Many adventure games are about exploring dead kingdoms. Navigating a once living corpse, roads acting like veins, drained of blood. What makes Hyper Light Drifter unique to me though, is that the wounds feel fresh. Hallownest and Lordran feel long dead, to the point where the actual amount of time that has passed feels irrelevant. The world of Hyper Light Drifter seems so much more violent because of this. We don't see the violence directly, sure, but the corpses still lay on the ground, undisturbed until we desecrate their resting place with more bloodshed. Violence is the natural state for some people, their bodies rebelling against themselves. Malfunctions become self-sabotage when viewed from the first person perspective. How can someone find peace in this cycle? Is it even possible? I don't know, I'm not a philosopher.