Silent Hill fans just got a peek behind the scenes of the next title in the iconic horror franchise, Silent Hill f, via Konami’s Press Start livestream on Thursday, during which the game’s developers provided a detailed look at the major theme of the game: beauty in terror.
“The setting of Silent Hill f has shifted from the town of Silent Hill to Japan,” series producer Motoi Okamoto said. “But it remains a psychological horror experience where one confronts themselves within a mental world. Taking into account that it is psychological horror, we sought to enhance the essence of Japanese-style horror. The hallmark of Japanese horror is not simply grotesqueness, but the coexistence of beauty and the disturbing. We are creating this title with the concept: ‘Find the beauty in terror.’”
First announced during the Silent Hill Transmission livestream in October 2022, Silent Hill f is the eighth mainline Silent Hill game, and the first to release since 2012’s Silent Hill Downpour. It is also the first Silent Hill title to take place outside of Maine, where the fictional town of Silent Hill is located. Instead, Silent Hill f is set in 1960s Japan, during the Showa Era, and follows high school student Hinako Shimizu, who must navigate her (fictional) hometown of Ebisugaoka, which has been overtaken by mysterious fog and strange monsters.
The game’s developers described Hinako as an “ordinary person,” in Silent Hill’s tradition, adding that they tailored the game’s combat to be simple and believable — after all, you are playing as a teenage girl armed with nothing but a steel pipe — while still challenging the player to face off with powerful (and often beautifully horrifying) enemies.
“A key concept in Silent Hill f is the idea of beauty in terror,” game director Al Yang explained. “We created our visual designs to have a distinct uneasiness to them, but also [to] have a horrific charm that would make it so you just couldn’t stop staring.”
As for the game’s major change in setting, scriptwriter Ryukishi07 — who goes by his pen name and is well-known in Japan for his When They Cry visual novel series — explained that 1960s Japan was chosen for a very specific reason.
“Regarding the setting, we carefully considered which era would provide a stage and environment that could depict the theme of the story with a higher contrast, and I chose it accordingly,” scriptwriter Ryukishi07 shared. “The Showa Era, though just half a century ago, feels like a different world — one that remains connected to our present, yet preserves customs and superstitions long-forgotten in modern life.”
