One of my favorite kind of horror is the one that has questions which can't be answered. I love it when a horror show, movie, book, or game slowly drives up the tension to a painful degree. A little like edging you could say.
The Silent Hill games always leave you with questions. Sometimes they're the good kind like with how Silent Hill 3's themes of motherhood are more than a little haunting. Other times...less so. At least to the majority of people.
While I've done my best to keep up with the lore of the series, I haven't been able to play a majority of the games. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is the only game I've managed to play and I'm hoping to add Silent Hill F to that short list.
With a trailer that goes into the plot, I now have something to really sink my teeth into. And before I begin my little review: The F in the title is the musical symbol known as forte.
I can't deny that Silent Hill F looks stunning. At least the trailers have given me the idea that the game will look drop dead gorgeous and scary. But since no actual gameplay has been shown, I don't know how the actual game will end up looking like.
Sometimes games will have their gameplay and cutscenes look the same. Other times the graphics in a cutscene will look so much better than the gameplay.
I am hoping that a future trailer will show actual gameplay. It could be that the gameplay isn't yet good enough to show off. With how poorly the Silent Hill 2 Remake combat trailer was received, waiting is better than showing a trailer with lackluster footage.
One thing that people like to point out is that Silent Hill F doesn't take place in the titular town of Silent Hill. Instead it takes place in the fictional town of Ebisugaoka all the way over in Japan. Some people seem to forget the fact that not every game in the main series has taken place in Silent Hill.
Such as Silent Hill 3 starts off outside of the titular town. It is only later in the game that you find yourself in the town of Silent Hill.
Silent Hill 4: The Room takes place in well...a room. Henry Townshend is able to basically astral project himself into different places. But all those places he projects himself into aren't always in Silent Hill.
And Silent Hill: Homecoming takes place in the neighboring town of Shepherd's Glen. The connection to Silent Hill is the fact that the people in the neighboring town are an offshoot of the cult of Silent Hill.
So there is precedent for a game in the main series of Silent Hill to take place outside of the titular town. We just have to hope that the story will eventually have a compelling way to connect Ebisugaoka to the town of Silent Hill.
The story of Silent Hill F seems to revolve around bodily autonomy. Hinako Shimizu is struggling over how to present herself. She isn't entirely in control of her body as she also has to consider what her society will think. This really hits me hard and is honestly getting me excited for this game.
If you didn't know, I'm agender. This basically means that I don't identify with being either a man or woman. I know that some people might not understand and I don't care. All that I care about is that I, as a person, am respected. Regular people hating me for being agender is one thing. It is a whole other thing when my own government places judgment on me. When the government gets involved it can get more than deadly for people like me.
As of writing this post, the government of the United States of America which is the country where I was born and raised, has shown itself willing to send its own citizens off to concentration camps. So I could be tortured just for how I identify while a rapist criminal gets to run free and call himself the president.
This is all to say that the theme of bodily autonomy is something that resonates deeply with me. And I'm excited to see how Silent Hill F explores it.
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