Konami gave us an extended look at how Silent Hill f plays earlier this month, and the horror prequel places a much heavier emphasis on combat than I expected. With mechanics like a stamina bar, timed dodges and a powerful counterattack ability, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Silent Hill f looks rather like a soulslike.
Konami has readily admitted to Silent Hill f's more combat-oriented focus. A few weeks back, Motoi Okamoto stated that "inserting more entertaining and thrilling action" is a big part of the project. Yet in a more recent interview, Okamoto pushed back against the soulslike comparisons, insisting that Silent Hill f isn't one.
"This is one of the things that we see—the term soulslike—being thrown around on the internet quite a bit," Okamoto told IGN. "And I think it's a label that's a little bit disingenuous. Modern plays will see like 'Oh, there's a stamina meter, there's a dodge' and they're like, 'Okay, it's a soulslike.'"
But Okamoto says these systems were not inspired by Dark Souls and its legion of imitators. Rather, he claims Silent Hill f draws from elements present in the horror series for years. He uses Silent Hill f's focus meter, which increases your counterattack window while charging up an enemy-staggering ability, as an example:
"A lot of these things we actually pulled from classic Silent Hill titles," Okamoto says. "Look at Silent Hill 4—there's a charge meter for your attacks, kind of like our Focus meter. And even for Silent Hill 3, there's a stamina meter. You see it later on."
Citing the series' own history, Okamoto points out that "these things aren't new and exclusive to soulslike games," and that "they've been part of action horror games for a very, very long time. If you have these things, you're labelled a soulslike. And we'd like to reiterate we are an action horror game, but we are not a soulslike."
This might seem like splitting hairs, but Okamoto does have a point. My own brain tends to yell "soulslike" whenever I see a game that has dodge-and-counter combat in it. But a proper soulslike's DNA is as much in its structure as its systems. The checkpoint-based progression where enemies respawn when you die, the world which unfurls with shortcuts and surprises as you explore it. These games are not just about how nimble your parry finger is. Then again, if Silent Hill f includes kooky NPCs who speak in gnomic phrases before cackling like a tickled witch, then it's probably fair to call it a soulslike.
Whether Silent Hill f is a soulslike or not, we don't have long to find out. The game releases in exactly one month, landing in a cloud of fog on September 25. One thing we definitely know is that Silent Hill f focuses squarely on the J-horror elements of the series, a response from Okamoto to how "the essence of Japanese horror was lost" in later Silent Hill games.
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