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Silent Hill: Ascension premiered last night, and I don't think I've ever seen the long-suffering Silent Hill fandom look quite this miserable before.
If you've not been keeping track of Ascension, it's effectively a Telltale-style narrative adventure game viewed through a livestream where viewers get to vote on what happens next. The story takes place over the course of months, with new episodes premiering every night. If you watch live, you can participate in community quick-time events that affect character stats like 'hope,' but you're able to vote on story decisions between episodes - which means, of course, that the results of those votes generally won't play out in real time.
It's a neat idea in theory, but Silent Hill fans started getting pretty skeptical ahead of launch, when a preview video detailed a Twitch-style streaming interface with live chat and enough meters and currencies to put the average Ubisoft game to shame.
To vote on story decisions, you need to spend influence points. Whichever option receives the most influence points from the community by the time the relevant episode premieres will then affect the story. To get influence points you can do things like participate in little puzzles, or complete daily tasks like watching catch-up videos or continuing login streaks. Or - of course - you can spend money to buy influence points.
There's also a battle pass you can purchase, which offers influence point bonuses and items you can use to customize your in-app avatar, which - under some extremely specific circumstances - has a chance of making a cameo appearance in a future episode. It also offers stickers you can spam on-screen for anybody who's participating in live chat. A colorful sticker that reads, simply, "it's trauma!" has already become something of a meme.
There's also the issue of the chat itself, which… Well, let's just say that it does not appear to be robustly moderated.
Silent Hill Ascension chat is bonkers pic.twitter.com/PDrCXc7rUFNovember 1, 2023
silent hill ascension is going well ! pic.twitter.com/bqaw6rgOojNovember 1, 2023
you cannot type "scam" or "hideo kojima" into the silent hill ascension chat but you can drop a hard R.just in case you were wondering how things are going with thatNovember 1, 2023
Whether the actual story presented in Ascension offers a meaningful payoff remains to be seen, and for what it's worth Jacob Novak, CEO of developer Genvid, has a pretty extensive defense of how the influence system can't be determined purely by players with deep pockets. But first impressions among the Silent Hill faithful have been pretty dismal.
"I cannot believe this is what Konami chose to revive Silent Hill with," Reddit user ToothlessFTW said. "The franchise should've stayed dead if this is what they think is acceptable, either that or they got scammed."
"This is such a cynical cash grab it makes the pachinko game look like a heartfelt passion project," as KillerKremling puts it.
There's another post suggesting that "Ascension will go down in history as the most hated Silent Hill experience," making direct reference to the abysmal remastering work in the HD Collection and the broadly panned 2008 series entry Homecoming.
Silent Hill fans have been suffering for a long, long time. Few series entries past the PS2 days managed to make much of an impression, but the sudden debut of PT in 2014 seemed to suggest something good was on the horizon - until, of course, the Hideo Kojima-helmed Silent Hills that was teased in that demo was canceled. Last year's Silent Hill stream offered new hope with a ton of new projects, but only time will tell if more traditional games like Silent Hill f and the Silent Hill 2 remake can make a stronger impression than Ascension has.
The ranks of the best horror games still have a lot to offer.
