Good news Silent Hill heads, Townfall is bringing firearms back as the devs promise combat and stealth will be on ‘equal footing’

Silent Hill: Townfall is the next window into Konami’s long-standing psychological horror series. But like Silent Hill f, Townfall seeks to do something slightly different, stepping towards full survival horror instead.

The devs over at Screen Burn have been drip-feeding us more information as we draw closer to its release date, and this time lead game designer Graeme McKellan and QA lead Linda Stenback have given us a little insight into Townfall’s combat and stealth.

“We want stealth and combat to be in our game on equal footing,” McKellan explains in a video shared to social media. “Sometimes parts of the game will certainly push you forwards one form of dealing with enemy encounters.”

It makes sense that some sections of the game will be one or the other, instead of combat and stealth being dead even the entire time. It’s balance like this that makes for good horror—knowing when to ramp up the heat and when to cool it down creates an oppressive atmosphere but one in which players don’t get burnt out too quickly.

But Silent Hill has always managed to walk that line before. It creates a truly terrifying experience despite the fact that players at times can defend themselves with weapons.

“We have various ways of doing combat in the game,” Stenback adds. “We can go from melee weapons to firearms and just general distractions.” The confirmation that we’ll have firearms in Townfall is certainly a welcome one. While the handgun is a pretty simple weapon it’s present in most mainline Silent Hill games alongside the shotgun and rifle, so we’ll likely be seeing these again in Townfall.

Silent Hill f didn’t have any firearms present, as it was entirely a melee combat game, but I didn’t mind. Honestly, guns and ammo in a small village in the mountains of Japan would have been a little out of place. I don’t think a fishing town in Scotland would have the same issue though.

This isn’t to say you’ll be able to go in guns blazing, McKellan confirms melee will still be an integral part of the game: “What I really enjoy about melee combat is just how frantic it is. You feel like you’re in a real scrap.” You know what that means—steel pipes here we come.