Silksong player tracks down a secret version of its act 1 boss and immediately discovers why Team Cherry probably cut it
Silksong contains remnants of all sorts of cut content, unfinished fragments of a game that never was. One of the things left out was an alternate version of the Last Judge fight that would've appeared in the game's secret third act. YouTube user Kilroy Was Here tracked down the snippets of leftover code for the fight, modded them in, and immediately realized why Team Cherry decided it should probably stay buried in the game's files.
Even though many players fought The Last Judge at the end of act 1, she's technically an optional fight. There's another way to get to act 2 that involves fighting a completely different boss, which leaves The Last Judge alive for whenever you decide to go back. However, you can't leave her alive if you want to enter the game's optional third act as she prevents you from completing one of the requirements to access it.
This might not have always been true during Silksong's development because an alternate version of The Last Judge exists. And that alternate version implies that a "voided" variant of her would've shown up during act 3—much like a handful of other optional bosses who get powered up if you skip them.
Kilroy Was Here discovered that this "voided" Last Judge is almost completely intact if you use mods to get around having to kill the normal version before act 3. Her bronze armor is blackened and some of her attacks are infused with dark void energy that saps away your silk resource when you get hit. But apart from a much bigger health bar and a single new void attack, she's nearly identical to the original fight.
Curious to see more, Kilroy Was Here modded in the rest of her unique void attacks to see how they shake up the fight. Their experiment started out promising when the boss brought out a nasty spinning blade attack that slices Hornet up and knocks her back. But then it was all downhill from there. Her second move spits out void globs that look like they're designed for a different enemy, and they're completely harmless if you just step back a little.
And then there are the void tendrils, which awkwardly sprout out of her midsection. They look fitting for a void attack, but they are positioned high enough on her body that they go right over Hornet's head, leaving her unscathed. You'd have to be trying to jump straight into them to take any damage. "Hornet benefits from being short, I suppose, for once in her life," Kilroy Was Here joked.
All of this makes the fight surprisingly tame for something you'd encounter near the end of the game. A finished version would've probably been a formidable encounter, but looking at what Team Cherry was playing with, it was probably better to just keep it out of the game.
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