Silent Hill f is one of the few Silent Hill games that takes place outside of Silent Hill itself. It takes players from the perpetual doldrums of Maine in North America to 1960s Japan and casts you as a school student in the foggy village of Ebisugaoka. His very goodthanks in no small part to thoughtful and poignant story by Ryukishi07. The appetite for a Silent Hill package tour has already been whetted, and Konami producer Motoya Okamoto already has a few ideas for where he'd like to see the series go next. Ideas that admittedly make me nervous about the possibility of awkward cultural misrepresentation.
“We think that perhaps we could apply similar approaches to other cultures around the world,” Okamoto. told Shannon Liao of Inverse in a recent translated interview. “For example, in Central or South America, we could perhaps tap into more indigenous shamanic beliefs and see how they relate to each other. But we could also try to broaden our horizons and explore other regions, such as Russia, Italy or South Korea, because all of these regions have their own unique types of belief systems. I believe this will be a gateway for us to further expand our concepts.”
Asked for more details, Okamoto said he reads horror books from Central and South America. He also mentioned magical realism, a literary tradition in which myth and folklore are part of everyday life that has precedents around the world but is closely associated (in my experience anyway) with 20th-century Central and South American authors including Gabriel García Márquez and Mariana Enriquez. I can't tell from the description, but it looks like Okamoto was quoting these last two authors.
He also made more general—indeed, broad, to the point of being demeaning and simplistic—references to political events that would have provided useful context for a Silent Hill game. “These areas have suffered from many military governments and coups,” Okamoto Liao said. “There is a certain type of bravado and machismo that comes from these political landscapes. There is also a more folkloric aspect coming from shamanism and indigenous beliefs.” Regarding the aforementioned mention of Korea, Russia and Italy, Okamoto did not go into detail. In his defense, he answered questions personally and, it seems to me, tried not to go into detail for fear of causing language.
Okamoto believes that one of the obstacles to making a Silent Hill game in Central or South America is the lack of a local developer he could trust with the keys to the horror series. “There aren’t many established video game development studios in Central and South America that can handle an IP like Silent Hill,” he said. “So while they have a lot of interesting movies, books and stories, we have yet to explore how we translate that into games.”
English-language writers in the northern hemisphere often do a terrible job of covering the game development scene in Central and South America. Fine, I there is at least. But one group comes to mind: Ace teamcreators of Zeno Clash, Rock Of Ages and The Eternal Cylinder. I think Silent Hill may seem a little staid for them visually, but they definitely have an eye for otherworldly creatures and places. There's also Dual Effect, the creators of Tormented Souls, at the right stadiumbut closer to Resi and survive than Silent Hill.
In the short term there is Silent Hill: City Collapse. It is being developed in Scotland by Screen Burn (formerly No Code), the developers of Observation and Untold stories. I have no idea where it is, but given the studio's past projects, there should be some terrifying gadgets in there.
