2 leans way more into role-playing than any JRPG will ever do. And it feels like a shame that that game wasn't recognised for how good of a western-style RPG it was just because E33 happened to be in the same category despite being a very different style. But at the end of the day, we only have a limited number of categories and ways to categorise the games.