The Silent Hill series has one of those worlds that I just struggle to conceptually place in a contemporary setting. Sure, that’ll partially be down to when the original four games were released, but seeing a faux iPhone in The Short Message just felt wrong to me. So I’m quite pleased by the fact that Silent Hill: Townfall is set in the ’90s, replacing the games’ iconic radio with a portable CRT. And in doing so, its devs were able to use that now nostalgic tech against us, so say the devs themselves.
Over on the PlayStation blog, series producer Motoi Okamoto and Townfall writer and director Jon McKellan were interviewed about the upcoming horror game. McKellan specifically was asked about the use of retro tech and environments, where he explained that, “Older analog tech and gadgets mean a lot to us, and we have a real fondness for them. Nostalgic elements like these are things that not just us, but players everywhere have touched and experienced, evoking a sense of familiarity. We deliberately designed moments that play against those nostalgic feelings.”
He went on to explain how at this point in time, analog technology can feel “unstable, unreliable, or hard to trust completely,” so the team “wanted to create a situation where players have to rely on this device to survive, even while feeling uneasy about relying on it too much.” This sounds like it could be quite a tense thing to balance. It also sounds like something that I’m not entirely sure would work as intended on me personally.
I’m not a true ’90s kid or anything, I was born at the tail end of the decade, but I did experience the 2000s which was essentially The ’90s 2: It’s Shiny Now. All of this sort of tech hadn’t been phased out then, and it’s something I still use in my life now (yes, yes, I am one of those annoying people that sees the value in experiencing games and movies on a CRT, sue me, there’s dozens of us!).
Will my penchant for such devices make me overly trusting of their in-game counterparts? Will I find them less frustrating thanks to my familiarity with them? I wonder how this game will connect amongst differing generations, how someone whose first phone was an iPhone rather than a Nokia may review it compared to someone who used to put their head up against the telly to feel the static electricity. I’m excited to find out the answer! Which will happen sometime around September 24th, when Silent Hill: Downfall is releasing.