Silent Hill: Townfall director Jon McKellan has only played the original game once. Normally, for a series with such a rabid fanbase obsessed with the details of the lore, that would be an odd thing to admit while previewing your new game in the historic franchise. But McKellan’s story about his experience gives him a good enough excuse, and an unforgettable experience that seems impossible to replicate.
Jon McKellan explains, “I was maybe 18 when [Silent Hill] came out. I was very ill; I had a fever, a cold flu thing. And my dad was feeling sorry for me, and he said, ‘I’ll go pick you up a video game at the local video store,’ and so he brought back Silent Hill, which I didn’t know about at the time. And so he brought that in, and I finished it in one night, but I had a high fever, so I don’t really know how much of that happened. I know I finished it; I remember the credits rolling, but I was in a weird space, and I was like ‘that was the best experience I’ve ever had,’ and so I felt like if I go back it will never live up to that moment, so I’ve decided to never play Silent Hill again.”
Earlier this month, Konami invited Bloody Disgusting to a preview event where I, alongside other journalists, got to chat with McKellan and Silent Hill series producer Motoi Okamoto about the upcoming Silent Hill: Townfall, scheduled to release September 24.
This interview and presentation provided the most in-depth look at what the new entry in the series had planned, finally shedding light on the mysterious title.
The first gameplay trailer for Townfall made it clear what the biggest change to the series would be: the first-person perspective. While this took me a bit by surprise, it seems like their reasoning for making the jump is solid. Presented in an immersive 2.35:1 CinemaScope aspect ratio, the new viewpoint complements the game’s focus on tense stealth and frenetic combat.
JM: “It was first-person from day one for us… I think the two biggest features we wanted to bring to the table in terms of gameplay experience, between puzzles and story, were stealth, evasion, peeking around corners, and the CRTV, which was one of the first features we were developing when we were like ‘what is our take on the radio?’ It feels like a very Screen Burn thing to do, to take this piece of analog tech and enhance it, and there’s no way to hold that in front of the player in third-person without having to render that onto the UI, and that starts to feel like a mini-map that feels really out of place in Silent Hill… Personally, I’m a huge fan of first, because when you’re going for proper terror or tension, not having an avatar between you and the enemies just lifts that experience a little bit. If you’re trending towards action, it makes sense to have something in front of you and see how they move, but when you’re going for stealth and evasion, there’s nothing better than being right up front.”
There are many signature Silent Hill elements that are present in this game, from the oppressive fog to the terrifying Otherworld, but Screen Burn wanted to make sure that they were putting their own twist on one of the franchise’s signature items, the radio. Their take on the iconic gadget is the aforementioned CRTV, which can be tuned to various signals to deliver story beats and help you track nearby enemies. It’s a very tactile, analog device that fits in with elements they’ve been exploring for years.
JM: “I think [analog technology is] creepy because we know it’s unreliable. It’s not magical, it’s not intelligent. These systems are cables and wires and transistors, and it can break. We don’t really think about the components in an iPhone breaking in the same way; we think of it as a device, it’s just a thing. But I think you know it’s kind of strung together with duct tape and it could fail you at any time, and I think that lends something to it. We talk about weaponizing nostalgia in all of our games, taking things you love, like text adventures in Stories Untold, something that was cute and quirky and fun, and turning it on its head to make it the most horrible experience you’ve had…It feels nostalgic for the people who grew up with that, and it feels really unique for the people who didn’t, so it feels like you win both crowds that way.”
Motoi Okamoto: “I think the 90s is right on the borderline between the more analog tech and the more modern digital tech, so I think it’s a time where those two technologies overlap and start to crossover, so I think that exact timing is part of the appeal, part of why analog tech feels so creepy.”
Another signature element usually associated with the series is composer Akira Yamaoka, who has done the majority of the games in the franchise. This time around, Screen Burn is teaming with Pilotpriest, a musician who has composed for film as well as directing films himself. While it may be weird for long-time fans to not have Yamaoka on board, McKellan said that Pilotpriest became an integral part of the project and fit into the tone of the series from the moment he was brought on board.
JM: “He sent over fifteen tracks within a month, and every single one of them made it into the game. It was like, this is perfect. He essentially became part of the dev team; he was working with us pretty much every day, working with the audio team, playing the game, feeling like if something didn’t quite land, a moment or certain encounter didn’t feel quite right, he would go back in and rescore and re-export. He was completely integral to the design of the game.”
While Silent Hill games have been set outside the iconic city before, Townfall follows Silent Hill f in setting the game both in a new location and in a specific time in the past. Simon Ordell, the player character you inhabit, is exploring the Scottish town of St. Amelia in 1996.
MO: “It was a very natural decision for a team from Scotland to create a game that is based in Scotland… I think we all know that Silent Hill fans are very analytical, and they like to go into a lot of details and guess and analyze what goes on in Silent Hill, and I think we’re able to provide an extra layer on that by giving them an opportunity to try to guess where we are going to explore next.”
JM: “I think on top of that, players will find out as they progress through the game that the town is really the star of the show, and what happened there. It’s not just a coincidence that it’s set in Scotland. There’s meaning to that; there’s meaning to the island community and the way it’s positioned in the world. All these things matter by the end of the game. So hopefully as people dig into it, they realize it’s not just a stylistic choice or that we just happen to live here. We make what we know, but there’s a lot of reasons to be Scottish and a lot of reasons to be the kind of town that it is.”
Prior to Silent Hill: Townfall, Screen Burn had developed two other games, Stories Untold and Observation, which are both much smaller in scale than this project. Fortunately, this experience synergized with the style of narrative-focused puzzle design that Silent Hill is known for, making the transition easier than anticipated.
JM: “I think Stories Untold especially was where we really started to find our feet on narrative puzzle design. I grew up with point-and-click adventures and text adventures, things where you were getting the story through the action, rather than the action being something you did between the story. The scale of Stories Untold and Observation were much, much smaller. You were in a fixed room; you did very little exploring of the area. With Townfall, we were like, ‘Can we take the narrative presentation of Stories Untold and the way that we solve puzzles and tell that story, and also allow the player to walk around and get into combat. All those things that were a bit newer for us.”
It can be a tricky balancing act trying to jump into an established franchise, trying to please long-time fans while still making sure the game is something unique and personal. Screen Burn and Konami were both aware of this, and worked hard to ensure Townfall brought its own perspective that adds to the series, while still respecting and referencing the past.
JM: “What we came to try and do was to find what felt like Silent Hill to us, and it seems to be landing the way we thought it would, which is to pull people in with things that feel distinctly Silent Hill, and feel reminiscent. You’re gonna get shades of Silent Hill 2 or shades of P.T., but then we start to subvert those expectations as the game plays out. So by the end of the game, you’re gonna feel like Townfall is something that’s completely unique to the rest of the series, but still feels like Silent Hill so that fans feel connected to what we’ve done.”
MO: “There are some parts of the game that feel somewhat similar to Silent Hill 2, but I think the one thing that makes Townfall stand out compared to all of its predecessors is that it has its own take on social commentary. It’s a game that explores the perspective of an individual opposed to society at large and opposed to corporations, so there’s that bit of a social angle that you can explore the game from.”
Knowing how hardcore Silent Hill fans are, everyone on the team is well aware of how much their game will be scrutinized down to the most minute detail. McKellan welcomes it, as Screen Burn’s past titles have prepared them for the type of storytelling and detail the series is known for.
JM: “Speaking as someone who had a Geocities fan page for Silent Hill 2, I was one of those people for a long time. I think that’s part of the fun for us, layering in the details. We pour a lot of love into the environment, not just to make it look realistic, but there are clues everywhere. There’s a sense of who the town is if you look deep enough. We know the player’s going to be very analytical, and so we try our best to cater for that rather than be afraid of it; we just lean in. We did the same with Stories Untold, even though there were no expectations on that game, but there’s stuff people have noticed in that game, you know the names of hardware and what that could mean as a metaphor. It’s our vibe, it’s the thing that we love.”
As they previously announced, the game will feature a total of five endings, including the expected secret endings that the series is known for. The way they described it, it sounds like they are using the Silent Hill 2 methodology of assigning an ending, allowing the player’s actions to dictate the conclusion. Multiple endings can be a challenge to write around, but McKellan said it was fun to rise to the occasion.
JM: “Because we have this slightly fluid nature of gameplay and how the player plays affects what ending you’re going to get in a very subtle way, we wanna make sure that each one of them still feels like it makes sense for everything that’s just happened before it. With the exception of the more secret endings, the endings should still feel appropriate, and that’s the hardest thing. If you’re gonna end up with that ‘go left, go right’ at the end of the game, both still need to work with everything you’ve built, and that is a challenge, and this is the first time I’ve written this way. It’s also fun. It’s a challenge and a puzzle of how do you figure out to make sure that whatever happens in Ending B still carries the message of what you went through, while still feeling rewarding enough to have people want to find the alternatives.”
Silent Hill: Townfall is the final game to be released out of the initial announcements from 2022, and it’s clear by the quality of the titles that Konami has made a statement about their dedication to the series. Not only was it a great business strategy for them, but they also did an excellent job of creating an environment for each dev team to flourish creatively.
MO: “The main reason we decided to have multiple titles in the works at the same time was because we wanted to convey to players that Konami is serious about coming back into the gaming landscape. A part of the strategy behind that was to work on multiple games at once so we can have an annual release of a new Silent Hill game every year. That way, players will know that it’s not a facade. We’re serious about coming back into the gaming space and providing players with new games.”
JM: “Overall, it felt like they gave us the creative freedom to do what we do, and know that there’s a little bit of oversight there so we don’t accidentally make the same story as another [Silent Hill game], given that we’re all drawing from the same pool of reference… Seeing those games do really well gave us confidence that people were accepting of the new Silent Hill and that the fans were here for it. It’s always been a confidence builder for us.”
In addition to chatting with them about the game, I also got to play a three-hour demo of Silent Hill: Townfall. You can find my article about my hands-on experience with the game here.
Silent Hill: Townfall will release on September 24 for PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
