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Gaming

20th Oct 2022

The new Silent Hill project could be the next evolutionary step in home entertainment

Rory Cashin

Silent Hill is getting three new games, a new movie and… something we can’t quite describe…

In case you missed it, Wednesday night featured an absolute tsunami of new Silent Hill projects being announced.

It has been a full decade since the last Silent Hill game – the very average Silent Hill: Downpour – so fans of the horror franchise have been left wanting for a while.

And Wednesday night fixed all of that!

First up, a remake of Silent Hill 2, which is not only the best of the Silent Hill games, but also one of the greatest games ever made. The remake is being taken on by Blooper Team, who previously released some very decent creepy games, like Layers Of Fear, Observer and The Medium.

We’ve also got Silent Hill: Townfall, coming from AnnaPurna Interactive (Stray, Telling Lies, Outer Wilds) and NoCode Studio (Observations, Stories Untold). From that duo behind the scenes, we can expect this to take on a much more artistic approach to the horror.

And the third and final (for right now, maybe?) game is Silent Hill f. Set in 1960s Japan, the story has been created by much-loved writer Ryukishi07. Not much more known about it yet, but the teaser trailer is appropriately disturbing.

Then we’ve got Return To Silent Hill, confirmed to have Christophe Gans returning to direct another entry in the franchise, as he was the director of the first Silent Hill movie. It will adapt the plot of the Silent Hill 2 game, and will be the first movie since 2012’s truly awful Silent Hill: Revelation.

And, last but not least, we’ve got Silent Hill: Ascension.

It is being produced by J.J. Abrams (yes, the guy who directed Star Wars, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible Movies) and Behavior Interactive (Dead By Daylight).

Ascension is being billed as “a new interactive video streaming experience for the series”, and is apparently based off the popularity of people watching people playing games on Twitch.

While it still isn’t 100% clear if this is a game or a series (or if any of it is live-action or if it is all computer generated), the premise appears to be that people all over the world can watch the latest “episode” of Ascension, and can choose in real time what the characters do inside the story.

And once those decisions have been made, and the consequences of those decisions have been enacted, then that is it. There is no re-do, no going back to change a path along the decision tree. Whatever happens, happens, and is from then on out a part of the Silent Hill lore.

While it does sound a bit like someone has decided to merge a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book with cutting edge technology, it also sounds like it could very well be the next evolutionary step in home entertainment.

Check out the teaser trailer for Silent Hill: Ascension right here: