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Of all the Silent Hill projects currently in development–and there are a lot, as we’ll detail further down in this article–the one that is hardest to figure out is Silent Hill Ascension. With only a reveal trailer to go off of, even fans paying close attention likely have several questions about what kind of game it’s going to be. This answer, and others, are a bit hazy as of now, but not without some context clues. Here’s everything we know so far about Silent Hill Ascension.
Silent Hill Ascension release date
When the experience was revealed, it didn’t come with a specific release date, but it was announced for 2023. However, as we’ll explain, it may not have just a single release date anyway.
What is Silent Hill Ascension?
Silent Hill Ascension is not a traditional video game, though it is an interactive experience. It may not even launch on consoles and PC, though it may be viewable on those platforms one way or another. These are questions we don’t yet have answers to. What we do know is that Ascension is a MILE, or massively interactive live event. MILEs are transmedia interactive experiences that, historically, have come from a number of different teams, but all operate on the foundational cloud technology from Genvid Technologies.
The most recent MILE is The Walking Dead: Last Mile, which ran exclusively on Facebook for several months in 2022. MILEs can have varying degrees of gameplay and no two MILEs operate all that similarly, other than their main commonality being the way the hybrid game-series unfolds in real-time with audience participation.
For Last Mile, this meant players doing minigames, making story decisions as a group, and tuning into the experience as the virtual characters often lived out their lives largely on autopilot. It’s not yet known what the interactive elements of Silent Hill Ascension will look like, though rumors of a companion app for at least one of the new Silent Hill games seem to tie in best with this one.
The short version of understanding what a MILE is arguably Tomagatchi plus Telltale plus Twitch Plays. There will likely be interactive elements and some hands-on experiences, but other parts of the series will unfold on its own, and players can elect to spectate and/or participate, or not. It may well also be episodic, though this has yet to be confirmed.
Past MILEs have often been totally free, as in not even including any in-game purchases. This is because they were on Facebook, a platform that is already free and exists by selling ad space and showing them to MILE participants. We don’t yet know whether Silent Hill Ascension will be free like these, and if it’s not free, whether or not it will even be sold in stores. One could fathom it being more like a subscription or one-time purchase on a mobile app.
Who is making Silent Hill Ascension?
Alongside Genvid, which provides the cloud infrastructure to allow the series to be experienced by potentially many thousands of players or more at a time, Ascension’s art and sound design is led by Bad Robot, JJ Abrams’ production company. Though the company has created several well-known properties, 2004’s Lost is perhaps its most beloved.
Also involved in the project is Behaviour Interactive and DJ2 Entertainment. The former is best known for Dead By Daylight, while the latter, though lesser known, is “a feature film, television and digital content production company specializing in video-game-to-TV/Motion-Picture adaptations,” according to its website.
Trailers
We’ve seen just one trailer for Silent Hill Ascension since it was revealed, and it doesn’t exactly clarify things much better than we’ve tried above for those who may be MILE-uninitiated. In it, we see characters texting back and forth–perhaps representative of the real-life players who will be tuning in–as they panic over the arrival of a monstrous threat.
That threat is then shown, albeit cloaked in shadows, and appears almost medieval except for the silhouette of a very inhuman head. It’s pretty gnarly and decidedly different from past Silent Hill monsters, though its metallic armwear is vaguely reminiscent of Pyramid Head’s rusty, uh, hat?
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Other upcoming Silent Hill projects
If you’re looking for a different Silent Hill project–or even all of them currently in the works–here’s a quick rundown:
Silent Hill 2 is being remade from the ground up by Bloober Team (Layers of Fear, The Medium) and will come to PS5 first for a period of exclusivity. Silent Hill Townfall is a likely smaller project from the horror legends at No Code (Observation, Stories Untold). Silent Hill F is a new mainline entry from a studio that has aided Capcom on several Resident Evil games. For something outside of games, Silent Hill 2 is also being adapted into a movie–the third movie in the series. It’s an exciting time to be a Silent Hill fan.
