A Silent Hill revival has been long overdue, but at long last, one is finally now in the works- and it’s going to take several different forms. In addition to the next mainline instalment in the series with Silent Hill f and other significant releases in Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake and Annapurna Interactive’s Silent Hill: Townfall, Konami is also collaborating with Genvid Entertainment on Silent Hill: Ascension, which can only be described as a mix between a cinematic adventure game and a streaming series.
Combining elements from both kinds of experiences in what’s shaping up to be a unique take on Silent Hill, Ascension has looked promising in what’s been shown of it so far- though of course, there’s still plenty that we don’t know about it, from how its “gameplay” (so to speak) will function, what its focus on community-driven storytelling will look like, or even what its streaming schedule is going to be. To get the answers to all of this and more, we recently reached out to Genvid Entertainment with a few of our biggest questions about Silent Hill: Ascension. Below, you can read our interview with Genvid CEO Jacob Navok.
"We started by asking what story would we want to watch, and how would we want the audience to have agency in that story? What decisions could be meaningful for you as a viewer? How could we incorporate the concept of multiple endings similar to the games?"
The Silent Hill franchise has been dormant for a long time, and being part of the group that will well and truly revive such a beloved series is no easy task. What motivated the idea to develop Silent Hill: Ascension as something that’s so unique not only to the franchise, but really, to the medium as a whole, especially on this scale?
I started this company seven years ago to build massively interactive live events (MILEs), a format that enables millions of people to interact together. I was deeply inspired by Twitch Plays Pokemon, Reddit Place, and other concepts where communities came together for a purpose. The last few years we’ve produced several hit experiences like The Walking Dead: Last Mile and PAC-MAN Community, but I wanted to explore the horror genre.
There have been two ways to experience Silent Hill historically. The first and most common was as an individual playing a single player game. The second is the films, at home or in theaters with others as an audience. There’s a reason that horror is one of the few genres that still drives people to go to theaters – it is fun to be scared together when it comes to watching entertainment. I look to Jordan Peele’s successes here.
Thus, we started by asking what story would we want to watch, and how would we want the audience to have agency in that story? What decisions could be meaningful for you as a viewer? How could we incorporate the concept of multiple endings similar to the games?
Was there any pushback for the idea of delivering a story that, in spite of being so heavily community-driven, will be part of the official Silent Hill canon?
Konami Digital Entertainment loved and supported the idea because they wanted to explore bold, new ideas. The Silent Hill community loves dissecting lore, and revels in debates over the meaning of certain events from the games. Therefore, what’s better than to have this community come together and decide on a canon?
Community-driven storytelling is at the heart of the story in Silent Hill: Ascension, and you’ve spoken about a number of ways that will be possible, whether or not someone is watching live. Can you talk about how these key decision moments will be distributed in that sense? Will the majority of key decisions be reserved for live premieres in order to encourage live viewings?
Every decision will be available for a minimum of 24 hours, in some cases longer (if it’s an important one), prior to a live viewing. We know that people are busy, and many will not be able to make it to the live viewing. We want to give an easy window for people to come in, scan the decisions available, and participate, without being obligated to come to a specific time. Watching will be better live, it’s more fun live, and there are several things you can only do live. But you don’t have to be there live, and once the decision result airs, you can watch the VOD on your own like you would an episode of television.
However, the decisions are not a voting system. Voting systems are one person, one vote. Here, the more you participate, the more leverage you’ll have in decisions. There are puzzles to solve and quick time events to engage in. It’s this mix of interactions that together influence the story.
"Konami Digital Entertainment loved and supported the idea because they wanted to explore bold, new ideas. The Silent Hill community loves dissecting lore, and revels in debates over the meaning of certain events from the games. Therefore, what’s better than to have this community come together and decide on a canon?"
How significantly will the story be impacted by the community’s actions and decisions? You’ve said that even you don’t know how it’s going to end, but given the fact that you do know about the potential ways it could end, can you tell us what level of branching we can expect?
Each story branch has 2-3 choices, and the most important are decisions that are connected to a character’s fate: Redemption, Suffering and Damnation. Each fate will also have alive/dead states, and there are multiple main characters each of which can be in a different configuration (e.g. Redeemed but dead, Suffering but alive) by the end of the story. Because of the number of characters, the number of configurations, and the number of different ways that mix together, there are hundreds of potential ways that the series could end. There’s a small chance the audience can save all of the characters, but I think it is highly unlikely.
Many times people think all the characters will just die because the audience is going to troll, but we know from having run multiple products that this is not true. Audiences always try to get the best outcome for characters, and those audience members who want the best outcomes greatly outweigh the trolls. On one of our previous projects, The Walking Dead: Last Mile, the VP of Creative at Skybound, Shawn Kittelsen, stated that the project renewed his faith in humanity because the audience always chose to have characters live.
If you think about games, when you die, you get a game over and have to start again. To “win” the game is to live to the end. Most people think that the “best” ending is the one where all the characters survive, and I think the audiences are going to default to that direction. (Though to be clear, for us, all endings are equally good.)
It’s our job to make the experience fair, to ensure that the audience’s true intentions are shown, and also deal with the trolls. But our job is also to make it difficult to just have everyone survive. We are purposely designing the choices so the choice you want the character to make may not lead to the outcome you desire for them, and we will be exposing these systems so the audience can see that there is no black box.
You’ve talked in the past about how you’ve had to write Silent Hill: Ascension’s story around multiple central protagonists sharing equal importance, because you don’t know whether or not a character will survive the events of the story, given that it’s all player/viewer-driven. What has the writing process been like with that in mind? How challenging has it been to write a story that can account for this level of narrative branching while still feeling cohesive regardless of what path it takes?
We have a huge, talented team of writers, many of whom were ex-Telltale. Our Chief Creative Officer, Stephan Bugaj, was technical director at Pixar for 12 years. He worked on Wall-E, Incredibles, Ratatouille, Cars, etc. He was also Studio Creative Director at Telltale, and was Chief Creative Officer at DJ2, the studio that made the Sonic movies. He has been leading the charge here.
Our Creative Director on the project, Martin Montgomery, was also at Telltale, having worked on their Walking Dead series, Tales from the Borderlands, and more. He also ran creative for Runeterra at Riot. Our lead writer, Shanon Ingles, and our Director of Production, Shiaw-Ling Lai, are also ex-Telltale, as are several of the writers.
Finally, I should note that the creative consultant at Bad Robot Games who edited the story and co-wrote the trailer with Shanon was Antony Johnston, the writer for Resident Evil: Village and also worked on Dead Space. He is the only person in the world who has worked on those three franchises.
People who can do great interactive writing are rare. Writing a story and writing compelling story decisions are not the same so we have leaned on people with games experience.
It was also important to us to tell a story for a global audience. This show is going to be streaming on Ascension.com among other places. We are going to be at the forefront of bringing the franchise to new people, many of whom will have never played the games before. We hope, through Silent Hill: Ascension, that they will become fans.
Finally, we wanted to be very careful with our depictions of what happens in the story, and respectful of both the diversity we’re putting into the storyline and how we deal with some of the difficult subjects. We brought in experts from around the world to help us ensure the stories are authentic and scary, but don’t lean into problematic tropes. We have women in key positions of production and story writing to help as well.
"Because of the number of characters, the number of configurations, and the number of different ways that mix together, there are hundreds of potential ways that the series could end. There’s a small chance the audience can save all of the characters, but I think it is highly unlikely."
What is the actual streaming schedule for Silent Hill: Ascension going to be? What cadence of new episode releases can we expect? And do you have plans for reruns after the first run where players/viewers could try and go through different choices to see how they would have played out?
There will be new content every day, new streams every day. Each should add up to an episode of content a week. If you join on Week 5, you can lean back and watch the previous week’s content like you would a TV show. But we will also have daily recaps that let you jump in and participate without that. After the canonical run ends, we’ll offer the alternative decision branches as a “What if?”. This will let the community work together to unlock what could have been, but the first run is canon.
Some players have wondered how Silent Hill: Ascension is going to be monetized, especially given the fact that it’s following a model that isn’t exactly common in the industry, and it’s not a paid or subscription-based release. Is that something you can give any details on?
We’ll share more on monetization at a later date, but it’s not subscription and it’s not fixed price. What I can add is that our #1 goal is accessibility – making sure as many people as possible can participate over trying to put a barrier to entry.
Silent Hill: Ascension is the product of a collaboration between several companies, including Genvid, Konami, and Behaviour, to name a few. What has that collaboration been like, and how have you shaped the development of the project around it?
Konami Digital Entertainment, as the franchise holder, has a distinct vision for how they want their IP to evolve. At the beginning of development, we were given a series of stipulations for what we could and could not do. We set about developing an initial vision for what we could do that would be unlike anything seen in horror entertainment, but we wanted access to the best talent to create the best show we could make. As a result, we brought in Bad Robot Games and Behaviour Interactive to help us realize that vision. Bad Robot Games is responsible for the stellar art and sound direction you have seen so far. They take their work on the project very seriously, setting the bar for what these creatures should look and sound like. Behaviour has designed the interactive components and sets. They have very distinct areas of responsibility and work together to deliver on the vision, and it’s been quite successful as a result.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention our collaboration with cEvin Key for the music. We were very excited when he agreed to come onboard and compose an entirely new, full soundtrack for the series.