Hollow Knight is a truly special game and widely regarded as one of the best Metroidvanias of all time. With how popular it is nowadays and fans ravenous for Hollow Knight: Silksong, it can be easy to forget that it was created by indie developer Team Cherry and funded via Kickstarter. It only managed to amass a little under $60,000CAD, meaning more expensive features like voice acting simply weren't possible. Instead, the bugs of Hallownest simply make little grunts and hums to let you know they're speaking.
However, if you've ever wondered what Hollow Knight is like with a full voice cast, then the game's ever-growing community has you covered. Hallownest Vocalized is a project that has been in development for a good long while now, and the team behind it finally announced on the official Hollow Knight subreddit that it's now available for players to download and experience right now.
Hallownest Vocalized isn't like your average voice acting mod either. For starters, none of the voice acting in this project is AI, as over 100 voice actors have come together and lent their voices to a number of the game's friends. Not only that, but the project has also voiced all of the game's journal entries and lore tablets, over 100 item descriptions, and pretty much all of the game's enemies and spirits. It's very impressive stuff.
It's finally here! Hallownest Vocalized is now available to play through the Scarab Mod Launcher! Check the replies for detailed directions & the full trailer. Have fun with the mod!
by u/Ccmaci in HollowKnight
What's more impressive is that the trailer for Hallownest Vocalized (which is embedded above) gives us a brief look at what the world of Hollow Knight looks like with voice acting, and it fits surprisingly well. The voice actors have adjusted their voices depending on the character's personality and general vibes, and it feels a lot more authentic as a result.
If you want to experience this for yourself, it does take a little bit of setup. First, you'll need to download the Scarab Mod Launcher and set it all up, which you can do here, and then use the search function to search for Hallownest Vocalized. It's completely free to download and there's also a Discord server you can join if you need a help, a link for which you can find in the Reddit post.
It'll give you something to do until Silksong finally releases at the very least, which is looking increasingly unlikely to meet its previously promised release before June this year. Silksong was included in a list of titles that would launch on Game Pass by June 2023 - revealed at Summer Games Fest last year - but we're yet to see any indication this will be the case. Even Hollow Knight fans have given up, as the majority admitted in a recent ResetEra poll that they don't expect the game to launch in the next two months.