Silent Hill f spoilers to follow–read at your personal discretion.
Set within the fictional village of Ebisugaoka in Nineteen Sixties Japan, Silent Hill f follows Hinako, a high school-aged girl who’s navigating her transition from girlhood to womanhood, defying gender roles and resisting an arranged marriage. As she grapples subconsciously with these struggles, it’s revealed in each subtle and overt ways how Hinako has endured psychological and physical abuse in a patriarchal society.
Hinako’s first journal entry discloses her father’s abuse, as she writes “he yells at Mom, throws things around, and even hits us.” On the primary run of the sport, it takes under five minutes to find a magazine suggesting women are happiest when submitting to men. For Japanese-speaking people and players acquainted with Japanese culture and folklore, there are considerably more clues that enrich the story. As an English-speaking woman living in 2025, I still found myself wholly resonating with Hinako’s experiences and Silent Hill f’s themes of exploring the assorted manifestations of sexism and abuse.
In the only of terms, Silent Hill f is a game concerning the horrors faced as a girl merely existing in a patriarchal society. Distressingly, these horrors are spilling over into the actual life reactions to the sport.
The brand new installment within the Silent Hill franchise has been met with a wave of criticism from (mostly male) content creators referring to it as “woke feminist slop” and “feminist propaganda.” That is disappointing, but not surprising. There appear to be gamers who still cannot address playing a protagonist who isn’t a white, heterosexual man. After all, some who typically engage on this gender bias will make an exception for female protagonists which have oversexualization or unrealistic beauty standards baked into their character design.
In 2024, one Twitter user shared an “anti-woke” gaming list, which has categorized over 1,400 video games into categories, offering a temporary explanation as to why it’s best to skip or play. While Silent Hill f has yet to be added, it’s value noting that Silent Hill 2 is listed as “Not Beneficial” for its “overtly anti-family, overtly anti-male, overtly anti-patriarchy, overtly pro-DEI, and subtly pro-LGBTQ+ messaging.”
General misogyny to the side, players began to drop mods that sexualized a teenage Hinako as soon as Silent Hill f was released. Modding character and game design will not be a brand new practice, and thought of a cornerstone of PC gaming. For example, in September, PC users released a “no fog” mod that transforms Ebisugaoka right into a serene village unstricken by the Silent Hill sickness, and extra mods optimize the sport’s performance.
Nonetheless, popular mods for Silent Hill f–with 1000’s of unique downloads–include those who purposefully make Hinako look “more kawaii” with childlike facial expression, and a “girl round the corner” mod that reenvisions Hinako with a younger-looking character design. While the sport endings suggest Hinako is definitely in her twenties, that doesn’t negate the undeniable fact that she is canonically depicted as being highschool age throughout the story.
On a Steam community thread where the unique poster criticizes people complaining about “upskirt censorship,” one other Steam user responded with “put me on a listing because I got so pissed I installed a straight nude mod.” A self-described “gooner” mod for Hinako that shreds her clothing until she is nude has already been downloaded over 3,200 times.
To be clear, there are real threats of online censorship which can be looming over gamers within the U.S., just like the Kids Online Safety Act; the passage of this law would require strict “duty of care” requirements to “protect” children on gaming platforms, which could ultimately end in the removal of deal of content. Further, censorship and anti-porn organizations corresponding to Collective Shout have pressured platforms like Steam to remove or ban any “not protected for work” content under the guise of protecting children and girls. In response to the recent campaign by Collective Shout, major payment processors also temporarily halted handling purchases for some “adult” titles. Notably, lots of the games targeted by ongoing anti-porn campaigns feature LGBTQ+ characters and don’t have any sexual component in any respect. Game developers selecting not to incorporate upskirt shots of a female protagonist who’s a minor will not be a type of censorship.
Hinako will not be the one character in Silent Hill f who has been the middle of viral streamer clips and mods. In a single section of the sport, players must work out a puzzle that takes place within the rice fields of Fog Town that involves pulling pins out of scarecrows, of whom the bulk are monstrous figures that resemble girls wearing ripped school uniforms. As their bodies contort in inhuman positions, and their forced expressions make them seem like they’re in perpetual pain. While the sexualization of the scarecrows could also be an intentional alternative on the a part of the developers as one other representation of misogyny and the male gaze, the response from some players demonstrates a lack of knowledge. Content creators have joked that they’ve wives as they position themselves behind the schoolgirl mannequins. They’ve also made jokes that Konami developers knew what they were doing by making the mannequins bend over to disclose the parts where their plastic legs hook up with their doll-like torsos.
On one other Steam community thread where a user asked for nude mods of Hinako, a commenter wrote, “I’m proud to see you being a warrior of justice for the fictional characters,” in response to a Steam user asking for the IP address of the unique poster.
To put in writing off the hypersexualization of Hinako as “not deep” because she is a fictional character shows an absence of media literacy at best. I meticulously went through each section of the map to find key documents and journal entries that expand upon what life is like for girls and girls living in Ebisugaoka. With minimal exploration of the map, you’ll inevitably come across dozens of collectibles that reveal the patriarchal oppression of ladies introduced in Silent Hill f, including those that remain unnamed. For instance, there are items like an in depth letter written by an unnamed woman who describes the physical abuse she experiences by the hands of an alcoholic husband. That said, even in the event you quickly complete the sport and deal with combat, the dialogue and cutscenes alone are enough to disclose the throughline of the violence against women because the theme of Silent Hill f.
It’s vital to notice that this isn’t about morality or a general takedown of modding female characters. There are plenty of “not protected for work” mods that aren’t inherently toxic. Just this past summer, mod sites were flooded with clothing and non-clothing options for Eve, the (adult) protagonist of Stellar Blade. Reasonably, it’s concerning the context, and why these mods are troubling with regards to Silent Hill f. Lots of these mods are in direct contradiction with the games’ overarching theme, which reinforces the hypersexualization present within the story.
At a surface level, it’s easy to simply call these widespread sexist reactions and Hinako mods creepy because, well, they’re. Upon greater reflection, there’s something disturbingly poignant concerning the objectification of Hinako and other characters in Silent Hill f. In a way, the hypersexualization is a betrayal to the Silent Hill franchise as a complete and its longstanding theme of exploring violence against women through horror.
Just as Hinako felt isolated playing Space Wars, I felt like I used to be on a special planet as I played through Silent Hill f while concurrently watching streamers and viral clips of the sport. There may be a crucial cutscene through which Hinako confronts her father for his abuse, in addition to her mother for enabling it, before he transforms right into a grotesque monster. As Hinako explains in her journal, this version of her father “acts the identical way he did when he let his anger get one of the best of him,” and that is “his true form.” As I entered this boss fight against the person who’s speculated to be a source of unconditional love and support, a pit of sadness grew in my stomach imagining Hinako being exposed and sexualized during this devastating moment.
I felt similarly as I sat through the gory moments of the marriage-like ritual that takes place within the spirit realm with Fox Mask, especially when Hinako’s face is sliced off and replaced with a mask. Hinako is slowly stripped of her autonomy and identity throughout the story, and stripped down physically by some players.
There may be a way of vulnerability I experienced playing Hinako–and that I’m sure many ladies experienced–battling monsters that served as a generalized representation of how she is treated by men in her village. For instance, there’s the Fog Town monster that acts disgustingly “chummy” together with her, yet ignores guys. Unlike the opposite monsters in Silent Hill f that beat, stab, or burn Hinako during grab animations, this “chummy” creature licks her face as a method to empty her sanity and health.
Every woman recognizes and has encountered different versions of those monsters: It would be the cat-caller on the road, the “nice guy” who turns violent if romantically rejected, or an anonymous gamer who hurls misogynistic insults and threats of sexual assault over the mic during a multiplayer game. Sadly, global statistics suggest one in three women experience gender-based violence, and specifically a quarter of 15- to 19-year-old girls report they’ve experienced intimate partner violence.
The fictional world of Silent Hill f could be very real in some ways, and the response to the sport also demonstrates just how relatable Hinako’s story is whatever the fictional, horrifying monsters she must battle. It’s that deep.