Omnihanded Entertainmet News | ‘Silent Hill f’ developers defend controversial ‘Elden Ring’ combat

The team behind Silent Hill f has defended their decision to add more action and combat into the game.

Silent Hill f was announced earlier this year and will take players to a small village in 1960’s Japan. There was originally a lot of hype around the latest entry in the long-running stealth horror franchise due to the brutal trigger warnings and the involvement of famed horror writer Ryukishi07.

However a number of early hands-on previews have revealed Silent Hill f will feature tricky bosses like the ones found in Elden Ring and a lot more combat than previous Silent Hill games. According to IGN, series producer Motoi Okamoto said the combat was inspired by “the current popularity of more difficult action games,” which has worried a lot of fans.

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In a new interview with Game*Spark (and translated by Automaton), the Silent Hill f team have defended their decisions.

“We didn’t want to end up recreating Silent Hill 2 over and over again, and we were aware that there was no reason to keep making clones of it,” said director Al Yang. “So, in order to avoid repeating what previous major titles did, we decided to make the action stand out more.”

“The Silent Hill series isn’t considered a game that has entertaining action per se, but as we’re opening our doors to new players, we began to wonder what it would be like if we added more of those elements into the game,” added Okamoto. “Challenging action games are gaining popularity among younger players nowadays, so I believed that if we implemented such elements into the game, it would resonate well even with people who are new to the series.”

Silent Hill f will launch on September 26 with players taking control of new protagonist Shimizu Hinako. “An average teen, she passes the time with nothing particularly special about her life. Until, that is, a deep fog descends on [her hometown of] Ebisugaoka, and everything Hinako knows crumbles as she finds her once-familiar home infested with spreading danger, the town empty except for the horrors teeming in the fog,” reads the official description of the game.

Earlier this year, actor Konatsu Kato revealed that playing Shimizu Hinako caused their “sanity to slip”. Meanwhile “faithful” Silent Hill 2 movie adaptation Return To Silent Hill has confirmed a 2026 release date after being filmed back in 2023.

In other news, Swen Vincke, the CEO of Baldur’s Gate 3 developers Larian Studios, has teased the studio’s “fun” and “surprising” new game.

Where to Find the Scoutmaster in Peak

If you want to find the Scoutmaster in Peak to unlock the Mentorship Badge achievement, note that you first need to summon him. He’s not a random encounter, and there are specific steps to follow beforehand.

There are two methods for the Scoutmaster to appear in your game. These depend on whether you’re playing solo or with others online, and are noted below:

In single-player, you must use the Scoutmaster’s Bugle, which is a rare item in Peak.

In multiplayer, you have to defy Scoutmaster Myres’ advice and actually leave a friend in need by deviating from teammates.

For the first method, the Scoutmaster’s Bugle is a rare item, meaning that it has a very low chance to appear in the game. You have a chance of getting the item from either Ancient Luggage–which are the suitcases that have the red emblem on them–or from the Ancient Statues that appear at the summit of each biome. Note that for the latter, all players must be alive when you interact with it. Otherwise, the statue will revive any fallen climbers, instead of dropping an item.

It’s indeed possible for the Scoutmaster’s Bugle to appear in multiplayer matches as well. In either case, the chances of encountering it are quite low. In over 26 hours of playing Peak, I’ve only seen the item twice–but again, there were several instances where the statue didn’t drop an item since one of our teammates had died in the biome, so your mileage may vary.

The Scoutmaster is not messing around.

If you’re playing Peak in multiplayer, encountering the Scoutmaster is somewhat easier. You need to distance yourself from your co-op buddies, whether that’s just one more person or several of them. A way of ensuring you trigger the encounter is by having everybody else but you stay at the starting point of the Shore biome. Then, head over to the opposite side toward the peak and start climbing.

After a few minutes of gaining latitude, you’ll begin hearing a different music than the usual background environmental track, similar to bells in the distance. The Scoutmaster is designed to chase whoever splits from others, so you’re likely to see him get close to you. A good way of knowing when he’s nearby is a film grain effect on the screen, which will gradually obscure your visibility the closer he is.

If the Scoutmaster is in your vicinity, get close and you’ll see the Mentorship Badge achievement appear. There’s a chance of him falling off a ledge and interrupting the chase, but he’ll likely climb back up again shortly. From here, you can either attempt to escape–the Scoutmaster is quite fast, mind you–or let him trap you. When tackling this myself, the Scoutmaster grabbed me and promptly threw me off the mountain.

That’s all you need to encounter the Scoutmaster. Bear in mind that there’s a chance of triggering the encounter by accident if you stray from other players. It’s a punishing and quite terrifying way of ensuring that you’re lending a helping hand whenever possible.