What a fantastic time to be a horror fan. We’ve got the most amazing films coming every which-way, countless new indie games to enjoy, and the revitalisation of some of the best horror series gaming has, one of which being Silent Hill with its upcoming game Silent Hill: Townfall.
Part of Silent Hill’s revitalisation is a trend of mainline games which take the Silent Hill story and explore it in new locations. Last year we got Silent Hill f which took fans to 1960s rural Japan—exploring the purgatory between tradition and modernity—and this year we have Silent Hill: Townfall set in 1996 St. Amelia, Scotland. What will this game explore? Well, director Jon McKellan gives us some hints.
There are some “very specific reasons why the game is set in this era”, McKellan explains in an interview with Eurogamer. “One, that it is on the cusp of when technology started to explode in the home. We started to get the internet. But also who Simon is, the time it’s taking place in, the type of town that it’s in—all these things are kind of deeply relevant. And by the end of the game, I think people will start to piece together why this is almost like the perfect storm for something to happen in St. Amelia”.
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Watching the internet seep into communities and homes is terrifying enough, especially as we now know where it’ll land us, but I think a more eerie aspect of Townfall could be the death of small towns and communities as people leave the promises of better lives found in major cities.
“Players having empathy for the town and understanding what this town’s been through is an important aspect of the story,” McKellan explains. “And you write what you know. We know these communities. We grew up in these communities. It felt like if we were going to set it anywhere, it would feel almost disingenuous if we were to set it in an American town, somewhere that we’ve never experienced and wouldn’t know. We wanted to build a town that felt extremely authentic, felt like this was a place you could believe existed. A place you could care about.
“There are a lot of reasons why it’s this kind of place and this kind of town, and not in Edinburgh, for example. It’s very specific. I wanted it to be something that seemed as believable as possible, and that was the best way to achieve that.”
This all sounds like a recipe for guilt, loneliness, and regret—your go-to Silent Hill emotions. “Everyone’s got their own vision of what Silent Hill is,” McKellan adds. “By the time you finish [a Silent Hill] game, I think everyone in our team—we were all discussing afterwards what we thought happened, and what was our interpretation of it. So, it was a deep and meaningful enough story and subjective enough to allow people to really dig into the theories. And it felt like no matter what your favourite Silent Hill was, that was a core theme.”
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