It seems as though, with each sequel, the Silent Hill fanbase suffers a new fracture.
- Although Silent Hill 2 garnered critical and fan acclaim, Silent Hill 3 was immediately hated by a subset of fans. This was due partly to all the Epileptic Trees that its storyline Jossed, with many fans declaring that Silent Hill didn't need a direct sequel and that the game was entirely unnecessary. There tends to be far less disagreement when it comes to gameplay, though; even those who hate the story can generally agree that it greatly refined SH2's controls and made them far more fluid, making it the best playing of the older games.
- When Silent Hill 4 came out, it almost instantly became The Scrappy of the series, although Critical Backlash eventually set in and a number of fans began to complain that the fans complaining were only complaining because it's a different experience. Depending on who you ask even today, it's either the last good game in the series or the first bad one.
- Once Konami exported the series to outside development teams, starting with Origins and moving on to Homecoming, the fanbase split again, between fans saying that the latest games have lost the atmosphere and rely on formula, and other fans saying that the fans complaining are culturally biased against the western developers and that the formula is just Silent Hill's style.
- The Silent Hill fandom is basically divided into two camps: those who embrace the old games and hate the new ones, and those who like the new ones, but must encourage you to like them in their own way. There are some fans who fall into a smaller third group, who prefer individual games rather than judging the entire series in exactly one way, but those are a minority. If you like the newer games, you're a traitor to the old fans, but you're still not in the clear with the new fans. Apparently, it's not enough to compliment the new games. You have to compliment them in the right way (meaning to idolize whatever game that person adores and ignore or bash the others).
- A notable debate between fan compliments towards the new games is between which of the two PS3/Xbox 360 games is better, Homecoming or Downpour. Fans of Homecoming say the game still looks and feels like the past games and has a story that fits closer to the series while deriding Downpour for feeling more like an In Name Only entry and its graphical issues. Fans of Downpour argue back by claiming its story was more uniquely original than Homecoming’s, which has been criticized for feeling like a retread of Silent Hill 2 but with the Order plot interwoven in there, and that it sticks true to the series’ survival horror roots than the more straightforward action horror.
- There’s also significant debate over which of the games developed by Climax Studios was better, Origins for sticking to the same gameplay format and atmosphere of the past games, or Shattered Memories for experimenting with the series concept and reinventing the original game.
- In front of the SH2 fandom, never, ever mention Pyramid Head and those rape scenes, unless you want to be verbally hung, drawn, and quartered very, very quickly. Whilst it's agreed that he's not actually 'raping' monsters in the literal sense (and is now only really used as a Running Gag), the fans still seem to be split into two parties: one side argues (from what can be gathered) that he is merely molesting/sexually abusing other creatures, but that this is meant to portray rape in a symbolic sense; the other side insists that his actions hold absolutely no sexual connotations at all, and that he is simply being a jerk and tormenting them. But do not form an opinion from any of this. Remember: Never. Mention.
- Related to the above, don't mention the possibility that Angela was raped. Ever. You'll get jumped by veteran forum members who drone on about how no hard evidence points to it, and that the dialogue that confirms this was altered from the original Japanese script.
- Weirdly enough, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories garnered far more hate before it came out than after, but maybe that was due to it being explicitly non-canon... at least, until you get into the people who find a way to work an SH1 connection into the game (namely, that it's based on SH1's bad ending) versus those who believe it entirely solo.
- There were a lot of arguments over whether or not Pyramid Head should've been put into Homecoming.
- In addition to "old vs. new", another fracture in the series is "the cult vs. personal demons". On the "cult" side, you have those fans who believe that the best games in the series are those concerning the Myth Arc about the Order (the first and third games, Origins and Homecoming). On the "personal demons" side, you have those fans who believe the series works best when it's telling more personal horror stories that are disconnected from the main plot (the second and fourth games, Shattered Memories and Downpour). It's a wide enough gulf that some fans have suggested that there are really two fanbases to the series.
- And that's just the actual games. If you don't want to start a fight, don't bring up Twin Perfect's The Real Silent Hill Experience
video series among fans. In short, it's a well-known fan-made video analysis of the entire franchise, which is very controversial among both old and new fans. Basically, it was created as a biased attempt to prove that everything post-SH4 simply cannot be canon, using only information provided in the games and quotes from the original developers, while also coming down firmly on the "pro-cult" side of the above debate. Whether or not they succeeded is very much up to the viewer.- It should be noted that Twin Perfect has also deliberately taken quotes out of context (i.e. Christophe Gans "wanting to fuck american bimbos" which was actually Roger Avary doing a mock impression of him).
- Both of the films get this, the first one over whether or not it's a good enough adaptation of the first game, and the second one over whether being closer to the games excuses all the continuity problems with the first and other script issues.
- Whether or not the original games (mostly 1-4) should be remade from the ground up is also a hotly debated topic. Some fans feel that it would be a great way to keep the series alive and that they would benefit from improving the tank controls and somewhat clunky voice acting, all without affecting the way the stories are told (using the Resident Evil 2 (Remake) as an example on how it can work). Other fans, meanwhile, are against the idea, arguing that the games were perfect to begin with and that redoing them would ruin the originals’ atmosphere and charm. There’s also a small 3rd group who are fine with the idea of remaking the older games as long as Konami is still making a new sequel to the series. With the Silent Hill 2 remake confirmed alongside the announcement of new entries in the franchise, the debate has now shifted to whether the quality of the remake will be worthwhile, particularly since its developer, Bloober Team, already has a divisive reputation amongst survival horror fans.
- Discussion of the lore and the rules of Silent Hill can be a heated topic. Is the Otherworld a parallel plane, a corruption of the real world, or something in-between? Is the god of the cult real, or a fabrication of the town? Was the town itself always supernatural, or was it corrupted by the rituals of the cult? Answers to these questions can vary wildly depending on which games each fan considers canonical (even within the original 4 there's disagreement about whether the rules are fully consistent), or whether the Book of Lost Memories databook is taken into account.
