After years of waiting, we finally received more information about Bloober Team's Silent Hill 2, and Silent Hill f is the new game we needed next.

While we haven't gotten a release window for Silent Hill f yet, the new trailer Silent Hill f is a welcome update to let us know that the project is still in development and making progress. Plus, you can now wishlist it on platforms like Steam, which is great for keeping track of when games you're looking forward to are finally released. If you haven't seen it, you definitely need to take a look at the new trailer, which is filled with classic horror vibes and a setting that makes me see a spiritual successor to Fatal Frame.

Silent Hill f Looks Surprisingly Like Fatal Frame

The Only Successor We Might See

When you look at the style of Silent Hill f, it's tough not to see elements of Fatal Frame in the style, and the same applies to the story in some capacity. I'd be surprised if this didn't take inspiration from Fatal Frame, or if the two games didn't perhaps take inspiration from the same place, creating similarities. Either way, I'm excited that Silent Hill f has the potential to not only fill in the content gap for new games that the franchise has had for years but also fill in the gap left by the lack of Fatal Frame content.

Fatal Frame is a long-running survival horror series that was initially inspired by Silent Hill, but it hasn't received a completely new entry in over a decade.

Set in 1960s Japan, Silent Hill f takes place further in the past than other games in the series, and it's also the first to be set in Japan rather than in a Western-based location. While it's a different take on the idea of what makes a game a Silent Hill game, it opens up a lot of new possibilities to explore what the essence of Silent Hill is and how it doesn't necessarily need to be tied to one location, which we saw a little bit of in the controversial Silent Hill: Ascension show-game hybrid.

With the switch to placing the game in the past and a small Japanese village rather than a Western town, the series is embracing a new atmosphere. However, that atmosphere might feel familiar if you enjoy old-school horror games, particularly if you miss Fatal Frame like I do. Both franchises put a heavy emphasis on mystery, isolation, and psychological horror, even if the end result for each series tends to be a bit different.

Just looking at the trailer details is enough to remind me of the early Fatal Frame games. You have a female protagonist alone in a small Japanese village, there's some kind of mystery consuming the village that she's become a central part of, and you have limited ways to defend yourself against the horrors that now inhabit what was likely once a peaceful location. If we know anything from old-school Japanese horror games, it's that this set-up works when it comes to creating a truly eerie experience that lingers with you.

Why Bringing In Old School Japanese Horror Works

A Culture With Great Ghost Stories

There are a ton of fascinating Japanese ghost stories and urban legends that seem unique when you're used to the supernatural stories and traditions of a different culture, and part of that is what makes it fun to learn about other cultures and their stories. Using those legends in combination with the resurgence of interest in old-school horror means that going down the route of focusing on old-school Japanese horror is bound to create a much-needed gem of a new game for the Silent Hill franchise.

With this atmosphere in mind, having Ryukishi07 on the writing team is a positive sign that Silent Hill f is going to be the revitalization that the series needs to keep moving forward without relying entirely on remakes, even if the Silent Hill 2 remake was done justice. Ryukishi07 is the writer of the When They Cry visual novels, a murder mystery and psychological horror series set in a village in the 1980s where strange events start taking place. It's easy to see how Ryukishi07's past work has already influenced the game through the trailer alone.

Given his background and what we saw in the newest Silent Hill f trailer, Ryukishi07 is the perfect writer to bring onto this project. His past work lines up incredibly well with what we've seen about Hinako and her experience dealing with the fog that rolls into what used to be a peaceful village. Not only is Konami trying an entirely new approach to redefine what a Silent Hill game can be, but the team is also drawing on aspects of other popular horror games and adding talent to the team with strengths that align with the overall goals.

Indie Horror Games Might Have Influenced Silent Hill For The Better

Konami Must Be Paying Attention

I won't pretend to know what is going on at Konami or among the teams working on the company's various projects, but I'll say that it definitely looks like the Silent Hill team has been paying attention to what their players want and what's found success in the horror genre in recent years. You can tell from the trailer that Silent Hill f has taken a step back and decided to try something new while returning to its roots at the same time, and the new location choice brings with it the potential for more future content.

This strategy worked for Resident Evil when the series needed to change its strategy to survive, and now Silent Hill is taking notes, finding new footing in a market where indie horror games have used old-school horror styles and concepts to great success. As one of the classic horror franchises, Silent Hill is the perfect series to draw inspiration from indie horror and polish it into the spiritual successor I didn't expect for Fatal Frame. All this is to say that I absolutely can't wait to play Silent Hill f.