Silent Hill f Sets Its Sights on Bloober’s Benchmark — But Can NeoBards Stick the Landing?

Why This Announcement Actually Matters

This caught my attention because Silent Hill is at a crossroads. After The Short Message’s mixed reception and the collective eye-roll at Ascension, Konami is effectively saying: the Bloober Team Silent Hill 2 remake is the bar, and everything from here must meet it. At Gamescom, series producer Motoi Okamoto and director Al-Yang didn’t duck the criticism-they owned it-and then pointed all eyes toward Silent Hill f, the series’ first full pivot to Japan with a new era, new protagonist, and a heavier focus on gameplay and combat.

• Konami pegs the Silent Hill 2 remake as the “quality benchmark” for all future entries, including f.
• Silent Hill f moves the action to Ebisugaoka, Japan, several decades in the past, led by developer NeoBards.
• Expect fresh approaches to setting, gameplay, and combat-without drifting into “soulslike” territory.
• The team acknowledges The Short Message’s criticisms and says f must meet higher expectations.

Breaking Down the Announcement

Okamoto and Yang laid it out plainly: “As part of the reboot of the Silent Hill series, we decided to create many various types of experiences… Our approach is that Silent Hill 2 is the benchmark for quality, and all future titles, including Silent Hill f, are made to meet that quality benchmark.” That’s a strong line in the sand after The Short Message’s on-the-nose storytelling and Ascension’s awkward experiment. The message is: variety is okay; inconsistency isn’t.

They also admit the pressure: “We do definitely feel a lot of pressure to follow in the footsteps of the quality of Silent Hill 2, [but] we need to take some new steps… This is where the setting, the gameplay, and combat come into play.” Translation for players: f won’t be a museum piece. Konami wants it to feel new, not just respectable.

Why This Matters Now

Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake reminded everyone why this series carved such a deep groove into horror gaming—oppressive atmosphere, ruthless intimacy, and psychological scar tissue you can’t scrub off. While the remake drew debate over tone and sheen, it delivered a functional, modern package that newcomers could actually play, and Konami clearly likes the response enough to set it as the standard.

Silent Hill f, meanwhile, is the bold swing. Ebisugaoka isn’t the fog-choked American Rust Belt; it’s mid-20th-century Japan, a cultural pivot that brings a different flavor of dread. The protagonist, Hinako, is a teenage girl who can actually handle herself in a fight—a notable shift from the series’ “barely coping” combat DNA. The devs stress it’s not a soulslike (good), but when a Silent Hill game starts talking up “combat moves,” my alarm bells ping. The magic of SH has always been vulnerability, not empowerment.

The Real Story Behind NeoBards Taking the Wheel

NeoBards isn’t a random pick. The studio has spent years co-developing horror-adjacent projects with Capcom—think Resident Evil remakes support work and asymmetric experiments—so they know their way around modern pipelines, performance capture, and third-person combat frameworks. That’s encouraging for production quality. But the Silent Hill litmus test isn’t just tech; it’s thematic cohesion. Can they thread symbolism, trauma, and surrealism into a coherent, unsettling whole without Masahiro Ito’s creature touch guiding the way? That’s the leap.

One promising angle: Silent Hill f has been associated with writer Ryukishi07 (of When They Cry fame), whose specialty is psychological spirals and folk-horror dread. If that DNA carries through, the shift to Japan could feel purposeful rather than gimmicky—rituals, social pressure, and history weaponized into personal hells. That’s the kind of “new challenge” that fits Silent Hill’s soul.

What Gamers Need to Know

• Tone over tech: The bar isn’t just visuals; it’s whether f lands the gut-punch themes and oppressive mood SH is known for.
• Combat with restraint: If Hinako’s moveset exists to create dynamic vulnerability (scrambling, stalling, desperate improvisation), great. If it turns into power fantasy, it’s off-brand.
• New setting, same rot: Moving to Ebisugaoka has to do more than swap fog for sakura. The town needs its own rot—cultural, historical, personal—that gnaws at the player.
• Consistency across the “reboot”: With Townfall still looming and The Short Message in the rearview, Konami needs coherence. Using SH2 remake as a baseline helps, but f must stand on its own.

My Read on the Risks and the Upside

I’m cautiously hyped. The idea of Silent Hill refracted through Japanese mid-century anxieties is fresh, and NeoBards has the production chops to deliver a polished game. I’m also wary: emphasizing combat and “trying new challenges” is exactly how past entries wandered off the psychological path and into generic horror. The absence of Masahiro Ito means the monsters need to earn their symbolism, not just look cool in a trailer. Get the metaphor wrong, and it’s just gore with homework.

But if f marries Ryukishi07’s slow-burn cruelty with a playable, modern framework that still leaves you feeling small and unsafe, it could be the most interesting Silent Hill in years. That’s the promise hidden in Konami’s talking points—and the benchmark Bloober’s remake, for all its compromises, put back within reach.

TL;DR

Konami says Silent Hill 2 remake is the quality floor now, and Silent Hill f has to clear it while pushing into new territory—Japan, a different era, and a more capable lead. If NeoBards balances fresh combat ideas with true psychological rot, we’re in for something special. If not, it’s another stylish detour from what makes Silent Hill unforgettable.