Silent Hill: Ascension doesn’t look like the game we’ve been expecting

Silent Hill: Ascension A brand new trailer has been revealed, giving us an idea of ​​exactly what this live gaming experience will entail. It doesn’t look like the game we’ve been stuck with. For many reasons.

First, Ascension won’t be a standard game. PR has made this very clear to us—Silent Hill: Ascension will take the form of an “interactive streaming series” where viewers can bid to decide the fate of the characters together. According to the PR, “no one is playing the part” — so no James Sunderland-esque agency here. Does this sound a bit like a poor version of Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn and The Quarry? Yes.

You are right to think so. There are some caveats. If someone showed me a trailer for Ascension without prior context or branding, I’d honestly mistake this trailer for another Supermassive entry, perhaps cut in with a little Netflix Bandersnatch. That’s not a bad thing, considering Supermassive’s title is both disturbing and entertaining.

The Silent Hill: Ascension trailer introduces us to multiple main characters; as we watch them flee in terror and catch glimpses of terrifying monsters, it’s clear Ascension will be exploring their trauma. What happened to these characters’ pasts to make them end up here? Can they face their trauma and escape? Or will they pass their trauma on to their children? The trailer raised a lot of questions for players, but one thing solidified for me: it wasn’t good.

I don’t deny that the format Silent Hill: Ascension takes will be a fascinating way to unfold — a “real-time interactive system” for viewers to decide what happens next, playing a format like Blair Witch does today. I think the problem here revolves around Konami forgetting what makes Silent Hill so special, and simply branding its future games to generate more hype.

There’s no question that the original Silent Hill games were primarily concerned with psychological horror. More specifically, how a character carries their trauma and in what ways it manifests. For example, James Sunderland battles his inner demons in the form of a pyramid head in Silent Hill 2. Sorry if you lost that one.

You could play the entirety of Silent Hill 2 and watch it at face value without even realizing that the real horror in the game is James’ unresolved trauma. Once you’re truly aware of James’ journey, Silent Hill 2 suddenly becomes more disturbing—it’s no longer about the physical threats James faces, but the more real, personal fears he’s dealing with. You don’t need a therapist to tell you why, for many people, it transcends the physical world and touches something far more disturbing deep in the amygdala.

Team Silent catches lightning in a bottle with the original Silent Hill trio; that was the period when horror as a genre took hold, and Silent Hill 2 became one of the best horror games of all time.There’s a certain level of intrigue and mystery surrounding this annoying little game because of how it manages to get under It’s so easy to skin the player. You can resurrect a series, remake a game, but you can’t recreate a moment in time like that. Especially if you pull out all the subtext in movie trailers like pulling teeth out of jawbones.

Silent Hill: Ascension looks like a fun experience to share with other Silent Hill fans, but it doesn’t look like Silent Hill. Maybe Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake will surprise me, and I’ll break my word.

But it might be worth considering what would happen if Konami considered starting a new series instead of getting the “Silent Hill” seal of approval on some trauma-focused horror game. Maybe it’ll have another classic property in the making. Maybe it will stop tarnishing the name of the good stuff that came before.