Silent Hill f hasn't even fully launched and someone's already modded out the fog, and as much as I'm against this wholeheartedly, even I can admit those graphics are gorgeous with greater clarity

Some impatient horror hounds are playing Silent Hill f ahead of schedule with its advanced release that comes with pre-orders, but the game doesn't properly launch until September 25. And yet, there's already a mod available on PC that removes the fog from the game, giving us a peak at the '60s Japan setting unobscured by the series' signature low-hanging clouds.

Two things: I hate this. It's hard to think of a visual characteristic that's more fundamental to Silent Hill's identity than the fog that blurs the line between nightmare and reality, especially now that the titular town itself isn't in the latest game. Although the fog was originally implemented as a way to mask the PS1's hardware limitations, it's since taken on an iconic presence in the series, and removing it is akin to blasphemy in my eyes.

Also, dammit this is kinda cool. I would never want to do a full playthrough of a Silent Hill game without that ever-imposing fog, but it is neat looking at a fogless Silent Hill 2 Remake, or now Silent Hill f, for just a few seconds to see what the locales look like completely unobscured. In fact, I'll just shut up now and let you do that:

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Side-by-sides of vanilla Silent Hill f and modded versions with no fod and less fog

Again, I'd never actually play the game this way, but the level of detail hiding behind that fog in the vanilla game is really interesting to see laid bare. Now, let's all return to the fog and pretend none of this ever happened.

Silent Hill f gets off to a "Very Positive" start on Steam, with 88% favorable reviews from horror fans: "It's not your classic SH experience, but it's a damn good one"