Hawk-eyed Hollow Knight: Silksong players spotted a rogue mouse cursor in a late-game cutscene, and now I can't unsee it.
I was alerted to this minor production error by Reddit user SooperWooper7044, and I've checked five different cutscene compilation and walkthrough videos to confirm it. It's real, folks.
For a brief second, a mouse cursor, seemingly tinted orange by the lighting of the scene, appears at the top edge of the screen during the cutscene. It shakes along with the shot's camera, suggesting it's some strange artifact of editing or layering.
Late-game Hollow Knight: Silksong spoilers ahead.
You can see the cursor for yourself at 3:21 in this video from Rizado.
Or in this screenshot from BeardBear's video:
The affected cutscene depicts Hornet's descent into the fiery core of the world underpinning the kingdom of Pharloom in Act 3 of Silksong. From inside the cockpit of a diving bell, which is audibly creaking and visibly cracking under the heat and pressure of a molten world, Hornet sits nervously as her bell operator sends her plummeting into an orange-lit abyss.
The mouse cursor appears shortly after the camera pans to show a wider view of the cockpit, with Hornet seated in the middle seat. Right before the light from the bell's sole window intensifies and the scene fades to black, a clear-as-day mouse cursor pops up at the top of the screen. Amazing.
This being the Silksong equivalent of Game of Thrones leaving a coffee cup on set, fans have obviously begun seeking a canon explanation for this mouse cursor.
Here's the best theory I've seen so far: this cutscene was actually a camera feed of the bell's interior, fed back to the operator up above for monitoring, and this mouse cursor was just the result of that operator briefly moving his mouse in panic as he stepped back from the desk gripped with fear that Hornet may be lost for good. That's more likely than a couple of Australian dudes missing one second of UI, right?
I can't wait to read the patch notes for this one.
