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I’ve spent a not-insignificant portion of my waking hours the last few weeks thinking (and writing) about Hollow Knight: Silksong, but I may have actually spent more time replaying a description of the game from streamer Northernlion in my head over and over again like a Nick at Nite rerun.
While Silksong was the focal point of online gaming conversation from its late August release date announcement up until the launch of Borderlands 4, Northernlion not only cheerily avoided streaming it alongside other big Twitch channels, but spent the Silksong hype period roasting viewers who asked why he wasn’t playing it.
“Have metroidvania fans ever considered that walking back is not as much fun as walking forward? I guess I’m just a different kind of beast’,” he joked a few days before Silksong’s release. “You can do metroidvanias if you want, but once I finish with something I’m done with it. I’m moving on. Greener pastures. Oh, you need a double-jump to access that door up there? Well, I guess god doesn’t want me to go up there. I’ll be moving to the right. I’ll be moving to the right and jumping onto platforms that are approximately one times my height above me. That’s about it, man. That’s about it.”
In the early 2010s Northernlion amassed a fanbase on YouTube with let’s play videos of The Binding of Isaac, but in recent years has become better known for live interactions with his audience on Twitch streams. At some point his ability to riff on basically any topic started generating a consistent stream of viral goofs, rants, and unbelievable moments—enough to earn him a reputation as “your favorite streamer’s favorite streamer.”
So it was perfectly in character when, straight off the dome, he delivered a perfect stream-of-consciousness takedown of metroidvanias as the gaming equivalent of getting to your car and realizing you forgot your car keys.
You can watch it here, but I will now transcribe the quote in its entirety for your reading pleasure:
“We will not be playing Silksong. Regardless of its reviews, we are being indifferent to Silksong. The reason is, I hate going back for stuff. I hate when I get to my car and then I forgot about my car keys. I’m like, what the hell, now I have to go back to the house?
“They made a whole game about getting to your car but you don’t have car keys, so now you have to go into your basement and get a fucking pogo stick that lets you jump up to the shelf where you’ve got your car keys, only oh wait, your garage door opener is inside something you have to become really tiny to get into, you have to get into your crawlspace to get the garage door opener, and then you go to click it but there’s no batteries, to get the batteries you’ve got to use the pogo stick to get a key that goes into a lock that unlocks to get the batteries but you don’t have the screwdriver to unlock the back of the garage door opener to put the batteries in so you’ve got a use a shovel to dig a hole, you gotta use your pogo stick and get really small in order to get to the shovel that you use to dig up the screwdriver to unscrew the back to put the batteries in to use the garage door opener to get into your car to use your car keys to drive to work.
“They made a game about that, and you can’t wait for it? You’re excited for that? Are you crazy?”
This is a perfect bit. It is immaculately conceived comedy with an unimpeachable narrative throughline that would leave stand-up comedians who’ve spent months polishing the delivery of worse jokes reeling. Per-second it has delivered me substantially more joy than any of the 20 hours I’ve put into Silksong so far, and I love the game.
The best part is that this is not just a bit; it’s a bit-inside-a-bit, just one moment inside the meta joke of games he plays instead of Silksong, as highlighted in this compilation of subsequent streams.
“i can’t believe in the middle of the ragebait he plays a puppygirl game out of no where,” reads one of the YouTube comments, reacting to Northernlion booting up a clicker game.
Northernlion’s fanbase has picked up his flair for multilayered and ironic reference-filled in-jokes, as another comment on that same video demonstrates:
“Pro tip: The Lion of the North frequently attempts to Ragebait against the current of the popular. If you do not have the prerequisite endurance or Thick Skin charm, counter by purposefully ignoring his cinema references or feigning absolute indifference towards it. The glass canon nature of this interaction will flip the Soyjak-Gigachad equilibrium to your favour, and soon enough NL will be the irate lion screaming at the calm and composed monkey that is you.”
You can no doubt find an army of YouTubers and Twitch streamers out there currently not playing Silksong, or making videos about why its difficulty is a crime against gamers. But only one who has the composure to blurt out “Shitsong!” and then segue to a diss of James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful. Truly a different kind of beast.
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wesley@pcgamer.com (Wes Fenlon)
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