Following the release ofP.T.in 2014 and the sudden cancellation of the game it was teasing, theSilent Hillfranchise entered a rather lengthy hiatus. In October 2022, a decade after the launch ofSilent Hill: Downpour, Konami proudly announced the series' resurrection by unveiling two major upcoming projects:Bloober Team’sSilent Hill 2remake, andSilent Hill f, an all-new mainline entry being developed by NeoBards Entertainment.
A few weeks ago, Game Rant got to play around five hours ofSilent Hill fin Konami’s Tokyo offices. The preview kicked off right at the start of the game, giving us an extensive look atSilent Hill f’s story, characters, world, and gameplay. Though there seemed to be plenty left to play after those five hours,Silent Hill fhad already made a lasting impression - though the game isn’t without a few kinks that still need to be ironed out.
A Familiar Fog Surrounds Somewhere New
Silent Hill fbegins with a brief introduction tothe series' newest protagonist, Hinako Shimizu, a self-admittedly stubborn teenager who has an incredibly tumultuous home life. Players are quickly introduced to Hinako’s abusive father, whose drunken tirade forces her to leave home and seek out her friends in the town below.
As soon as players get their hands on the sticks, they’re inundated with well-written journal entries that shed more light on Hinako’s family. This includes Hinako’s mother, who she views as “pitiful,” and her sister Junko, who Hinako could “rely on for anything…until she left to get married.” There’s a subtle tension and mystery surrounding Hinako and her sister that reeks ofclassicSilent Hillstorytelling.
A short hike down the hill leads Hinako to her small group of school friends: Sakuko, Rinko, and Shu. It’s this latter friend who gets the most immediate attention, with him being Hinako’s oldest friend, much to the chagrin of the town’s adults, who view the purely platonic relationship between the young girl and boy as unsavory.
Within 20 minutes,Silent Hill fsuccinctly sets up its corethemes of womanhoodand traditional roles, familial abuse, and adolescence and the changes it brings to friendship group dynamics. And in classicSilent Hillfashion, all of those themes inspire the horrors that Hinako faces during her adventure, undoubtedly giving seasoned fans plenty of deeper meanings to dissect along the way.
Silent Hill f’s story is being written by Ryukishi07, a renowned horror visual novel writer. Just prior to the hands-on session, Ryukishi07 mentioned thatSilent Hill fwill have five possible endings, with every player getting the same one during their first playthrough, and more becoming available in subsequent runs by taking alternate paths.
After meeting her friends, Hinako’s hometown is shrouded in an all-too-familiar fog. But while the fog is known to fans, the setting it envelops is new.Silent Hill ftakes place in the 1960s in Ebisugaoka, a small, rural Japanese town that thrived beforethe Second World War, but has lost most of its populace in the two decades since.
Ebisugaoka is obviously a very different setting from the series' usual Maine-based town, and it’s a difference that immediately setsSilent Hill fapart in the best way. Thefirst hour ofSilent Hill f’s hands-on previewsaw Hinako dashing through Ebisugaoka’s claustrophobic alleyways, ascending its cramped three-story houses, and tentatively exploring the town’s surrounding farmyards, all while being pursued by some terrifying new threats that make the most ofSilent Hill f’s very different architecture and environment.
Of course,Silent Hill fwouldn’t be aSilent Hillgame without its own version of the “Otherworld,” the nightmare realm where the protagonist’s psyche is exposed for all to see. Much like its Ebisugaoka setting,Silent Hill f’s Otherworldputs a fresh spin on a classic series feature, with it delivering plenty of ethereal scares that are, this time, inspired by Japanese mythology and religion.
A Haunting Beauty Lies Just Beyond the Gloom
Just before we were given the keys toSilent Hill f’s preview build,Silent Hillseries producer Motoi Okamotospoke briefly about the game’s art direction, one of the core pillars of the new entry. Okamoto said that the team set out to merge grotesque horror with natural beauty to deliver a powerful tonal contrast, and it’s easily one ofSilent Hill f’s best qualities.
Across the board,Silent Hill f’s visuals are immaculate. The strive for photorealism with the game’s character models and environments groundSilent Hill fin reality and deliver the fidelity fans would expect from amodern AAA franchise. These realistic textures are then contrasted beautifully bySilent Hill f’s otherworldly flora and fauna, which embrace fantasy and color just enough to appear incredibly unsettling against the mostly monotone backdrops of Ebisugaoka.
Sound design is another core pillar ofSilent Hill f, and it might just be some of the best uses of 3D audio I’ve ever experienced in a horror game. Rather than feel like a tacked-on gimmick,Silent Hill fhas been designed from the ground up with spatial audio in mind, and it’s a pivotal element of the game’s scares. ThoughSilent Hill f’s new scarecrow monstersare disturbing enough from a visual standpoint, their audio design is what elevates them to truly terrifying, with the striking sounds of creaking wooden limbs promising a threat that’s just out of sight.
On top of their excellent visual and audio design,Silent Hill f’s enemies also boast grotesquely expressive animations that cement their danger the moment players first lay eyes on them. Their threat level is subtly elevated by Hinako’s own suite of expertly-crafted animations, with the teenager’s inherent lack of physical strength being apparent with each swing of a weapon.
Truly Horrifying, But Not Always in the Ways Intended
Much of my time withSilent Hill fcan be summarized by the phrase “familiar but fresh.” The game’s setting, story, tone, and visuals all hearken back to the best ofSilent Hill’s past while putting forward their own refreshing spins on the decades-old formula. But when it comes toSilent Hill f’s combat, things are a little more experimental.
Silent Hill fis doing away with gun combat altogether, instead deciding to put all of its eggs in the melee basket. Along with light attacks and heavy attacks,Silent Hill fputs a strong emphasis on dodging and countering enemy attacks, with the latter mechanic requiring the player to hit the enemy just before they strike, which is indicated by a red aura that briefly appears around them.
Players also have access to a focus meter that lets them perform special attacks and slow down time to make countering easier, but it comes at the cost of slowly draining the player’s Sanity bar.Silent Hill falso features weapon durability, a divisive mechanic in the modern age of gaming but one that I had no trouble with during my preview session given the abundance of repair kits and spare weapons lying around town.
The new depth toSilent Hill’s combat could be one of this entry’s greatest additions, but a lot ofSilent Hill f’s runtime is spent engaging in combat, and the longer encounters last, the more cracks in the system begin to show. By farSilent Hill f’s biggest problemright now is its stamina management system, with it directly impacting every facet of the game’s combat loop. The best way to explain these issues is by breaking downSilent Hill f’s first major boss fight.
“Horror Souls” This Ain’t
A tall, undead woman with a torn, spike-ridden mouth,Silent Hill f’s first proper boss wields a swinging censer-like weapon that she loves slamming into Hinako’s head. The boss itself features a hauntingly memorable visual design, and its well-telegraphed attack patterns kicked my FromSoftware-addled brain into gear.
But within seconds of this boss fight,Silent Hill f’s stamina issuesbecome painfully apparent. Dodging just once inSilent Hill fwill remove about a third of the player’s stamina bar. Attacking takes a similar toll. The problem is that this boss loves to dish out consecutive attacks that feature little room for error. To avoid taking any damage, players will often need to dodge several times in a row, depleting their entire stamina bar in the process. And in its current state, stamina regeneration is absurdly slow.
This quickly leads to a brutal cycle of masterfully dodging a flurry of blows but being unable to return the favor. And that cycle quickly leads to a feeling that the player is being punished, regardless of how well they’ve learned the boss' patterns. That’s especially true onSilent Hill f’s “Balanced” combat difficulty, where this boss can decimate the player’s health bar in just a few hits. This also means that this boss fight lasts much longer than it needs to, dragging down the otherwise pitch-perfect pace ofSilent Hill f’s opening hours.
Performing a “Perfect” dodge inSilent Hill frestores the player’s stamina bar instantly, but due to a very limited window this is pretty difficult to pull off consistently.
Another notable issue withSilent Hill f’s combat that becomes glaringly obvious during this boss encounter is the game’s lock-on mechanic. When attacking an enemy that’s been locked onto, it was common for every other strike to completely miss the target, even if they were stood completely still. Given how few attacks the player can deal before their stamina disappears, it doesn’t feel great that a good portion of them miss their mark for seemingly no reason.
In regular enemy encounters, these heavy restrictions feel like a somewhat natural part of the game’s survival horror nature. But in this boss fight, they suddenly feel like the one part ofSilent Hill fthat hasn’t been polished to a sheen. Of course, there’s still plenty of time for NeoBards to tweak these mechanics to perfection.
On a more positive note,Silent Hill fis also adding depth to its gameplay loop by introducing a few new progression mechanics. When visiting the assortment of Hokora Shrine save points that are dotted throughoutSilent Hill f’s world, players have the option to spend Faith Points to obtain a randomized Omamori, a charm that grants a special benefit such as increased max health. Faith Points can also be used in conjunction with a rare resource called a Blank Ema to permanently increase their max health, stamina, sanity, and Omamori slots.
Faith Points are earned by exchanging consumables that would otherwise let the player refill their various meters in the heat of battle. This adds a fun layer of strategy and player-choice toSilent Hill f, one that also naturally encourages thorough exploration of its hauntingly beautiful world.
The Crest of the (Silent) Hill
After banging my head against the brick wall that wasSilent Hill f’s first boss fightfor around 45 minutes, I was thankfully rewarded for my efforts with the best sequence in the entire preview session. The fifth and final hour of mySilent Hill fpreview saw Hinako, Rinko, and Shu make their way to the town’s middle school, and the second they step inside the dimly-lit abandoned building, there’s a comfortable but eerie air of familiarity.
Silent Hill f’s middle school sequence channels the best of the series' level design, evoking memories ofSilent Hill 2’s Wood Side Apartments. This sequence revolves around a locker room that contains a handful of combination puzzles. Players need to scour classrooms for clues and solve a few smaller riddles along the way.
As players gradually progress from one classroom to the next, they’ll notice the school shifting around them. The vibrant red flowers that have haunted Hinako since the start of the game slowly creep up the walls, and the aforementioned scarecrow enemies begin to line the hallways.
This sequence features the perfect blend ofSilent Hill f’s core pillars. Combat is sprinkled in sparingly, enemies' unique behaviors are used effectively, sound and environmental design create an intoxicating atmosphere, insightful character revelations are around every corner, and a handful of engaging puzzles act as the engine that drives the sequence forward.
My five hours withSilent Hill fended on a very high note, one that was almost strong enough for me to forgive the game’s combat shortcomings. With an intriguing story, strong character dynamics and themes, a refreshing setting, and thoroughly polished presentation,Silent Hill fhas all the earmarks of a rivetingAAA horror experience. It just desperately needs to tweak some of its combat mechanics.
Game Rant was provided travel and lodging for the purposes of this preview. In-development footage and screenshots are shown. © Konami Digital Entertainment.
