Silent Hill f, the latest installment in Konami’s psychological horror series, marked a big stylistic departure from its predecessors. With a narrative penned by When They Cry series creator Ryukishi07, a Japanese-inspired aesthetic and more action-focused gameplay, the developers thought their bold choices would result in much more divided reception. However, the game ended up exceeding their expectations both in sales and critical reception, and was crowned the fastest-selling title in the series.
Much of this is thanks to the big wave of online hype (particularly in Japanese online spaces) that kept people talking about the game – through memes, livestreams and fan-made content. In a recent interview, Silent Hill f director Motoi Okamoto and writer Ryukishi07 talked to Dengeki Online about this phenomenon.
According to Okamoto, compared to the Silent Hill 2 remake, Silent Hill f managed to attract a much bigger number of new players worldwide, but this trend is especially apparent in Japan. He believes some of the reasons for this could be because people were intrigued by the storyline, or because some of the many online memes piqued their interest.
Okamoto believes that this could be the key for long-term success, especially nowadays, when information circulates quickly and hype dies out in mere days. “Recently, discourse about games is being consumed at a rapid pace. But games that do get talked about even months after release are the ones that are fun to theorize about and analyze, and they usually get a lot of character fan art. From my experience, titles which are able to show us that kind of hype tend to live on for longer,” says Okamoto. Being a character-driven drama, and a rather unorthodox entry in the series, Silent Hill f managed to garner a steady fan-art community, which largely contributed to that kind of success.
As writer Ryukishi explains, psychological horror games, like the Silent Hill series, “ultimately boil down to how much the player resonates with them. That’s why, protagonists of such games tend to be on the less-talkative side, so players can immerse themselves in the game.” Therefore, the emphasis is put on the introverted, gloomy characters with not much dialogue or exaggerated characteristics.
While Ryukishi07 says that those types of characters do have their own unique appeal – “It’s not something that makes you feel I want them to be my friend, it’s more of a dark kind of appeal.” But that’s precisely what makes it inherently difficult to actively build hype around the characters themselves – and this goes for the Silent Hill series as well. Ryukishi07 suggests that this is what Silent Hill f does differently (hence such a boom in character fan-art and fan-theories). At the same time, he does not imply that this is necessarily the “way the series should follow” from now on. He hopes the latest title will demonstrate that there are many unique ways to go about the series while still maintaining its essence. “If the direction we took with ‘f’ is well-received, hopefully it could become one of the examples of the Silent Hill series’ expressive range.”
