The upcoming Silent Hill F was originally going to be set in the real ‘Silent Hill’, but a large landmark ruined the mood.
In an interview withFamitsuheld at Anime Expo 2025, the game’s writer Ryukishi07 explained that he looked into setting the game in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture.
Shizuoka literally translates to Quiet Hill orSilent Hill, and Ryukishi07 felt that this would have made it an ideal setting for the first Silent Hill game to be set in Japan.
However, he soon realised that because Mount Fuji is partly located in Shizuoka Prefecture, and because the enormous stratovolcano dominates the landscape of the prefecture, it didn’t fit with the feel of the game.
“When creating the story, we first wanted all the staff to have a common understanding of where the game was set,” Ryukishi explained (via machine translation). “To achieve this, we used real locations as the basis for our imagery.”
“In fact, since this is Silent Hill, we actually visited Shizuoka Prefecture as a potential location,” he laughed. “However, when we actually went there, we felt that the presence of Mount Fuji as seen from Shizuoka was too overbearing and it didn’t seem suitable for a Silent Hill setting.
“Mount Fuji looms over the entire area, so its presence would overwhelm the foggy atmosphere of the work. After visiting several other locations, I felt that the grid-like townscape of Kanayama was an interesting shape, so I suggested that.”
Although Silent Hill F is set in a fictional town called Ebisugaoka, it is indeed based on Kanayama, which is located in Gero in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture.
Silent Hill F follows high school student Shimizu Hinako, who explores her hometown as it becomes “engulfed in fog and shifts nightmarishly”.
The game, which issaid to be more action-oriented than other series entries, is developed by NeoBards and will release for consoles andPCon September 25.
Shizuoka header image bylazy fri13th,CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
