With The Medium, Bloober Team added innovation by displaying the real world and the spirit world in a split-screen format, where players navigate both realms simultaneously, and this is a technique that future Silent Hill titles could certainly borrow from for a new approach to the series’ trademark horror. The Medium required a fairly powerful gaming PC, and its Xbox Series X/S version was among the first games that was not supported on the Xbox One as well. If Silent Hill were to step into the next generation, embracing the innovation of The Medium’s split screen, dual-worlds format could benefit the storied horror franchise.
[Warning – Spoilers for The Medium appear below.]
There are already connections between The Medium and the Silent Hill series. Composer Akira Yamoaka provided the score for Silent Hill 2, and also for The Medium. Both games deal with parallel spirit realms that display hellish aesthetics. Where Silent Hill took place in Maine, The Medium is set in post-communism Poland, Bloober Team’s native country. Both games deal with demonic entities making use of young girls to influence the world. In Silent Hill, Alyssa Gillsepie was raised by an abusive cult and set on fire during her childhood, and her pain and suffering serve as a conduit for supernatural nightmares that plague the town. In The Medium, Liliane was abused as a child by a friend of her father’s named Richard, which caused her to manifest the supernatural entity known as The Maw, which serves as the game’s major antagonist.
Though there are thematic connections, as well as a shared composer, between the two games, Silent Hill’s approach to depicting a shift to a dark, alternate world was more traditional. A looming fog and the sound of an air raid siren typically signaled the descent into Silent Hill’s nightmarish Otherworld. Classic titles like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo offered similar gameplay with its transition from the Light World to the Dark World, and many other games have featured similar premises. A simultaneous depiction of two separate game worlds, both of which the player can interact with at once, was likely a challenging feat even on modern gaming hardware.
As Silent Hill fans mourn the lack of access to P.T. and speculate on possible connections between Abandoned and Silent Hill, it is clear there is still a great deal of interest in the franchise. Part of the horror of Silent Hill was the dread of entering the world of nightmares. The signature sound effect foreshadowing the transition from an eerie rural town to a rusted industrial hellscape provided a unique sense of dread for players. Even if Silent Hill was to adopt a split-screen format for segments, like The Medium, it would likely also need sequences fully in the world of nightmares.
The unique gameplay format of The Medium certainly made it stand out, but many noted it barely tapped the potential for its approach. The game was fairly short, and the puzzles and sequences that made full use of the dual-worlds presentation were limited in number. While Bloober Team is a developer that maintains the “indie feel” in its games, and has created several cult classics, Konami’s Silent Hill series is one of the mainstream leaders in video game horror. Given the thematic connections and shared genre elements, The Medium’s presentation makes Silent Hill an obvious fit for its format. For now, gamers continue to await any official news on both the rumored future of Silent Hill, as well as future endeavors by Bloober Team.
