Let's continue to analyze the announcements of the new Silent Hill projects.
In the previous articles, we covered all information about SH2 Remake and SH Short Message, and now let's take a look at the mysterious project "Silent Hill F".
What interesting details can we notice in the SHF trailer? What kind of people are creating the game? How is this project connected to the other Silent Hill installments? I will try to answer all these questions in the article.
Silent Hill F Announcement
The project was announced in October 2022. From the very beginning, it was surrounded by many mysteries - Konami only showed a CG trailer, but did not show the actual gameplay.
And about the plot, it was only officially said that the events would take place in 1960s Japan.
Thus, SHF would be the earliest game in the series in terms of chronology. This will also be the first attempt to create Silent Hill in a distinctly Japanese setting.
SHF Trailer
In the trailer, we see how strange flowers begin to appear in a small Japanese town.
A young girl walks through the street, dragging a rusty steel pipe behind her. And she is pursued by red stems sprouting from the walls.
At the end of the trailer, we are shown a creepy scene of the "blooming” corpse of this girl floating along the river. And several more human bodies with similar flowers on them.
By the way, here's an interesting fact: the trailer was directed by Yoshihiro Komori. He is known for the game Rule of Rose, where he also directed the CG cutscenes.
Interesting details in the trailer
Let's try to find all the hidden details in the Silent Hill F trailer:
1) The scarecrow is dressed in a women’s school uniform for some reason. And it also holds a sickle.
2) The first bunch of flowers grows next to a small statue whose head is broken. If you look closely, you will notice that among the flowers there is something similar to intestines. And there's also a steel pipe lying on the ground.
3) Then we can see that pipe again in the hands of a girl. It should be noted here that the rusty steel pipe is the signature weapon in the Silent Hill games. It was used by heroes in all four classic installments of the SH series.
4) The large red structure in the middle of the water in the final scene is similar to a real Japanese landmark called Itsukushima Shrine.
5) On one of the houses, you can see a sign with the inscription "千鶴屋商店". This translates as "Chizuru Store". Perhaps Chizuru is the name of the shop owner.
6) Also, there is the inscription: "戎ヶ丘 駄菓子・玩具". This can be roughly translated as "Ebisugaoka. Cheap sweets, toys". Ebisugaoka - this seems like some kind of geographical name and literally translates as "Barbarian Hill" (which is somewhat reminiscent of the name Silent Hill). It is possible that the word "Ebisugaoka" may be the name of the town where the events of the game take place.
7) A little lower, we can see the inscription "塩” - "salt”. It's strange that the store advertises sweets and salt at the same time.
8) At the end of the trailer, the title theme from Silent Hill 1 plays, remade in traditional Japanese style.
Ryukishi07 Participation
A big surprise was that the Japanese scenario writer Ryukishi07 is working on the story for Silent Hill F.
He previously worked on many horror visual novels: Higurashi no Naku koro ni, Umineko no Naku koro ni, Higanbana no Saku yoru ni, Iwaihime, Gensou Rougoku no Kaleidoscope, and Ookamikakushi.
In the Silent Hill F trailer, you can see several references to Ryukishi's previous projects:
1) The title of the game is written in different colors: "Silent Hill" is in black, and the letter "F" is in red. Using one red letter in the title is an old trick of Ryukishi07. Higurashi and Umineko also had red letters in their titles - it looked like this:
ひぐらしのなく頃に
うみねこのなく頃に
うみねこのなく頃に
2) At the end of the video, we see red flowers called "higanbana” (lycoris) growing around the heroine's corpse. This is a reference to the game "Higanbana no Saku yoru ni". Ryukishi also used the theme of such flowers there, and even called one of the heroines "Higanbana".
3) A traditional Japanese doll sometimes appears in the trailer. This may be a reference to "Iwaihime" - such Japanese dolls were an important theme in that game.
Designer
The monsters and characters will be designed by Japanese artist Kera.
She previously worked on monsters and illustrations for the horror game "NG" (the sequel to "Shiin").
Apparently, Kera loves Silent Hill 3. In 2015, she even drew beautiful fan art of Vincent.
Kera also said on her Japanese blog that she first became acquainted with Silent Hill when she was at school. And the game had a big influence on her.
Developers
The game is being developed by the Hong Kong-based company NeoBards Entertainment.
They previously worked on the multiplayer games "Resident Evil Re:Verse" and "Resident Evil Resistance". And also assisted Capcom in the development of RE7, RE2 Remake, and RE3 Remake.
Overall, it's quite strange that the development of SHF was outsourced to a company that mainly developed multiplayer action games.
And the director of Silent Hill F will be a man named Al Yang. Judging by his Twitter account, he is a fan of Japanese retro games.
A pleasant surprise for me was that Al Yang also loves Forbidden Siren - he recently tweeted a photo of his TV set covered in stickers of Shibito and ShibiToro.
Connection with SH Short Message
Interestingly enough, SHF shows some conceptual connections with another new project - "Silent Hill: The Short Message".
1) Both games have a similar theme of strange flowers growing from human bodies.
2) The events of all previous SH games took place in the USA. But in these two new projects, the setting is suddenly transferred to other countries. The story of "The Short Message" takes place in Germany, and SHF takes place in Japan.
3) The scenario writer for "The Short Message" is Kiichi Kanou, who previously worked with Ryukishi07. They worked together on the additional stories for the console versions of "Higurashi no Naku koro ni".
It is therefore possible that SHF will somehow be related to Short Message.
Silent Hill FIVE?
In 2022 (several months before the announcements), an interesting screenshot of Sony’s internal presentation leaked onto the Internet.
It mentioned that Konami is preparing two related projects exclusively for the PlayStation - Silent Hill 5 and a "PT-style demo for SH5".
The exclusive "PT-style demo" here most likely referred to "Silent Hill: The Short Message". It was released on PS5, was in many ways similar to the PT playable teaser, and was also distributed for free.
Then what's with the mysterious "SH5" that was mentioned in the presentation?
It is possible that "SH5" was referring to "Silent Hill F". In this situation, the letter "F" in the title will stand for "FIVE", and the game itself may suddenly turn out to be the fifth part of the series.
But for now, it's just an assumption. Let's wait for further news about this project.
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Author of the article: SilentPyramid
Publication date: 20.10.2022
Article update: 21.02.2024
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