During The Silent Hill Transmission live stream, Konami introduced Jacob Navoke, the CEO of Genvid, to reveal Silent Hill Ascension. The game will be, as he put it, "a new kind of Silent Hill, an experience that you haven't seen up till now," and its multiplayer focus will give the game a chance to stand out from its precessors and the other upcoming entries in the series.
The Silent Hill Transmission was a nearly 40 min live-streamed presentation that showcased the future of the Silent Hill franchise by revealing a number of new games, a follow-up to the 2006 film, and various collectibles for Silent Hill fans to purchase. The oddest of these announcements, and possibly the most interesting, was Silent Hill Ascension. Unlike the rest of the franchise, this entry will be an experimental live steamed multiplayer experience. While Silent Hill has dabbled in multiplayer before, with Book Of Memories being the most recent offering, Ascension seems to be attempting to do something entirely new.
What is Silent Hill Ascension
While limited details were given about the project, there is a lot of information that can be extrapolated from the interviews and trailer that were included in the Silent Hill live stream. Jacob Navoke described the project as, "A live, real-time, interactive series," and noted that it would be a shared horror experience meant to emulate the same type of collective fright audiences feel in theaters. He described a scenario in which millions could watch live, change outcomes, and be a part of scenes, all helping to dictate the future of the Silent Hill canon. It was emphasized multiple times that there would be, "no reset button" implying that the Ascension experience would be a unique and non-repeating multiplayer opportunity.
Fans of "choose your own adventure" type narratives may be familiar with the idea behind this bold concept. Whether it's gathering around the TV to vote on decisions made in Netflix's Bandersnatch, or participating in the more formalized "Crowd Play" mode featured in many of the later Telltale games. Audiences have been coming together to vote on outcomes in games with branching narratives for some time. The key difference here is the finality of Silent Hill Ascension's promised experience. Providing high-level stakes and a non-repeatable experience would be something truly new on its own, but the added stress of it permanently shaping the future of the Silent Hill canon is a bold decision from Konami that potentially makes this a landmark video game event.
The game is being developed by a handful of studios, including Behavior Interactive, Bad Robot, and most interestingly Genvid Technologies. Genvid is a New York based tech company pioneering new types of massive live service entertainment experiences. While Silent Hill Ascension seems to be their largest and most ambitious project date, it does have some other video game-related projects under its belt with Pac-Man Community and The Walking Dead: Last Mile. They have developed the technology that Ascension will be built on, MILES, a customizable data stream that allows audiences to interact with the broadcast in various ways. While it's nice that there are past examples from the company to point to for reference, it seems like Silent Hill Ascension will be something totally fresh.
What Ascension Means For Silent Hill's Future
With the Silent Hill Franchise laying dormant for the past 10 years, Ascension seems like an exciting way to continue the canon moving forward. Silent Hill is in an interesting place, as the combination of its lengthy absence and the less than favorable reception of most of its recent entries leaves the franchise in a position where there are likely few hardcore fans that have a strong opinion on where the franchise's narrative should go in the future. This collective apathy would normally be a detriment to future installments, but Konami has found a way to turn this into an opportunity.
Providing people with a way to help dictate the outcomes of Ascension is a unique sell that may help bring in a broader audience to either return to the series or check it out for the first time. This level of involvement with the story may also create a sense of ownership and community around the future of Silent Hill that should encourage people to check out future installments and see how their choices are manifesting in other projects. With Silent Hill Ascension set to come out in 2023, it is poised to be the first title released in this new era, kicking off the rebirth of Silent Hill with an experience designed in part by the players.
If successful this style of multiplayer live experiences could explode in popularity. Live-streaming as a form of entertainment is already extremely popular and creators are always looking for new ways to engage with their audiences; it's not too big of a stretch to imagine a scenario where steamers stream the Silent Hill Ascension live stream and converse with their chat about the decisions that they collectively make as a group. Likewise, companies are always seeking new ways to build communities around their franchises in the same way that streamers have cultivated their loyal audiences. Live multiplayer gameplay sessions such as Silent Hill Ascension could be the catalyst that ushers in a new type of communal entertainment experiences by capturing the same type of zeitgeist that brings people to Twitter after each episode of "House Of The Dragon." However, instead of simply tweeting their opinions, fans will be able to help shape the outcomes and then pontificate over the everlasting question of, "What if?"
It is a bold decision to essentially put the future of a franchise up for a vote. However, as with most branching narratives, the illusion of choice is just as powerful of a tool. With most games, players have the opportunity to go back again and again, making new choices and discovering just how flexible the branching narrative truly is. More often than not there isn't as stark of a difference between the potential endings as one may initially think. Silent Hill Ascension, on the other hand, has the added bonus of never needing to pull the curtain back. As a non-repeatable live stream event, players may never know what the other options were or just how different the ending could have been. It then falls on the developers to craft an engaging and satisfying narrative that truly makes players feel like they've had an impact, setting the tone for similar live experiences in the future.
Silent Hill Ascension is scheduled to release sometime in 2023.