So I’ve had this thought before, and seeing Slime bring it up here, I wanted to elaborate and expand on it a little., Hollow Knight has an incredibly similar world to Bionicle. It’s through the lens of bugs rather than biomechanical beings, but the bones of the work are there. To expand any further on this though, it does get a bit into spoilery territory for the game, however, so if you have any interest at all in the game, and have not yet played it, please go and do that now, because I’m going to be spoiling, well… everything I think is relevant.
Hollow Knight’s protagonist, as Slime said, is a hero who has lost their memory, but still feels this instinctive calling to complete this mission that they were in fact made specifically to accomplish, to boil it down to its essence, cleanse the singular-minded infection that has consumed their world and plunged it into an eternal rest, and preserve said world forevermore. This is, more or less, also the story of Bionicle, just with less steps. But from there, I feel like Hollow Knight explores sides of Bionicle’s premise that it never really delves into.
Both Bionicle and Hollow Knight feature protagonists with very explicit destinies, and present said destinies as, at least initially, very set in stone and unmovable. The Knight is destined to replace the Hollow Knight, and take the infection of the Radiance into themself, thus preserving the kingdom of Hallownest forever more. For Bionicle, of course, our two modern-day teams of Toa are destined to reawaken Mata Nui/stop him from getting big dead, and the Toa Metru are just destined to save the Matoran. What’s interesting about this though, is where the two stories diverge. Bionicle never questions destiny. The closest it comes is when the Toa Metru think they’ve discovered that Lhikan was tricked into choosing them to be Toa, and that Nuhrii and co. should’ve been in their place. Of course, it essentially says “Well… nevermind” very shortly after that and that Mata Nui knew Makuta was going to switch the stars, so he switched them first, showing that in this universe, destiny is immovable and set in stone. Destiny is not something to be questioned, and the intent behind said destiny is never for a moment called into doubt.
Contrasting this with Hollow Knight provides a very interesting difference. The Knight’s destiny is not even made clear to the player at first, and it’s somewhat ambiguous whether the Knight themself even knows it at the beginning of the game. You as the player slowly learn about what’s expected of you, simultaneously learning just how much Hallownest as an institution sucked. It was isolationist, keeping the Moth, Mantis, Deepnest, and Hive tribes at arms length. It was colonialist, replacing the Moth’s religion with the worship of the Pale King (More on this later.) It flaunted inequality even within its own borders. The nobility of Hallownest is specifically shown to have gotten ridiculously obsessed with their own wealth, as shown in the City of Tears, while the rest of the populace lives in shacks, such as in the Forgotten Crossroads. You are given every reason to doubt the intent behind this grand destiny of yours, and several characters even specifically call you out for it. Vespa, queen of the Hive, tells you “Though this hive exists within Hallownest, we play no part in its attempt at perpetuation. To rail against nature is folly. All things must accept an end.”
And its this that gives us our greatest point of divergence between the two stories. Bionicle is about preserving and fixing mistakes, namely the splitting of Spherus Magna, or, more relevant to most of the story, fixing the GSR and fixing Makuta’s mistake. Hollow Knight is about how that’s not necessarily the way to go. Hollow Knight offers a different answer besides just endless preservation. If you as the player go through the extra effort to learn all about your conception, and the reasons you’re doing what you are, then you’re rewarded with a new option. Instead of just preserving Hallownest and taking your turn as the method of stagnation, you can choose to instead fight the thing eating Hallownest alive, and end both it and the kingdom, so the cycle of life can start anew.