. . .
So this answered a lot of the questions I had. Unfortunately most of those answers were not the ones I wanted.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE SILENT HILL GAMES AHEAD!!!
Silent Hill: Ascension is a streaming series.
We now finally know what Silent Hill: Ascension actually is. Though we don't know what the platform is yet, Ascension will be an episodic streaming series. It sounds like there are still a lot of details that are up for grabs, actually. Either they aren't ready to reveal them, or they haven't entirely figured them out yet. There were actually a few where this video made me feel like the latter was the case. In particular, how much time there will be between episodes still seems to be something the team isn't sure on. The fact they're ramping up the marketing for this, but there still seems to be important details they're figuring out is troubling.
We will interact by voting.
Ascension was billed as an interactive narrative. So initially, this had me hoping for something in the vain of Telltale or The Dark Pictures. But no, we will watch episodes and then we will vote on certain outcomes. This is another thing where there's still some sketchy details. They talk about this like they don't want people who watch an episode immediately on release to be the ones that make the decisions. They also want to foster community engagement, with people discussing and debating what should happen between episodes. But we still don't know how these decisions will be made, other than through some type of voting.
So now we know what Ascension is and how we will "interact" with it. Before we get to the massive "Boaty" in the room, let's talk about a couple of other details they provided.
Trauma Trauma Trauma!
One of the things that really started to bother me about this video was just how many times they said the word, "trauma."
When Silent Hill 2 came out, it took everyone off guard. Where as Resident Evil had continued its story in a relatively linear narrative, Silent Hill did something incredibly unique. Rather than come up with a continuation of Harry, Sybil, and Cheryl's story, they decided to tell a new story set in the titular town. But not only did we get a new character and a new story, but it was completely different from what had come before. While Harry's story had been tied deeply into the history of Silent Hill and the mystery of what had happened there, James's story was deeply personal. While Harry was facing horrors that had been invited in by a deranged cult, James faced horrors drawn from his past and the decisions he'd made.
This new story worked on whole new levels. In addition to the grotesque nightmare of the town and its monsters, the team behind Silent Hill 2 managed to create imagery and environments that constantly nagged at the player and resonated with the unfolding revelations into James's past. A synergy was created where you started to feel something of the guilt and grief that James was feeling as the town ripped open the wounds left by his wife's death. There is legitimate reason why this game is so beloved by much of the gaming community.
This would not be the last Silent Hill game to depict the town as echoing the nightmares a character brought with them, but none since have done it as successfully. But since then, the idea that the horrors that lay at the heart of the town respond to the hearts and minds of those lost within has become an indelible part of the canon.
It's definitely not a bad thing that the team behind Ascension want to explore this. Especially now that Silent Hill no longer appears to be set in, well, Silent Hill, the idea that there is a force similar or identical to what haunts the town working elsewhere in the world can help build some connective tissue. But this video just harps so much on trauma specifically, repeating the word over and over. It feels like someone in the team, or perhaps at Konami, tried to ask the question, "What is Silent Hill?" And then decided, "Silent Hill is about trauma."
It just feels so reductive! Silent Hill is so much more than that! To me and many fans it's an exploration of humanity told through the lens of horror. Further, there's a mystery there that grew deeper as the series went on. While the first game seemed to wrap up a lot of questions it presented, it never told the whole story. And as sequels came out, many brought even more questions. This allows creators to engage with the setting in multiple ways. To just go, "Silent Hill is about trauma," limits that and kills the mysteries that are at the center of the series.
Delusions and Illusions
One thing I did like was the idea that some of what the characters in Ascension are experiencing might be delusions. With characters that have undergone traumatic experiences you have the room for things happening in the world to actually just be in their head. The team even brought up the idea of shared delusion, a real world phenomenon where multiple people can perceive things that aren't real.
This actually harkens back well to the original games. In the original Silent Hill, if you failed to save both Sybil and Cheryl, you were treated to a simple cutscene where Harry is still in his wrecked car, seemingly dead from the car crash. This seemed to hint that everything the player had experienced might have just been in Harry's mind as he died. The various other endings created a scenario in which the events of the franchise might be happening on multiple levels, from figments of the imagination to events affecting multiple planes of existence simultaneously.
Using delusions as a narrative theme will allow Ascension to make use of this. It will also bring back an element of mystery. Once a character is revealed to suffer from things like flashbacks, we'll never be sure if something they're experiencing is real or not . . . until it becomes terrifyingly so. This also allows the story to press an important issue: to a person suffering from the effects of trauma the horrors they experience are all too real.
I won't lie, though. What I've seen doesn't fill me with confidence that they've got the chops to do it. Especially when they detail out how they're handling the monsters.
"This one's a Tomato Devil . . ."
The video also ties trauma to the monsters themselves. They describe the monsters as each being a representation of a core trauma, and name them with things like "violence, domination, and obsession."
First of all, again, I hate how they seem to be overusing trauma as a concept. But obviously this has been done. The idea of a monster being a metaphor for a human concept is an old one.
Now that doesn't mean that doing this is a bad thing. First of all, monsters in Silent Hill representing something does go back to Silent Hill 2 again. The infamous Pyramid Head was a creation of James's psyche to both disassociate his past misdeeds while still punishing him for them. But at no point does Silent Hill 2 ever come out directly and say what any of the creatures are metaphors for. The best we have for what they represent are the few words James says when he finally confronts them. The rest we have to infer from what the game gives us.
But now we're going into Ascension knowing that the monsters represent traumas. We even know what three of the traumas will be! Again, we're killing part of the mystery! The scariest monsters are the ones you never really see. Growing up, Predator was a badass alien hunter while the Xenomorph was a nightmare that haunted my dreams. Why? Because the Predator takes off his mask before fighting Arnold, while you never really get a good look at the Xenomorph. The same applies here, but now they'll be less frightening because as soon as we know that a character is a victim of violence, we'll know that's what the big scary monster is.
This is all just feeling so ham fisted . . .
"Hitler Did Nothing Wrong"
Finally, let's get to the whale in the room.
This series is going to go down in flames!
Why do I know this? Why can I say that with so much confidence?
Because they're going to let the internet decide narrative outcomes!
How many times is this going to happen? How many companies have to go through this before studios realize you can't trust the internet? I guarantee, as soon as Ascension announces the release of the first episode, there will be reddit threads for "Let's get every character killed!" There might even be the opposite, where threads say, "Let's make sure nothing bad happens!" Either way, events will be decided not based on the narrative, not based on debate or passion, not even based on actual consensus.
They'll be decided based on what the internet finds funny.
Now there are a couple of ways that the team can address this. The best is for them to have rigorous security around their voting systems to prevent people from spamming in responses. But looking at the quality of the animation I'm seeing, I'm somehow doubting that's in the budget. Another possibility is to have interesting narrative outcomes already planned for every eventuality. But again I'm not encouraged there.
The option they will likely resort to is what so many interactive narrative experiences do: the choices will be meaningless. They will either start off, or eventually resort to, making it so that the votes have as little impact as possible. They might even fake the votes. Or maybe it'll be like green tea cereal and they'll just let the internet do what it wants.
Regardless, the experience will be lessened for it.
FINAL THOUGHTS
From the get go, Silent Hill: Ascension has felt like more gimmick than game. From the mystery of not telling us what it even was, to the idea of voting at story points, this feels like just another cheap cash grab from Konami.
As I've gotten older, I've have grown more and more to regret franchises. Eventually, every franchise reaches a point where the people who own it just start milking it for cash, releasing cheap, disposable experiences because they know the fans will pay for it. Every so often, a passionate creative decides to play around in one of these settings and does something cool and interesting. But I don't think that's what's happening here.
Konami long ago became a company that was no longer interested in releasing quality experiences for the properties it owns. Hell! For a while they weren't even interested in making real games! They've shown time and again that all they care about is chasing trends and profit margins. This recent wave of revival for their franchises doesn't feel like they've learned anything. It feels like their President had a friend tell him, "Hey! You should be nurturing you IPs for long term growth!"
Unfortunately, not only has this behind the scenes look at Ascension made me less confident for the project, but it's kindling my fears for the other projects.
The scariest thing about Silent Hill has become Konami's plans for it.
