Gaming Twitter is a wonderful yet horrible thing. Sometimes you can find some hard-hitting news, but most of the time you are seeing people who are trying to get your attention with a “hot take” by saying something either stupid or thought-provoking. This time around, we have the topic of “Is Silent Hill f a Silent Hill game?”-something that was sparked by a thread created in response to the tweet shown below… Even if the person making this claim goes on to promote her own lore video afterwards, her point remains: Is Silent Hill f a Silent Hill game?
Considering I reviewed both Silent Hill f and Resident Evil 7, complete with their comparison to each other, not to mention that I am known as the “Silent Hill and Resident Evil guy” on this site; who better than me to take a look at some of these “hot takes” and try to settle the debate of if Silent Hill f is a Silent Hill game or not?
The Spirit of Silent Hill vs Gameplay
Let’s get the big one out of the way, or should I say, the big two… Because Atmosphere and Gameplay are two completely different things when it comes to Silent Hill as a series.
First, let’s tackle Atmosphere. What do you think of when you hear of Silent Hill? You think a town covered in fog, filled with monsters, the feeling of isolation, and a mystery that reveals itself over time, which leaves you wondering if there is more to be found once the credits roll.
Silent Hill f nails all of these to great acclaim, the review scores state as much. Ebisugaoka is just Silent Hill in Japan. The way the town makes you go through twists and turns, wondering what is waiting just beyond that wall of fog, all for a monster to drop out of nowhere and make you engage your flight or fight response, all of that is pure Silent Hill atmosphere. Many would say that as long as Silent Hill f is able to capture this, then it is a Silent Hill game, and I agree.
Now, gameplay…
Combat isn’t a focus of Silent Hill; it never has been. Sure, you have weapons available to help you through the town and the monsters that inhabit it, but they are more of a defensive thing than anything else. The core of gameplay for Silent Hill has been “fight or flight”, where you can play through 99% of any game without needing to swing a single steel pipe or shoot a bullet. Silent Hill f, on the other hand, added a lot more to this idea than any other Silent Hill game before it.
One of the biggest things about Silent Hill f’s combat was the addition of a stamina bar, a dodge mechanic, and a parry system, making the game be called “Silent Souls f” or other connecting phrases to the Dark Souls series. Now, this topic has been talked to death on this site a few times, and I’ll reiterate: Silent Hill f is not a Souls-like game. However, with this being established, the combat in Silent Hill f is a lot more focused and modern than what we are used to in this series. A pure melee focus is new to the series, and the fact that you can bash your way through the game is kinda new, too. You could say that the combat in Silent Hill f is more of an evolution of the combat that came before it, making it easier to choose “flight” instead of “fight”, or you can do the opposite, and it’s still fine.
The point is, combat has been a CHOICE in Silent Hill games ever since the PlayStation original, and it continues to evolve with what is available to do with the hardware. I think that people have forgotten that. Just because you are given weapons, it does not mean that you have to use them.
Silent Hill, The Town, is a Big Part of the Lore
This was one of the things that I brought up in my review for Silent Hill f. The town of Silent Hill plays a bigger part in the lore of the series than most people who are defending Silent Hill f are giving it credit for. Before Silent Hill f, 7 of the previous 8 mainline games were set 100% inside the town of Silent Hill, giving a connection to all of those games that made it easy to create a timeline of events, or find connections for every story in the series. Ebisugaoka feels like Silent Hill in Japan, but ultimately, it is not the same. There is something about the town of Silent Hill that feels bigger than the games themselves, like it’s something that we all could connect with.
If there was anything that Silent Hill f could have done better, it would be making connections with other games in the franchise. When I was playing the game for review, I spent some time with my colleagues here at The Outerhaven reviewing the footage and giving opinions along the way. The one thing I said several times was, “I hope that this game has some connection to the other games. I know due to the 1960s timeframe, they can’t directly call out the games, but maybe something like this event carries to the establishment of Silent Hill, or the cult that was involved there.” We didn’t get anything that could connect Ebisugaoka to Silent Hill at all. Fan’s aren’t asking for much, just some reference where we can connect Silent Hill f to the town of Silent Hill, giving credence to giving the game the Silent Hill brand.
There has been a big thing in recent years where a company will take a game, movie, or product that has a great concept and would do really well on its own, and slap a known brand name on it to make sure it sells. Silent Hill f comes off as one of those types of things, just like Resident Evil 7 did back in its day, because there was nothing in the game that linked back to the previous games in the series or the lore that connects them all. While Silent Hill f didn’t need to make a reference that says something like, “There’s this town in America, Silent Hill, that reflects what is happening in Ebisugaoka.”, all we needed was something like the Fox spirit being taken to Silent Hill by Hinako or that the cult worships a fox-like being… Just something that links things together. Otherwise, you end up with debates like this one, using points like this one to discredit an otherwise good game.
You Need to Play More Than Once
Something that came to light after the review embargo lifted, and was not mentioned in the reviewer’s guide, was that Silent Hill f was best enjoyed via multiple playthroughs, as the first playthrough locks you into the “story” version of events and ending. To learn more about Ebisugaoka and any possible connections to the rest of Silent Hill, or at least, get the references the developers put into the game, you need to play through ‘New Game+’. Playing New Game+ gives you some new locations, information, and the ability to find the game’s other endings.
Given that most people will only play Silent Hill f once, then leave it in their digital pile to gather dust, they are not going to get a lot of what would make Silent Hill f a Silent Hill game unless they play through the game again. Unless you are one of the hardcore Silent Hill fans, you are not going to understand the things behind the scenes that make a Silent Hill game something that is worth playing. On the other side, forcing people to play the game again to get things like connections, deeper meanings, and other endings is a bit of a bitch move. People will not do what they are forced to do to get the full experience. This would be like adding DLC that connects Resident Evil 7 to the other games and saying, “You won’t get the full experience unless you play this extra stuff we didn’t include in the base game.” Wait, that’s exactly what they did.
Having to play through Silent Hill f multiple times to get the “full experience” is not a good game plan. It comes off as cheap, demeaning to the audience, and just stupid. You should be able to see everything the first time if it pertains to the story of the game, not on the third playthrough.
The Silent Hill Drought
This is one of the dumbest, yet most interesting takes from this whole tread. Just because this is the first new mainline Silent Hill game in 13 years, does it make it exempt from criticism or exclusion from the franchise? Short answer: No.
What we have here is a line from an old Eddie Murphy joke called “Regular old crackers.” The point is that if you give someone something that they have either never had before, or haven’t had in a long time, they will think it is way better than it really is.
It’s been 13 years since we got a new mainline Silent Hill game, and because of that, we have a bunch of people who are going to defend the game no matter what because they finally got that taste of something they have wanted for a long time, and they want to get more. The only way that we are going to get more new mainline Silent Hill games is if Silent Hill f gets a bunch of praise and people buying the game. Of course, when people are desperate like this, they will take any form of criticism or negativity as something that can be used to not give them what they want, and god forbid that we don’t give these entitled little shits everything they want in 2025.
The future of Silent Hill is in the hands of the bean counters at Konami, and we know that they are some flip-flop-minded people at best. We are getting a Silent Hill remake thanks to the success of the Silent Hill 2 remake, so there is hope that due to the success of Silent Hill f, we will get another mainline Silent Hill game in the future. The drought might actually be over, so back off on the dumb “Don’t be negative about this at all, because it’s all we got” mindset, ok?
A Little Too Japanese
One of the big problems I pointed out in my review, and one that many others seem to have glazed over, is that Silent Hill f is unapologetically Japanese from beginning to end, and that is something that is not going to translate well to a non-Japanese audience.
While NeoBards did a great job with the game, and using Japanese author Ryukishi07 to write the story is a master stroke in making things very spooky and easy to create with the spirit of Silent Hill, the fact that the game leans very heavily on Japanese culture, mythology, traditions, and folklore means that unless you are someone who studies these topics, or have lived in Japan your whole life, you’re not going to get a lot of the deeper meanings and references that the story of Silent Hill f relies on to create its world.
This all works very well if you are Japanese, or study a lot of Japanese culture, etc, but for the layman in the West, 90% of this is going to get lost in translation. Where someone who is Japanese will understand the Tsuneki Religious Cult, the significance of a Fox spirit, and the Japanese underworld, you are not going to get the same understanding from someone outside that region/culture/race. To the Western audience, Silent Hill f is about a girl who is being tricked by a guy in a Fox mask, making her sacrifice her friends, and possibly end up married to the Fox guy. This misunderstanding of the culture, mythology, and folklore creates a misunderstanding of the story of Silent Hill f as a whole.
I’m not saying that Western audiences are dumb, but more than when the writer makes something that is very much locked into their own culture and doesn’t care to explain anything plainly for other audiences, you end up with something that is going to be confusing and somewhat hated. If Silent Hill f worked more towards an international audience than just the Japanese audience, then people wouldn’t get annoyed with their misunderstanding of the deeper context that the game needs you to understand to understand the story as a whole.
Psychological Connections
One of the biggest things about Silent Hill games is the psychological connections between the town and the person wandering around in the fog. To use Silent Hill 2 as the example, each enemy that James comes across is related to James’ situation or a feeling in relation to Mary. The nurses are a representation of the nurses in Hospital, their faces not having features connect to James feeling that they did nothing to help Mary while she was ill. Pyramid Head is a representation of James’ sin and repression. The ‘dolls’ in the beginning are James’ relation to those around him, who wouldn’t do anything to help him or Mary.
With Silent Hill f, and a lot of other Silent Hill games before it, the monsters are no longer connected to the person in the game. Hinako faces off against puppets that have knives, swords, and other weapons; alongside Scarecrows, a messy pile of doll combined into one creature, and water creatures that seem to suck her soul. What do these monsters have in relation to Hinako’s story? Nothing. They are slightly based on Japanese folklore, with vague references to mythology based around Yokai, Japanese demons that populate the underworld. As I mentioned above, this is another case of Silent Hill f’s 100% Japanese focus working against it. Not everyone can relate to Japanese culture.
Silent Hill f Could Fade Away
One of the biggest thing with people talking in a negative context about Silent Hill f is that the game could fade away into obscurity, being cast aside and forgotten. This type of thing is worse than having the game not sell, as once it has left the mind of the gaming public, it might never come back.
This is something that has happened to Resident Evil 7. When the game came out, people hyped it up, calling it a great game that does the Resident Evil brand justice, and those people defended it with the same force that they now defend Silent Hill f. But tell me this, when was the last time you heard someone talking about Resident Evil 7? It’s been a long time since that game was even mentioned. Village took over as the game to talk about, and people still talk about the older games, and those even got remakes. Village even got an update to add the modern tradition of third person perspective into it… Did Resident Evil 7, a so-called “acclaimed game” and “one of the best in the series”, get the same treatment? No. Resident Evil 7 fell into obscurity over time, with people barely remembering that it exists, let alone saying that it is a true Resident Evil game.
Silent Hill f could easily follow the same path. While people are high on the game now, since it’s a new game and the first mainline Silent Hill game in 13 years, over time, Silent Hill f can be forgotten, left to be seen as something that might have all the spirit and soul of the Silent Hill series, but once placed against the previous games or the next one, it’ll become a footnote in the series history, called “too Japanese” and “too unconnected from the series”, and left to collect dust on the shelf of history.
The Endings
Note: The video above lists the endings with a different title; the endings are still in order and work with the listings below.
One of the big things about Silent Hill is the multiple endings that you can get from each playthrough that you go through. Now, I mentioned before that Silent Hill f locks you into one ending on your first playthrough (The “Coming Home to Roost” ending below. Now, while this is the first time that there is a canon ending (Yes, it is the first ending you get. The developers have confirmed this.), you can still get other endings that make things even more confusing, as people will debate forever and a day about what is the “true ending” to the game.
What ending you get/choose is all up to you and how you want to interprate said ending. The truth about a Silent Hill game’s ending is that everything is canon and non-canon at the same time. However, Silent Hill f seems to do this in a way where everything that you spent hours doing means nothing once the ending happens, since nothing makes sense at all.
Conclusion: Well? Is it a Silent Hill Game or Not?
Alright, it’s time to answer the question: Is Silent Hill f a Silent Hill game or not?
Short answer is… Yes. Long answer is… Kind of.
If you view Silent Hill games as something that is all about atmosphere, horror, monsters, etc; then you are going to consider Silent Hill f a Silent Hill game. As long as these things are kept, then we can have many other games in this series that do not need to be located in Silent Hill or have to do with previous games in order to get new games in the series. Much like how people consider Resident Evil 7 a Resident Evil game just because it’s a survival horror game.
On the other side, as someone who is a long-time Silent Hill fan, I like the game enough to say that it does belong in the series, but at the same time, it’s not a mainline Silent Hill game. This is like me saying that Resident Evil 7 is not a Resident Evil game, but it’s still a part of the series. Sometimes you just have to accept that some games aren’t going to be 100% like the older ones and that things need to change and evolve to keep the series going. To me, Silent Hill f is one of those side-games in the series, much like Resident Evil: Revelations is a side-series to the main Resident Evil games. The mainline games have moved onto something else so that it can tell new and different stories, but at the same time keeps things close enough to the spirit of the series that its connected in that way… Think of Silent Hill f as a cousin to Silent Hill 1 through Silent Hill 3, it has some of the same blood, but is not directly related.
Let People Have Fun
I left this take till last because it’s the best one of all.
At the end of it all, who cares if Silent Hill f is a “true” Silent Hill game or not? The two main things should be these:
We got a new Silent Hill game at all
People enjoy the game, which from the reviews and online reaction, they do… a lot!
A friend of mine likes to say: “Fans, not fandoms.” This means that fans are good, fans are loved, and fans are cool. A fan can be talked to and will listen to others; they might debate what you say, but they listen and think about what you have to say. Fandoms, on the other hand, will scream at each other about who is the most “right” and how their way of thinking is the only one that matters, much like the tweet that started me on this road. Saying that someone doesn’t know lore, or doesn’t know what makes this game good, or worthy of the branding, is something that is egotistical and makes everyone else look stupid.
At the end of the day, Silent Hill f is just a game, something to be enjoyed by the person playing it. Adding all this debate about what makes a Silent Hill game what it is, and what should be allowed to be called a Silent Hill game, is dumb. People can have open discussions, but in a world where “discussion” becomes nothing but name-calling, personal attacks, and trying to discredit people, this makes everyone look dumb and the hobby look like a bunch of basement dwellers who desperately need to go and touch grass, or at least disconnect themselves from the internet and their games for a while.
Go out there, have fun, enjoy the game. Who cares if it’s a Silent Hill game or not? Did you have fun? Then that’s all that matters.
