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Ever since I played three hours of Silent Hill: Townfall and interviewed its writer and director Jon McKellan, one thing McKellan said has been rattling around in my head: “There are different Silent Hills for different people.” It’s a simple statement–one I agree with and felt silly for not having really considered until playing Silent Hill: Townfall.
Coming off the heels of Silent Hill f, the biggest departure in the 27-year-old series’s formula both in location and gameplay, Townfall carries forward that same trajectory as its predecessor. Silent Hill seems to be entering something of an evolutionary moment, mutating and contorting as it separates itself more and more from the roots of its titular western town. Silent Hill: Townfall is different from other Silent Hills, both mechanically and thematically, in a way that shows this series still has far more to offer beyond its decrepit rusty aesthetics and Bubble Head Nurses.
To begin, Silent Hill: Townfall takes place in Scotland, the home of its developer Screen Burn Interactive. Much like Silent Hill f before it–which placed the series in 1960s Japan, home of f’s writer, Ryukishi07–Konami is exemplifying a trend with giving its developers more liberty in not only embracing Silent Hill as a state-of-mind more than a literal place, but unshackling it from telling stories rooted in the culture of America. Just like f exploring the generational trauma and societal expectations of gender in 1960s Japan, Townfall has its own story to tell that can only be realized in 1990s Scotland.
While I don’t yet have a full grasp of the mysteries and themes Townfall is setting to tackle, it is clear that ’90s Scottish culture is woven through every aspect of the game, from story to gameplay, and the game has something to say about the chokehold corporations can have on small towns. In this case, it’s an energy company in the harbor town of St. Amelia. From what I can gather, this will be a story about industrialization of a small community, anchored in tragedy and regret.
As Simon, an American who suddenly emerges from the sea on the docks of St. Amelia with an IV bag attached to him and a patient bracelet around his wrist, I combed through the harbor town, reading every plaque and sign, absorbing an incredible amount of detail. Apartment listings, fliers for missing cats, town events–the list goes on. St. Amelia is small but remarkably dense with detail, as every storefront has a story of its own, whether it was a visitor’s center with photos of its residents or the abandoned shops adorned with “Everything must go! Closure sale!” signs. The town has history, and the game wants you to breathe its salty ocean air in.
This amount of texture remained ever-present as I searched through the many homes and buildings of St. Amelia, soaking in the lives of the people who lived there from things like family photos on the walls, the scraped wallpaper leaving evidence of moved furniture, or the emails found on family desktop computers that require a dial-up internet connection to access. These environmental touches all feel like they have a purpose–like Screen Burn Interactive wanted me to see them, whether I understood their relevance in the moment or not.
Exploring this town is intimate, and that intimacy is owed to the game’s first-person perspective. Silent Hill: Townfall is the first game in the series that is fully set in this perspective. While other games, like Silent Hill 4: The Room or P.T. (which was a playable teaser for a Silent Hill game we’re now never going to get), have dabbled with first-person, Townfall was intended to be first-person from day one of its development, McKellan told me. And while its mechanics support that direction, like its emphasis on stealth and the CRTV you’ll be relying on, the perspective accentuates the ability to observe and absorb St. Amelia so closely that it’s a justified shift for the series.
As an American, this perspective helped me better engross myself in things I hadn’t ever known about, such as payment meter cards that Scottish residents had to purchase in order to activate their home electricity–an activity I got to do in Townfall, first locating a meter card, and then crawling into a cupboard under the stairs in order to turn on a house’s electricity so I could access a computer. While these foreign quirks seem placed in the game to ground it in 1996 Scotland, I could sense it had stronger thematic weight than it first led on, as the logo of corporate energy company C.E.G. is branded on the card–the same C.E.G. logo plastered on protest signs left abandoned all over town. C.E.G. did something to this place and its residents, it’s just too soon to say exactly what.
Suffice to say, I was engrossed in this world. If I wasn’t limited to my three hours of hands-on time, I would have been there all day reading and exploring every nook and cranny. That’s how detailed it felt to me. Yes, this is likely because I’ve played enough Silent Hill games that I know to look for clues and analyze everything in order to get the full picture of what’s really happening, but it’s also because Townfall just feels good to explore. But exploration is only a fraction of everything Townfall has to offer in its moment-to-moment gameplay.
The game’s standout feature and tool is the CRTV, a handheld TV and FM/AM radio, which closely resembles Sony’s Watchman series. This is Townfall’s take on Silent Hill’s ever-present radio, riffing on its use in Silent Hill 2, where it alerts the player to nearby enemies and also serves as a narrative tool to help protagonist James Sunderland locate his wife. Townfall, however, is tripling down on its CRTV and weaving it into nearly every aspect of the gameplay, from puzzle-solving, to combat, to delivering its story. In doing so, the CRTV isn’t just a tool; it forces you to engage with the setting, the dangers that surround you, and the mystery you’re unraveling.
With the CRTV, Simon can tune into frequencies to see fragmented and glitchy video, as if images are trying to swim to the static’s surface. It’s eerie in the way analog technology can be, years removed from its heyday. The signals are cryptic messages, sometimes addressing Simon directly, or giving clues about his environment so you can decode a puzzle, which required me to manually tune to their frequencies. Around the town, there are radios I had to calibrate with the CRTV in a multi-step process of fine-tuning the search, and aligning its RGB signals. The last vital use case for the device is tracking enemies. The CRTV helps you to see where enemies are through walls or fog, so you can better avoid them. Each enemy has its own frequency, requiring me to switch between frequencies on the fly when surrounded by three to four monsters. And when used in these moments, it’s a pure, unadulterated tension-builder.
I’d hide in a dark, narrow alley, as I listened to the monsters’ shuffling bare feet scraping along the cement, accompanied by their muffled gurgles emanating from under their skin-covered mouths; The CRTV hummed in-hand as I switched from frequency to frequency, revealing monsters on all sides via their silhouettes on the devices screen. Pilotpriest’s soundtrack (which is shaping up to be a great accompaniment to Akira Yamaoka-san’s iconic scores) thumped low beats, with weaving dark synthtones, as I realized I only had three bullets left and a half-broken 2×4 to fight with, and a glass bottle to distract them. This is tension I haven’t quite felt in a Silent Hill game before.
When engaging with Townfall’s contorted, fleshy, almost naked enemies, Silent Hill’s usual trope of wailing on an enemy until it’s down will not get you very far. In fact, it should only be your last resort. Combat is simplistic, consisting of a swing and a block, but weapons are fragile and enemies hit hard. Thankfully, St. Amelia is designed with a lot of paths to maneuver, doorways to temporarily hide in, radios to turn on to distract monsters, and bricks and bottles to toss from a distance to trigger car alarms. Townfall gives enough options to the player to incentivize avoiding a direct brawl. And I only ever used a gun when I had no other choice, when an enemy was standing between me and my escape.
Using a gun in the hands of Simon can feel appropriately desperate as it’s clear he’s not a trained marksman. Aiming is finicky and enemies are erratic; missing a shot feels awful, and even worse when it alerts surrounding monsters. Playing on PlayStation 5, the DualSense’s gyro controls assisted a lot when aiming down the sights of my pistol and lining up a shot. It’s a good use case for motion controls, and managed to crank up the tension a bit more as it reflected my shaky hands on-screen, but still helped aim better than with an analog stick.
Sneaking around, peeking around corners using a designated lean button, switching between frequencies to locate enemies, and internally deliberating whether to engage in a swinging match or take a shot, made me realize that this is the most mechanically layered Silent Hill game in the series. Every encounter forced me to weigh my options–and fast–creating a layer of tension similar to Alien: Isolation. That was another stealth horror game that relied on diverting your attention to an analog device to track enemies, and there’s some correlation there, as some members of Screen Burn Interactive worked on Isolation, including McKellan.
This mechanical variation is a highlight for me, but I was also a fan of Silent Hill f’s pivot into character-action. Silent Hill: Townfall, as it stands, is sitting snug with Silent Hill f in its diversion to a tried-and-true formula we’ve seen a handful of studios attempt in the post-Team Silent era with Silent Hill: Origins, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and Silent Hill: Downpour. Over its 27 years, Silent Hill has developed a somewhat divided fanbase, with each player having a drastically different best tier list–I know mine is certainly divisive (shoutout to Silent Hill 4: The Room).
But I think this divisiveness is a stand-out quality of the series, and Silent Hill is at its best when using the franchise more as a playground to experiment and tell compelling and twisted stories, rather than stumbling through the fog of its own tropes. Again, different Silent Hills for different people. Silent Hill: Townfall is shaping up to usher Konami’s psychological horror franchise into either a potential renaissance, or another divisive edition among certain fans, and I’m here for it. Screen Burn Interactive feels like it’s being given the breathing room to take liberties with the beloved series, while also clearly understanding and respecting it.
I asked McKellan about the weight involved in taking on a treasured franchise that brings with it obsessive fans who analyze everything.
“Speaking as someone that had a Silent Hill 2 fan page in 2002… I was one of those people for a long time,” he said. “[Silent Hill 2] is a game that people are still theorizing about 20 years later. We want to be in that camp.”
Silent Hill: Townfall is expected to release September 24 for PlayStation 5 and PC.
“}]]
[[{“value”:”Ever since I played three hours of Silent Hill: Townfall and interviewed its writer and director Jon McKellan, one thing McKellan said has been rattling around in my head: “There are different Silent Hills for different people.” It’s a simple statement–one I agree with and felt silly for not having really considered until playing Silent Hill: Townfall.
Coming off the heels of Silent Hill f, the biggest departure in the 27-year-old series’s formula both in location and gameplay, Townfall carries forward that same trajectory as its predecessor. Silent Hill seems to be entering something of an evolutionary moment, mutating and contorting as it separates itself more and more from the roots of its titular western town. Silent Hill: Townfall is different from other Silent Hills, both mechanically and thematically, in a way that shows this series still has far more to offer beyond its decrepit rusty aesthetics and Bubble Head Nurses.
To begin, Silent Hill: Townfall takes place in Scotland, the home of its developer Screen Burn Interactive. Much like Silent Hill f before it–which placed the series in 1960s Japan, home of f’s writer, Ryukishi07–Konami is exemplifying a trend with giving its developers more liberty in not only embracing Silent Hill as a state-of-mind more than a literal place, but unshackling it from telling stories rooted in the culture of America. Just like f exploring the generational trauma and societal expectations of gender in 1960s Japan, Townfall has its own story to tell that can only be realized in 1990s Scotland.
While I don’t yet have a full grasp of the mysteries and themes Townfall is setting to tackle, it is clear that ’90s Scottish culture is woven through every aspect of the game, from story to gameplay, and the game has something to say about the chokehold corporations can have on small towns. In this case, it’s an energy company in the harbor town of St. Amelia. From what I can gather, this will be a story about industrialization of a small community, anchored in tragedy and regret.
As Simon, an American who suddenly emerges from the sea on the docks of St. Amelia with an IV bag attached to him and a patient bracelet around his wrist, I combed through the harbor town, reading every plaque and sign, absorbing an incredible amount of detail. Apartment listings, fliers for missing cats, town events–the list goes on. St. Amelia is small but remarkably dense with detail, as every storefront has a story of its own, whether it was a visitor’s center with photos of its residents or the abandoned shops adorned with “Everything must go! Closure sale!” signs. The town has history, and the game wants you to breathe its salty ocean air in.
This amount of texture remained ever-present as I searched through the many homes and buildings of St. Amelia, soaking in the lives of the people who lived there from things like family photos on the walls, the scraped wallpaper leaving evidence of moved furniture, or the emails found on family desktop computers that require a dial-up internet connection to access. These environmental touches all feel like they have a purpose–like Screen Burn Interactive wanted me to see them, whether I understood their relevance in the moment or not.
Exploring this town is intimate, and that intimacy is owed to the game’s first-person perspective. Silent Hill: Townfall is the first game in the series that is fully set in this perspective. While other games, like Silent Hill 4: The Room or P.T. (which was a playable teaser for a Silent Hill game we’re now never going to get), have dabbled with first-person, Townfall was intended to be first-person from day one of its development, McKellan told me. And while its mechanics support that direction, like its emphasis on stealth and the CRTV you’ll be relying on, the perspective accentuates the ability to observe and absorb St. Amelia so closely that it’s a justified shift for the series.
As an American, this perspective helped me better engross myself in things I hadn’t ever known about, such as payment meter cards that Scottish residents had to purchase in order to activate their home electricity–an activity I got to do in Townfall, first locating a meter card, and then crawling into a cupboard under the stairs in order to turn on a house’s electricity so I could access a computer. While these foreign quirks seem placed in the game to ground it in 1996 Scotland, I could sense it had stronger thematic weight than it first led on, as the logo of corporate energy company C.E.G. is branded on the card–the same C.E.G. logo plastered on protest signs left abandoned all over town. C.E.G. did something to this place and its residents, it’s just too soon to say exactly what.
Suffice to say, I was engrossed in this world. If I wasn’t limited to my three hours of hands-on time, I would have been there all day reading and exploring every nook and cranny. That’s how detailed it felt to me. Yes, this is likely because I’ve played enough Silent Hill games that I know to look for clues and analyze everything in order to get the full picture of what’s really happening, but it’s also because Townfall just feels good to explore. But exploration is only a fraction of everything Townfall has to offer in its moment-to-moment gameplay.
The game’s standout feature and tool is the CRTV, a handheld TV and FM/AM radio, which closely resembles Sony’s Watchman series. This is Townfall’s take on Silent Hill’s ever-present radio, riffing on its use in Silent Hill 2, where it alerts the player to nearby enemies and also serves as a narrative tool to help protagonist James Sunderland locate his wife. Townfall, however, is tripling down on its CRTV and weaving it into nearly every aspect of the gameplay, from puzzle-solving, to combat, to delivering its story. In doing so, the CRTV isn’t just a tool; it forces you to engage with the setting, the dangers that surround you, and the mystery you’re unraveling.
With the CRTV, Simon can tune into frequencies to see fragmented and glitchy video, as if images are trying to swim to the static’s surface. It’s eerie in the way analog technology can be, years removed from its heyday. The signals are cryptic messages, sometimes addressing Simon directly, or giving clues about his environment so you can decode a puzzle, which required me to manually tune to their frequencies. Around the town, there are radios I had to calibrate with the CRTV in a multi-step process of fine-tuning the search, and aligning its RGB signals. The last vital use case for the device is tracking enemies. The CRTV helps you to see where enemies are through walls or fog, so you can better avoid them. Each enemy has its own frequency, requiring me to switch between frequencies on the fly when surrounded by three to four monsters. And when used in these moments, it’s a pure, unadulterated tension-builder.
I’d hide in a dark, narrow alley, as I listened to the monsters’ shuffling bare feet scraping along the cement, accompanied by their muffled gurgles emanating from under their skin-covered mouths; The CRTV hummed in-hand as I switched from frequency to frequency, revealing monsters on all sides via their silhouettes on the devices screen. Pilotpriest’s soundtrack (which is shaping up to be a great accompaniment to Akira Yamaoka-san’s iconic scores) thumped low beats, with weaving dark synthtones, as I realized I only had three bullets left and a half-broken 2×4 to fight with, and a glass bottle to distract them. This is tension I haven’t quite felt in a Silent Hill game before.
When engaging with Townfall’s contorted, fleshy, almost naked enemies, Silent Hill’s usual trope of wailing on an enemy until it’s down will not get you very far. In fact, it should only be your last resort. Combat is simplistic, consisting of a swing and a block, but weapons are fragile and enemies hit hard. Thankfully, St. Amelia is designed with a lot of paths to maneuver, doorways to temporarily hide in, radios to turn on to distract monsters, and bricks and bottles to toss from a distance to trigger car alarms. Townfall gives enough options to the player to incentivize avoiding a direct brawl. And I only ever used a gun when I had no other choice, when an enemy was standing between me and my escape.
Using a gun in the hands of Simon can feel appropriately desperate as it’s clear he’s not a trained marksman. Aiming is finicky and enemies are erratic; missing a shot feels awful, and even worse when it alerts surrounding monsters. Playing on PlayStation 5, the DualSense’s gyro controls assisted a lot when aiming down the sights of my pistol and lining up a shot. It’s a good use case for motion controls, and managed to crank up the tension a bit more as it reflected my shaky hands on-screen, but still helped aim better than with an analog stick.
Sneaking around, peeking around corners using a designated lean button, switching between frequencies to locate enemies, and internally deliberating whether to engage in a swinging match or take a shot, made me realize that this is the most mechanically layered Silent Hill game in the series. Every encounter forced me to weigh my options–and fast–creating a layer of tension similar to Alien: Isolation. That was another stealth horror game that relied on diverting your attention to an analog device to track enemies, and there’s some correlation there, as some members of Screen Burn Interactive worked on Isolation, including McKellan.
This mechanical variation is a highlight for me, but I was also a fan of Silent Hill f’s pivot into character-action. Silent Hill: Townfall, as it stands, is sitting snug with Silent Hill f in its diversion to a tried-and-true formula we’ve seen a handful of studios attempt in the post-Team Silent era with Silent Hill: Origins, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and Silent Hill: Downpour. Over its 27 years, Silent Hill has developed a somewhat divided fanbase, with each player having a drastically different best tier list–I know mine is certainly divisive (shoutout to Silent Hill 4: The Room).
But I think this divisiveness is a stand-out quality of the series, and Silent Hill is at its best when using the franchise more as a playground to experiment and tell compelling and twisted stories, rather than stumbling through the fog of its own tropes. Again, different Silent Hills for different people. Silent Hill: Townfall is shaping up to usher Konami’s psychological horror franchise into either a potential renaissance, or another divisive edition among certain fans, and I’m here for it. Screen Burn Interactive feels like it’s being given the breathing room to take liberties with the beloved series, while also clearly understanding and respecting it.
I asked McKellan about the weight involved in taking on a treasured franchise that brings with it obsessive fans who analyze everything.
“Speaking as someone that had a Silent Hill 2 fan page in 2002… I was one of those people for a long time,” he said. “[Silent Hill 2] is a game that people are still theorizing about 20 years later. We want to be in that camp.”
Silent Hill: Townfall is expected to release September 24 for PlayStation 5 and PC.”}]] Read More GameSpot – All Content
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