Silent Hill f has a lot to live up to. It’s not only following on from a well-received Silent Hill 2 remake, but it also has to wrestle with over 20 years of nostalgia. To make matters worse, the news of Silent Hill f indulging in more action and fight sequences was enough to have an OG fan or two shaking in anger.
But after playing three hours at Gamescom, I’m not convinced that Silent Hill f actually strays very far from what players have come to expect from the series. So I asked NeoBards' game director Al-Yang, and series producer of Silent Hill, Motoi Okamoto, what they thought of all the hullabaloo surrounding Silent Hill f's changes.
"This entry in the Silent Hill series is more action-focused than previous ones," Yang tells me. "But because of this, we tuned our difficulty to be more suitable for players from both classic Silent Hill titles."
Silent Hill f players can choose between three difficulty options. Story Mode is the recommended setting for classic Silent Hill fans, while the harder settings will ramp up the fights and their difficulty for "new players that come in and might want a little bit more action."
I played on Story Mode, and it truly did feel very similar to what I’ve encountered in previous Silent Hill games. Some of the fights were even finicky enough to awaken a kind of rage that I haven’t felt since the last time I had to endure James and his trusty lead pipe in the original Silent Hill 2.
"We want to give old fans, the classic fans, kind of like, 'Ah, this is what I came here for, a succulent Silent Hill meal,' you know," Yang says. "But also something for newer fans, or people who want to try something a little bit different. We're trying to keep the classic Silent Hill vibes and atmosphere, but change the gameplay a little bit. We don't want everything to be the same."
I back this wholeheartedly. I'd much rather get a couple of Silent Hill games that attempt to inject a bit of life into the series than simply be restricted to playing remakes for the next decade. Playing it safe and regurgitating the same formula will only get these games so far.
"Future titles will probably carry their own flavour, depending on who we will be working with."
Motoi Okamoto, series producer of Silent Hill
"We have to remember that at this moment, there's so much Silent Hill coming out," Yang says. "We just got the Silent Hill 2 remake, which was basically for the classic fans. And as announced already, there's a Silent Hill 1 remake, and then Silent Hill f and then Townfall.”
Having this kind of variation in a Silent Hill game isn’t just fun, it’s also necessary. The Silent Hill 2 remake was good, but Konami can’t just dish out the same game year after year and expect to attract new players.
Producing Silent Hill games that each have a slightly different vibe also seems like a very deliberate choice for Konami. "Silent Hill is a type of series that we've been partnering with many different groups for," Okamoto says. "For the remake, we partnered with Bloober Team," and now Silent Hill f is being made by NeoBards, a studio known for its combat.
"Future titles will probably carry their own flavour, depending on who we will be working with," Okamoto continues. So, instead of being too adverse to new experiences in Silent Hill games, it seems like a reality that players should come to terms with, if only to enjoy new and exciting interpretations of one of the best horror series to date.
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