Did you folks see the trailer for Silent Hill: Ascension? There are people. There is mist. There are monsters. Words are said. It’s all a little generic. That doesn’t mean the game itself will be generic. The trailer somehow shows way too much and way too little at the same time. Rather than giving us any idea of what the story will be, we get vibes. And the vibes? Silent Hill-like!
Which is a great start! Silent Hill is a vibes-heavy series. I give Konami credit for allowing companies to experiment with new ways to make a Silent Hill game. To be fair, Konami’s bar for doing anything right is ten feet below the Earth. The company literally said, ‘What if we allowed people to play old Metal Gear games on modern consoles?’ and we lost our collective minds. Hey, it even feels like it got off the couch when they announced Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 remakes. It’s only three years behind the ‘remake famous games with nicer lighting’ trend. But I’m a little worried about Silent Hill: Ascension.
From the vague descriptions given by its developers, Silent Hill: Ascension seems to be an interactive TV show not unlike Until Dawn or The Quarry. Except, rather than one player moving through the story, it’ll be “millions” of people. In theory, millions of people will vote, and those votes will decide the direction of the story.
None of this is a new idea. Interactive television concepts have existed since the 1970s. Like every technology that hasn’t quite taken off, we like to pretend the newest iteration is the first iteration (see: virtual reality). So far, interactive TV hasn’t worked on a huge scale because the technology has been wonky and - I don’t know if you’ve heard this - making interactive entertainment is expensive as fuck. Shooting a movie is costly. Shooting a movie with multiple branching paths is wild. Meanwhile, video games like Immortality have figured out innovative ways to do it without being embarrassing. Which is ironic, because the people who made Immortality also made one of my favorite latter-day Silent Hill games, Shattered Memories.
What worries me about Silent Hill: Ascension is that Silent Hill is a pretty personal series. I don’t mean personal to me like it’s my baby. I don’t matter. I never have. At its best, Silent Hill is a series focused on characters and their emotional arcs. The fear in the games comes from anxiety and despair. Pyramid Head isn’t a particularly scary villain, he’s disturbing. Monsters in Silent Hill tend to look more tragic than they do outright dangerous. Something went wrong with them and you’ll never know what it is.
But Silent Hill: Ascension will be decided by a massive audience. That could be cool, but it also turns Silent Hill into a literal game show. Which makes sense, because it’s still technically a game. But rather than making story choices yourself, you’re making story choices and just hoping it goes your way. Don’t want someone to die? Too bad, asshole. The crowd has spoken. Try again. The fear is drained out. The fear and anxiety pivots into whether your vote will be picked rather than from your direct actions with the characters.
It turns Silent Hill into a less scary American Idol. Rather than going on a journey with characters, we’ll be rooting for our faves to ‘win’. When the choice is out of our hands, the gap between our choices and what happens are only going to become annoying. The cliche in horror movies is someone shouting at the screen, “Don’t open that door!”, and the solution in horror games is you get to be the person deciding whether or not to open that door. Ascension is setting itself in a weird middle ground where you want to open the door and everyone else thinks you’re an idiot. Somehow it feels less interactive; it feels cheaper.
This also works against characters being the center of the series. While the ‘theme’ of Silent Hill is debated by fans, I’m squarely in the camp that believes each character has put themselves in a Hell of their own making. Sure, some fucking cult can be involved. Whatever. But the series is at its best when it’s leaning into the characters’ flaws and how they come to terms with the way they’ve hurt people in their lives. Silent Hill is emotional as I am. Which is to say, way too much.
If ‘who lives or dies’ is the central conceit of the game, Silent Hill: Ascension might feel more like a slasher film than a slow burn character study. Which can be great. Like I said, Supermassive Games has created some incredible titles that play out like a slasher film. But that’s what Supermassive is going for. That’s the point. And even in those games, it can be frustrating when a character whose story you’ve slowly explored suddenly dies because you chose the wrong dialogue option. But that’s slashers for you!
Even if it’s not a slasher, how much of Silent Hill: Ascension’s story are we going to miss if a large group of idiots decide to troll the game and kill everyone? I can easily imagine a scenario in which two characters that fans ship are saved while everyone else goes into the woodchipper. And it’ll be frustrating because you’ll know that you personally would’ve gone a different way. The part of the story that you’d prefer is cut off to you because everyone else said ‘no.’
This is different from linear entertainment. We go into a TV show or movie knowing we aren’t in control. We’re just experiencing the story. With games, we have the ability to shape the story (within pretty stiff boundaries). An in-between world in which the player is playing but their choices rarely matter feels like it misses the point of something like Silent Hill. If I’m learning about a character’s sorrow after abandoning their family, I might want to find out what’s below the surface of their hardscrabble personality. And I do so by… voting? Then hoping for the best?
On the other hand, the developers could have a specific story they want to tell with the illusion of choice. I don’t think they’ll lie about who voted for what. That’s dumb. But it wouldn’t surprise me if none of the choices really mattered outside of side characters being swallowed by a living bed. But that would also be a problem because then we’re just doing a choose your own adventure game that always ends up at the same spot. Why not just make a movie if you have a story you want to tell and don’t feel like giving much of an actual choice.
I would love to be wrong about this. Silent Hill: Ascension is still Silent Hill, and I’m ready to let the sadness flow over me like a cold river. It’s unfair to judge an entire game based on a few clips. Trailers aren’t always honest. That said, Silent Hill: Ascension may look a little like a Silent Hill game, but it doesn’t quite feel like one from the trailers. Each character sounds generic, each line could be taken from a thousand other horror stories. We have no real concept of what those choices will entail. Are we all doing quick time events at the same time? Or are we just doing the Futurama scene where an audience votes for Calculon to do tedious paperwork? Who lives or dies is old shtick. I want choices that cause deep emotional pain, not momentary body horror shock.
Hopefully I am wrong. Hopefully Ascension will be a sign that Silent Hill is back, baby, and not just in canceled demos we keep locked in our PS4. But when a trailer for a game shows me nothing about the characters, nothing about the stories, and very little about the playing, I become worried the new Silent Hill will be as rough as most of the old Silent Hill. Then again, there’s not much to lose, so go at it!