One of the surprises of yesterday’s State of Play broadcast was the release of Silent Hill: The Short Message. This in itself is not surprising, considering that we wrote about it with reference to information from a Dusk Golem insider back in May 2022. In retrospect, however, it is very interesting to read what has been leaked about the game over the past years and compare it with what the game really is. Beyond that, of course, we were extremely curious as to what exactly it was about, what intention Konami and the developers from the HexaDrive studio actually had with it, and whether it was possible to find connections in The Short Message with what had already happened once in the past . Naturally, I’m referring to PT – a playable teaser of the never-released Silent Hills, which Hideo Kojima worked on before he left Konami. Both games were released on the day of their announcement, both are intended to attract fans to the series as such, both are treated as first person horror, and both do not look terribly long at first glance. Yet they are very different and that’s a good thing.
Disturbing topics
One of the first things The Short Message will alert you to after downloading just under 13GB of data is the sensitive topics the game covers. As already seen in the minutes of the Australian rating commission, the title displays a message several times with (American) phone numbers for support lines and encourages people in problems to talk to someone about their condition. At the same time, the developers explain that Silent Hill: The Short Message, quite as expected, was not created as a glorification of suicide, self-harm, depression or bullying, but as a modern way to talk about such things and send a message to the young generation, who can face very different pressures on the psyche and overall health than the previous generation. These are mainly young people who, in addition to real life, are also active on the Internet to a large extent, where they are often exposed to very relentless criticism, which is not easy to cope with. And although not in all places the interweaving with these themes in The Short Message seems natural, I personally appreciate that such a famous brand has gone in a similar direction. It is only a spin-off, which by the way you can finish in less than two hours, but even a very hard and heavy impact on the conflict of the young generation with the generation of parents or grandparents left a really deep scar in me, as well as in my father.
But if we were to focus on the gameplay part of Silent Hill: The Short Message, the previous leaks really didn’t lie. In the game, we take on the role of high school student Anita as she mourns at Maya’s monument. The game doesn’t exactly explain the relationship between the two girls right from the start, because literally seconds later, a confused Anita wakes up on a dirty floor in one of the rooms of a dilapidated building simply named Villa. In the light of his cell phone, he goes out of the room through the only door, so that the player can also look around the bleak scenery of the place that could have previously served as an office. The developers didn’t put too much effort into introducing the setting of the title to the player more closely, if we don’t count the obligatory messages in the form of newspaper clippings, leaflets and documents. It can be read from them that the game takes place in the German city of Kettenstadt, which was previously prosperous, but due to the outflow of young people, the low birth rate, but also the failure of efforts to attract new investors to the city and, last but not least, also due to the coronavirus pandemic, its importance begins completely fade away. To make matters worse, unemployment and the decline of the city’s overall level is affecting the students, and the number of suicides has risen in the city on top of all the other problems.
Who is Anita?
This is decisive for the next minutes of the game, because Maya really took her own life, and Anita feels the need to clarify the circumstances of the suicide. Even taking into account the short playing time, it doesn’t take long before it becomes clear that Anita herself is somehow involved in the death of Maya – performing in town as the artist Cherry Blossom. This is probably the best thing The Short Message has to offer, and I have to commend the developers for setting the stage for at least two very interesting twists in such a small area. Moreover, it is not only Anita and Maya – a third girl enters the story – Amelie – whose fate is closely intertwined with the mentioned couple and plays a rather important role. But in the foreground is still Anita, with whom you will not understand the situation around you for a while, then you will see her, and then you will probably feel a little sorry for it all. But that’s probably the only thing that can be said about the story, so I won’t give you too much away, because almost everything that is heard in the gaps and during the actual gameplay is in a way a clue to understanding the whole mystery. Which, between us, isn’t even supernatural at all.
Contrary to the somewhat lazy way of presenting basic setting information via short texts, I have to praise the cutscenes though. Part of them is processed in the game engine, but the developers prepared a larger portion in the form of real shots with the actors, which was a pleasant refreshment. Sure, it’s nothing extra revolutionary, but in the field of shorter first person horrors that we usually associate with independent AA production, it’s nice to see that Konami wasn’t afraid to invest. Thanks to this, you can get to know Maya better in flashbacks and try to understand why the popular artist has so many psychological problems that eventually lead her to commit suicide. But nothing is lined up directly, and the path to the main protagonist’s catharsis is quite convoluted in the finale. Especially when part of one of the three chapters is devoted to what Anita’s childhood was like and what shaped her, for better and, unfortunately, for worse.
Did someone say fear?
If I were to go back to comparing The Short Message to PT, the new one is much less abstract and therefore less scary in my view. In Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills gameplay teaser, I had absolutely no idea what was going on from the start, and just when I thought I had the key, my belief was shattered in the very next scene. The Short Message is a much more traditional game in this regard, although there is one rather laughable nod towards PT, but unfortunately for me personally, this meant that I had almost nothing to fear. The game can reliably induce unpleasant feelings, anxiety and panic, but not cold sweat and skipping heartbeats. Of course, this is an individual view, but Anita is in no danger of harm most of the time, and when this is about to change, the game will make it clear that if something goes wrong, it will take you right back to the beginning of this sequence.
It’s about running away from cherry a monster that cannot be fought. If you get so awkwardly lost in the jumble of corridors and doors that the monster comes for you, you’ll die and be quickly returned to the living with a rather desperate comment from the main character. But it only takes one or two deaths for you to understand how this mechanism works, and the whole atmosphere is gone. Along with literally only one “logic puzzle” consisting of very simply figuring out the combination of a school locker lock, it’s also the only rip-off from the walking simulator level, which is a bit of a shame, but understandable given the experimental treatment and ultimately the zero price tag. On the other hand, at least you have something to watch, because the environment looks very good, the monster itself looks good, and the title confirms its production qualities with the involvement of composer Akira Yamaoka, who has been an integral part of the entire Silent Hill series since the first part. The game also makes nice use of the controller’s haptic feedback to indicate your steps or approaching danger, although it doesn’t use triggers at all, and neither does the speaker.
Missing connection to Silent Hill
Although I liked the story and I attribute the short length simply to the fact that it is a free-to-play title, there is one thing where I think the developers failed. And actually, much like Kojima in the case of PT I this time, the playable sample of possible things to come seems to be a far too distant derivation from the main attributes of Silent Hill as such. In addition to the name The Short Message, it has only one newspaper article in common with it, which refers to the events in the United States and the town of Silent Hill, but without any other attention or jumpers. At the same time, I am wondering if this could really be a prelude to one of the announced new parts, or if it is just a one-time experiment without a deeper meaning for the brand as such.
Considering how much I like traditional Silent Hill, I’d ultimately prefer the second option, because The Short Message is really just a hodge-podge of interesting, but down-the-rails scenes where you’re just devouring the story and character(s) development. , rather than actually playing something. The new preview of the upcoming remake of Silent Hill 2 is probably the best tool for a very contrasting comparison of what I mean, but it’s hard to fully judge how the people at Konami actually went about it. If you have a PlayStation 5, you’ve either already played the title, or you’re about to. And know that it won’t rob you of two hours of your life so that you wish you could get them back at the end. I just maybe expected something more thoughtful, playful and scary, although the weight and urgency is brought by the story and interesting ending.
2024-02-02 09:43:43
#Recenze #Silent #Hill #Short #Message #Vortex
