Introducing the Video Game City Week
Queen’s Station
They say the best way to arrive in a city is by train. I think that probably holds true even when the train is actually a giant stag beetle, summoned by the ring of a bell. Actually, it’s perfect – Hollow Knight’s fast travel Stagways system blends the best of trains and hansom cabs. Victoriana of a certain kind – the pre-raphaelites, Christina Rosetti – shimmers through this world.
And this is never clearer than at the Queen’s Station, the jewel of the Stagways system. When I think of Hollow Knight, a delicate, brutal metroidvania set in the moonlit world of insects, I always think of this place. It feels like it’s the centre of something vast, the way that Grand Central feels like it has arteries and veins open to the whole of New York. It’s a place you pass through, and yet it’s also a place that rewards stopping to take a break. Of all of the railway stations in video games, The Queen’s Station is my favourite.
