Just finished Silent Hill Ascension. Not ONCE is the name Silent Hill or any character/location/detail from the previous games mentioned. There are things that are similar TO Silent Hill, carrying similar themes (but done worse). They aren't actually the same, though.

Take the town of Silent Hill, for instance. The Norway part of the story takes place in a town called "Silent Valley" (translated). The other part takes place in Pennsylvania, which is where Centralia is, which a lot of people thought inspired Silent Hill but that's not actually true.

Or the cult and its many players. It's not called The Order. It's called The Foundation. There are people in The Order called Heralds who believe in alternate teachings. Their deity isn't God, but The Purifier. Or maybe The Collector. Or maybe The Great Empath. Maybe they are all one in the same? We don't really know because literally none of it is ever answered.

There is something called The Withering and that's very similar to The Otherworld because it's orange and ashy and there are monsters everywhere, but it's totally not The Otherworld. There's the Fog World too, and although they never mention it being the Fog World by name it's clear that it is a separate plane. Only sometimes, though? That's extremely unclear. I think they might refer to it as also being part of The Withering. It seems to be used more often as a device to remove characters from tough or interesting situations and whatever happens in the real world while they're in there is not usually explained.

There are letters that get sent mysteriously, like in Silent Hill 2 (although it doesn't make nearly as much sense). There are a lot of themes of guilt due to killing someone, like Silent Hill 2 (although it's way overboard, almost every character has killed someone and that's not an exaggeration). There are visions of dead loved ones created by the Fog World that lead to protagonists accepting their guilt. There is obviously all the cult stuff that is more of a focus in SH1/3/4/Origins and aspects of personal trauma based on SH2. It feels like two completely different stories for the vast majority of the runtime.

That's just talking about it's lack of anything to do with Silent Hill despite bearing the Silent Hill name. There are so many other things wrong with it. Horrible pacing, bad character motivations that always flip-flop, incoherent narrative, cuts that don't make any sense. Scenes where something crazy happens, then the next scene where it has been completely resolved and you never know why. Scenes where characters tell other characters to run and then teleport over to them. Insane things that happen that are then never brought up again. Insane things that are never brought up or even lightly hinted at that are brought up at the very end as a plot twist. It's so incredibly bad, and I loved watching it because of how bad it was.

Why is this Silent Hill? Konami really has ZERO quality control with the franchise and it shows big time. If I remember correctly, The Short Message didn't have any connections to Silent Hill either. It's like they just asked a bunch of developers if they wanted to make a Silent Hill game and none of the developers know anything about Silent Hill except that it's supposed to be about traumatic events and there's some spooky otherworld and maybe some cult stuff. That's why I'm so worried about everything else coming out, like the Silent Hill 2 Remake especially. Even if Townfall and F are good games, which I honestly think they will be and I'm looking forward to them, are they actually going to have ANYTHING to do with Silent Hill? At this point, it might actually be better for Konami to start a completely new franchise and say it is inspired by Silent Hill if they want to do much different things with it. They're Konami, though, and they know that the IP name is really important and it will sell copies. I think they are just shooting themselves in the foot again.