Silent Hill f’s trailer and announcement reception was a bit shaky. On the one hand fans of the series were frothing at the mouth for a new installment in the series, having waited for over a decade for something that wasn’t just a PS5 demo. But on the other, some were unsure whether a Silent Hill game set in Shōwa-period Japan would have what it takes to rival their love of the classics.
This pressure followed Silent Hill f throughout its pre-release. It was so bad at points that, after playing the preview at Gamescom, I wrote about how Silent Hill f is actually really fun when there’s not a worm in your ear saying otherwise.
But fans weren’t the only ones noticing the pre-launch pressure. Understandably, Al Yang, game director as well as the team at NeoBards Entertainment were most affected by the stress.
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“From the day we signed the project to the day the reviews came out, I probably didn’t have a good night’s sleep,” Yang told PCG senior editor Wes Fenlon at GDC earlier this year. “You put pressure on yourself, because if you’re a fan, you know what the community wants. But at the same time we have limitations on specific things, you know, not just on budget, but on story, on setting, etc, etc.
“So, as a fan, I asked myself what is it I want to see the most? Or what do I care about the most? And that’s why, in my talk, I was talking about the atmosphere. No matter what we do, this is non-negotiable. We cannot touch this. Even though we’re changing things, even though it’s a completely different setting, it has to be recognisable to the fans.”
The fact that Silent Hill f so clearly nailed the atmosphere went a long way when it came to creating a convincing Silent Hill experience located somewhere outside the titular town. This isn’t to say Silent Hill f was a complete clone. The lack of firearms and the presence of more action alongside counterattacks and dodges were a change, albeit a welcome one. But it was easier to digest thanks to the continued onus on twisted monsters and themes of mental anguish which I’ve come to expect from Silent Hill games.
In the end, the trick to pulling it all off is a simple one: keeping an open dialogue between developer and publisher. “What parts are negotiable, what parts are non negotiable—that’s really what we discuss a lot with our partners,” Yang explains. “Every week we’d have a meeting with them. They’d be telling us their concerns, we’d be telling them our concerns—they were really good partners to work with. There’s mutual respect, and there’s dialogue on both sides, because at the end of the day, no one wants to make a bad game. You want to do the best you can with what you have.”
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