I think that's why the Japanese love David Lynch's work and take so much inspiration. He leaves things in his work very vague and you have to come up with your own conclusions.
After your beautiful exploration I can end with my own reflection: Silent Hill is about the pain of the living, the ones that remain after we pass, the pain of being left behind. While Fatal Frame is about the pain of those who passed, the ones that in death can’t find peace and are forced to remember.
Yea they did that in Shattered Memories and Downpour and it was stupid as hell. Just go back to the chainlinked fence and metal grating a meat walls, that's scarier than ice or a dumb ass water slide.
Nope knowing Ryukish you might expect silent hill f to have one of those wholesome heartwarming moments only for it to turn 180° out of nowhere to let your guard down, he likes to mess with your mental health.
After watching this video, it surprised me the different worldviews, beliefs and ideologies being presented in both franchise and that some fans think Silent Hill f being the Fatal Frame of it.
SHf focusing its beauty on the flowers, the supernatural force corrupting the protagonist, only to shift into grotesqueness while still feeding off its victim is one of the distinctions between it and Fatal Frame here and also one thing that I'm really excited for because it is so fitting for Ryukishi's writing. He doesn't shy away from the ugly, but he also has this fascination with "witches" and "magic" in his works. These witches are always past victims of the narrative and must in some way re-enact their pain on someone else to keep their facade of beauty in a way. The central witch of the narrative is always the most sympathetic, but she'll often either spill or have her guts spilled physically as a metaphor for the ugly truth of the situation being forcibly and disrespectfully brought out.
I feel like Ryukishi07 definitely belongs somewhere in between SH and FF in style and themes, in Higurashi and Umineko both Hinamizawa village and Rokkenjima island are characters in their own right.
Kind of funny the first thing that came into their minds after watching the trailer was fatal frame, when forbidden siren is the closest take to a SH title with a japanese enviorement. I guess the siren franchise is still too obscure.
It really is! And Toyama-san is behind both, and honestly Silent Hill at times feels like Siren-0 to me, or something like that. There's a lot of similarity between them, you can see many of Toyama-san's early ideas/tropes developing there.
I think a fatal frame set in the west maybe a incan temple or something with native Americans would be a neat addition to that franchise im excited for silent hill f
The point at 8:30 is so interesting to me, because while the stories are definitely about the characters in fatal frame they often have more to do with their relation to the core ritual of each game However the ritual doesn’t form itself around the girls like the locations of Silent Hill do. And the main way this is communicated is the fact that a lot of the mystery is actually solved before your characters. Almost every single game has journals from past victims that allude to other characters figuring out what happened before being killed. (Mafuyu’s teacher comes to mind here) And while the characters of Fatal Frame are almost always related or even participants in the rituals (like the ff4 girls) they’re never the sole person on the receiving end of the hell they’re in. Where as Silent Hill literally tailors itself to its victims fears. Interestingly enough FF4 and Silent Hill 4 are the times where this is sort of flipped on its head as iirc SH4 has us explore what happened to someone else, where as the Fatal Frame 4 girls are direct sufferers of Luna Sedata and were participants in their ritual.
I couldn't tell you exactly what it was about the final part of the trailer, with the flowers growing all over the girl and the "boat" and spider lilies, but I started to get a La Llorona vibe; once I noticed the "crown" of flowers though, it struck me hard as La Catrina, with her wide hat/large crown of flowers and veil.
I'm glad you made this. The root of this issue, in my opinion, comes from one thing: ignorance. American audiences have very little interest in researching other cultures, even those of Europe. If it's Japanese and it's a horror game, it's Fatal Frame or Siren; no exception. Or it must be a visual novel, even though the teaser for Silent Hill F was done by one of Japan's most important animation studios. Bringing up any of the well informed arguments you've made usually ends in predictably misguided assertions about any number of things, from what mental health looks like to superficial characteristics of David Lynch's filmography. Silent Hill deserves so much more than this, and so do the developers and artists involved.
So, this is an outsiders perception; the only things I know about Silent Hill are things I've gathered from other people talking about it. I've never played the games or read the books or anything like that. I was under the impression that there is a regular town of Silent Hill that people live in and it's just a normal place. Then there's the "other" Silent Hill...the bad Silent Hill that exists separate from time and space. And it's that other version that can reach out and find you, no matter where you are. I was also under the impression that you needed some kind of loose connection to the town for it to have this power over you, that even a deep ancestral connection to the land was enough for its tendrils to find you. After some new media came out about SH I think I'm wrong on this, though; you can be a "stranger" to the town and it can come after you. However, beyond all that, I just assumed the town is something primordial, more a force of nature than an actual place. It has its own reasoning and internal logic no human is privy to. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it from functioning the way it does. It is more a lifeform simply existing in the way it must, like everything else alive must do what it does to survive. The predator and prey can't simply choose to exist in some other way...we eat and are eaten and that is just how things are ordered to be. So too does Silent Hill perform the functions it must lest it cease to exist. I'm not entirely sure the town-as-an-entity is even necessarily malevolent or has some sort of desire system that drives it to hurt people on purpose. I get the feeling it's just...being. It simply functions the way it does for unknown reasons and it doesn't have particular hard feelings toward the people caught in the snare.
@@ChristopherSadlowski Don't worry, I'm not interested in judging anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to play the games and I feel it's become all too common as of late. I quite appreciate what you said, because it touches on something crucial, I feel; Silent Hill is less about location and more about its objectivity. Jean-Paul Sartre refers to a concept called "thrownness", or the overwhelming force of life itself, while Camus defined it as "absurdity". Some people similarly believe it to be Lovecraftian, but I personally dislike that implication because it's far more abstract than that. Silent Hill is for me removed from a sense of morality, as you said, and instead functions as both a material and immaterial characterization of this dissonance between human consciousness and the human definition of existence. You won't hear many people talking about this because, frankly, most people aren't interested in the philosophical aspects of Silent Hill; your average person probably isn't, either. But to me, that's what makes Silent Hill significant, and while this is simply my interpretation as an artist, it's why I don't care where it comes from. In fact, I believe such ambiguity would only strengthen the profundity of Silent Hill as an IP. Being alive is frightening enough in its implications if you think of how little control we actually have in our birth and in our death, and when you consider how existentialists such as Nietzsche drew much of their philosophies from Buddhism, it would only make sense that such an indescribable idea would feel right at home in the atomic aftermath of one of humanity's most horrifying atrocities.
what a GREAT video. i'm so happy i'm subscribed. that was an amazing watch. i enjoy the two series a lot and i think you did a great job explaining the differences you see. i'm excited to see what silent hill ƒ will turn out to be. thank you for the video~
I think the distinctions you've laid out between the games are very well expressed, and I (for the most part) agree. However, I find I can't help but recoil at the expressions that Fatal Frame is "unrealistic", "overly romanticized", or the implication that death is -in fact- a tragedy (and nothing else). I think the beauty of art is that people can resonate so deeply with it, because, deep down, we all know there is some mysterious truth to it. I think the beauty of Fatal Frame is that it **is** the kind of art the defies what we **think** we know, and dares to paint something we've decided is "tragic" in a more beautiful light, and asks "is this wrong?" To which many can't say "no". It's certainly romantic, but I would not say it's unrealistic.
I don't know that it's unrealistic, but it is in comparison to SH; there's still certainly some realism there, SH is just so heavily realistic in style by comparison, it feels very different.
honestly, I am so pumped about Silent Hill F , if it would feel like fatal Frame as well , then we're getting a resurrection of two games at the same time - hell yeah!
Fatal Frame? Shouldn't it be Siren (Forbidden Siren), it's like Silent Hill in Japan, but with Outlast mechanics of stealth and out maneuvering stalkers. But in Japan horror story telling.
I think both games will be similar just because they will share the same folklore roots which is good and new for the SH franchise. In fact, F will be probably the only new Silent Hill game worthy of play.
The whole talk of the concept of ero-guro made me remember the time I somehow befriended some ero-guro artists and much to my surprise, they were the nicest guys I've ever met and usually spoke about random things like Azur Lane or tokusatsu, I noticed that many of them are fond of the movie species.
It's not really a surprise. Junji ito is one of the nicest guys out there, and he's drawn some super fucked up shit. Did you ever ask them why they drew ero guro ?
I mean, yeah, I immediately thought of Fatal Frame because it was visually similar. But I think that says more about the absence of high end horror games with distinctly Japanese sensibilities. Not to knock indie horror as it was a godsend that revived the genre, but there have been so many SH2 imitators and that even a Fatal Frame clone would be a refreshing change of pace even if it was true.
I think some gamers have a bad habit of comparing games just because of a few elements. No doubt they didn't really give the comparison between 'Fatal Frame' and 'Silent Hill F' much thought other than it takes place in Japan.
I spent my teenage years inside my room playing theses games and never thought that maybe I was obssessed with death, that I wanted to understand it somehow much more than had words to put into question as to why that was. I needed closure for the feelings of inadequacy I had and travelled terrifying worlds to search for the answers of those unspoken questions helped me become braver, stronger and daring. Made my art style more interestng, made me standout in some stances. I'm grateful for that.
Thanks for making this Muse! You're 100% right. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse and Maiden of black water really hammer home your points as well. While FF4 is set in a western-style hospital, which is a common silent hill area, they don't MEAN the same thing. In Silent Hill, the hospital sets the tone that there is a sickness here. A sickness so prevalent even the place that cures sickness is ruined by it. But in FF4 the western hospital is meant to echo a mask. It's a place that's new, shiny and Western, built to hide something old, taboo and Eastern when it shouldn't have been hidden at all. As you said, it's a story of the Japanese past and its influence. FF5 is very similar to FF3 in it's tone. It's very literally romanticized version of death. Death is heavily equated with eternity, therefore love and marriage after death is a love that lasts eternity. In FF5, characters want to die. In order to feel loved. Which is fundamentally at odds with Silent Hill where love is living. People fight to save the ones they love from death. The struggle to deal with their love after death. Which is a theme still carried by new entries. In short- the further you go down the lines of both games, the more and more your point rings true. One is an ancient ghost story of romance, the other is a tragedy of the human mind.
Honestly, you deserve much more raise 🙌 single handedly deliver some of the best video essays and analysis about Silent Hill and other JP horror titles ❤ Keep up the good work 👏
Something that I hear a lot from silent hill analysts is that silent hill was a game that was set in America based on Japanese interpretation. This made the game very strange and unique. Setting it in Japan loses that strange mixed of culture that was beloved by fans. Another thing is the lore. Why is silent hill in Japan, when it's a town in America?
There's no reason they can't continue to try and blend west and east in this game set in Japan, since there's been a lot of blending of our cultures after all (especially during the WW2 era). I honestly believe this is an attempt to bring the series home and make it appeal more to Japanese people in particular because (as I've covered in other videos in depth) the series never took off in Japan after the first one, and the fanbase is tiny compared to the western audience. I'm curious to see what they do, and since they're obviously also still having western devs work on the series, there's no loss there either.
Please make a video on the latest controversies of the remake! I feel like your voice on this needs to be heard now more than ever! It’s as you once said years ago, this is your job. So please be consistent with all the drama and updates as possible. I feel like I’m the only one who’s sees the full picture here.
I honestly think it's kind of silly for a game that hasn't been released and has only a few trailers to have controversies. I've said my piece on the games, and now we wait until its released to see what it will be like. I'm not interested in the extreme over reactive drama some folks like to indulge in.
@@Urzalyr I love Kojima but if the SH fans hated the Western games because they were different, they would HATE Silent Hills because one thing for sure: it would be NOTHING like the first 3 games.
Te quiero mucho, Muse. Tus videos me alivian la vida y en serio te admiro mucho. Eres, verdaderamente, mi referencia principal cuando se trata de Silent Hill. ❤🎉
If you haven't read it, there's a lovely dual interview with FF and SH directors where they talk about that, it's really fun. fftranslations.atspace.co.uk/other/denfami.html
This may sound bizarre but I've just had the realisation that most of, if not all of my views and perspectives on death and mortality aren't traditionally western (I'm Australian) and a LOT of things are starting to click into place. I grew up playing these games, especially Silent Hill, and I didn't come from a religious family. My views and thoughts are culturally different from the place I live and the people in it and I honestly think that epiphany in itself is going to help me better understand myself psychologically. You may not even read this comment, but thank you, truly. Without your passion I may never have realised this on my own.
I'm shocked only the first few entries of each series were referenced in this video. Both SH and FF continued after their third game, and I believe both moved away from some of their more rigid attributes.
To be honest, I felt like continuing to compare the entire series would be a little repetitive at some point, and I can't fully compare them as I haven't played the entire FF series. But I will definitely be making more in depth discussion videos about both series in the future.
muse you are a beacon of rationality in the negativity surrounding silent hill at present. for the reasons youve pointed out, these comparisons are pointless and baseless, and imo, at worst kind of racist. silent hill f is personally my most anticipated release of the new games, its an original entry in the series and higurashi is one of my most favourite horror stories of all time so when i saw ryukishi07 as the writer i lit up in excitement. keep up your amazing work
@@nettaraxy8815 Agreed, Muse is far more articulate than most creators concerned with Silent Hill, and they often go above and beyond to demonstrate their perspective. As you said, in this case it's absolutely racism, there is no question of that imo; "Silent Hill" is, after all, a translation of 静 Shizu and 岡 oka, a well known prefecture in Japan. It was theirs, and it always will be. I can't tell you how awful an experience it is to attempt any reasoning with people on the subreddit, not just for Silent Hill F, but the franchise as a whole. You could write a dissertation and it would make no difference when personal biases outweigh morality or common sense. Anyway, glad there are others that feel the same; Silent Hill continues to be a huge part of why I became an artist and I find myself incredibly disappointed with what its discussion has become.
I'm actually very interested in seeing a SH game that is taking place in their country. Even I want to know what the gameplay is gonna be like for SHF.
If your speculation about this SH game is correct, and it is invoking themes of nuclear warfare and the aftermath, it creates a really interesting potential clash of Western and Japanese ideas and storytelling. Not to mention, Silent Hill has spread beyond the town before, with SH5. If it can spread to another town, why not another continent? The ideas and beliefs are what feed and propagate the Silent Hill Otherworld, and that makes for some interesting commentary, given Japan's historic isolation trying to prevent Western ideas from corrupting its culture .
Probably nothing bigger than "Silent HIll used to take place in American Stephen King environments, now it's Japanese environments and I don't vibe with those as much as I do US environments". At least in terms of quality having Ryukichi07 on board speaks volumes in terms of instilling confidence in a product over what they've been doing with it lately. I followed a Let's Play of the TV show and that was... well, it was certainly an experience, not just a very good one. ANd I guess that could also contribute to the salt: people want a return to form and rise in quality, to feel like they did when they first played Silent Hill 2. And now the game that looks like it has the biggest chance of doing that has a brand new environment and aesthetiqe than what they liked about Silent Hills traditional looks, and gamers never handled change very well. Which I realize has very little to do with your video on what the story and themes of these respective games are, but alas: I'm afraid it was never about something as deep as the story and themes. It's just vibes, all the way down.
I'm so late to the Fatal Frame party, but it's skyrocketed to my favorite game series. I would love a new Fatal Frame game. If it's VR, even better. The trailer had me thinking of Fatal frame for a few seconds. The old Japanese houses, then the doll. But after that, clearly not in any way a Fatal Frame game. That said, I'm gonna ignore the 'Silent Hill' title and try to judge it on its own, because I liked the trailer in general
There is a "first person" version of Fatal Frame, even if it's not exactly VR... someone with some emulating/hacking experience could maybe make the game play that way lol. Fatal Frame 2 on Xbox has a first person mode.
Isn't the baby Henry saved in SH1 a part of Sheryl/Alyssa? So I wouldn't say he lost Sheryl but more so she was reincarnated into the girl we know as Heather. Cause Heather is Sheryl just reincarnated
Literally the whole of 20th century European modernism was concerned with narrative ambiguity, from which Japan's post-war creative elites took huge inspiration. Japanese folktales, by comparison are pretty straightforward. Great video but like many Western commentators, you try to mystify the East too much.
Folktales are folktales, novels are different. I'm not trying to 'mystify' the east, I'm trying to show the different ways we tell stories. Of course, there's a lot of blending because west has influenced east and vice versa, but that doesn't erase the trends that exist. Think about Junji Ito, or Koji Suzuki, etc. - compared to works like Stephen King or Clive Barker, which are more likely to have an inworld explanation for events, Ito and Suzuki leave everything ambiguous. We rarely know the 'why' of events, or at least some part of the larger narrative is left mysterious. Very different compared to, say, The Mist telling us the monsters are just animals from another reality.
@@thegamingmuse thanks, appreciate the thorough reply. Though I'm still not convinced the West = straight narrative, East = narrative ambiguity thing holds up e.g. Cronenberg and Lynch would be a closer comparison respectively to Ito and Suzuki than King and Barker. But I'm nitpicking a small point here. The video as a whole was great.
Well, in a way it did. It's not completely divorced from each entry but each one can pretty much stand on its own, besides 3; though as a teen I played 3 before 1 and it still really resonated with me, so I think to an extent the series kinda is like that.
@@thegamingmuseno I mean full anthology like every story stand on it own without the town dang even the name silent hill have give it a anthology vibe
Wouldn't a Japanese set Silent Hill be more similar to Forbidden Siren? Forbidden Siren was actually made by a portion of the developers that made Silent Hill.
Girl, thanks, you are brilliant. I am gay so this is not coming from teenage hormones. I sincerely enjoy hearing your perspective and I find quite enticing your analysis so keep it on! Chapeau!
Christianity has a pretty unique history in Japan too, and that's not even touching on the USA/Japan history during and immediately after WW2. I think people are underestimating the interesting possibilities we could have here.
@@thegamingmuse and the eastern perspective on western culture, could be mirrored in this game creating a new dichotomy. And contrast is silent hills thing!
People gotta slow the impulse to IMMEDIATELY compare games as soon as they are announced. It really bothers me . At least wait til you have more information. and .. yeah two survival horror games taking place in japan will have some similarities. but people will see one similarity and be like ' oh my god they copied'. Not saying there's not carbon copies out there in the world, obviously.
Given how much Silent Hill has always been a Japanese interpretation of the states, honestly, this '1Ts cH@nG3d!!1!" makes less sense. I mean, there's a thesis paper in how one culture views the other through a new media but it hardly changes the whole work.
We already have Silent Hill in Japan and it's called Siren. I like the people involved in F, but I'm not happy about the change of country, not one bit
Nope, Silent Hill f (pronounced "Forte", not "Ehff") is part of the "Silent Hill" franchise. It will play like Silent Hill. Nice try grasping at invisible straws during a one minute teaser with no in-game footage.
Your most points are wrong and also the definition of west is debated just google it..I cant explain everything here but I will say this that japanese culture can be adopted by U.S Game developers into their own culture , it has already been done with F.E.A.R 2005 and The Ring 2002 (Starting with) with a slight distinction , can and has been set in countryside and its not always about sexy body japanese culture gaming or else..Sexiness is in U.S gaming as well etc. I am not saying that silent hill and fatal frame are the same..not at all , but other than that. While shinto and christianity difference will always be there but things can be adopted as much as it can be. U.S embraces japanese cultues and games there are gamers in US for japanese games has grown since mid to late 90's.
@@thegamingmuse I do understand that is why I said I am not relating fatal frame to silent hill at all. My comment is very clear for what I have to say. I argued few points that felt was wrong.
Honestly, you deserve much more raise 🙌 single handedly deliver some of the best video essays and analysis about Silent Hill and other JP horror titles ❤ Keep up the good work 👏
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I think that's why the Japanese love David Lynch's work and take so much inspiration. He leaves things in his work very vague and you have to come up with your own conclusions.
I’d argue the very fact the character in the trailer gets a pipe makes it not a fatal frame clone
I hadn't thought of that. XD
After your beautiful exploration I can end with my own reflection:
Silent Hill is about the pain of the living, the ones that remain after we pass, the pain of being left behind. While Fatal Frame is about the pain of those who passed, the ones that in death can’t find peace and are forced to remember.
That's a lovely way to put it.
"We love how the otherworld appears and functions differently for everyone"
"You're not allowed to make the next game different, stop that"
XD
Yea they did that in Shattered Memories and Downpour and it was stupid as hell. Just go back to the chainlinked fence and metal grating a meat walls, that's scarier than ice or a dumb ass water slide.
Nope knowing Ryukish you might expect silent hill f to have one of those wholesome heartwarming moments only for it to turn 180° out of nowhere to let your guard down, he likes to mess with your mental health.
After watching this video, it surprised me the different worldviews, beliefs and ideologies being presented in both franchise and that some fans think Silent Hill f being the Fatal Frame of it.
SHf focusing its beauty on the flowers, the supernatural force corrupting the protagonist, only to shift into grotesqueness while still feeding off its victim is one of the distinctions between it and Fatal Frame here and also one thing that I'm really excited for because it is so fitting for Ryukishi's writing. He doesn't shy away from the ugly, but he also has this fascination with "witches" and "magic" in his works. These witches are always past victims of the narrative and must in some way re-enact their pain on someone else to keep their facade of beauty in a way. The central witch of the narrative is always the most sympathetic, but she'll often either spill or have her guts spilled physically as a metaphor for the ugly truth of the situation being forcibly and disrespectfully brought out.
I really, really need to get around to playing his games already.
This is actually kind of similar with mask of the lunar eclipse and the blooming curse/disease.
@@Bike-chan I mean... it reallyyy isn't.
I feel like Ryukishi07 definitely belongs somewhere in between SH and FF in style and themes, in Higurashi and Umineko both Hinamizawa village and Rokkenjima island are characters in their own right.
Kind of funny the first thing that came into their minds after watching the trailer was fatal frame, when forbidden siren is the closest take to a SH title with a japanese enviorement. I guess the siren franchise is still too obscure.
It really is! And Toyama-san is behind both, and honestly Silent Hill at times feels like Siren-0 to me, or something like that. There's a lot of similarity between them, you can see many of Toyama-san's early ideas/tropes developing there.
I think a fatal frame set in the west maybe a incan temple or something with native Americans would be a neat addition to that franchise im excited for silent hill f
The point at 8:30 is so interesting to me, because while the stories are definitely about the characters in fatal frame they often have more to do with their relation to the core ritual of each game
However the ritual doesn’t form itself around the girls like the locations of Silent Hill do. And the main way this is communicated is the fact that a lot of the mystery is actually solved before your characters. Almost every single game has journals from past victims that allude to other characters figuring out what happened before being killed. (Mafuyu’s teacher comes to mind here)
And while the characters of Fatal Frame are almost always related or even participants in the rituals (like the ff4 girls) they’re never the sole person on the receiving end of the hell they’re in.
Where as Silent Hill literally tailors itself to its victims fears. Interestingly enough FF4 and Silent Hill 4 are the times where this is sort of flipped on its head as iirc SH4 has us explore what happened to someone else, where as the Fatal Frame 4 girls are direct sufferers of Luna Sedata and were participants in their ritual.
You got "Trouble in Therapy Town" vs "Multiple Mansions/Villages/Island with Gateways to Hell"
XD There really are a lot of gates to hell
The people just love fucking up rituals that open said gates.
I couldn't tell you exactly what it was about the final part of the trailer, with the flowers growing all over the girl and the "boat" and spider lilies, but I started to get a La Llorona vibe; once I noticed the "crown" of flowers though, it struck me hard as La Catrina, with her wide hat/large crown of flowers and veil.
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I'm glad you made this. The root of this issue, in my opinion, comes from one thing: ignorance. American audiences have very little interest in researching other cultures, even those of Europe. If it's Japanese and it's a horror game, it's Fatal Frame or Siren; no exception. Or it must be a visual novel, even though the teaser for Silent Hill F was done by one of Japan's most important animation studios.
Bringing up any of the well informed arguments you've made usually ends in predictably misguided assertions about any number of things, from what mental health looks like to superficial characteristics of David Lynch's filmography. Silent Hill deserves so much more than this, and so do the developers and artists involved.
So, this is an outsiders perception; the only things I know about Silent Hill are things I've gathered from other people talking about it. I've never played the games or read the books or anything like that. I was under the impression that there is a regular town of Silent Hill that people live in and it's just a normal place. Then there's the "other" Silent Hill...the bad Silent Hill that exists separate from time and space. And it's that other version that can reach out and find you, no matter where you are. I was also under the impression that you needed some kind of loose connection to the town for it to have this power over you, that even a deep ancestral connection to the land was enough for its tendrils to find you. After some new media came out about SH I think I'm wrong on this, though; you can be a "stranger" to the town and it can come after you.
However, beyond all that, I just assumed the town is something primordial, more a force of nature than an actual place. It has its own reasoning and internal logic no human is privy to. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it from functioning the way it does. It is more a lifeform simply existing in the way it must, like everything else alive must do what it does to survive. The predator and prey can't simply choose to exist in some other way...we eat and are eaten and that is just how things are ordered to be. So too does Silent Hill perform the functions it must lest it cease to exist. I'm not entirely sure the town-as-an-entity is even necessarily malevolent or has some sort of desire system that drives it to hurt people on purpose. I get the feeling it's just...being. It simply functions the way it does for unknown reasons and it doesn't have particular hard feelings toward the people caught in the snare.
@@ChristopherSadlowski Don't worry, I'm not interested in judging anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to play the games and I feel it's become all too common as of late. I quite appreciate what you said, because it touches on something crucial, I feel; Silent Hill is less about location and more about its objectivity. Jean-Paul Sartre refers to a concept called "thrownness", or the overwhelming force of life itself, while Camus defined it as "absurdity". Some people similarly believe it to be Lovecraftian, but I personally dislike that implication because it's far more abstract than that. Silent Hill is for me removed from a sense of morality, as you said, and instead functions as both a material and immaterial characterization of this dissonance between human consciousness and the human definition of existence.
You won't hear many people talking about this because, frankly, most people aren't interested in the philosophical aspects of Silent Hill; your average person probably isn't, either. But to me, that's what makes Silent Hill significant, and while this is simply my interpretation as an artist, it's why I don't care where it comes from. In fact, I believe such ambiguity would only strengthen the profundity of Silent Hill as an IP. Being alive is frightening enough in its implications if you think of how little control we actually have in our birth and in our death, and when you consider how existentialists such as Nietzsche drew much of their philosophies from Buddhism, it would only make sense that such an indescribable idea would feel right at home in the atomic aftermath of one of humanity's most horrifying atrocities.
what a GREAT video. i'm so happy i'm subscribed. that was an amazing watch. i enjoy the two series a lot and i think you did a great job explaining the differences you see. i'm excited to see what silent hill ƒ will turn out to be. thank you for the video~
You're welcome! I'm also really excited to see what it becomes :D
I think the distinctions you've laid out between the games are very well expressed, and I (for the most part) agree. However, I find I can't help but recoil at the expressions that Fatal Frame is "unrealistic", "overly romanticized", or the implication that death is -in fact- a tragedy (and nothing else). I think the beauty of art is that people can resonate so deeply with it, because, deep down, we all know there is some mysterious truth to it. I think the beauty of Fatal Frame is that it **is** the kind of art the defies what we **think** we know, and dares to paint something we've decided is "tragic" in a more beautiful light, and asks "is this wrong?" To which many can't say "no".
It's certainly romantic, but I would not say it's unrealistic.
I don't know that it's unrealistic, but it is in comparison to SH; there's still certainly some realism there, SH is just so heavily realistic in style by comparison, it feels very different.
honestly, I am so pumped about Silent Hill F , if it would feel like fatal Frame as well , then we're getting a resurrection of two games at the same time - hell yeah!
So glad you made this.
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it
@@thegamingmuseyou’re welcome.
Fatal Frame? Shouldn't it be Siren (Forbidden Siren), it's like Silent Hill in Japan, but with Outlast mechanics of stealth and out maneuvering stalkers. But in Japan horror story telling.
Right? It feels like Forbidden Siren through vibes.
I think both games will be similar just because they will share the same folklore roots which is good and new for the SH franchise. In fact, F will be probably the only new Silent Hill game worthy of play.
The whole talk of the concept of ero-guro made me remember the time I somehow befriended some ero-guro artists and much to my surprise, they were the nicest guys I've ever met and usually spoke about random things like Azur Lane or tokusatsu, I noticed that many of them are fond of the movie species.
It's not really a surprise. Junji ito is one of the nicest guys out there, and he's drawn some super fucked up shit.
Did you ever ask them why they drew ero guro ?
@@danialyousaf6456 if I remember correctly they found the topic fascinating
@@darkroninmarvel thanks for replying, and that's kind of an understandable, yet underwhelming reason lol
Hm, "Species". That's not really surprising given this context...
I mean, yeah, I immediately thought of Fatal Frame because it was visually similar. But I think that says more about the absence of high end horror games with distinctly Japanese sensibilities.
Not to knock indie horror as it was a godsend that revived the genre, but there have been so many SH2 imitators and that even a Fatal Frame clone would be a refreshing change of pace even if it was true.
Thank you for all your SH content, Muse. Relaxing and chilling at the same time!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy it :D
I think some gamers have a bad habit of comparing games just because of a few elements. No doubt they didn't really give the comparison between 'Fatal Frame' and 'Silent Hill F' much thought other than it takes place in Japan.
I mean Silent Hill is the Nemesis of Resident Evil while Fatal Frame belongs in it own art category
I spent my teenage years inside my room playing theses games and never thought that maybe I was obssessed with death, that I wanted to understand it somehow much more than had words to put into question as to why that was. I needed closure for the feelings of inadequacy I had and travelled terrifying worlds to search for the answers of those unspoken questions helped me become braver, stronger and daring. Made my art style more interestng, made me standout in some stances. I'm grateful for that.
love this tysm
Thanks for making this Muse! You're 100% right. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse and Maiden of black water really hammer home your points as well. While FF4 is set in a western-style hospital, which is a common silent hill area, they don't MEAN the same thing. In Silent Hill, the hospital sets the tone that there is a sickness here. A sickness so prevalent even the place that cures sickness is ruined by it. But in FF4 the western hospital is meant to echo a mask. It's a place that's new, shiny and Western, built to hide something old, taboo and Eastern when it shouldn't have been hidden at all. As you said, it's a story of the Japanese past and its influence.
FF5 is very similar to FF3 in it's tone. It's very literally romanticized version of death. Death is heavily equated with eternity, therefore love and marriage after death is a love that lasts eternity. In FF5, characters want to die. In order to feel loved. Which is fundamentally at odds with Silent Hill where love is living. People fight to save the ones they love from death. The struggle to deal with their love after death. Which is a theme still carried by new entries.
In short- the further you go down the lines of both games, the more and more your point rings true. One is an ancient ghost story of romance, the other is a tragedy of the human mind.
Fatal Frame the Characters sacrifice themselves for a better tomorrow while Silent Hill is for control
Honestly, you deserve much more raise 🙌 single handedly deliver some of the best video essays and analysis about Silent Hill and other JP horror titles ❤
Keep up the good work 👏
Something that I hear a lot from silent hill analysts is that silent hill was a game that was set in America based on Japanese interpretation. This made the game very strange and unique. Setting it in Japan loses that strange mixed of culture that was beloved by fans. Another thing is the lore. Why is silent hill in Japan, when it's a town in America?
There's no reason they can't continue to try and blend west and east in this game set in Japan, since there's been a lot of blending of our cultures after all (especially during the WW2 era). I honestly believe this is an attempt to bring the series home and make it appeal more to Japanese people in particular because (as I've covered in other videos in depth) the series never took off in Japan after the first one, and the fanbase is tiny compared to the western audience. I'm curious to see what they do, and since they're obviously also still having western devs work on the series, there's no loss there either.
@@thegamingmuse I agree. It's what I hear a lot from other people and that's why sone people aren't happy.
The difference is that Silent hill is about circumcision and Fatal frame isn’t. /s
Please make a video on the latest controversies of the remake! I feel like your voice on this needs to be heard now more than ever! It’s as you once said years ago, this is your job. So please be consistent with all the drama and updates as possible. I feel like I’m the only one who’s sees the full picture here.
I honestly think it's kind of silly for a game that hasn't been released and has only a few trailers to have controversies. I've said my piece on the games, and now we wait until its released to see what it will be like. I'm not interested in the extreme over reactive drama some folks like to indulge in.
SH fans: we want a Japanese SH!
*Konami gives them SHTSM and SHf
SH fans : ☹️
I’d wager because most wanted a Kojima delToro Silent Hill.
@@Urzalyri swear. the kind of "fans" that came after the PT demo, fueled the toxicity in the SH community even more.
@@Urzalyr I love Kojima but if the SH fans hated the Western games because they were different, they would HATE Silent Hills because one thing for sure: it would be NOTHING like the first 3 games.
@@Bike-chanI unfortunately agree. I miss the days of the "circumcision" guy 😅😢
@@ancientandbored I am more of a SH4 person.
Te quiero mucho, Muse. Tus videos me alivian la vida y en serio te admiro mucho. Eres, verdaderamente, mi referencia principal cuando se trata de Silent Hill. ❤🎉
Y'wanna know what game this video made me think of? Final Fantasy X. The way it merges eastern and western cultures is beautiful
My favorite game of all time! I have a few videos on it though not as many as SH/FF.
And silent hill did inspire the creators of fatal frame series. Thanks for the video and your perspective.
If you haven't read it, there's a lovely dual interview with FF and SH directors where they talk about that, it's really fun. fftranslations.atspace.co.uk/other/denfami.html
@@thegamingmuse thank you for sharing this interview it was very informative!
This may sound bizarre but I've just had the realisation that most of, if not all of my views and perspectives on death and mortality aren't traditionally western (I'm Australian) and a LOT of things are starting to click into place. I grew up playing these games, especially Silent Hill, and I didn't come from a religious family. My views and thoughts are culturally different from the place I live and the people in it and I honestly think that epiphany in itself is going to help me better understand myself psychologically. You may not even read this comment, but thank you, truly. Without your passion I may never have realised this on my own.
I remember when Short Message came out and people said that the game isn't Silent Hill unless it's set in the specific town or its surrounding locale
I think it could be somewhat similar to when they cry, you know, same writer, similar time line, setting, same country...
::sits at his desk::
::opens his notebook::
I don't know shit about either of these games, but I'm ready to learn...
I agree with you on silent hill f im very curious to see what they are cooking up it does sound interesting
How can people say it will be Fatal Frame clone, when SH f wont have what make fatal frame, well fatal frame...the camera mechanic
I'm shocked only the first few entries of each series were referenced in this video. Both SH and FF continued after their third game, and I believe both moved away from some of their more rigid attributes.
To be honest, I felt like continuing to compare the entire series would be a little repetitive at some point, and I can't fully compare them as I haven't played the entire FF series. But I will definitely be making more in depth discussion videos about both series in the future.
muse you are a beacon of rationality in the negativity surrounding silent hill at present. for the reasons youve pointed out, these comparisons are pointless and baseless, and imo, at worst kind of racist. silent hill f is personally my most anticipated release of the new games, its an original entry in the series and higurashi is one of my most favourite horror stories of all time so when i saw ryukishi07 as the writer i lit up in excitement. keep up your amazing work
@@nettaraxy8815 Agreed, Muse is far more articulate than most creators concerned with Silent Hill, and they often go above and beyond to demonstrate their perspective. As you said, in this case it's absolutely racism, there is no question of that imo; "Silent Hill" is, after all, a translation of 静 Shizu and 岡 oka, a well known prefecture in Japan. It was theirs, and it always will be. I can't tell you how awful an experience it is to attempt any reasoning with people on the subreddit, not just for Silent Hill F, but the franchise as a whole. You could write a dissertation and it would make no difference when personal biases outweigh morality or common sense. Anyway, glad there are others that feel the same; Silent Hill continues to be a huge part of why I became an artist and I find myself incredibly disappointed with what its discussion has become.
I think it's really weird
Like, even if it was similar, so what
The trailer is sooooo cool
YOOO WAKE UP NEW VID FROM TGM WHHOOO🔥💖
I really like this type of content
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it :D
I'm actually very interested in seeing a SH game that is taking place in their country. Even I want to know what the gameplay is gonna be like for SHF.
If your speculation about this SH game is correct, and it is invoking themes of nuclear warfare and the aftermath, it creates a really interesting potential clash of Western and Japanese ideas and storytelling.
Not to mention, Silent Hill has spread beyond the town before, with SH5. If it can spread to another town, why not another continent? The ideas and beliefs are what feed and propagate the Silent Hill Otherworld, and that makes for some interesting commentary, given Japan's historic isolation trying to prevent Western ideas from corrupting its culture .
Probably nothing bigger than "Silent HIll used to take place in American Stephen King environments, now it's Japanese environments and I don't vibe with those as much as I do US environments". At least in terms of quality having Ryukichi07 on board speaks volumes in terms of instilling confidence in a product over what they've been doing with it lately. I followed a Let's Play of the TV show and that was... well, it was certainly an experience, not just a very good one.
ANd I guess that could also contribute to the salt: people want a return to form and rise in quality, to feel like they did when they first played Silent Hill 2. And now the game that looks like it has the biggest chance of doing that has a brand new environment and aesthetiqe than what they liked about Silent Hills traditional looks, and gamers never handled change very well. Which I realize has very little to do with your video on what the story and themes of these respective games are, but alas: I'm afraid it was never about something as deep as the story and themes. It's just vibes, all the way down.
I'm so late to the Fatal Frame party, but it's skyrocketed to my favorite game series. I would love a new Fatal Frame game. If it's VR, even better.
The trailer had me thinking of Fatal frame for a few seconds. The old Japanese houses, then the doll. But after that, clearly not in any way a Fatal Frame game.
That said, I'm gonna ignore the 'Silent Hill' title and try to judge it on its own, because I liked the trailer in general
There is a "first person" version of Fatal Frame, even if it's not exactly VR... someone with some emulating/hacking experience could maybe make the game play that way lol. Fatal Frame 2 on Xbox has a first person mode.
I kinda wonder why the covers were chosen for these titles. What spoke to them that says the name of the game.
You should still make videos on the Clock Tower, Parasite Eve and MediEvil games. They're worth it
If is like fatal frame or Kuon... oh boy, its gonna be amazing!
Isn't the baby Henry saved in SH1 a part of Sheryl/Alyssa? So I wouldn't say he lost Sheryl but more so she was reincarnated into the girl we know as Heather. Cause Heather is Sheryl just reincarnated
I watched this whole video and enjoyed it i have absolutely no life 😭
Brilliant video Muse!
Silent Hill isn’t equal to Project Zero they are very different.
Good day to you all 👋🏽
You have more than 3 minutes of black silence at the end.
Literally the whole of 20th century European modernism was concerned with narrative ambiguity, from which Japan's post-war creative elites took huge inspiration. Japanese folktales, by comparison are pretty straightforward. Great video but like many Western commentators, you try to mystify the East too much.
Folktales are folktales, novels are different. I'm not trying to 'mystify' the east, I'm trying to show the different ways we tell stories. Of course, there's a lot of blending because west has influenced east and vice versa, but that doesn't erase the trends that exist. Think about Junji Ito, or Koji Suzuki, etc. - compared to works like Stephen King or Clive Barker, which are more likely to have an inworld explanation for events, Ito and Suzuki leave everything ambiguous. We rarely know the 'why' of events, or at least some part of the larger narrative is left mysterious. Very different compared to, say, The Mist telling us the monsters are just animals from another reality.
@@thegamingmuse thanks, appreciate the thorough reply. Though I'm still not convinced the West = straight narrative, East = narrative ambiguity thing holds up e.g. Cronenberg and Lynch would be a closer comparison respectively to Ito and Suzuki than King and Barker. But I'm nitpicking a small point here. The video as a whole was great.
big question you think silent hill should have gone into a anthology direction
Well, in a way it did. It's not completely divorced from each entry but each one can pretty much stand on its own, besides 3; though as a teen I played 3 before 1 and it still really resonated with me, so I think to an extent the series kinda is like that.
@@thegamingmuseno I mean full anthology like every story stand on it own without the town dang even the name silent hill have give it a anthology vibe
this video has got me thinking…imagine a fatal frame game set in a midwestern american town 🇺🇸
It would definitely have real different vibes xD
Wouldn't a Japanese set Silent Hill be more similar to Forbidden Siren? Forbidden Siren was actually made by a portion of the developers that made Silent Hill.
I personally feel like a SH game in Japan would be more like Siren
Fatal Frame and Silent Hill F being similar is very odd, I can think of several other games that fit much better as a "similarity". Weird.
Girl, thanks, you are brilliant. I am gay so this is not coming from teenage hormones. I sincerely enjoy hearing your perspective and I find quite enticing your analysis so keep it on! Chapeau!
There are lots of Christian’s in Japan so that symbolism still works there too. You could use Christian symbolism in every continent in the world.
Christianity has a pretty unique history in Japan too, and that's not even touching on the USA/Japan history during and immediately after WW2. I think people are underestimating the interesting possibilities we could have here.
@@thegamingmuse and the eastern perspective on western culture, could be mirrored in this game creating a new dichotomy. And contrast is silent hills thing!
People gotta slow the impulse to IMMEDIATELY compare games as soon as they are announced. It really bothers me . At least wait til you have more information. and .. yeah two survival horror games taking place in japan will have some similarities. but people will see one similarity and be like ' oh my god they copied'. Not saying there's not carbon copies out there in the world, obviously.
I think it looks more like siren!!
Given how much Silent Hill has always been a Japanese interpretation of the states, honestly, this '1Ts cH@nG3d!!1!" makes less sense. I mean, there's a thesis paper in how one culture views the other through a new media but it hardly changes the whole work.
Te amo
Fatal Frame is about a camera that hurt ghosts, Silent Hill is not, are these people stupid or something? Where are they getting this comparison from?
We already have Silent Hill in Japan and it's called Siren. I like the people involved in F, but I'm not happy about the change of country, not one bit
Seems silly. We're still getting western Silent Hill games, and we don't really even know much about this one. It could turn out to be amazing.
I Love Japanese Girls ❤
Nope, Silent Hill f (pronounced "Forte", not "Ehff") is part of the "Silent Hill" franchise. It will play like Silent Hill. Nice try grasping at invisible straws during a one minute teaser with no in-game footage.
You clearly didn't watch the video did you?
To the ones who talk negatively about silent Hill f you are fools
Your most points are wrong and also the definition of west is debated just google it..I cant explain everything here but I will say this that japanese culture can be adopted by U.S Game developers into their own culture , it has already been done with F.E.A.R 2005 and The Ring 2002 (Starting with) with a slight distinction , can and has been set in countryside and its not always about sexy body japanese culture gaming or else..Sexiness is in U.S gaming as well etc. I am not saying that silent hill and fatal frame are the same..not at all , but other than that. While shinto and christianity difference will always be there but things can be adopted as much as it can be. U.S embraces japanese cultues and games there are gamers in US for japanese games has grown since mid to late 90's.
I'm not sure you understood my point since that's not really related to the thesis at all.
@@thegamingmuse I do understand that is why I said I am not relating fatal frame to silent hill at all. My comment is very clear for what I have to say. I argued few points that felt was wrong.
fatal frame never ran through my mind watching this trailer...and I'm a huge fatal frame fan
Honestly, you deserve much more raise 🙌 single handedly deliver some of the best video essays and analysis about Silent Hill and other JP horror titles ❤
Keep up the good work 👏
Thank you, thats very kind of you