Silent Hill f is the best all-new Silent Hill game in about two decades, ending the curse that has loomed over the town like a thick blanket of fog. It taps into the series’ psychological roots but is bold enough to push forward and ask new types of questions that all gel wonderfully with its setting. But some of this is hampered by its abrupt ending that cuts off without much of a proper resolution and also banks heavily on a cheap, anticlimactic shortcut. A sour finale would poison most other games, but rolling credits once does not mark the end for Silent Hill f. Instead, it’s just the beginning.
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Silent Hill f’s other endings are essential viewings partially because of how the game changes on subsequent playthroughs. New Game Plus doesn’t just carry over stats and upgrades; it also includes brand-new and remixed scenes alongside additional collectibles that further flesh out its characters. Its nifty and convenient user interface even clearly notifies players when a new scene is playing by pointing them out in various pop-ups that show up when trying to skip a scene.
Silent Hill f‘s Story Gains New Wrinkles Upon Replaying
These segments sit on a spectrum of barely noticeable tweaks like a staircase having flowers on it the second time to more telling alterations that yield new dialogue, with the latter being much more noteworthy. New lines often reveal more about what’s going on and fill in some blanks, whereas the dialogue from the same scene on the first run might have been vague or hiding the point altogether. A lot of what’s implied in the initial playthrough is gradually unveiled even more through these exchanges and adds to the satisfying feeling that f is like an onion with layers that are waiting to be peeled back with each run.
The process of unwrapping said metaphorical onion is partly why f’s narrative is so engrossing. By withholding some of its secrets, it’s able to be more digestible. And the foundation it presents on the first go-around is intriguing enough to entice players to do some extra digging; a flat story with bland characters wouldn’t encourage any extra analysis. f gets the attention of its players first before asking them to dive into the fine print to find out motivations and details that might have been too overwhelming the first time.
Key character aspects are withheld until New Game Plus and New Game Plus 2, both of which have exclusive collectibles that add depth to most of the cast that wasn’t previously there. Withholding certain nuggets of context until later runs adds an interesting wrinkle to its storytelling because players are given the means to shift their perspective. Building up antagonists across two runs only to humanize them on the third makes players confront biases and possibly forgive those who were previously painted as evil. It’s always possible to hold different views on characters when rewatching a movie or replaying a game, but that process is directly and intricately woven into f and the tantalizing — yet rewarding — way it doles out various pieces of information.
This cleverness of its gradual storytelling fully comes together in its “Ebisugaoka in Silence” ending, which is the “truest” of the five and requires the most work. It’s here where the documents hinting at the wider lore from previous runs start coming to fruition and when players get the clearest understanding of its core cast based on New Game Plus 2-specific additions. It’s the climax the game has been building to this whole time and offers the cathartic release that was all but absent the first time. Many games would have made this the only conclusion, but it would have run the risk of being too dense to truly work in a game that’s already stuffed with lore and backstory.
The other two serious New Game Plus endings are worth seeing in their own ways since they offer thought-provoking takes on the game’s central questions that push on extremes, particularly the grim and memorable “Fox’s Wedding” ending. But their broader function is to provide contrast with the “Ebisugaoka in Silence” ending, which demonstrates how the game can conclude with more nuance. Even the silly UFO ending is the best one in the series because it actually has an appealing art style that fits within the world — it looks like manga — and isn’t purely a wacky non sequitur.
Silent Hill f Changes Quite a Bit in New Runs
While most of the appeal to replay f stems from its narrative, f’s various difficulties provide different experiences that change things up on a gameplay level. Enemy spawns are often rebalanced around its three difficulty modes and provide unique scares that make it slightly less predictable. For example, the fantastic cornfield segment has more aggressive Ayakakashi monsters who creepily chase Hinako on the higher settings, while the field at the school has three distinct setups that all offer their own kind of tension. Most of the puzzles only get more obtuse and f could have taken additional steps to change up the higher difficulties, but f at least offers some variation that goes beyond playing with health values and resource allocation.
A few parts of Silent Hill f’s story still don’t work even after multiple runs. It relies a little too much on nebulous spooky magic to explain away inconsistencies and a handful of the developments seen in the New Game Plus endings are incongruent with some segments that are consistent across every full run. But these don’t diminish how well f encourages new playthroughs and slowly reveals its hand after each one. Watching these endings on YouTube is only a half measure, too, since a decent portion of the intricacies of these climactic scenes rely on or are enhanced by knowledge that’s revealed through notes and documents players piece together when cycling through this red spider lily-infested version of hell. It’s one of the many ways f differentiates itself from past Silent Hill games and is an approach future installments should borrow or build upon.
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Courtesy of Toei Animation
