Silent Hill: Where Did It All Go Wrong?
Losing Focus
In terms of where it needed to go, it certainly wasn't into hands of the American-based Climax Action group. You know how American horror movies are all obvious jump scare/loud audio cue gorefests, whilst Japanese/Asian cinema offers up the more foreboding, skin-crawling dread experiences? Well, that's analogous to the Silent Hill franchise.
Returning after a three-year hiatus, Silent Hill: Origins tells a prequel of sorts around characters from the first title before Mason's first trip to the town. Which could have worked, if done properly. However, someone at Climax must have gotten wind of the tonal shift to more action-based gameplay in Capcom's Resident Evil 4 and somehow convinced the board to incorporate it into Origins.
You can imagine how well that went down...
Silent Hill was renowned for its dark, psychologically imposing horror. Previous protagonists were deliberate everymen/women. Combat was meant as a panicky last resort, not a dependable strategy. As such, Origins didn't reignite the waning hope for the series to reach lofty heights again, with many criticising Konami for allowing an American studio to miss the point completely.
Whilst Origins' story did help it maintain its standing in the overall mythos, it seems that the developer for the next generation's title, Double Helix Games, didn't heed any lessons from it all. In fact, they doubled down on the combat angle, making hero Alex Shepard a Special Forces soldier capable of holding his own.
It was insulting, if anything.
Of course, when Alex's eventual "bad thing" is revealed, it makes the whole combat-heavy notion redundant, contradicting the nature and gameplay mechanic of taking out monsters and the cult behind events. The cult, who are renowned for being behind the scenes and to our knowledge, not raising an army of super-suited soldiers.
Suffice to say, relations between Silent Hill and its audience were strained after these two titles. Fans made it clear that they didn't want generic action-horror titles, instead returning to what made the series great in the first place.