The long-suffering Silent Hill fandom will be getting a slight reprise, as the much-maligned “interactive series” Silent Hill: Ascension is making some changes based on community feedback.
For those lost in the fog and uninitiated, Silent Hill: Ascension is an all-new streamable series broadcast via app and browser for 16 weeks, but the twist is that the entire community can vote in Telltale-esque choices and complete fatal QTEs when characters get into paranatural danger. Twitch Plays Pokemon meets Until Dawn, in a way.
The game comes from developer Genvid - which is now working on a series based on Borderlands - in collaboration with Dead By Daylight’s Behaviour Interactive and JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot Games. That all sounds pretty promising, but the show-game-live-event hybrid landed on its face when it debuted this Halloween.
We hear and appreciate our community’s feedback and are constantly working to improve your #SILENTHILLAscension experience. As part of that, here are some community updates from our development team on the following: - Tuning improvements to Rallies - Video player… pic.twitter.com/Vw3fJpxywnNovember 17, 2023
Silent Hill fans, in dismay, said Ascension made “the pachinko game look like a heartfelt passion project.” The complaints were mainly aimed at wonky online infrastructure, annoying microtransactions, and a live chat that’s somehow both unmoderated and sometimes over-moderated. You couldn’t type “Hideo Kojima” into the chat, for example.
In a recent social media post, Genvid announced that some community complaints would be addressed soon: “We hear and appreciate our community’s feedback and are constantly working to improve your Silent Hill: Ascension experience.” The team is currently tuning Rallies, updating the Fate system, and improving the video player and server connection.
The team also promises that future updates are in the pipeline, but we’ll need to wait for the Wednesday night post-shows to get information about what’s next for Konami’s latest controversial joint.
The setup for Ascension sees two separate (but connected) occult deaths occur in two separate (but also probably connected) towns, with the series’ signature twisted creature wreaking havoc and emotional trauma as well. Those looking for a more traditional and slightly less money-hungry Silent Hill game are in luck. A Silent Hill 2 remake is in production at Bloober Team, meanwhile, the studio behind indie horror Observation is developing Silent Hill: Townfall together with publisher Annapurna Interactive. Both are expected to drop next year when they’ll hopefully fare better than Ascension.
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