Now that I've beaten Townfall, I'm curious what the future of Silent Hill might look like

Now that we’re in a new era of Silent Hill with a run of different developers, we’re lucky enough to see some experimental takes on the franchise. There’s always a few key elements (a traumatized protagonist, fog, scary monsters) but none of them guarantee a successful Silent Hill stew. I’ve finally worked my way through Silent Hill Townfall, and Screen Burn’s take on the series has given me lots of food for thought.

Townfall is set in the small coastal town of St. Amelia in Scotland, 1996. I’m playing as Simon, a man with an IV embedded in his hand and a mysterious message beckoning him back to the town. Upon washing up, Simon discovers that there’s been some sort of catastrophic crisis: everything is shut down, including the emergency services.

There’s a phenomenal sense of place and time in St. Amelia that makes the town feel very real, and the atmosphere is absolutely dreadful. There’s a motif of invasive medical equipment that’s very creepy, and the ‘90s era tech — including a little CRT TV monitor that Simon uses — is a nice way to distinguish this as its own game without just replaying Silent Hill’s greatest hits.

The stealth is obnoxious, the combat is a grind, and there are a few sequences that were absolutely infuriating — but none of that is new for Silent Hill. I want to focus on what Townfall suggests for the overall lore of the franchise, comparing and contrasting with Silent Hill f and Silent Hill 2, both the original and the remake.

[Spoiler warning: This article contains minor spoilers for Silent Hill f and Townfall, and major spoilers for Silent Hill 2 and the remake.]