Silent Hill f hands-on preview and interview – the f is for feminism

The creators of the first Silent Hill game set in Japan explain how they’re aiming to elevate the whole survival horror genre, with an impressively thoughtful new sequel.

It’s been a strange journey for Silent Hill, ever since Konami announced the return of the franchise in 2022, with a bewildering number of new entries. It’s not like fans were complaining, but it seemed strange given that the original games, like most horror titles not called Resident Evil, never sold that well. But then fans did start complaining, when initial titles like Silent Hill: Ascension and Silent Hill: The Short Message turned out to be varying degrees of awful.

It was beginning to look like the series was awoken from its grave merely to spit on it, but then last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake defied expectations by being extremely good. There still hasn’t been a successful new game but from the very first trailer, Silent Hill f always like the most promising of the second wave.

We played over an hour of the game at Gamescom earlier in the month, but we also got to speak to game director Al-Yang, from developer NeoBards, and Silent Hill series general producer Motoi Okamoto from Konami. If anything, talking to them was even more encouraging than playing the game, as they reveal it’s unexpected feminist themes and a very unique use of uncanny valley.

Silent Hill is unusual for a turn-of-the-millennium Japanese franchise, in that while the original games were made by Konami, in Tokyo, that wasn’t particularly evident from playing it. The game was set in the US, and influenced by the work of Stephen King and David Lynch, as well as 1990 film Jacob’s Ladder, but plenty of Japanese games are influenced by outside sources and yet it’s still very obvious what the game’s country of origin is.

Only the clumsy dialogue and voice-acting gave Silent Hill’s roots away, so one of the aims for Silent Hill f is that, after all this time, it should be the first entry that is identifiably Japanese. To that end it’s set in a fictional small town in Japan, in the 1960s, with you cast in the role of high school student Hinako Shimizu.

We’re not sure if what we were playing was the absolute beginning of the game but it portrayed Shimizu as having a fractus, if not outright abusive, relationship with her unpleasant seeming father, with even her contemporaries accusing her of being a ‘traitor’. Exactly why isn’t clear but Shimizu’s best friend is a young man, but not necessarily boyfriend, who also dreams of escaping their small town blues.

Traditionally, Silent Hill is something the main characters are drawn to, and actively seek out and visit, but here the town is turned upside down when a thick fog suddenly rolls in and red spider lilies sprout up everywhere, killing one of Shimizu’s friends.

This immediately reminded us of the red weed from War of the Worlds, but the developers explained that the flower has great significance in Japanese culture, symbolising the arrival of autumn. But they’re also used in Buddhist funerary practices, are associated with Christian martyrdom in Japan, and are said to grow along the path you take when you leave someone who you will never see again.

Whether this symbology will become evident by playing the game we don’t know but after escaping the initial outbreak you discover the inevitable: the town is now overrun by murderous monsters. The initial ones are reminiscent of the mannequins from the early games and move in a very unnerving, staccato fashion that is impressively creepy.

Shimizu’s only defence at first is a lead pipe, but she’s fairly light on her feet and can defeat the creatures relatively easily, as long as she doesn’t get cornered. What follows is a tense game of cat and mouse through the town, squeezing through gaps, exploring now deserted houses, and solving relatively complex puzzles – they’re inline with previous games, including the remake, and while never as obscure as they first appear do require considerably more brainpower than their Resident Evil equivalents.

Who it is that’s setting all these puzzles is never made clear but there are other new gameplay elements, including a sanity rating. This doesn’t seem to work like Eternal Darkness though, even though it drains as Shimizu looks at monsters. While you’ve still got enough of it left, it allows you to use a special focus ability that makes critical strike easier, which seems an oddly specific concept. You also have a numerical rating for faith, but this is essentially just in-game currency used to exchange for talismans that offer various buffs and minor abilities.

At a certain point Shimizu is knocked out and wakes up in a Japanese temple, where she encounters a being with a fox mask, who’s implied to be Inari Ōkami, one of the most important divine spirits, known as kami, from the Shinto religion. Although you’re immediately given reason to doubt who he is, or at least what his intentions might be.

The water-logged area outside of the temple is stuck in a perpetual twilight and it took us a long time to realise that this is the Japanese version of the Otherworld from the existing games. It looks nothing like it, but it serves the same purpose, in that it’s filled with monsters and yet it’s unclear whether it is an actual physical place or not.

As a game, everything we played (the demo was over three hours long but we didn’t have time for all of it) was very impressive on a technical level, with excellent graphics, believable dialogue, and good voiceovers where, unlike something like Onimusha, everyone speaks English with a Japanese accent – which does wonders for the immersion.

We do have concerns though. The game was creepy but nothing we’d call actively scary. It’s hard to compare it to Resident Evil Requiem though, where we happened to be the last people in for the day and were left to play the demo alone and in pitch dark. With Silent Hill f we were surrounded by other people and while Konami had done their best to darken the venue, we were still in the middle of Gamescom’s noisy press area.

Silent Hill generally doesn’t trade in jump scares and gore but instead a creeping sense of dread. It is, famously, a more psychological style of horror, rather than the (equally entertaining) shlock of Resident Evil. Either way though, we’ll only get to judge the atmosphere properly when we get to play the final game.

Our other worry is that while the combat is functional it’s not in any way interesting. It’s not meant to be – this isn’t Bayonetta – but there’s no reward for killing monsters and yet there seem to be a lot of them. Although by the end of our time with the game we’d already started to get the message that we should probably just try running away a lot of the time.

We look forward to the final game very much and can only hope it makes good on the obvious potential from the demo and the thoughtful intentions of the creators, who are clearly attempting to do something more nuanced than a straightforward survival horror sequel.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £69.99
Publisher: Konami
Developer: NeoBards Entertainment
Release Date: 25th September 2025
Age Rating: 18

GC: OK… do we know why it’s called f yet?

MO: [laughs] We can’t spoil anything, we don’t give everything away, but it stands for many different things, that much we can say. [We suspect fear, faith, and feminism are amongst the various words involved – GC]

GC: The game always looked interesting, from the first trailer, but also very different from other Silent Hill games. Where did this unique vision for the franchise come from?

MO: The whole philosophy and concept behind rebooting the franchise was that traditionally Silent Hill always took place in the same locale, at or around the physical location. But we felt that keeps repeating the same thing… the same type of gameplay experience. What we wanted to do was, we wanted to try something new and as part of that process what we decided to do was to remove it from its familiar locale and take it somewhere new.

That’s something we’d tried before with Silent Hill: The Short Message, because that took place in Germany, so along a similar philosophy what we decided to do is bring it to Japan, to provide a fresh experience to the player.

GC: The original games weren’t only set in the US they were influenced by a lot of American movies and writers. Are they still the main influences in this game, or have they been swapped out for something else?

MO: A lot of influences for this game are due to the collaborative efforts we have with the scriptwriter, who is a Japanese horror writer by the name of Ryukishi07, so his influences are very prevalent in the game. Of course, there may be some other influences that will make their appearances in the game, but for the most part there’s a heavy influence due to the stylistic choices of the scriptwriter

And this is due not only to the locale but due to the era that it takes place in, because it’s not just in Japan but in 1960s Japan. So it’s Japan of 60 years ago, which at the time… female social pressures were very much still prevalent in society as a whole. But also, it was a time of Japanese history where it was the beginning of Japanese female and social movements, like women’s rights movements, so this shapes the plot and experience as whole.

GC: How interesting. I thought it was going to be just so people didn’t have mobile phones!

AY: [laughs] One of the things we really want to talk about is that the classic atmosphere, that is very unique to the series, is still part of this game. But in terms of the 1960s question, this is something that… ‘familiar yet foreign’ is a phrase that gets used a lot. Classic Silent Hill always feels as if something is not quite right, so you’re always on the edge of your seat.

So in terms of 1960s Japan we actually have two things we can do there. Every country has schools but for school in Japan in the countryside, at that time, it’s an extra step removed from what people might understand about modern Japan. So it’s two levels of unfamiliarity for most people.

GC: It is that sense of wrongness which makes Silent Hill stand out. I almost felt ill playing the original game, because it had such a suffocating atmosphere, and this sense that you didn’t know what was going on or what you could do about it.

MO: We believe this is something that the scriptwriter, Ryukishi07, excels at, because he crafts mysteries while at the same time playing on people’s expectations. So when you play there’s a lot of uncertainty, there’s a lot of loose strands that are left unanswered in the game. It’s something that gradually starts to reveal itself the more you play through the game.

And from there the game will gradually reveal itself, there are many mysteries that will unfold, so the first time you play through it there are a lot of questions left unanswered. But the more you play through it the more you start to see what constitutes the game and its plot and its mysteries.

AY: Something you’re probably aware of is uncanny valley, where something is not quite right with a face. We actually use this philosophy throughout the entire game, to make it all kind of feel off. Because if you just have one thing that looks off, it feels like a bug or a mistake. But if there’s lots of tiny things that are off on purpose, that you might not catch, it can work in a very subtle way.

So, for instance, you walk by a river and it’s flowing in a certain way but the sound it makes doesn’t quite match the speed of the water and it’s even going backwards at certain parts. Or with a building, we specifically designed it so that maybe some of the walls are at strange angles, but they change as you’re walking through, so it’s never enough to be obvious.

These things throw players off in small ways and you’ll find these all throughout the game. And that also adds that kind of unease, where you’re not quite sure where it’s from but you know something’s a little bit off.

GC: Oh, I like that. That’s very clever. I’m interested in why the Otherworld doesn’t look the same in this game, as it never seemed very country specific – it’s not like it’s based on a Christian idea of Hell or anything. Why did you decide to go with something so different?

AY: I think one of the main things you see in the game, as you run through, is faith is a large part of the game. Without getting too much into the detail, faith and shrines plays a very large part in the story. And you’ll uncover more and more of this as you go through, and it all still directly ties into our main character’s personal struggle and it’s a journey that she goes through.

GC: The only thing I’m worried about with the game is comments you made about it having more action than previous entries, as an attempt to appeal to younger players, but damn them kids for forcing that!

All: [laughs]

GC: In previous games the characters were not fighters, they were very clumsy in combat, as a normal person would be. Is it really necessary to have so much combat in this game? If you’re able to fight back so effectively against the monsters you’re going to be less scared.

AY: As you say, Silent Hill has traditionally had a lot of combat but a big part of all this is that you don’t always have to engage. A lot of the tension in traditional horror games is with resource management. If I have a hundred bullets in my gun and I see a monster, compared to I have four bullets in my gun and I see a monster, the response will be very different.

So you’ll notice right off the bat, one thing we have is none of our monsters will drop health potions, like other games. So it doesn’t encourage you to fight everything you come across. And we have a lot of analogues in terms of resource management and weapons deteriorate. We don’t want you to be constantly fighting.

Silent Hill has always traditionally had combat and then for distinguished gentlemen such as yourself, who might have grown up with the Silent Hill series, we also recommend story mode, because we know older fans aren’t really big into the action side of the game.

So for these kind of fans there’s a traditional mode where you can enjoy the story without too much emphasis on having to fight everything. But for players that do want that we do offer an extra mode.

GC: [laughing at distinguished gentleman comment] OK, that’s a fair answer. Thank you very much for your time.

Both: Thank you.

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