Silent Hill: Ascension - I Don't Know What I Expected

I'm choosing to believe that Silent Hill: Ascension is a metaphysical manifestation of every Silent Hill's worst fear: The franchise being turned into a tasteless, mediocre cash cow. Only we cannot pull out a rifle and shoot a boss representing our guilt to make it go away. Or drag the Silent Hill IP behind a shed and put a merciful buckshot between its eyes.

Look, let me tell you something about the Silent Hill fandom? We're a bunch of jaded pricks. All of us at some point in our fandomship (is that a word?) we were a pretentious snob who nitpicked endlessly at the Western Silent Hills, saying they were shallow copies of Silent Hill 2 without any of the charm. Some of us eventually grew up and stopped being jackasses, but there are still plenty of Silent Hill fans who will burn your house down if you say you like Shattered Memories. Around 2015, when Konami canceled Silent Hill and insulted us all with the Silent Hill Pachinko gambling machine, we all just gave up. We gave up hope of this franchise resurfacing into something deserving of respect like the first four games. When I heard about several new games being made in the IP, I had a flutter of hope in my chest that was squashed by a horrid stomach-turning clench of dread.

Because Konami is not a video game company, it is a bunch of clowns in one big business suit cosplaying as a respectable producer. I assume the clowns have finally stopped drinking and just moved onto pure methamphetamines, because that is the only reason I can think of as to why Silent Hill: Ascension was greenlit. It is a mockery of Silent Hill, a site that might as well just be one big donation widget. And before I get lit up by Vocal for bullying, it may not even be a group of people who made this thing because I strongly believe that an A.I., like ChatGPT, might have been used to write the script. Oh, you got caught out by a professor for using A.I. on a term paper? This game managed to be PUBLISHED without tripping the radar. Mad skills, Konami.

But let it be known that I am criticizing the product and corporate Konami, not the individual developers who made this. After all, I don't have proof that they used A.I., this is just a personal theory, so please do not take anything I say as confirmation.

So, how does Silent Hill: Ascension work? It's kind of like an online watch-party where you click on QTEs and "make decisions" for the plot advancement. I put "make decisions" in quotations because of the most controversial aspect of this: It's a pay-to-win game. Is it a game? It's more like a really boring series of student films, as though is a media production course and the people watching are peer reviewers. Really rich peer reviewers. If you're not spending real-world money on this, you're likely not contributing much to the decisions. There's a reason why a meme of Silent Hill: Ascension's "gameplay" is a GIF of a credit/debit card scanner.

You don't get to choose your username during the live event, probably because people were naming themselves after profanity, genitalia, and certain bodily fluids. Instead, you're given a generated name from a pool of Silent Hill character names and locales. You can design your own avatar and if you give the greedy Konami pigs enough of your hard-earned cash, your avatar will feature as a non-talking NPC in the series with a shoutout.

There are also chat emojis, one of them which is just...absolutely brazen.

Wow...that's just. Wow. They're not even trying to hide the fact that they are milking the brand and trivializing trauma. If it was made by a fan, this would be funny. But this kind of thing coming from the developer is tacky and insulting.

So, what is Silent Hill: Ascension about? Think about the most generic Silent Hill plot ever and you're halfway there. Except for the fact that none of it takes place in Silent Hill. In fact, half of the plot is in Norway. Why is it called Silent Hill then if it's not in the same state? Parts of Silent Hill 3 didn't take place in the titular town, but that's because the demonic god within Heather was causing the Otherworld. Silent Hill 4 features a splinter group of the town's cult which were responsible for Walter Sullivan's mass murders and subsequent corruption of South Ashfield.

The cause of the monsters in Ascension? The Blight...whatever that is. It is not explained well. We begin the not-game with some old guy setting up a diorama of a bloody, culty ritual. Wow, a Silent Hill game that features a cult...what a new concept. Almost as new a concept as an amnesiac protagonist fighting his inner demons and finding out he killed someone. Only the cult in Ascension is based in Pennsylvania and Norway and they believe in something (someone?) called the Purifier. Our first glimpse of the "Silent Hill" part of this supposed Silent Hill title is a woman named Joy getting tentacle-choked to death. Good start.

The characters of Ascension are poorly written and the community-led decisions mechanic means that they will do things that don't make sense for their arcs. And since the actions of the characters depend on the choices of the voters, that means nothing they do is canonical. Many scenes will end in cliffhangers with characters in dire situations, but they will show up in later scenes unharmed, leaving the previous scene unconcluded. What is the point, then? Well, it's to make corporate Konami richer, of course. Integrity? Transparency? Those are traits of the woke cuck brigade! /s

The only things to praise are the monsters. I don't dislike them. The developers managed to avoid putting a certain muscley geometric guilt demon into the not-game. A few of them are kind of dumb, like the hazmat-suit guys. What's this "creature" indicative of? A fear of OSHA violations?

The main issue raised by critics of Ascension is the bland, soulless writing. In my honest opinion, the script sounds like part of it was written with the help of A.I. The developer would later claim that no one used A.I. to help write the game, which is considerably worse, because that would mean a human being actually wrote the most boring, generic script I've ever heard. The lines are delivered in monotone, droning cadences with hardly any expression. I am not blaming the voice actors here, because they can only work with what they've been given, and what's being given is crap. Again, this is my opinion. Please don't freaking narc on me to the video game police.

Is Silent Hill: Ascension a sign of worse to come? There are three other Silent Hill projects in the works and a film. I desperately want the Silent Hill 2 Remake to be good, but hope is not enough. After all, I once hoped the Silent Hill HD Collection wasn't as bad as people were saying...boy, was I disappointed. For God's sake, let Silent Hill have its own version of a Resident Evil Renaissance.