Silent Hill and Townfall must escape the franchise's worst crutch

Because the One Ring, Gollum and Gandalf have been inseparably linked to the Universe The Lord of the Rings IPs as pieces of iconography, it's amazing to see Tales of the Shire engaging in its hobbit holes and seemingly refusing to imbue the cozy life simulation with anything that would otherwise only be there for the sake of nostalgia or familiarity. However, not all games can say the same about the looming franchise IP they belong to, and that's certainly true for silent Hill games that were somehow meant to follow Team Silent's amazing psychological horror titles.

silent Hill has a perpetually captivating and enticing premise, and with countless protagonists, characters and settings it could feature, there's no reason why its creativity or imagination should ever be stifled. As Silent Hill 2no story or character needs to explicitly connect to another for the lore to remain intact, and as an anthology there should never be any excuse for repeating iconography if it isn't necessary. Pyramid Head manifested itself with a specific link to James Sunderland, for example, and on the way silent Hill games like F OR Townfall need to abandon the trope wholeheartedly.

How the Silent Hill games regurgitated Pyramid Head and the executioner/bogeyman trope

Silent Hill 2Pyramid Head is a phenomenal antagonist and expression of James Sunderland's guilt. But, in the years following Pyramid Head's debut and the influence it would have on the franchise, the idea of ​​a menacing figure looming as a dark reflection of a protagonist has since been diminished and bastardized:

• Silent Hill: Origins' Butcher as a reflection of Travis Grady.
• Pyramid Head himself appears briefly, needlessly and inexplicably Silent Hill: Homecoming.
• Silent Hill: DownpourBogeyman as a reflection of Murphy Pendleton.

Silent Hill: HomecomingPyramid Head is not necessarily a reflection of Alex Shepherd, but is simply a purposeless executioner/bogeyman, although regardless of the in-game explanation alluded to, this example is the most obvious demonstration of the trope being regurgitated and exploited as a means of reproducing iconic images. Origins'Butcher and DownpourBogeyman aren't horrible representations of what they're trying to represent, but because they're designed to be similar to Pyramid Head they lack the originality that pretty much every other monster or boss has in the silent Hill series.

Many Westerners silent Hill the games are incredibly unsubtle and lack that narrative nuance Silent Hill 2 alone had, making the situation even worse Origins, Return homeAND Downpour all have a thematically identical, silent antagonist figure meant to represent or reflect the protagonist in one way or another. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories presents its story through a unique perspective that leads to a surprising conclusion, but it too relies on an established story and characters.

The simple answer to why the executioner/bogeyman trend continues is because Pyramid Head is an icon
Silent Hill 2
and replicating that is easy for fan service, literally and unapologetically
Return home
nothing less.

Future Silent Hill games should be held to creative standards

If F AND Townfall they will be respected as newcomers, hopefully not clinging to superficial images. Now, silent Hill the visuals will be impossible to completely bypass if fog or the city itself is present, but having a character or enemy appear without anything to justify their presence would be a huge mistake.

Part of the fun of

silent Hill
The lore of is to know or at least believe that some enemies are meant to be experienced only by one protagonist, which therefore allows for that protagonist's experience in the Silent Hill novel to be different from anyone else's.

Return home it still would have leaned too heavily on the imagery of the 2006 film even if it hadn't featured Pyramid Head, but the cursed town of Shepherd's Glen and the lore behind its four founding families is interesting. There was no need Return home triple down on foreign iconography and its reputation still suffers today.

Rather, Silent Hill: The Short Message went in the opposite direction and bears almost no resemblance to silent Hill. This might have been nice if the game itself wasn't a free two-hour walking simulator, more like one of the first Bloober games, and hopefully more in line with what the future will be. silent Hill games will take into account in their approach to creating lore and imagery. That said, players shouldn't hold their breath why Silent Hill 2The remake of was released recently and the model will likely be revamped with even more inspiration drawn from Pyramid Head for boogeyman figures in the future silent Hill games.