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If you've played enough of Silent Hill: Townfall, you'll probably have encountered The Weight.
This is a slow, top-heavy enemy that patrols a few sections of the game and gives chase if it spots you. You must avoid alerting it while you're going about your objective; otherwise, it'll be on your tail.
And it's an absolute pain in the arse.
The monster only appears in very tight, claustrophobic areas where you only have a few means of escape, like running away or hiding in a cabinet. If it catches you, it instantly kills you and you have to reload a checkpoint. The game has a revive system where you equip an IV Bag, but even if you use one of those to come back to life, The Weight stays where you died and has a very good chance of killing you a second time.
Luckily, then, developer Screen Burn has heard the complaints and will be rebalancing the enemy as soon as possible.
In a social media post about a PC update, the studio said: "We've heard you on struggles with The Weight — gameplay balancing on its way asap." I'll have an article on the site detailing the PS5 patch once that's live.
One of The Weight's appearances is tied to a late-game area containing one of the most baffling puzzles I've ever faced in a video game. Since other reviews came out, I've read and heard about many other critics being stumped by this particular puzzle. It'll be nice to know The Weight will soon be less of a threat in that section.
My Silent Hill: Townfall PS5 review concluded with a 7/10 score and then explained: "Returning to the tried and trusted formula of the series’ roots, Silent Hill: Townfall is a more traditional entry in the horror franchise that succeeds most when replicating what’s come before it. The new Scottish setting is a standout, but its other new elements are a disappointment."
How have you been getting on with the game so far? Post your impressions in the comments below and don't fear The Weight quite as much.
[source x.com]
Comments 20
Glad that enemy is getting patched, at the moment he should be in a CoD lobby with the amount of camping he does!
This is just a skill issue. I can afford to say that because I haven't played the game but I read the article title.
It really dragged down the game for me. All of the sections outside in the town were fantastic, but the minute you're down in the basement levels with this lumbering, unkillable thing; it just became the worst game ever.
That's certainly a particular problem of mine: I'm more than willing to spend hours on a difficult boss fight in action game, but waiting for 30 seconds for a stalker enemy to pass me by is unbearable.
Having played Alien Isolation and loving it, I had no issue with The Weight. It made the game more tense. maybe make it easy for easy difficulty but for normal I found it just right. This should be played as a stealth game.
I’ve kept my copy in the cellophane in anticipation of this happening! I will wait patiently (and finish my replay of SHf in the meantime).
I didn’t have an issue with it in chapter 3. Hiding in a closet instantly baits him into the room but exiting the closet doesn’t. Hiding is the only thing that alters his patrol route (relative to which area of the map you’re in) As long as I stayed out of sight and/or behind him, I was able to move around him just fine.
counter weight is falling
I love seeing developers listen to player feedback and address complaints to improve the game. I haven't started this yet, and I probably won't until that patch is live, but I'm glad I bought it day one if this is the kind of response they have to complaints. Good on them.
I've been enjoying this game quite a bit and I can confirm that enemy is annoying and made me not want to play a few times, but ultimately you can just run past or away from it as long as you don't get too close. I did have to sit there and just wait for too many minutes before they went away enough for me to proceed. They will just stand in a doorway and not move when you have no other means of escape. That behavior could use some adjustment. I don't know if I'm at this baffling puzzle or not, it does seem pretty convoluted. In any case, the game has otherwise been fun and engaging.
It's a really bizarre part of the game.
We've had stalker type enemies in horror games for while, but I legitmately struggled with the first Weight area in the game.
It seems hyper sensitive to everything, the area is very small and it has a habit of, if it tracks you to a room and you hide, just setting up camp outside of the room you're hiding in.
I got so frustrated I knocked down the difficulty to story, and...had the exact same issues! Eventually I just abused the IV system to brute force the section, and like the article says, it doesnt reposition the Weight when you revive, and he can just one shot you a second time.
One of the most confused I've been playing a game in recent years, seems completely un-tested. I wonder if a lot of people skipped this to play Control, as I havent heard much about this issue. I thought I was going mad
@GrimWillows This is another strange thing about the weight.
Some people are just like "oh I found it fine".
It absolutely drove me insane. The AI on it just seems completely busted.
We just seem to have had vastly different experiences. I don't mind stealth gameplay and a lot of the rest of the game I've stealthed through. But this enemy just made the game miserable for me
How many reviewers, so-called representatives of the people, supposedly fingers on the pulses of the audience (they aren’t exactly writing the reviews for esports professionals to read, are they?) actually identified that this tuning would be a problem in their reviews?
Not talking about the IGN types who can’t get past tutorials, but more reputable outlets and YouTubers? I guess they’re not as relevant and useful to the audience and the majority of consumers as they think they are?
Glad I held off buying, as I don’t have enough spare time to waste on annoying encounters, given my limited gaming time available, especially with so many other good titles hogging that time.
I’m interested, but will see what this is like after all the necessary patches.
The true worst enemy in the game is lack of third person. When does that patch come?
@LordAinsley it must just be vastly different experiences. I legitimately haven’t run into the camping forever issue and didn’t have much trouble with the section in chapter 3. Haven’t made it to the end section though. What I’d love is for them to patch in the ability to check your map while hiding in a closet!
@Metonymy oh yes that's got to happen. I need something to do whilst it sits directly outside the locker for 5 minutes!
@LordAinsley Yeah, I just played through Chapter 3 last night and this monster is pretty egregious in the Different Hospital. I like it in theory, as pursuer enemies have been a lot of fun in recent Resident Evil games, but I think it's the tuning that's off - The Weight seems drawn to you like a magnet, slow to move on (until it randomly runs), and generally breaks the flow of the otherwise-fun stealth sequences; it ends up feeling like a chore.
I think making its pathfinding more pattern-based and reducing its ability to detect the player character a bit - as it saw me once when I was crouching and 45 degrees behind it! - would go a long way towards solving the issue. It sounds like it varies a lot between players, so I'm not surprised it may have been missed in testing. In the old days it would've just been a part of the game that many folks remembered being annoying, but I'm grateful that Screen Burn is working on the issue and can patch in a fix.
@LordAinsley 😂
@MyHairGrowsFast I noticed that too with enemies. I was hiding and one came up close to me and just stayed. I had no way to get out of there after minutes. I had to just jump out and give it a little face-to-plank therapy. It was my first battle with an enemy and it killed me.
But yeah, point being, enemies do tend to stand and stare if they “soft-detect” you. Kinda more realistic that way I suppose.
@brakeman90 I finished the game today and the second section with him isn't quite as bad, although it's still pretty annoying and I had him camping outside a door a few times again.
The first one is awful though.
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