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 really serve a purpose or are they just an archaic, infuriating bit of time-wasting design that's well past its prime? The comfortable, posterior-supporting calm before the Silksong runback storm. "I've played enough Souls games to appreciate how repetition becomes muscle memory and, thus, mastery. So we ask, is the boss runback an outdated bit of game design that should be consigned to the past, or is there still value in those lengthy returns?