Silent Hill f's director believes 'I am not qualified to tell you how…

Silent Hill f isn't the first of the series to include a female protagonist, it's not even the second really, what with the likes of Heather Mason and Cybil Bennet having graced our screen decades ago. But Silent Hill f did still manage to deliver one of the best performances and narratives with a female protagonist I've seen in a very long time.

The story follows Shimizu Hinako, a young woman at a crossroads in her life. Set in 1960s Japan, Hinako is forced to choose between what is expected from her traditionally and what could be possible in an emerging world where women have more rights. But the catch is in both instances someone else is choosing her future for her, and each holds its own terrors. tbzikra.org

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There is no one right answer or 'good' ending, that's for the player to decide. The truth is the future can be scary no matter what path you take, and, especially for women, all tracks of life come with its own pressures and fears.

The fears Hinako faces are genuine. Ok, maybe not literally, but figuratively speaking. A truth that's undoubtedly achieved by the team at NeoBards looking towards female staff members for insights, instead of just guessing at it.

"The main theme is women's rights, or how that was perceived in that time," director Al Yang told PC Gamer's senior editor Wes Fenlon at GDC. "We have a lot of female members on our team, and you'd always ask them questions regarding the fears Hinako had, and the monsters that represent them.

"Some of them are married, some of them have kids, some are right out of school. So you get different perspectives from different age ranges. I am not qualified to tell you how women should feel or what the pressures [they face]. I can try to understand, but that's not on me. The most I can do is to talk to people and get feedback and try to translate that as much as possible."

Hinako faces many fears throughout Silent Hill f, for the uninitiated that's pretty much Silent Hill's whole shtick, such as the fear of marriage, of turning out like her mother, of growing apart from her friends, and of staying too reliant on the small town where she grew up just to name a few. These plague Hinako throughout the game, some coming in form of flashbacks and other in horrific apparitions, which were also designed by the female staff.

"So with the monster that [represents] Hinako's fear of pregnancy and whatnot, there was a lot of feedback from our team members, and it was drawn by one of our female concept artists too. So there's a lot of details, this is your own personal nightmares, or the nightmares of people who've had children. And again, talking to our younger staff members, if they're afraid, what are they afraid of?"

There's no better way to create realistic fears in a game than by actually including what those working on it are afraid the most by. In the end it seems like the most effective tool NeoBards utilised was just good old fashioned feedback and communication—asking the right people the right questions.

Here at PCG towers we've recently been unearthing a bunch of classic interview material from our publishing company Future's decades-long history in print media. Earlier today I wrote about a 2014 interview in which the design lead on the first Elder Scrolls fondly recalled the days when Bethesda would finish a game, then the team would "assemble boxes, inserts and use the heat gun" to get it shipped.

This led me down a rabbit hole towards an even older interview with designer and Daggerfall lead Ted Peterson, conducted with GameSpy in 2001, in which he answers a question I'd never thought to ask—why's it called The Elder Scrolls: Arena anyway?

"I was one of two designers on it, the other being Vijay Lakshman, who along with Julian LeFay really spearheaded the initial development of the series," says Peterson. "Up to that time, Bethesda had never done a roleplaying game, only action games like the Terminator series and sports titles like Wayne Gretzky Hockey. I remember talking to the guys at SirTech who were doing Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and them literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it."

We'll get to the name, but the context behind it is how Arena changed over the course of its development from a combat-oriented game to more of an RPG.

"Julian, Vijay, and I were all longtime pen-and-paper roleplayers, and fans of the Looking Glass Ultima Underworld series, which was certainly our main inspiration," says Peterson, who also cites a "completely forgotten" contemporary title called Legends of Valour: "It got pretty pitiful reviews and not many people bought it, but I really had fun with it."

Arena was always meant to have a "little bit" of an RPG element to it, but over the course of development this changed from a side-bonus to the game's main focus.

"The initial idea was that there was a series of tournaments in an arena, and your character fought in a team to win the coveted title against other teams," says Peterson. "A story developed that there was an evil wizard named Jagar Tharn who you could only fight once you made it to the final tournament in the Imperial City. Along the way you could do sidequests which were more roleplaying in nature.

"Eventually during the development, the tournaments became less important and the sidequests became more important. We eventually dropped the whole tournament idea altogether, and just focused on the quests and the dungeon-delving."

Which led to a realisation: Arena wasn't really a game about an arena any more.

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"In the end, we had a game that almost didn't resemble our original idea at all," says Peterson. "It was really a hardcore roleplaying game, but we had already done the advertising and printed up boxes with the name 'Arena.' Someone came up with the idea that the Empire of Tamriel, because it was so violent, had been nicknamed the Arena. That explained, kinda awkwardly I guess, why there was no arena combat in a game named Arena.

"I think Vijay [Lakshman] was the guy who tacked on the subtitle 'The Elder Scrolls.' I don't think he knew what the hell it meant any more than we did, but the opening voiceover was changed to "It has been foretold in the Elder Scrolls..."

To be clear, this is not new news: it's coming from an archived interview that's 25 years old, and yes I'm sure some of you already knew this piece of trivia. But I'm always fascinated by moments of serendipity like this, where a pre-printed box and a change in the project's nature led Bethesda's developers to come up with the name of the series that the company would be built upon.

Alexander Morton, the voice of Geralt's stout, stalwart pal Zoltan Chivay in The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3, has died. Morton's death was reported in a tribute to the actor shared on social media by The Witcher developer CD Projekt.

"We're deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Alexander Morton, the voice of beloved Zoltan Chivay in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," the studio wrote. "Our thoughts are with his family and friends. Thank you for bringing Zoltan to life. The Continent is already missing you."

We're deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Alexander Morton, the voice of beloved Zoltan Chivay in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. Thank you for bringing Zoltan to life. The Continent is already missing you 💔

— @thewitcher.com (@thewitcher.com.bsky.social) 2026-04-17T16:42:20.495Z

Morton had a few other videogame credits to his name, including Fable 2, Age of Conan, Heavenly Sword, Killzone 2, and Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. But his portrayal of Zoltan is surely his best-known work among gamers: Gravel-voiced and foul-mouthed, Zoltan is nonetheless a relatively cool head among dwarves, although quite capable of spilling over into violent rage when the moment calls for it. Morton deftly captured that complexity in his portrayal of the character, making him one of the game's most memorable NPCs.

But while his videogame credits are relatively slim, Morton was an acclaimed actor in the UK. He was best known for playing the role of Golly Mackenzie in the series Monarch of the Glen, but appeared in numerous other series in a career stretching back to the 1970s.

"We're saddened to hear the news about Alexander Morton who made a significant contribution to Scottish television and theatre. His portrayal of Golly Mackenzie in Monarch of the Glen was a key part of the long-running drama's success," BBC Scotland commissioning head Louise Thornton said in a BBC report. "He will be remembered fondly for the depth and authenticity he brought to one of BBC Scotland's most cherished dramas."

Noted film and television actor Robert Carlyle also paid tribute to Morton in an Instagram post, saying he was "not only a brilliant actor, but one of the kindest men I ever knew."

Alexander Morton was 81.