Konami thought it was the right time to bring together Metal Gear Solid 3 Remake and Silent Hill F at the same event, even though both games were shown at PlayStation and Xbox during the two manufacturers' recent conferences. The event also served to unveil a surprise game: a new Silent Hill game from Bloober Team. What more did we learn about the publisher's upcoming survival horror? Did we get any additional gameplay clips compared to the State of Play?
Silent Hill F continues to freak out at the Konami Press Start
We now know that Silent Hill F will be available on September 25, 2025 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and it surprised a lot of people! Given that the game has been very silent since its CGI trailer, we didn't expect to be able to get close to it anytime soon. But that's definitely the case, and on paper, it looks more than promising for several reasons. And the main one is probably the fact that it will be a familiar yet different experience at the same time. Saying goodbye to the American backwater atmosphere, Silent Hill takes the player to Ebisugaoka, a remote part of Japan... in the 1960s. Hinako Shimizu, the game's heroine and a local resident, suddenly sees her town engulfed in mist.
"As the town falls silent as the mist thickens, Hinako must explore the twists and turns of Ebisugaoka, solving complex puzzles while battling grotesque monsters in order to survive." Silent Hill 5 is raising some expectations, too, because it's written by Japanese author Ryukishi07 and promises to be one of the most shocking games in the franchise. The latest trailer has indeed shown that the developers aren't going to skimp on the gore, nor on the strange, deformed creatures that move strangely, like the iconic "Bubble Head" nurses from Silent Hill 2. To complete the picture, Akira Yamaoka, the cult composer of the horror saga, is also composing some of the music.
Through a segment "Behind the Scenes of Creating the World of Silent Hill 5," we got some details on the development and intentions behind the project. For Motoi Okamoto, the franchise's producer, it was important to rediscover the Japanese horror dimension that, according to him, had been somewhat lost. An essential facet of the cult saga. "As the series progressed, I felt like the very essence of Japanese horror had been lost a bit.I started dreaming of creating a Silent Hill that would 100% reflect the Japanese style of horror.".
A real desire to have a horror game the Japanese
How to make this dream come true? For Okamoto-san, a Japanese or Asian team was absolutely essential, hence the call on Neobards. The studio has already worked with Capcom on the multiplayer games Resident Evil Resistance and Resident Evil Re: Verse. Admittedly, it's far from being the top of the range in the genre, far from it in fact, but Silent Hill f looks much more promising at the moment. "We really wanted to understand the elements that make up the atmosphere of Silent Hill and develop them in f" explains Al Yang, game director of the game.
According to the producer, and despite the action moving from the United States, Silent Hill f bears the hallmarks of the cult saga, but by bringing back this Japanese touch. "We tried to highlight what makes the Japanese style of horror. What makes Japanese horror unique is not just the grotesque side, but also the coexistence of beauty and terror." This new game was also developed with a motto in mind: "Finding beauty in horror". In order to convey this, it needed a creepy visual design and a frightening charm that you can't look away from. We'll have to see the whole adventure, but we can already feel it with the gameplay clips revealed.
Speaking of gameplay, NeoBards also discussed the direction of the combat. "In the spirit of the series, our heroine Hinako is also a normal person. But we really wanted the game to be fun and interesting. The team spent a lot of time creating a combat system that was both new and familiar, without being too complicated and in keeping with the game's theme." To finish up on the atmosphere of Silent Hill f, the floor was given to scenario writer Ryukishi07, who chose the Showa era for a specific reason. "It feels like another world. A connected world, but one that has retained its customs and long-forgotten superstitions.".
Source: Konami.
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