Silent Hill f and Townfall Should Be the Ying to Each Other’s Yang

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 23, 2024 9 Views 6 Min Read
Silent Hill f and Townfall Should Be the Ying to Each Other’s Yang



Silent Hill is currently riding a high that its most die-hard and long-time devotees could only dream of even a year or so ago. That’s all thanks to the astounding reception that Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake has received, which was hard-earned and nowhere near anticipated until the last little while before it launched. Silent Hill 2’s remake isn’t particularly earth-shattering as a modern AAA survival-horror game, but it’s a win for Silent Hill in general regardless of how low the bar was set by games like Homecoming, Downpour, and The Short Message. Now, f and Townfall have a huge responsibility to carry that torch as the only two upcoming Silent Hill games announced at the moment.

Silent Hill f’s announcement teaser makes it remarkably clear what imagery to expect from its decidedly Japanese-inspired setting and aesthetic (quite beyond the rural American norm for the franchise) and Silent Hill: Townfall’s announcement teaser left everything to the imagination with only a CRTV Pocket Television depicted on a desk among other miscellaneous items. These two games have probably been in development for some time now and won’t necessarily take the Silent Hill 2 remake’s success into consideration for their own design or development, and f and Townfall possibly being polar opposites of one another may work greatly in their favor.

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Cronos: The New Dawn has a spotlight on it thanks to the Silent Hill 2 remake and will be a true test of what Bloober can accomplish with a new IP.

Silent Hill Games Should Take the Whole Line Back to Formula

Silent Hill’s newfound success is a slippery slope and how f and Townfall are designed will determine how long that success is sustained. What kind of gameplay they may have is anyone’s guess at the moment, but an ideal scenario might see each of them pursuing two opposing paths: one could be linear, claustrophobic, and short like classic Silent Hill games of old, while the other could be nonlinear, encouraging exploration, and lengthy like Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake. Silent Hill 2’s remake obviously needed to faithfully maintain what made the original terrific and that included the classic’s nostalgic survival horror atmosphere in a third-person perspective.

It’s unlikely that Silent Hill will ever revert back to fixed camera angles and tank controls as big-budget franchises like Resident Evil have decidedly declared that style outdated in the contemporary era, but keeping its story tight-knit and truncated like Team Silent’s Silent Hill games could provide an experience that’s more familiar and true to how the original installments are designed. If either f or Townfall leaned in that direction, it would have nostalgia on its side.

Future Silent Hill Games Can Have Their Cake and Eat It Too

Silent Hill 2’s remake is exceedingly long and by far the longest Silent Hill game ever. That’s not to say that the remake necessarily overstays its welcome or is full of bloated content, but most of that runtime involves mandatory content that must be completed on repeat playthroughs unless players remember associable puzzle solutions, in which case they can skip entire sections of the game.

The remake’s opening sequence sees James Sunderland exploring Silent Hill differently than players do in the original, and the puzzle players piece together in this journey navigating foggy streets and shops is compulsory regardless of whether players knew they needed to search certain locations for key items or not.

If exploration is a fixture of either f or Townfall, another lengthy title could satisfy that indulgence and hopefully pepper in as many engaging environmental puzzles. Only time will tell how either game will turn out, such as whether or not they’ll indulge in other Silent Hill inspirations as a design framework, and indeed a new bar has been set that they both can hopefully strive to surpass.

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