As Silksong drags them into the spotlight again, have boss runbacks had their day?

Let me paint a picture: Vlor, Despoiler of the Night, raises his mighty fists toward the blackening sky, thick swells of crackling magic signalling an incoming downpour of vicious spears from dimensions unknown. Sword aloft, you rush in, seizing this rare moment of vulnerability to chip, chip away at Vlor’s health bar. Only – your timing is off; your dodge is too slow, and before you know it, you’ve gurgled another death cry, respawning a potentially tortuous five-minute odyssey away from Vlor’s Palace of Desolate Ruin and another chance to best him.

Yes, I’m talking about the classic boss runback – distant cousin, perhaps, to the unskippable pre-boss cutscene – and one of the most divisive mechanics to have been embraced by developers inspired by FromSoftware’s Souls games. For a time, if you’d asked, I probably would have evangelised the runback; if there’s one thing I’ve learned battling through From’s oeuvre, it’s that calmness isn’t just a virtue, it’s a necessity. Anger breeds impatience, impatience breeds carelessness, and suddenly you’ve got two dozen gigantic spears sticking out the top of your head at concerning angles.

My old argument, then, was that runbacks were a vital opportunity for re-centring – a chance to breathe out the rage as you traversed a familiar path, ready to face your formidable opponent again with perfect mental equilibrium. By Dark Souls 3, though, the series’ boss runbacks were growing notably less severe, and by the time Elden Ring arrived – let’s ignore Raya Lucaria – it seemed From was about ready to consign them to the dustbin of video game history once and for all, tossed aside as a pointless bit of legacy faff. And you know what? I didn’t miss them.

But as other developers began looking to capitalise on From games’ popularity, runbacks – alongside other familiar Soulsian mechanics like world-resetting rest points and currency drops on death – started proliferating elsewhere. Over the years, we’ve seen the subgenre embraced by the likes of Nioh, Salt & Sanctuary, Lords of the Fallen, Mortal Shell, Blasphemous, Steel Rising, Nine Sols, and Lies of P; the full list is long. And while some studios opted to ape the formula as closely as possible for maximum authenticity, others, particularly in recent years, either jettisoned runbacks entirely or shortened them so much they felt little more than an obligatory nod. For a time, it seemed runbacks might finally be falling out of fashion, but then came Hollow Knight: Silksong. With its punishing difficulty and often lengthy runbacks, Silksong has helped resurrect the conversation once more: do boss runbacks serve a purpose or are they just an archaic, infuriating bit of time-wasting design that’s well past its prime?

On Silksong specifically, Eurogamer’s Dom Peppiatt – a massive fan of the original Hollow Knight – is torn. “On the one hand,” they explain, “I really appreciate what Team Cherry has done in making them dynamic: you cannot just autopilot your way back to the boss in most cases, because the path is laid out with threats that do not react the same every single time. Enemies may back-dash, hurl projectiles that intercept your jumps, or burrow up/down through the terrain. It means you have to think, react, and be aware every single time you die – you can’t just sleepwalk your way back to an encounter like you do in some FromSoft games, even the runback is a test. That’s fun. It wakes you up, it makes you think about your path.”