There is a town called Silent Hill, but rarely has this abandoned place been the core focus of Konami’s beloved survival horror series. Multiple titles have taken place there as you attempt to escape its rusty, rain-drenched confines, but the drive has often been on how it shifts and changes to reflect the inner thoughts of characters like James Sunderland and Harry Mason.
While attempts have been made in both video games and films to explore the town’s history and exactly how it fell to ruin as a result of witchcraft, religion, and corruption, whenever we see a wayward soul called towards it, the form will coalesce into something unknowable. It’s a place that transcends reality and constantly morphs to reflect the subconscious of any and all who step within it. In the recent Silent Hill 2 remake, it begins as a fairly normal town thick with fog before descending into a hellscape that defies logic and comprehension.
Silent Hill f Marks The True Return Of A Horror Icon
There is undeniable beauty in this unorthodox physical manifestation, allowing developers to take the player, narrative, and characters to places that shouldn’t be possible. But in a game that thrives on exploring horror in ways we’ve never seen before, it’s more than plausible.
With the reveal of Silent Hill f, we are not only seeing the series leave this titular town behind once again, but also become the first entry to take place in Japan. A brave departure for a series that has leaned on very specific American iconography and horror tropes since its inception, but it also provides an entire landscape of the genre yet to be explored. Not to mention you’ll be playing as a female character during the 1960s, and, judging by the website disclaimer, the narrative will explore the roles of women in society and how they can be easily taken advantage of and abused by those above them.
Some of the mature themes mentioned on the website include gender discrimination, child abuse, bullying, drug-induced hallucinations, torture, and graphic violence. In addition, it makes clear that it will reflect the cultural values of 1960’s Japan, for better and for worse.
Silent Hill f will follow Shimizu Hinako, a young high school girl in the fictional mountain town of Ebisugaoka. On the surface, she seems like your average teenager with friends and family supporting her in life as she prepares to graduate and leave the small-town life behind. But it isn’t that simple, as soon an oppressive fog begins to descend upon the town and transform her home into something horrific. In the trailer’s opening shot, we see Hinako kneeling on the ground, surrounded by crimson water and a messy bed of equally vibrant flowers.
Her school uniform is torn at the back to reveal fresh gashes, while the narration features her friends talking about the fact that Hinako is already long dead. It is intended to confuse, while it appears that, during the narrative, our heroine has already betrayed people close to them or is convinced they will do the same, creating an emotional dilemma that will seemingly form a crux of the core story.
The flowers could allude to the struggles of puberty and growing up, a deflowering through sexual assault, or coming to terms with a violent incident that continues to haunt our protagonist. Silent Hill has a habit of manifesting past mistakes through horrific monsters and locales, so my money is on it being a reflection of something Hinako has been through and struggles to leave behind. Or maybe she is already dead, and this is some form of purgatory.
And It Doesn’t Need The Titular Town To Succeed
But the idea of not actually taking place in Silent Hill doesn’t sit well with everyone. I get it. I mean, why not call this game something else if the titular town isn’t featured at all? But as a fan of the series for decades now, I’ve learned to look beyond that definition. In Silent Hill 3, only portions of the game take place in the town, while Silent Hill 4: The Room features an array of characters influenced by it despite never actually being there.
Its existence, for so many years now, has been deliberately abstract in terms of what it represents. Some see it as purgatory, Hell itself, or another dimension people are transported to in order to confront their sins and come out the other end a better person, or perish in the process.
Silent Hill f joins that pantheon, and does so in a different continent two years before it had burned down. For years now, Konami has wanted to express Silent Hill as a force with the power to seek people out and trap them, which is obviously the case with Hinako. As to the demons our heroine will be confronting, neither the trailer nor official website are especially clear about that. One line stands out, however: “will she choose to embrace elegance and beauty? Or will her path lead her to madness and horror…”
The game is primarily developed by NeoBards Entertainment, who previously worked as a support studio on projects like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Marvel’s Avengers. From the looks of it, this is its first fully-fledged project.
As a teenager growing up in 1960s Japan where society is shifting and changing at such a rapid pace, it seems Hinako will be forced to abide by societal conventions thrust upon her and be the woman that everyone expects her to be, or leave that demand behind by facing up to her demons.
But that doesn’t sound dark enough for Silent Hill, so there has to be an element missing. What does her torn sleeve represent? Who is she trying to destroy? And why is her town covered in gorgeous yet demonic red flowers instead of the rust and pus that we’re so accustomed to in this series? I can’t wait for the answer to these questions.
