So, we finally have a trailer for Silent Hill f, a title that looks like a typo and will frustrate me every time I have to write it. We’ve been waiting a while, and in the time since SHf was revealed, we’ve received three Silent Hill other games: One surprisingly great, one fascinatingly terrible, and one brief but kind of okay. That said, it’s nice that Konami is trying things with the series that go beyond slapping together another vaguely-broken remaster collection.
Would we all like the old Silent Hill games playable in a current format other than emulated or modded to Hell? Yes. Would Konami release them in a good state? Eh… I’d go with a pessimistic ‘maybe’. At least they’re okay at doing Game Boy Advance re-releases! That’s something! We gotta hold onto what we can get!
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Can It Be Silent Hill If It’s Not In Silent Hill?
Among all the new wave of Silent Hill games, Silent Hill f (at least let me capitalize it, Konami, please, I’m dying) feels the most different in terms of vibes. Yes, Ascension was an experiment in story decisions made by audience vote, but it still somewhat stuck to the aesthetic of the series, even though that game itself wasn’t always in the actual city of Silent Hill. It still stuck to creepy Western towns. Confused people wandering in a daze and talking like they just got bonked on the noggin.
None of it was done that well in Ascension, but it paid lip service to the series. Meanwhile, Silent Hill f takes place in an entirely different location with characters that seem a little more active or unaffected by the curse of whatever town might be cursed. And, honestly, I’m torn.
Now, when I say ‘torn’ that’s not a euphemism for ‘I’m not happy’ or ‘they did it wrong’. It means that I literally feel split on whether I like what I’m seeing. The game does look great. At the same time, it also looks on the surface like half of the Japanese horror games ever made. You could swap out one or two elements and this could be a trailer for a new Fatal Frame or Siren or even a next-gen Corpse Party.
To be fair, these games are all different with different stories and play differently from each other. But it’s been a genre that’s pressed the ‘stringy hair girl with limbs bent weird’ button a lot of times. I’m not worried it’ll be bad, I’m worried it will struggle to differentiate itself from a very packed field.
Silent Hill Has Always Been Tropey
On the other hand, it’s not like Silent Hill’s regular setting of ‘spooky American town’ is the freshest of ideas. We’ve had that for a very long time too, and with all the recent indie games inspired by Silent Hill taking up that mantle, it’s hard to get excited for another tour through a dilapidated shopping district with generic versions of stores you’d see in a failing mall.
Silent Hill as a series has spent decades struggling to do something significantly new with the town (and/or adjacent cities), so I can’t say that I’d prefer them to give me more diners with three chairs and one obtuse puzzle. The series needs more than remakes and rehashes of ‘generic everyman gets out of car and walks into Scary City, USA’.
Neither setting is innovative in terms of the horror genre. Yet what I do appreciate is that the aesthetic of Silent Hill f is innovative for the series. Rather than everything turning to rust or rot, there’s a weird sense of growth when we see the Otherworld, assuming it’s even that. Tendrils reach out of the ground and walls, weird plants spring up. True, Silent Hill: The Short Message featured Sakura Head, a monster with flowers all over its body, but otherwise, the series hasn’t had a lot of fauna or strange biology in the environment. It’s almost like it’s turning into an alien world rather than a Hellish one.
It looks amazing with vibrant colors that have been missing from the series for – I dunno – almost its entire existence. And, again, it’s a departure from a series that got a little too stuck in the old ways. Even the violence and character interactions in the trailer feel pretty different than the old ways. The main character’s friends don’t seem like lost souls trapped in their own nightmare – they seem like regular kids who don’t even know cursed crap is happening around them. It’s a new way to turn the diamond, and I love that.
Of course, I also have literally zero idea what’s going to be in Silent Hill f outside of what was shown in the trailer. The game takes place in 1960s Japan, but it could always connect to the larger series in a satisfying (or annoying) way. There will probably be a joke ending where a dog brings back the old cast or something. What we do know is the game is the first in the series to get an 18+ rating in Japan and it’s being written by Ryukishi07, who’s done great work in the genre before.
The team behind it is strong and features some veterans from the good old days. And whatever Konami is doing here, at least it seems it’s doing it with confidence. It’s comforting that it isn’t going to the same well that’s been dry for years. I just hope that it’s not going to another well that’s dry, even if it inevitably ends up having a weird ghost girl crawling out of it. Either way, I’m buying it day one because I don’t learn lessons.
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