Silent Hill: Ascension

I watched almost three episodes. At first, I was hyped. Silent Hill was my first favorite video game, and I thought that I would gladly consume any type of Silent Hill content because of how rare something new comes up. And the idea where users have an influence on the story? So cool! It can't go wrong, right? Oh dear, sure it can...

It's terrible.

Story? It's not "Silent Hill". It could be, but it's not. The sequence is chopped, disconnected, incoherent, filled with completely unnecessary scenes, important scenes are not developed enough. It feels more like a YouTube fan made fiction montage using cutscenes from a video games, then a series. This is not a professional product at all.

Characters? The last ounce of creativity was spent on modern characters (bossy women, flimsy men, mustachioed girl, zoo of all races, etc.), so there was no creativity to add at least some complexity to any character. That's exploitation.

Video? That would be cool for a ~2010 game, it's a bit late for a 2023 series. Hell, the series never took any of the advantages of computer graphics (impossible angles and transitions). Lip-sync is hit or miss, faces are mostly stuck in a single emotion.

Music? Ha-ha... ha-HA-HAHA. No.

There's nothing of value here.

Obviously, this "product" has nothing to do with the actual creators of Silent Hill.

I'd rather play Silent Hill Pachinko Machine till my last breath than finish this series.

Valiant effort.

Although the story develops slowly, there are several things that I would like to highlight about the story.

-The interactions and objectives of "the Order" had never been seen from the inside, which gives a point in favor of the expansion of the Silent Hill universe.

-Here the fact is left aside that only the protagonist and co-stars are able to see the changes in reality, which helps to know what the inhabitants of Silent Hill or surrounding places felt.

-Outside of what has been mentioned, the monsters are original but correctly following the style of the franchise, at least in monsters and setting, the world of blood, fog and monsters is well represented.

-The motivations of the characters are clear and understandable.

-I thought the community interaction was great, despite the negative reviews I have seen on the internet, the broadcasts are full of good expectations and good reception.

-It is difficult for a series in which the public themselves chose the decisions to go wrong, in this case it seems like an interesting approach and so far I am satisfied.

-The action scenes are interactive just like a TTG (tell tale games) style visual novel.

-There are several not very exciting activities that complement the experience but as a concept it seems very good to me, the only bad thing is how short the episodes are.

This is the worst that has happened to this franchise. The writing is abysmal, nothing fits or makes sense, there is so much forced exposition, nothing feels authentic. Its like the characters don't even hear what the others are saying at times. No wonder people think this is AI generated.

The animation is not much better. Its like PS2 level of animation upscaled to PS 3 level. There are tiny glimpses of good animation but the majority feels incredibly outdated.

The voice acting can't get anything across and seems wodden and monotone most of the time. When the voice acting is there, it doesn't fit the animation.

Silent Hill Ascension is only worth your time when you come together and laugh about how bad it is.

God bless the voice actors. And if you want the most impotent, repetitive monsters you've ever seen, and an endless, boring soap opera, then this is for you. Oh, and of course there's the lamest 1990s game-play character editions. I watched the whole thing out of a morbid curiosity, and some kind of misplaced dedication to the genuinely creeping and frightening SH movies. In episode 16, when something actually started to happen, I was so starved for any kind of forward action I actually expressed my gratitude out loud. He fact that I sat through the whole thing says more about me than the show... and what it says is not healthy.

Man, where to start? The first thing that stood out to me was the writing felt like it was written by very earnest teens in a Spooky Story Club or something. 100% dumb tropes, disjointed (in a BAD way) dialogue, just really awful and a lot of it was extremely uninteresting.

Uninteresting? Yes, it was more interesting to try and figure out why a majority of the voice acting was so over-the-top terrible. The pacing was off, the voicework was either deadpan or emotionally out of place for no real reason. At one point a girl just found out her Grandma died and is trying to ask her Grandad if he killed her Granny, and she put about as much emotion into it as if she were asking someone to pass the salt.

Oh, don't worry, that wasn't a spoiler or anything, because the entire show is such a disjointed toilet mess you really won't CARE what's going on about 15 -30 minutes in when you realize you are only sticking around to see just how bad the show will actually get.

Even if this were a traditional Console or PC game, the voice acting and jank story and writing would have resulted in negative reviews, even in a day and age where Retro is cool again. Just like tank controls, this Show or Game or whatever it's trying to be should have been left as what it was: a really, really bad idea.