Silent Hill: Ascension, Konami’s first Silent Hill game since P.T. in 2014, has officially launched and unfortunately, it’s not going well. The ambitious new game in the franchise has been marketed as a hybrid streaming and gaming experience, allowing players around the world to decide on a collective playthrough of the game.
Unlike other choose-your-own-adventure games, the player won’t be able to see every possible ending through multiple playthroughs due to the “collective” decision-making. Many people are saying this approach is basically taking microtransactions to a horrible extreme by literally locking cutscenes (i.e., the actual story) behind paywalls.
Other players are also put off by the game’s emotes, which include a rainbow “it’s trauma” sticker and general gameplay that doesn’t mesh well with Silent Hill’s survival horror.
Others have compared it to an even worse version of Quibi due to the limited amount of content available on launch and the strange format of the game.
Ascension also has limited comment moderation, which has led to increased harassment and use of racist, sexist, and ableist language.
All of this seems like the developers didn’t BETA test the game or put any thought or care into the project at all. It also doesn’t bode well for the other Silent Hill games that are supposedly releasing soon, including the remake of Silent Hill 2. Especially since these microtransactions do nothing to bring back the audience that was lost by Konami’s choice to focus on Pachinko games (basically a Japanese gambling game).
Konami had an uphill battle from the start, but Silent Hill: Ascension may well have killed Silent Hill before it had a chance to be reborn.
(featured image: Konami / Genvid Entertainment)
