Silent Hill f’s 5 Endings & Story Explained

Silent Hill f has a deeply emotional and surprisingly harsh take on the classic coming of age archetype, which builds to five potential conclusions for players to experience. As with many titles in the franchise, the critically acclaimed Silent Hill f has multiple paths for the conclusion of the storyline, which are largely dependent on the choices they made during the gameplay.

Silent Hill f takes it a step further by not just encouraging multiple playthroughs, but making the experiences of losing one side of Hinako to another a key element of the game’s ultimate moral message. Here is how players can unlock all five endings in Silent Hill f and what each different path says about the game’s overall story.

Silent Hill f’s Is About A Woman’s Responsibility To Society and Herself

Moving the traditionally contemporary American-set franchise to 1960s Japan, Silent Hill f uses horror imagery as the surface for a story about fear in the face of society’s expectations for the woman in it. As Hinako and her friends try to escape the sudden cursed mists surrounding Ebisugaoka, Hinako finds herself shifting in and out of the Dark Shrine. There, she meets Fox Mask, whose guidance through several supernatural rituals gruesomely transforms her into his perfect bride.

This builds on the clues left around town and found in Hinako’s journal, which steadily establishes the central theme of the story. Hinako’s ostracization from the rest of the town stems from their disapproval of her independence and friendship with the male Shu, instead of adhering to local customs. She’s seen as a failure by her parents, with an implied arranged marriage set to pay off her father’s own debts. This all contrasts against her seemingly perfect sister Junko, an ideal bride to an unseen man. Hinako’s arc is focused on her attempts to escape the expectations and judgments of those around her.

All of these hidden dark animosities and hatreds from her friends and family manifest in monstrous forms throughout the game, forcing Hinako to kill them to survive. As the story continues, part of Hinako keeps giving in to the Fox Mask’s outreach. Fox Mask is slowly teased out to be Kotoyuki, a peer of Hinako whom she saved from a fox in their childhood.

In reality, the boy was possessed by the fox spirit, making him into the Fox Mask players get to know. Steadily losing herself to the influence of Fox Mask, Hinako eventually splits into two forms. The monstrous side of her is the Shiromuku, the mysterious mist monster that has been haunting the player, seeking to destroy the part of her holding back from “growing up” and accepting her role as a subservient wife to her great love.

It’s a harrowing take on the classic coming-of-age story, building to a confrontation between the two after the human Hinako defeats monstrous versions of her parents before Shiromuku murders her human mother and father. The story of Silent Hill f ends up diverging here, with factors like the number of playthroughs, puzzle solutions, and items used determining which ending the player gets.

The Darkest Ending Of Silent Hill f Is Unavoidable (At First)

“Coming Home To Roost” is the first available ending gamers will see while playing through Silent Hill f. It’s also the only ending players can receive on their first playthrough. Regardless of approach or playstyle, this seems to be the standard ending for Silent Hill f, and only a New Game+ run will allow the other endings to occur.

After realizing that the mysterious mist monster haunting the town has been the Shiromuku all along, Hinako confronts her other self in the Dark Shrine. The confrontation between the pair serves as the final boss fight for this run. After the battle, Hinako attempts to flee the creature and escape the Dark Shrine, only to be caught in an endless loop of screams and tears with her alternate self.

This noise fades out to reveal police sirens, which clues in the player that Hinako’s quest was all within her head. In reality, a police report reveals that a 22-year-old bride (implied to be Hinako’s true self) had a psychotic episode at her wedding, leading her to massacre the guests. The mental break is revealed to have been due to the herbal medicine she had been taking.

These are shown to be the same capsules that Shu had been giving to Hinako for her migraines throughout the game and serve as a common health item, cluing in the player that the capsules are an important detail in determining the game’s ending on future playthroughs. This ending serves as a grim potential fate for Hinako, one where her only way of escaping a society that never embraced her is to lash out and brutally destroy everyone around her who pushed her down this path.

Silent Hill f Is A Tragic Romance (If You Let It Be)

After unlocking “Coming Home to Roost,” players will have the ability to revisit Silent Hill f through New Game+ playthroughs. In this mode, the player has the ability to unlock four new endings. “Fox’s Wedding” is one of the most interesting and the most unsettling. To unlock this mode, players will have to deal with several challenges during the game (including recovering/purifying the Sacred Sword, collecting the Agura no Hotei-sama, and solving the Crimson Water puzzle). Purifying the sword is crucial to unlocking this ending. Hinako can also never use a single Red Capsule. This adds a decepitvely tough layer of difficulty to the game, as the Red Capsules are among Hinako’s most common options for a quick burst of health.

In this path, Fox Mask intervenes in the confrontation between the two versions of Hinako. In this ending, the fox version of Hinako seems to genuinely love Fox Mask. Although she is still torn about her wedding and her place in the world, she is content with this path. This prompts Shu to reveal the true nature of the medicine he was giving her and his desire to force her to confront her inner self in the process. His desire to keep her in his life as his “partner” sets him up to become the final boss of this ending as the Tsukumogami.

After defeating him, the final cinematic adds a lot of dark layers to this path for Hinako. In the final scene, Hinako is treated more as a prize than a person, with Fox Mask and a heartbroken but supportive Shu bonding over their “respectful” objectification of her as Fox Mask’s bride. Hinako transforms fully into the Shiromaku in this ending and seemingly remains in the Dark Shrine. In a brief post-credits section of this ending, her human face is revealed to have been left abandoned in the Dark Shrine at the base of the Fox’s home, leaving behind her terrified human self (here representing her sense of self and individuality), crying she doesn’t want to be like her mother and become just someone’s wife. It takes what in theory could be a romantic story and makes it both heartbreaking and harrowing.

Silent Hill f’s Fox Fight Leads To An Open-Ended Future

In direct contrast to “The Fox Wedding,” “The Fox Wets Its Tail” serves as a version of events where the human Hinako succeeds in escaping the Dark Shrine and Fox Mask’s grasp. For this ending to be unlocked, players must not use any of the Red Capsules for a health and sanity boost. They must also retrieve the Sacred Sword. However, it’s vital that they do not then get the Sword purified, instead relying on it more as a weapon in combat and not as much as a story-centric tool.

By skipping the burned-out shrine in Sugisato and refusing to bless the weapon, Hinako remains steadfast in the face of the supernatural and is given a chance to fight against the Shiromaku. In this version of events, Fox Mask intervenes when Hinako gets the upper hand and insults the young woman for her insolence. With the help of Shu, Hinako confronts Fox Mask and forces him to reveal his true demonic form as a kitsune.

The battle with Fox Mask serves as the final boss for “The Fox Wets Its Tail” ending. Throughout the fight, this version of Fox Mask leans harder into his domineering personality, revealing more about his long-standing obsession with Hinako after she saved the boy the spirit possesses when they were children. Eventually, Hinako defeats Fox Mask. Humbled but still confrontational, Fox Mask allows her to escape from the Dark Shrine with Shu. While this ending closes out on a more standard happy note (with Hinako and Shu returning to Ebisugaoka as the mist steadily clears), it leaves Hinako’s fate more ambiguous.

Silent Hill f’s Hardest Ending Is Also The Most Satisfying

“Ebisugaoka in Silence” is one of the more difficult endings to unlock in Silent Hill f. For starters, players must have already unlocked two of the other endings to even open it up as a possibility. Players must once again clear the game without using any Red Capsules. They also must find and then purify the Sacred Sword. However, they must also find the hidden Ancient Jizo Statue, which can only be easily accessed when players are going from Shu’s house back to Hinako’s home and afer a tricky search. This costs the player Hinako’s Brooch as an item (as the player must leave it at the alter as a tribute), preventing the player from opening any of Inari-sama’s boxes or doors for the rest of the playthrough.

“Ebisugaoka in Silence” feels like the most complete ending of the game. It sees both sides of Hinako attack one another, with Fox Mask intervening and revealing that Hinako was targeted by him and his tribe for her potential power. After Fox Mask is brought low, an ancestor of his serves as the final boss of this run-through, confronting both versions of Hinako after explaining her intended fate as an offering to their number. This pays off several minor clues found elsewhere in the game about missing women, who were sacrifices that came before Hinako. After defeating the creature, both versions of Hinako reconcile and bond. In this ending, Hinako and Kotoyuki (the man behind the Fox Mask) decide to give their love a chance to naturally grow, but only after they’ve lived their lives.

This is the most compelling ending of Silent Hill f, serving as the closest thing the game has to an overt happy ending. Both sides of Hinako are at peace with one another, with both the agency to decide her own fate and the lingering possibility of true love with Kotoyuki. This ending sees Hinako truly retain her agency and sense of self in a way that feels impossible in the other endings. Ultimately, Hinako is only truly at peace when both sides of herself find unity in their desire for a better future.

A New Chapter In Silent Hill’s Silliest Running Gag

Silent Hill has always been one of gaming’s scariest series. It has also always had some of the silliest endings, which serve as a goofy and charming bit of relief following the more extreme and harrowing turns of the gameplay. Silent Hill f is no exception, which takes the interpersonal games of aliens between Shu and Hinako further by making it the core of the game’s gag ending.

To unlock “UFO,” players must be playing Silent Hill f in New Game+. Towards the beginning of the game as players make their way through the town of Ebisugaoka and try to avoid the first monsters they encounter, Hinako can find an archway made from scrap metal beside a dumpster. Moving through it will take players to a small room, where a radio broadcast reveals that the nearby Magogawa Bridge has collapsed. The game then proceeds as normal until the player returns to the town and is tasked with locating three posters across Ebisugaoka. The player then must return to the streets near the general store and locate a UFO toy. Doing this and picking up the document next to it triggers the “UFO” ending. It’s a lot of steps, but it can be accomplished in just a few hours of gameplay.

In this ending, drawn in a charming retro manga style, Hinako and her friends all discuss an alien plot to abduct humans and replace them with aliens. Debating which of them is really an alien and unable to use the alien-detecting robot Roboko because the battery is dead, the teens admit to embarrassing secrets to prove their humanity. This inadvertently leads Shu to reveal his memory of the girls all going through puberty, leading them to beat him up as a creep. It’s a silly conclusion to the story that still finds a way to give Hinako a little bit of agency, even in Silent Hill f‘s final ending.