Silent Hill Townfall

Anyone tackling the Silent Hill franchise during its recent revival faces a difficult challenge when it comes to audience expectations. Who, exactly, are you making your game for? The old Silent Hill heads who got started with the classic four games? The legions of video essay enjoyers who claim a strong affinity for the series despite having not played them? Horror game fans in general?

Arguably, a new Silent Hill game releasing today needs to court all three to some extent. Silent Hill f became the fastest selling game in the series’ history, which I would be willing to bet is largely due to curious outsiders rather than hordes of pre-existing fans running out to purchase it. At the same time, there’s clearly stacks of cash to be made in appealing to the nostalgia of the long-time, post-Team-Silent-skeptical fanbase. Going too far in one direction or the other risks alienating a chunk of your potential audience.

Well, I don’t know who Scottish developers Screen Burn were trying to appeal to when they made Silent Hill Townfall, but they ended up directly targeting a demographic even more important than pre-existing fans and the general horror audience, perhaps even more vital to the franchise’s long-term success than the worldwide gaming public at large.

That demographic is me. Townfall is a Silent Hill game just for Ronan.

Our protagonist this time around is Simon Ordell, an American man who wakes up in the water outside the Scottish island town of St. Amelia, having apparently been summoned there by another American in order to set right some kind of wrong. Upon entering the empty, foggy streets, it quickly becomes apparent that St. Amelia has undergone some sort of catastrophe—a downfall of the town, one could say—the exact nature of which both the player and Simon will have to figure out as the story progresses.

And that’s pretty much all the game gives you up-front, Townfall probably rivalling Silent Hill 3 in terms of its plot brevity before the monsters show up. Unlike Silent Hill 3, and like Silent Hill f, there is no franchise Deep Lore to tie into here: this is firmly sticking with the “anthology” model of storytelling that all of the revival projects except for the remake of Silent Hill 2 have employed.

I have some growing reservations about this approach and what it means for the franchise as a whole, which I’ll discuss at the end of this post, but taken purely on its own merits, I think Townfall is the second-best post-Team Silent game in the series, being beaten only by the Silent Hill 2 remake. It’s also one of the strongest—if not the strongest—Silent Hill inspired horror games in existence, the developers understanding what makes the franchise appealing far better than the people who churn endless derivative “psychological horror” games out onto Steam.

That might be kind of surprising on the face of it, because Townfall actually does a lot of the same things those games do. Its horror is firmly psychological rather than occult, it’s very clearly looking to Silent Hill 2 as inspiration rather than any of the other classic games, it features a quasi-amnesiac main character struggling with guilt over something he either doesn’t remember or isn’t willing to acknowledge, the game regularly employs sudden shifts into surreal environments that are symbolic of said guilt and the events that caused it. The thing is, Townfall just does all of this better than those other games, mort artfully, with more restraint, and in a way that carries forward the DNA of classic Silent Hill rather than clumsily aping the surface-level tropes and aesthetics of the series.

Take, for example, the game’s handling of the Otherworld. One of my big complaints about a lot of the post-Silent Hill 4 games is that they never managed to make their Otherworld anywhere close to as frightening or as bizarrely fascinating as the franchise did during its inception, either rehashing the “rusty metal and blood” aesthetic without the same level of skill, or coming up with something new that just wasn’t very interesting. Townfall’s underground concrete labyrinths come the closest I’ve ever seen, in terms of all-original creations, to recapturing that feeling of descending into a hellish nightmare space that you can’t wait to escape. For the first time since Silent Hill 3, I found myself thinking “I would like to go back to the empty fog town right now please”, which is one of the core appeals of Silent Hill for me and a feeling that no game in the last 24 years has managed to conjure up.

Note that I said Townfall’s Otherworld comes the closest to recapturing the magic of the glory days, rather than actually recapturing it. I do think the developers could have gotten a little weirder with it, especially in the second major Otherworld section later in the game. Give me some of those Masahiro Ito “why the fuck is this here” set-pieces, and they’d be all the way there.

One visual element that’s sadly a long way from clearing the Silent Hill bar is the enemy designs. They’re not the worst the series has seen by any means, but they never progress beyond the “humanoid figure with a weird head” template that anyone trying to make their very own Silent Hill monster always seems to default to. Unfortunately, this goes double for the game’s recurring “stalker” enemy that has a lot of important symbolic meaning, which is easily the blandest design of the bunch.

Speaking of symbolic meaning, I’m going to go on a little side tangent before we move off this topic: future Silent Hill developers, whoever you end up being, please dial back a little on the symbolism. Yes, it’s been a key feature of the games since the start, but the reason it had such an impact on people is because it wasn’t obvious. You could play the original games and not realise it was there (Silent Hill 2 less so than the others, admittedly), and once you did cotton on, a big part of the fun was that you had to actually think about what a particular monster or environment might mean. Townfall, like pretty much all of the newer Silent Hill games, is way too eager to show off its symbolism; once you get the gist of what the plot is about, you will have zero difficulty figuring out what any given monster represents. I said the same thing about Silent Hill f, I’m saying it again here.

Anyway, tangent aside and while we’re still on the game’s visual qualities, its strongest asset is actually the fog world. St. Amelia is probably the most visually captivating environment the franchise has ever given us when you’re outside, but venture into the interior spaces (which are numerous and varied) and that’s where things really get Ronan-coded. I love first-person video game representations of mundane interior spaces; a million sci-fi cities and fantasy castles pass right through me, but give me a game set in a gas station or something, and my eyes light up, especially if I get to use a flashlight to explore it. On this level, Townfall’s interiors are an absolute joy to explore and poke around in. The game’s graphical fidelity isn’t quite up there with that of the Silent Hill 2 remake or Silent Hill f, but it more than compensates with atmosphere.

Some of this will admittedly not hit as hard if you didn’t grow up in Ireland in the 90s. Ireland and Scotland have a lot of cultural, linguistic, and architectural cross-pollination, and it turns out that extends to the interior decorating of people’s homes in the 90s (the game is set in 1996). Several times, I felt like I was walking into my grandparents’ house as it existed when I first moved here from America.

In terms of gameplay and how that relates to the older games, Townfall sticks closer to the formula than Silent Hill f, but still deviates from it in key ways. Played in first person and placing a big emphasis on stealth rather than fighting every monster you see, the game is essentially a combination of classic survival horror mechanics with Alien Isolation (not a coincidence, as one of the primary Isolation developers now works at Screen Burn). You can kill enemies, and you get a range of both melee and long-ranged weapons to do it with, but the former will break after a few fights and ammo for the latter is extremely scarce. There simply aren’t enough resources to take out every enemy in the game, which means you’ll need to pick your battles carefully.

To even the playing field, you’ve got the CRTV, a nifty little portable TV that you can use to tune into a monster’s frequency and see them through walls. This is kind of like a mash-up of Alien Isolation’s motion detector with Forbidden Siren’s “sight-jacking” ability, and like the latter, it requires a bit of concentration and lateral thinking to use effectively. Patience, planning, and careful observation of the environment are needed to get past Townfall’s monsters, which have more finely attuned senses than in a lot of other stealth games (peeking around corners does not render you invisible, for example; if you stick your head out of cover and a monster is looking right at you, they’ll still see you).

I gather that a lot of people found these stealth mechanics frustrating. I didn’t, particularly. I’m not saying that’s entirely a skill issue on their part, that while they partied I studied the Metal Gears and Dishonoreds; I’m saying that it’s only mostly down to me being a highly skilled gamer and stealth God. The game does also commit a few blunders in this area.

Generally I found the monster’s behaviour pretty predictable in terms of what conditions they would detect me under, but there are a few weird edge cases I encountered. For example, on a few occasions I was spotted while hiding behind hospital curtains or those banner things you see around the outdoor seating areas of pubs and restaurants. On one hand, these had narrow slits in them and the game generally operates on “if you can see the monster, then the monster can see you” logic so fair enough, but on the other hand, these environment assets were clearly put there as cover for the player to use, so it feels like the monsters being able to see through them was unintended behaviour.

A more serious issue comes with the stalker enemy that you have to contend with in two of the game’s Otherworld areas. Its behaviour is modelled after that of the alien in Alien Isolation, in that instead of patrolling along a fixed path it “tethers” to the player so that it’s never more than a certain distance away. Unlike the alien, this thing doesn’t have vents to disappear into, which means that it keeps up with Simon by just sprinting to his location whenever he gets too far from it. Coupled with what I think might be a bug that keeps it from moving unless you get within a certain distance of it, this means that this particular monster can be annoyingly clingy at times. Its slow speed means that you can run from it and try to break line of sight, but depending on the specific location you’re in and what you’re trying to do, that might not be a viable option.

(During the writing of this review Screen Burn, responding to player complaints, deployed a patch to address this particular issue, but I haven’t replayed the game so I can’t comment on what the changes are like).

These quibbles aside, I found the stealth in Townfall to be tense, challenging, and rewarding in a way I haven’t experienced since playing Alien Isolation. It can be tough, but the game gives you all the tools you need to surpass it, as long as you’re smart and use your resources carefully.

Combat, too, was surprisingly gratifying every time I either chose or was forced to engage in it. Fights are fast and vicious, with both monsters and Simon going down in only a few hits, so every battle feels like a desperate struggle to the death. Melee attacks are quick and feel good to land; in fact I’d say this is one of the better-feeling first-person implementations of weapon combat in a video game, which is not something I ever thought I’d be saying about a Silent Hill game.

What consistently surprised and delighted me about Townfall was how much of a fully-fledged Silent Hill game it is. Back when it was announced, I predicted that it would be a smaller, more highly experimental entry in the franchise, but that’s really not the case. It’s long, it’s got monsters and combat, lots of large interior environments to explore, back-tracking through places you’ve already been, multiple endings (and two joke endings!), New Game+ with unlockable weapons, plus some cool twists that I won’t spoil here. And then there’s the puzzles, which are both numerous and of exceptionally high quality, probably among the best the franchise has ever seen. You’ve got your standard keys and door codes to find, but also some really in-depth and elaborate puzzle set pieces, many of which require a bit of lateral thinking to solve. The plot is maturely written and handles its themes with subtlety and finesse.

That’s really the best complement I can give Townfall: it feels like a big, new, modern Silent Hill game. When I reviewed f last year I was lenient towards its wild stylistic departures from the series’ roots, and I still am today—I prefer to live in a world where we can get crazy experiments like that under the franchise banner, rather than new games just trying to recapture the glory days of the past—but there’s no denying that Townfall made me feel like I was back in Silent Hill more than that game did. In some respects, it made the bleak years when the franchise was in the wilderness seem like they never happened. This game could have come out right after Silent Hill 4 and fit in just fine.

So, that’s my assessment of Townfall on its own merits. In case this wasn’t clear enough already: I highly recommend it, if you’re a Silent Hill fan and you can at least tolerate stealth mechanics, go and buy it.

I do, however, have some misgivings when it comes to Townfall and what it means for the overall direction of the franchise.

The thing is, we’ve now had three all-original games in this Silent Hill revival wave (including The Short Message, which I haven’t reviewed because it’s free and an hour long), and all three are very clearly and unambiguously drawing inspiration from Silent Hill 2, and Silent Hill 2 alone. All three of them are primarily psychological horror experiences, featuring characters wrestling with repressed guilt/trauma, navigating symbolic horror mindscapes. The occult elements that formed such a core part of the original games are either light set dressing (as in Silent Hill f) or simply absent entirely.

This is bad, for two reasons. The first is that it just perpetuates the idea that Silent Hill is “about” guilty people getting trapped in their own personal hells. This is an idea that’s firmly taken root in the larger cultural landscape due to Silent Hill 2’s outsized stature, and the new games running with it so enthusiastically means it’s even more likely to take hold as the dominant theme in the franchise, which I feel would be a huge mistake. The occult elements are part of what made Silent Hill unique, they were one of the big differentiating factors between Silent Hill 1 and Resident Evil back when it first came out. Even Silent Hill 2, the most firmly psychological of the four classic games, uses a lot of occult imagery to add a unique texture to its story.

The second reason this is a bad thing is because it simply risks becoming repetitive. There’s only so many times you can take a certain form of trauma and apply the Silent Hill Formula to it before the whole thing gets stale. Already, with Townfall, I feel like we might be reaching that point, as I found myself anticipating most of the story’s plot beats long before I got to them.

Of course, the reason why these three projects are like this is because they were all made by separate development teams, in parallel, independent of each other. Konami gave three different studios piles of cash to make their very own Silent Hill games, and all three of those chose to do a spin on Silent Hill 2, either because they’ve been infected by the “Silent Hill 2 is the only Silent Hill that matters” brainworms, or because they just sincerely love Silent Hill 2 that much and wanted to pay tribute to it.

Either way, as a vocal proponent of Silent Hill 3 supremacy, I’m already starting to get a little tired of it. These new games have been very daring in moving away from the established setting and gameplay styles of the franchise, and I heartily applaud them for that, but in terms of theme and story, they haven’t moved on at all. They feel less fresh than Silent Hill 4, a game that came out 22 years ago.

My hope is that the creators of The Short Message, f, and Townfall got it out of their systems with this first wave of projects, and that if Konami lets them make another Silent Hill game, this time they’ll look beyond Silent Hill 2 for inspiration. I want to see something fresh and new, something that isn’t “person arrives in Silent Hill or a Silent Hill-esque foggy town and confronts their Inner Torment.”

A Silent Hill protagonist doesn’t actually have to be struggling with suppressed guilt, you know. Of the four original main characters, only James was like that.