'Silent Hill: The Short Message' - Not Short Enough

The only good thing about Silent Hill: The Short Message is that it is free on PS5. I even like some of the visuals. But one question still ruminates in my brain:

Why is this a Silent Hill game?

The smartass answer would be, "Because Konami marketed it that way" but Konami hasn't had the best track record of keeping this franchise marketable. I can only assume this was a freebee because it's PS5 exclusive. Imagine, Konami actually thought this was a game that would get people to buy PS5s. Not, you know, Demon Souls Remake and uh...oh, right. I still don't think there's enough of a library to get a PS5.

So I watched gameplay footage online of The Short Message and I'm a little concerned for the developers, because this seems like a parody of neurodivergence. It's an overdone trope that the series has done in multiple iterations: person forgets horrible thing they did, they go to Silent Hill and fight manifestations of their hidden trauma, and then they find out what they did. Only these games only degraded in quality after a while, so far as to not even be about the town anymore.

After Silent Hill: Ascension's launch, I thought they could sink no lower. While I don't think The Short Message is as unforgivable as Ascension's pay-to-win interactive movie bullshit, it's still a mediocre copy of the Silent Hill 2 formula.

The game's protagonist is a girl named Anita who seems to have severe self-esteem issues. She's following the artworks of Maya, a graffiti artist known as C.B. for Cherry Blossom. The gameplay is interspersed with strange videos of Maya talking about the meaning behind her art. The videos are strange because her dialogue seems to be dubbed over. This would only make sense in an anime, but this is a video game presumably localized to English audiences. If she speaks another language, why not just put subtitles instead of the bizarre dub?

Anyway, the core gameplay loop seems to be a Groundhog's Day type of walking simulator, not unlike the Silent Hills PT Demo. You are in first person, discovering the plot through cryptic news stories, texts, and social media posts on your in-game phone which you also use as a flashlight. These girls must have superpower typing abilities because they have incredibly fast text conversations. Since the game seems to be taking place in an otherworldy plane of existence, I can excuse this, but I can't help but feel like it's wasting exposition it could have in the cutscenes. There is precisely one monster through the entire thing, unless you count the Oogie Boogie Bag Baddies, which I don't.

The dialogue is strange and unnatural. HexaDrive are the developers for this alongside Konami Digital Entertainment and I'm wondering if Konami even bothered to hire an English translator or just did the best they could on their own. I'm not even blaming the developers for this one, Konami just seems that inept in its business practices.

The "scares" are ridiculously predictable and downright tone-deaf. There's an exhaustive content warning at the beginning of The Short Message which developers think is a license to push all kinds of boundaries. There's reference to self-harm and suicide, including the aftermath of one which occurred in a bathtub. The OG Silent Hills were never this blatant. At most, they took a theme to its limit, allowing the player to fill in the blanks. They showed a journal of a seemingly suicidal patient atop the hospital roof which cuts off abruptly. The player then thinks the patient decided to jump. The Short Message shows the protagonist attempting to commit suicide the same way her friend did, only she wakes up back in the time loop.

If you thought this wasn't mediocre enough, halfway through the chain-link fence and Post-It-covered wall section, you get pursued by a cherry tree monster.

The Sakura Head (which may or may not be the actual name) is a humanoid monster covered in cherry blossom leaves, white cloth, and barbed wire.

Okay, then.

What is there to say? I'm so fucking jaded at this point. I was already at my wit's end with Konami circa 2015 when they canceled the already critically acclaimed Silent Hills to produce a goddamn Pachinko Machine. They had a chance to revitalize the franchise, but tore it off the wall, rolled it up, and used it to snort cocaine.

There's some typical Silent Hill clone nonsense where Anita recalls past abuse from her mother and how the mom locked her and her brother up so long, the brother died. I know it's heartless to say that kind of story is nonsense but it seems so tactlessly stapled-in to the plot it's like a developer was just like, "No, we have to add something traumatic about their personal life" because the friend suicide and Anita's own suicidal ideations aren't enough. This is trauma porn of the most egregious kind. It serves no purpose other than to be edgy.

James Sunderland's story is one also steeped in trauma, but Silent Hill 2 is a game that weaves a narrative around the traumatic past, not in spite of it. He is not this one-dimensional character that fills a plot quota, he is a severely traumatized, broken man trying to find his wife in a hopeless situation. The town serves him a brutal punishing obstacle course because he seeks punishment for his actions.

The Short Message doesn't even feature the eponymous town or a core motivation. Apparently, Silent Hill is just a phenomenon now like in Ascension. Anita is a just a woman traversing a mystery dimension and apparently this is enough to warrant the Silent Hill title. Yeah, no other series ever in the history of horror features a town that manifests monsters from the darkest recesses of your psyche. Except for, I don't know, the dozens upon dozens of works that inspired the original series.

Konami's last two chances are the Silent Hill 2 Remake and Silent Hill f. From the latest gameplay trailer of the remake, I am not optimistic. Bloober Team was quick to blame Konami for the combat trailer saying it didn't showcase the spirit of the game. Yeah, I agree the combat isn't the selling point of the franchise, but you still designed it. I hope that it was only an alpha version, because some of the effects look really cartoony. Apparently, they're in the last phases of development. Time will only tell if this is going to be worth it. Two of the original developers for the series are working on it, but I'm not hanging all my hopes on that. A lot of the voice work and motion capture were perfected by Takayoshi Sato who masterfully crafted much of the facial motions by hand. I just don't want the original work to be discounted because a remake is coming out.

Anyway...hope you enjoyed this foray into my love-hate relationship, mostly hate, with Konami. See you next time for probably the Silent Hill 2 Remake review. Let's hope it's a positive one.