Silent Hill: Ascension marks a new era for the esteemed survival horror series. Alongside the forthcoming Bloober Team-led Silent Hill 2 remake, as well as No Code's so-far elusive Silent Hill Townfall, Ascension is a key part of the franchise's modern day renaissance after years of stagnation. As a proper origins story, Ascension shows a side of the titular tarnished town we've never seen before; and as a concept, the makeup of Ascension takes Team Silent's bygone creation in a totally new direction.
Brought to life by Genvid Entertainment in collaboration with Konami, Silent Hill: Ascension is the former's latest MILE (Massive Interactive Live Event) endeavor – an undertaking that unfolds over several months, whereby players all over the world dictate who lives, who thrives and who dies by mass vote every 24 hours. Ascension takes its first tentative steps this evening (6pm PT / 9pm ET / 1am UK), and with over one million pre-registrations globally already, it certainly seems like fans of the series are on board for what lies ahead.
Back to the beginning
The Walking Dead: Last Mile might just be a glimpse into the future of gaming
With a wealth of experience steering similar projects for the Rival Peaks and Pac-Man communities, Genvid's biggest MILE venture to date was last year's The Walking Dead: Last Mile. When I was shown the game's inner workings at Gamescom 2022, I came away with a question: Is this the future of video games? As a Facebook Gaming exclusive, that Alaska-set episodic interactive narrative game was part-Telltale, part-visual novel, part-Farmville, and part-live studio TV show; wherein important decisions had major in-game consequences, that were put to a community vote every week over the course of four months.
Between times, players could customize an avatar, mess around with mini-games, complete 'bids' that helped inform said irreversible choices, read graphic novels, watch new scenes related to the game's story, and revisit prior narrative highlights, each outcome of which, once finalized, was cemented as canon within the wider, overarching The Walking Dead universe. At the end of each week, the events of the previous seven days were recapped via a Facebook Watch live-stream, hosted by actors Yvette Nicole Brown and Felicia Day – best known for their work in Community and The Guild, and Supernatural respectively – and then the process started all over again for the next stretch of minute-to-minute storytelling.
Breaking from Last Mile's Facebook exclusivity, Silent Hill: Ascension is its own thing, powered by a dedicated mobile app or straight from desktop browsers. The story follows the "complex lives" of two families on the cusp of uncovering Silent Hill's darkest secrets right at the very beginning of it all. Unlike every other Silent Hill game to date, Ascension kicks off before the fog, the twisted rituals, the ungodly monsters, and the Great Knife-wielding Pyramid Head, with ordinary people living ordinary lives in a seemingly ordinary setting.
Ascension doesn't kick off till Halloween night proper, however the game's first decision is available right now. There, you'll find mother and cult leader, Rachel Hernandez, attempting to perform some pretty shady-looking pseudo spiritualism on new recruit, Joy Cirelli. When things inevitably go south, players assume control of Rachel as she tells Joy to: 'Finish the oath', 'Run', or 'Plead for mercy'.
With that, Silent Hill: Ascension wastes no time in ramping up the signature tension-driven horror the wider series is now renowned for, and the idea that every decision made in Ascension becomes series canon is really interesting – assuming whatever lies ahead for the series elsewhere decides to revisit these story threads and their framings, therefore really giving each decision made here extra weight.
Players interested in learning exactly how voting works should check out the above explainer video, but Genvid says each major decision is open for 24 hours after the fact, meaning players who can't tune in live can do so at their leisure between times. Moreover, between each major decision, players can solve puzzles, play mini-games, and rewatch the game's latest scenes on-demand before the next big one rolls around. Players can also compete in so-called 'cameo contests' whereby winners' avatars will feature in-game in various ways.
As a Silent Hill fan who's been around since the dawn of the series in the late '90s, the prospect of Ascension is an intriguing one. I've longed for a proper origins story for so long – 2007's PSP title Silent Hill: Origins was a prequel to the first game that didn't explore the actual origins of the town in any significant way – and am already interested in how Ascension is framing those foundations. I'm still not 100% sure of the format at this point, but that's almost certainly down to my own preconceptions, again tied to the fact I've been playing these games since the days of the PS1 last millennium. That said, I'm also 100% willing to give it a shot; to play along with the world and see where this latest stretch of Silent Hill horror takes us.
Are games like Silent Hill: Ascension the future, then? I still don't know. They could be. There's certainly so much potential for storytelling in this space, and Silent Hill is a great video game setting to host it. In any event, I'll report back in a few months time with a more informed opinion after Ascension has either swallowed me up or spat me out.
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