Having recently been introduced to the Silent Hill series, the more psychological/Lynchian horror series compared Resident Evil's action-horror theatrics, via the SH2 remake, I've been curious about the series and other entries within it.
While Silent Hill f released only a... few months ago, I think, they already have the next game in the series announced an apparently coming out this year. Townfall, like f, takes place in a different town, this time a place called St. Amelia, which is a remote fishing town on the east coast of Scotland (there was a little documentary about the studio, Screen Burn, which is based in Glasgow, going out on road trips to real towns to base St. Amelia on, including a shot in-game that perfectly replicates one harbor-side street in a real town).
In the trailer, we're given some obscure hints at the plot: Simon Ordell is told by a woman that he can't stay in "that room" forever, and he resolves to return to St. Amelia to "set things right." He seems to wake up in the water, climbing onto a pier in the town. One thing that's particularly notable about Simon (while the game is from a first-person perspective, we'll evidently see him in cutscenes) is that he has an IV tube in his left hand, a needle sticking into the veins, and a hospital bracelet.
If I may do so, I know this series is all about its big plot twists, and my immediate thought was that Simon might be in a coma - that the exhortation for him to not "stay in this room forever" might have referred to a hospital room. Is he kind of astrally projecting to St. Amelia, then? Just putting this here in case I'm proven right.
The game makes a few changes to the formula: the action is in first person, as mentioned before. There's also a curious change to the classic Silent Hill radio. In this case, you actually have a portable television (for those kids who don't remember life before smart phones, there was a time when you could have a really crappy little TV that you could walk around with that had a tiny screen). One of the game mechanics is that you can tune the CRTV, as they're calling it, and at certain frequencies, you'll be able to detect monsters.
Among the monsters you encounter, we've seen a weird axe-headed creature wandering around. I couldn't tell if it was simply because of the perspective, but this might have been an enemy we see Simon fighting off with a thick bit of wood, though the creature looked mostly like a Lying Figure from SH2 to me (I think it might just be that if the axe-head were straight on it would be hard to see in the brief shots of it). Another monster of some sorts seems to pull its chest open, to reveal a snaking medical tube and needle, the kind used to draw blood (or, you know, to put an IV in).
From the dialogue, Simon sounded American to me, but that might have just been from a small sample size. The other character we hear is definitely British (though English, I think, rather than Scottish).
Anyway, it seems pretty cool.
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