With the lightning in a bottle success of Bloober Team and Konami’s remake of Silent Hill 2, all eyes are on the dynamic duo to learn how an additional collaboration might lend new life to another Silent Hill classic.
In the meantime however, Konami’s latest team up involves NeoBards Entertainment. The studio and publisher are busy prepping Silent Hill f — a wholly original mainline game and the ninth game in the Silent Hill franchise, following Silent Hill 1-4, Origins, Homecoming, Downpour, and 2024’s The Short Message.
This new entry marks a departure from most of the previous titles in the series in that it is not set in the foggy and beleaguered New England town of Silent Hill, but in rural Japan of the 1960’s. It may just be the Silent Hill prequel you didn’t know you needed.
Silent Hill f is the first full game in the series since Downpour in 2012 (if we choose to ignore this year’s mini game The Short Message, and the beautifully horrific and sadly cancelled P.T. from Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro in 2012.) but what is it about? With the game still in production, details are thin on the ground as yet. Or are they?
The initial game trailer released over 2 years ago, and featuring no game footage, does provide some surprisingly strong clues. The clips (see the video below) feature a child in a school uniform navigating a town that has been ravaged by the startling growth of a red weed of some sort.
The video is replete with symbols of death — particularly related to children — including the presence of an Okiku Doll (said to grow the hair of a dead child), and a scarecrow in the opening scene dressed in a child’s school uniform. Even the red flower featured throughout the video bears a striking resemblance to the poisonous Higanbana, or Red Spider Lily, a symbol of death and the afterlife.
The creeping red vines later sprout ominous flowers, and in the final scene we see the child’s head (moments before her face slides off) adorned with a flower crown. We have to believe there is a connection here to Silent Hill: The Short Message and its vine wrapped and flower-sprouted antagonist.
The Short Message, released earlier this year, centered around a teenager navigating a series of traumatic events (depression, suicide, self harm, social media addiction, bullying, peer pressure, and teen pregnancy to name a few) with its protagonist Anita drawn to a derelict building where she is supposed to meet with her friend, a street artist named Maya.
As Anita navigates the building, and begins to remember (James Sunderland fashion) what actually happened to Maya, she is beset by the game’s own version of Pyramid Head (Cherry Blossom Head?), and must escape a labyrinthine maze in order to escape. Could Silent Hill f’s young protagonist also be facing similar metaphysical horrors?
The video seems to suggest yes, showing us an opening featuring a young girl standing before a grave adorned with the red lilies. A statue of the Buddhist God Jizo, who watches over, and guides dead children to the afterlife, is defaced. A sign of bad things to come? Who is the child in the grave? In typical Silent Hill fashion, our protagonist may have unresolved guilt to work through, or she may in fact be the dead child herself, on her own perilous journey to the afterlife. Either scenario would be very fitting to the tone and themes of the series.
However, we shouldn’t ignore the time and setting of this new entry to the franchise. Silent Hill f is set in Japan in the 1960’s, very shortly after the country was devastated by nuclear war. Could the game mark a departure from previous instalments by focusing not on individual trauma, but on the trauma of a nation? The final moments of the game trailer show a body of water, filled with corpses, unable to enter the afterlife, a poisoned landscape, and destroyed buildings.
It’s hard not to make a connection.
Finally there may be a last clue in the game’s title, featuring a stylized f. In sheet music, f means ‘forte’ signifying the instrument should be played with strength, or loudly. Could this be a reference to the catastrophic nuclear explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The Japanese expression for the atomic blasts became known as “pika-don,” with a rough literal translation being “blinding flash-loud roar.”
Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.
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