Woo, time to see how many gooners are actually on lemmy.

The modern “video game essay” format came out of people on the Something Awful forums who were REALLY into Silent Hill. It was Japanese style horror in a Western setting with a lot of fairly heavy themes and implications so it was the perfect confluence of weebing out and “it is dark so it is deep” level discourse. And what started as people writing thousands of word arguments for what the shovel being at an 80 degree angle in that shed meant became people making 60 minute youtubes on what it meant that Heather ALSO saw the titty nurses and how it represents her repressed lesbian urges. And 3 hour videos about Pyramid Head that would make even Freud roll his eyes.

And… basically all of the later Silent Hill games REALLY sucked. The Room has its defenders but pretty much everything after that is universally panned and with good reason. Up until last year-ish with the remake of 2.

Which was a different kind of shitstorm. Because now you had all these essayists who were The Keepers Of Silent Hill lore (one of the most famous ones wrote her master’s thesis on SH2 I want to say?) seeing the greatest of the games being remade. And by fucking Bloober team? Pretty much every essayist had keyed in that Bloober have some very questionable themes in some of their games. Uhm… trigger warnings but

spoiler

Bloober at least used to really like the trope of “The only way to stop this great evil infecting you is to kill yourself and it with you” and “They were a victim of abuse and should be pitied even as they perpetuated the cycle”. That are both, fairly unarguably, shitty mindsets but are also horror tropes going back literally centuries

So it was the mix of “This is MY game and MY story and how dare they change it” combined with “Also they picked the bogeymen that I hated on so hard last year that I could buy a car”.

And then… Bloober kind of made a masterpiece? Like, most of their changes are fairly loved/appreciated and everyone but the most hardcore of the SH2 Video Essayists loved it.

But now we have Silent Hill f that very much DOES feel like a cash in and a way to make a Fatal Frame but with a more marketable IP. But also… Fatal Frame fucked hard?

Either way? The most important thing ever is to never stop saying that Silent Hill (the town) is really smokey because it was built on top of a coal mine that caught fire and has been smouldering for decades. That is some real Silent Hill fan lore that not many people know but is really cool to share.