I stumbled into Silent Hill Ascencion while browsing Tubi, unsure of what it was since it seemed to be a show. This was odd since I had never heard about it, but being a fan of the series I began to watch it and research more about it. Looking online there isn’t great information out there, just a lot of complains and confusing information if you were not a part of the show interacitons as it was airing. But I tried to make sense of it all and talk about it here since I do love a good Choose Your Own Adventure and oddities in franchises. This seemed specifically made for me. Granted I didn’t know most of this information as I was watching it so many things I was confused about were because of this context I lacked. Also this context is somewhat important as reviews are skewed by people who only experienced the original take and those who only experienced the second part without realizing its origins. So I hope to at least clear things up a bit.
The first thing I noticed of course is how bad it looks, since well it looks like a video game, like a PS3 CG cinematic or perhaps PS4 in game footage. I can see how a lot of people would hate it just for this, the lipsyncing is bad as is the way they move. Counting I had 0 expectations for this and thought at first it was a fanmade machinima these were not deal breakers to me, I liked that there was an official product doing this and it doesn’t always look so bad, but yes, you’re going to be embracing what looks like an older HD gen cutscene show. There is a lack of emotion or just not the best reactions to the voice acting in general, now all of this has a reason but it can be distracting.
As I mentioned this was a choose your own type story, but it’s not like there were different outtakes you could experience, there is only one canon version, no one really saw any other outcomes besides a few that leaked out unofficially. But in general none of the others were ever shown officially or meant to be seen or even finished. In fact they seemed to have a “mold” of the show created that they could easily edit dependingo on the choices made. Now how were the choices made? Well that was people who were watching and would vote where the next episode would go given some choices. So the show had to be adaptive which means the interactive feature makes the final product not seem as coherent as it could’ve been.
Now this raises another issue people have, the original format was 3-6 minute shorts every day for 6 months and the show was mostly made to fit this format with and ending point in each mini episode. These were all compiled to the full season of 22 episodes we see in the end that are 30 to 40 minutes long. One of my complains while watching was it felt they kind of repeated information or hand weird transitions way too many times in an episode and this is the reason why. This didn’t seem to work too well in the original format either as it seems the episodes were just too short for people to understand what was going on.
Now, let’s get to the story, it is confusing because of all the above reasons, but even taking that into account it’s rather confusing. They mention a lot of stuff that isn’t fully explained and you are left wondering what they are talking about. At first I thought it was my lack of Silent Hill lore knowledge but I was glad to see others were also confused. The fact that it’s dark and also following two different stories with their own baggage only makes it more difficult to get things straight. I do like the story though. One is a more traditional Silent Hill type story while the other one is a bit different but they both eventually intertwine towards the end. While perhaps not the best story Silent Hill ever told, I think a good edited version of the story could’ve been far more memorable.
I actually wouldn’ve loved to have watched the original interactive version, I researched online and it sounded like one of those things you had to be there for. Originally it was more ambitious and you’d be able to interact almsot anywhere including consoles but eventually things were kept smaller to only the official release. It’d almost be like watching a new show on a twitch chat, you’d have commentary from everyone either making fun or just shtposting and having a blast at some of the sillyness of the show but still following what you’re watching. There was some type of virtual currency that you could either earn from some simple games on the site, activities or even buying with your own money. With that you were able to influence more the direction by voting live on some events happening liek quicktime events and evenn after the epsiode ended as wel that would lead up to the next one. You even had a character you created and with points had a chance of having your character be a part of the show by making a cameo as a backgroundcharacter. And well the canon verison of this story that you watch now was well decided by that community that was there at the time.
It might not be great, but it’s not that awful, Ascencion has plenty of good ideas here and there that could’ve been a good show or even game. While lacking it was also a very innovative way to present a show. I almost wish it had been more of a success so we could have this done with other franchises or have another company take a swing at it. Learn the mistakes from this version and make something better.