Signalis wears its influences on its sleave, taking the game-design developed by Shinji Mikami for the original Resident Evil and applying it to the psychological horror presentation of Team Silent's Silent Hill titles. It also incorporates film and anime influences, using concepts and framing from Stanley Kubrick (particularly The Shining and 2001) infused with Lynchian surrealism, all while taking philosophical and presentational notes from Hideaki Anno's Evangelion and Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell. The themes of identity, existentialism, and FLESH are all derived from those latter works.

Signalis is truly standing on the shoulders of giants, and yet while being derivative is typically counted against a piece of art, in the case of Signalis these elements are distilled into something artistically coherent. Taking all those influences and putting them in a blender doesn't just pump out Signalis, it takes a creative and dedicated hand to craft an experience around them that works, and Signalis certainly does. The new thing that Signalis is bringing to the table here is a queer, feminist application of these ideas, which allowed for fresh and exciting ways to explore these concepts.

Regarding some criticisms, I think the application of Silent Hill-style psychological horror to Resident Evil design concepts resulted in some awkwardness. In Silent Hill, the resource management is kind of there, but massively played down, with unlimited inventory space to keep the player in the moment. Resident Evil is more about planning routes, fussing over what to take and what to leave behind, being more of a pure gameplay experience. This is reflected in the tighter level and enemy design of Resident Evil compared to Silent Hill, where the latter has much less polished design for its enemy programming, but which never registers as a flaw due to the differing goals of those games. Signalis tries to have it both ways, which can lead to some frustrations and take the player out of the experience, with the limited inventory forcing the player to engage with the game on a mechanical level that undercuts the psychological horror. I think freeing up the inventory just a bit more could have alleviated this issue (Rule of Eight, anyone?), as well as allowing the player to combine items on the ground with those in their inventory, but most of the time the melding of styles works well. A bit of tweaking there and we're in the clear.

I think these minor gameplay problems hold Signalis back from being quite on the same 5/5 level as the two masterpieces from either side of the classic survival-horror spectrum, Resident Evil's 2002 remake and Silent Hill 2, but its probably the next best thing. I can't wait to see what the dream team of Barbara Wittmann and Yuri Stern are able to cook up next.