'Silent Hill has had its ups and downs' – Konami on how Silent Hill f forges a new path to horror

Players will soon get to experience the grizzly delights that Silent Hill f has to offer. We speak to Konami to find out more about the tricky task of bringing the iconic horror franchise home to Japan for the first time.

Silent Hill is currently making the ultimate comeback. Despite being left on ice for several years up until just recently, the wildly positive reception to last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake, combined with an upcoming movie adaptation and several other video game projects in the works, indicates that Konami is clearly betting big on the iconic survival horror franchise’s long-awaited return.

Fortunately, it’s not much longer that players need to wait to see what’s next, with Silent Hill fset to launch this September 25, 2025 . It’s a more unique-feeling entry in the longstanding franchise, for sure, swapping out clumsy gunplay for tight, melee-driven combat while transplanting the scares from the town of Silent Hill itself to the fictional Japanese location of Ebisugaoka. In multiple ways, Silent Hill f is indicative of the franchise’s bold new era.

I got to play roughly three hours of Silent Hill f at this year’s Gamescom in advance of its release, where I was pleased to see plenty of fog-driven scares successfully pulled off, alongside what promises to be a surprisingly personal story about childhood trauma. The smalltown Japanese setting is definitely injecting this modern brand of over-the-shoulder survival horror format with new life, with various grotesque nightmares seemingly lurking around ever corner.

To learn more about this fresher approach Konami is taking with Silent Hill f and what specific challenges it entails, I sat down with game director Al Yang and series producer Motoi Okamoto.

READ MORE: Cronos: The New Dawn review – classic survival horror tropes wrapped around a cool sci-fi mystery

READ MORE: Metal Gear Solid Delta and Gears of War Reloaded are 2 very good remakes that didn’t need to happen

First off, what took you so long to set a Silent Hill game in Japan, and why is now the right time?

Motoi Okamoto: Silent Hill is a combination of Western horror and Japanese horror. We felt that as time progressed the elements of Japanese horror had started to fade away, so what we decided [was] to breathe new life by turning the Japanese horror elements back up all the way up to 100%.

What did you recognize as the core elements of Silent Hill and how challenging, if at all, was it to integrate it into that Japanese setting?

MO: We believe that the essence of Silent Hill resides in its psychological horror aspects. So for this game, we decided to delve deep into the psychological aspects of the protagonist Hinako's personal conflicts and traumas, and we believe that this is something that was fleshed out very masterfully thanks to the scriptwriting of Ryukishi07.

Al Yang: Silent Hill has traditionally been about a lot of things to a lot of people. Sometimes it's about The Order. You see that in Silent Hill 1 and 3. Sometimes it’s about personal trauma. You see that in Silent Hill 2 with James. No matter which Silent Hill title in the series you have, [it’s about] that impeccable sense of dread, the atmosphere, the pervasive kind of tension you see in the world. For us, it was critical to make sure no matter where we set it, we still were able to capture that feeling.

At the start of the game, we see that Hinako doesn’t have the healthiest relationship with her parents. Will this play a large factor?

MO: A critical aspect of the game is repression from the female perspective. This also coincides with the type of pressure that children will be facing from their parents. So the parent-child relationship that she has with her own parents and also the type of relationship she has with her own friends plays a critical role in the game's story.

AY: And as you know, with the writing of Yukishi07-san, who's basically our main script writer, and then just from previous Silent Hill games, fans will know that nothing is ever there by accident. All these little details that you're noticing now, they'll definitely come back. But just how? You'll have to play the game to find out.

Ebisugaoka is a very labyrinthine location. Do you intend to use the environment against the player to help enhance the horror of the game?

MO: The environment that you see in the town is based on an actual physical location in Japan, called the town of Kanayama, which is a small town in the Gifu Prefecture. And the labyrinthine type of environment actually exists. We felt that the environment and its labyrinthine aspect matches Hinako's mental state perfectly, which is the reason why we decided to use it for this game.

AY: You'll find that when you're in Ebisugaoka that it's a little bit more open. It feels a little like Silent Hill 2 in the very beginning where you can explore a lot of the town, and you can keep exploring as you go further in the game. We designed this also in contrast to the Dark Shrine [sections], which is basically more structured, more less organic feeling and more artificial. With Ebisugaoka, you do have this kind of very organic small town that's been built up.

How challenging was it to develop a new melee-driven combat system from the ground up for Silent Hill?

AY: As you mentioned, Silent Hill f is completely melee-driven. You have to be right there, always in the danger zone. We had to take a lot of core elements from traditional ranged horror games that really slow down the pacing of the combat when you're aiming down sights on a gun and you're waiting for the crosshair to [line up], because it builds tension and you're like, ‘do I attack now or do I wait for the perfect opportunity?’

That's the same thing with the Sanity meter here, where you're focusing on the enemy, it's taking time to kind to build up and you’re looking for the perfect opportunity. While you're focussing you can see, ‘is this the right time to strike back?’ Because you are just really focusing hard on the enemies. It adds tension because you're just not constantly attacking. So that was a big point in Sanity, which is to give you a resource to kind of slow down the pace and up the tension of combat.

Following Silent Hill f’s release, is there a desire to tell more stories outside of the titular town?

MO: Throughout its long history, Silent Hill has had its ups and downs, and there had been some declining sales in the past. Our analysis pointed to how we were going through the same kind of game over and over. [It] was wearing off from the player's perspective, so we wanted to spice up the player experience by exploring new horizons, by attempting new locales. Which is why for Silent Hill: The Short Message we decided to go to Germany and for Silent Hill f we went with Japan. Overall, Konami does have some ambitions to further explore other new horizons for potential locales.

Lastly, as we edge closer to release, what’s one aspect to Silent Hill f you hope surprises people?

MO: One thing we do want to clear up while we have the chance is that we see the label ‘Soulslike’ being thrown around, but we feel like that doesn't apply to our game. It's a game that combines horror and action. For the previous players of the series, you can choose the story mode, and if you choose the difficulty of the story, you will get a similar experience to the previous Silent Hill games.

AY: We have an interesting progression system because the game has multiple endings, and we basically promote multiple playthroughs. Some things carry over that might make it easier the more you play. And even though this is a brand-new title in the Silent Hill series, we're hoping that our old fan base of returning players will play it. They'll be like, ‘well this may be different but to us it still feels like Silent Hill’ before new players come in that are like, ‘oh this is something fresh and interesting for them’. Hopefully that will get them into other titles in the Silent Hill series too.

Silent Hill f is set to launch on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PCthis September 25, 2025.