>>719705671
>i thought it was an entirely emotionless automaton
There's a few schools of thought on whether the player knight is hollow and how hollowness even works.

The Hollow Knight was supposed to be an emotionless automaton yet all it took to give the Radiance a foothold was just the slightest hint of familial attachment. The vessels seem to have a will, a mind, curiosity, impressions of the world around them. An empty vessel would gain nothing from saving Bretta, or repeatedly challenging Zote, or chilling with Quirrel, or competing in the Colosseum of fools, or sitting with Marissa as she sings. The knight does all those things, and experienced a lot more than the Hollow one did.

Unless you play your knight like a mindless terminator who only cares about killing the dreamers, supplanting the sealed vessel, and killing/removing any obstacle in the path. Don't give a shit about anything else in the game. That kind of knight could very likely be an entirely emotionless automaton. But it's never clear whether any of the vessels are actually hollow, or if it's just a lot of wishful thinking and hasty assumptions by higher beings who overestimated their own intellect.

And of course if the player knight is empty, then why does the game need any endings other than the very first one?