Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 10:41:32 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Silent Hill

Started by Why I Hate Tables, May 04, 2010, 08:22:01 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

DJ Solid Snail

Hey, don't forget Snatcher! And Symphony of the Night! "The same could be said of all religions..." Aaah.

There's a superb telephone interview floating 'round the 'Net somewhere wherein he entertainingly moans at length, New Yoik accent and all, about the fact that he was forced to keep in certain lines in MGS that he'd wanted to take out. It's a proper localisation, so the English version's his baby essentially, but Kojima insisted on keeping in a few things. He said he absolutely begged them to let him take out the line, "Snake, do you think love can bloom on the battlefield?" ("Do you seriously think I would have put that line in there?") and the exchange that follows, and he's right, it's totally outta left field melodrama, and the things Snake says are uncharacteristically ludicrous. "All the heroes I know are dead or in prison!". . ."Why yes, Otacon, I do believe love can bloom anywhere. In an orchid meadow. In Bois de Boulogne. In a gondola perhaps." Conversely, the (deliberately) funniest line in the game is all his - Ocelot's "I love the feeling of slamming a long silver bullet into a well-greased chamber."

I'm not sure why he wasn't asked back to do MGS2, and perhaps it would have been a great deal better than it was if he had - according to him, the original scripts to both were, paraphrasing, "absolutely terrible." I believe he implied that Kojima had no quality control, and also no real idea of how to construct a script, he just writes and writes and writes (true of MGS4, certainly). It's possible he's bitter about being passed over for 2, and/or ego-mad, but MGS clearly is one of the best localisation jobs ever, and the man's a great talent.

Edit: Ahhh, and I remember him saying how if there was a pun in Snatcher that only worked in Japanese, he'd come up with a whole new bit of related wordplay that worked in English. Most don't make that much effort, it seems. I feel asleep and the truck have started to move and on and on.

Little Hoover

Well yeah someone told me there was a podcast on the subject here http://www.mgstus.org/downloads/audio/ptt_podcast/ptt_episode011.mp3 but the site is down at the moment.

DJ Solid Snail

That's the exact one. The Internet Archive can't pull it, either. It's a damn shame to think it could be gone forever.

That said, I have a tendency to archive everything I ever come across, so I'll let you know if I ever come across it on some burnt DVD-R some day.

mcbpete

Quote from: eluc55 on May 23, 2010, 12:26:16 PM
Well, as I mentioned above, I brought the Wii's Silent Hill: Shattered Memories off the back off this thread, and I have to say, I owe you all a massive thanks; it was one of the best put together, wholly satisfying, and most intelligent games I've played in years. Seriously. I fucking adored it.
I bought this on Friday and have been playing this until the wee small hours over the last couple of nights. It's really good, really affecting and though not the most technically competent of the series (Hell Silent Hill 2 even looked better than this !) is probably the most mature of the whole series. I'm really bad at the frozen sections and it's not helped by the crack on the front of my Wii remote hampering the sensor thingy, so normally I have to play those bits about 3 times before I make it out alive. It's really not a game you want to play in front of people especially if you want to answer the psychologist's questions truthfully - I'd be interested to know what my specific answers have done to tailor the experience of the game.

Glebe

I'm finding SH3 bloody hard going at the moment, using melee weapons can be darn awkward at times and some of the puzzles are well tricky... plus it's a long slog of a game. Thank goodness for walkthrough hints and tips!

eluc55

Quote from: mcbpete on May 31, 2010, 02:54:01 AM
I'd be interested to know what my specific answers have done to tailor the experience of the game.

I won't spoil it for you, but during play it has a number of cosmetic changes; alters dialogue, character appearances, locations and music... but it also alters the ending of the game: I won't go into how.

mcbpete

Nice ! I'm not sure quite how far I am through the game (I've reached the opened bridge with Dahlia) but I have noticed there's a lot of sexualized images around various buildings and some of the music has become a lot more 'plinky plonky' a-tonal in style. So I'm guessing the game perceives me as an alienated abstract pervert. Yep, pretty much !

DJ Solid Snail

Quote from: DJ Solid Snail on May 28, 2010, 06:56:51 PM
That's the exact one. The Internet Archive can't pull it, either. It's a damn shame to think it could be gone forever.

That said, I have a tendency to archive everything I ever come across, so I'll let you know if I ever come across it on some burnt DVD-R some day.

Aces, tracked it down: Part 1 & Part 2.

Little Hoover

Thank you, you lovely man.

Little Hoover

Oh for goodness sake. Here's a trailer for a  boring, generic looking horror game that seems to have stolen the rights to Silent Hill for some reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS7xj78t4dk

falafel

Can you explain why, from viewing the trailer, you think the game strays from the Silent Hill template? It might help me understand why people love the series so much. As far as I can see, the trailer pretty much follows the usual troubled-person-psychodrama narrative, has the same aesthetic (updated for current gen hardware) and has the same thing of random cipher-characters popping up and being pop-mystical, pop=psychological, or just downright incoherent (or any combination of the above), the protagonist wandering around empty rooms with a shitty flashlight, lots of squelchy noises and alternative-world institutional buildings with fleshy monsters that all the other ones have - there doesn't seem anything to mark it out as being worse, or somehow a knock-off, or even particularly different. Actually I think the premise looks fairly interesting. Especially compared with the wifey-hubby-weepy-weepy nonsense in SH2.

Show your working, please.

mcbpete

I was thinking the same thing, it looks like a nice hybrid of styles between the previous wii and ps3 version. And having a prisoner as the lead role could push it in a nice direction for the series (though am I right in thinking there's another survival horror game with that premise - Condemned or The Suffering I think it was called...)

Little Hoover

Well this is the thing, it doesn't look very different from previous games, it looks like an incredibly generic Silent Hill game that we've seen many times before. Repeating the formula was acceptable to a point for the first few games, but for a game that used to take risks and experiment, this just looks so familiar and ticks all the boxes of what they supposedly think the fans want from the game. Familiarity and horror don't really go well together.

It does all look too glossy and smooth for my liking as well, seems to have something of the "Hollywood remake of a Japanese film" about it.

And although it's too early to say, we don't learn anything about the character in that opening other than the fact that he seems to be being taken to prison, the games tend to work better when the protagonist has a reason for going to Silent Hill, rather than being there because of circumstance. I get the feeling they just thought "Oh and you play as a prisoner because that's kind of dark, to play as the anti-hero" But I could be wrong on that.

falafel

It does look as though the van is heading to Silent Hill though, so perhaps although he doesn't want to go there he does have a reason to be there. And with the way the game uses the town as a kind of psychic conduit for people's private terrors, the conflicted mind of a stranded convict seems quite a savvy and rich seam to explore. Although perhaps it's too obvious?

I think the issue may be that if you really are a fan, you might simply hope they never make another Silent Hill game again. The place operates a certain way - the mythos is basically established now - and you have to wonder if there really is a way to reinvigorate the narrative - or is it all just gilding the lily?

I know where you're coming from with the "glossy" Hollywood remake angle - but... to my mind, a lot of elements of the previous games really needed a lot of polish. There were massive gaps in the presentation that far from being charming were really quite infuriating - and let's not forget that you're comparing this to games which were either last-gen or suffered, in this generation, <in my opinion blah> from last-gen design and gameplay. I can't help but imagine that if the original designers were able to employ the same technical accomplishment that is on display here, they would have. And the voice acting looks like a good improvement as well. Computer games are still in their infancy, and I'm not so sure that the polish can't just be put down to a refinement of the craft rather than a lurch towards creative homogeneity. It still looks pretty grimey.

Cerys

I'm just wondering why the torch seems to carry its own particles.

mcbpete

Quote from: falafel on June 21, 2010, 12:05:02 PM
to my mind, a lot of elements of the previous games really needed a lot of polish. There were massive gaps in the presentation that far from being charming were really quite infuriating - and let's not forget that you're comparing this to games which were either last-gen or suffered, in this generation, <in my opinion blah> from last-gen design and gameplay. I can't help but imagine that if the original designers were able to employ the same technical accomplishment that is on display here, they would have.

Although saying that PS1 Silent Hill has an awesome feel to it due to the lack of polish



The grainy textures, weird bending polygons that plagued a lot of PS1 games and claustrophobic camera angles (presumably to reduce polygon count) really add to the nightmarish and grimy feel to it. Like some low budget pirated VHS of some video nasty vs. a super shiny blu-ray remastered version, the lack of technology is an element that really adds to the genre.

I remember at uni having my PS2 connected to my laptop via a cheap USB TV capture card as I didn't want the hassle of bringing a TV. Playing Silent Hill 3 through this lo-fi setup really added to the atmosphere and for some reason actually made the whole thing feel more immersive.

But then I'm weird.

Little Hoover

Quote from: falafel on June 21, 2010, 12:05:02 PM
It does look as though the van is heading to Silent Hill though, so perhaps although he doesn't want to go there he does have a reason to be there. And with the way the game uses the town as a kind of psychic conduit for people's private terrors, the conflicted mind of a stranded convict seems quite a savvy and rich seam to explore. Although perhaps it's too obvious?

It does have potential, but I'm not sure they'll really explore this. One of the huge missed opportunities with Homecoming was that they have an army veteran for a main character
Spoiler alert
although it might have been revealed he was never in the army, I can't even remember now
[close]
but none of the imagery and locations of the game reflect this. It could have been interesting to have you exploring a hospital or whatever and then have you walk through a door into a place that appears to be part of a Vietnamese jungle, or something like that, which plays on the psychology of the character. Maybe they will, but I'd be surprised if they did anything interesting with it.

falafel

Quote from: mcbpete on June 21, 2010, 12:48:28 PM
Although saying that PS1 Silent Hill has an awesome feel to it due to the lack of polish



The grainy textures, weird bending polygons that plagued a lot of PS1 games and claustrophobic camera angles (presumably to reduce polygon count) really add to the nightmarish and grimy feel to it. Like some low budget pirated VHS of some video nasty vs. a super shiny blu-ray remastered version, the lack of technology is an element that really adds to the genre.

I remember at uni having my PS2 connected to my laptop via a cheap USB TV capture card as I didn't want the hassle of bringing a TV. Playing Silent Hill 3 through this lo-fi setup really added to the atmosphere and for some reason actually made the whole thing feel more immersive.

But then I'm weird.

Good point - one of the most important things about horror (as pointed out by Hoover too) is that it should be alienating and uncanny. One of the best ways to achieve this is through that completely uncontrollable element of not being able to do the things you'd like to do the way you'd like to do them. If that wasn't too convoluted a sentence.

Basically, yes, there is a lot of risk involved in throwing loads of money at something, taking too much advantage of freedom, and churning out something identical to what has gone before just because you weren't forced to innovate.

Glebe

I've nearly completed SH3... it's a bugger of a game, must be darn near impossible to get a ten-star rating.

Glebe

Quote from: Still Not George on May 19, 2010, 08:33:20 PM

Finally came across that playing this yesterday... fuck me, it really is an an all-time freaky moment!

Mister Six

Quote from: mcbpete on June 21, 2010, 10:57:12 AM
I was thinking the same thing, it looks like a nice hybrid of styles between the previous wii and ps3 version. And having a prisoner as the lead role could push it in a nice direction for the series (though am I right in thinking there's another survival horror game with that premise - Condemned or The Suffering I think it was called...)

The Suffering; Condemned's the one where you kill tramps.

Agree with what's said upthread about SH1 being grainy and fucked up. I'd happily play it again if there were some way to hack into the PS1 and replace all the voice files with people that can act, though. My brain can totally overwrite shit graphics with the power of imagination, but having what is presumably just one of the PAL coders stumbling over half-translated dialogue pulls me right out of the thing.

I think latter-day Silent Hills have also suffered too much from being entirely explicable. Even when you know that there was a cult and a divided soul and all that, there are still entire chunks of Silent Hill's story and setting that remain a mystery - not least of which is the cyclical series of endings that deposit Harry back in the cafe time after time. Some bloke called President Evil did a fantastic plot guide on GameFAQs that I highly recommend reading if you've got an afternoon free - you'll find it here.

j_u_d_a_s

It's about time I revisited this thread really.

RE: The Silent Hill 8 trailer

Graphically it does look better than the last current gen instalment 'Homecoming'. What does worry me though is the needless use of fishbowl lens when the protagonist is crossing over using a fallen tree. It just reeks of trying too hard.

The soundtrack however is genuinely terrible. There isn't the variety of volume dynamics that Yamaoka played with. It's all overpowered with needless backing, no minimalism to emphasise the isolation the protagonist faces in a Silent Hill game. It's more suited to a thriller than horror. I presume it's meant to get you tensed up for action but that misses the point of the horror of Silent Hill by miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiles! You don't know when to expect to be attacked, the horror comes from being totally alone in the environment and not being sure if you have the ammo to take something out. The apartment building in Silent Hill 2 is a perfect example of this, you're physically locked into a big closet with the monsters you're afraid of.

Homecoming also suffered from never once just SHUTTING THE FUCK UP. No matter where you were in the gameworld, there would be some needless background noise ensuring you couldn't hear yourself think. Before, it was enough to just hear your own footsteps echo down a dank corridor

Quote from: falafel on June 21, 2010, 10:22:42 AMAs far as I can see, the trailer pretty much follows the usual troubled-person-psychodrama narrative, has the same aesthetic (updated for current gen hardware) and has the same thing of random cipher-characters popping up and being pop-mystical, pop=psychological, or just downright incoherent (or any combination of the above), the protagonist wandering around empty rooms with a shitty flashlight, lots of squelchy noises and alternative-world institutional buildings with fleshy monsters that all the other ones have - there doesn't seem anything to mark it out as being worse, or somehow a knock-off, or even particularly different. Actually I think the premise looks fairly interesting. Especially compared with the wifey-hubby-weepy-weepy nonsense in SH2.

Show your working, please.

I couldn't let this pass without comment, I actually agree with the lions share of this comment but it does sound mightily reductive. I'm intrigued though by what you thought was interesting about the premise of SH 8 seeing as it didn't really show much except the protagonists circumstance. In fact my first impression of that trailer is that the protagonist has been convicted of a murder he didn't commit, or if he did he was probably posessed by demons in Silent Hill. A storyline that has more or less already been done in 2 other games I can think Fahrenheit and The Suffering which both aimed for scares with a bit more substance. Equally both fell flat because of the crippling lack of imagination and expertise in storytelling. Another bugbear is the appearance of a "no nonsense" female police character and the wise old black man. 2 stock tropes that you immediately recognise.

There's really nothing wrong with what's been revealed so far, it's all very competently done but we've seen it before. And that's the biggest problem.

Mister Six

#112
Quote from: j_u_d_a_s on July 17, 2010, 04:13:59 AM2 other games I can think Fahrenheit and The Suffering which both aimed for scares with a bit more substance. Equally both fell flat because of the crippling lack of imagination and expertise in storytelling.

I'm playing through Farenheit now, and I'd have to say that it has the best storytelling I've ever seen in a videogame. Maybe not the best story, but certainly the best structure, development of characters and contrasts of story and contemplation I've experienced. It's more comparable to a novel in its structure than anything else, which is pretty ambitious in itself.

j_u_d_a_s

Quote from: Mister Six on July 17, 2010, 08:51:35 AM
I'm playing through Farenheit now, and I'd have to say that it has the best storytelling I've ever seen in a videogame. Maybe not the best story, but certainly the best structure, development of characters and contrasts of story and contemplation I've experienced. It's more comparable to a novel in its structure than anything else, which is pretty ambitious in itself.

I felt it was too obvious in what it was doing myself. Each stage pretty much amounted to a cutscene. It didn't feel natural enough to me, I felt more like I was watching something rather than actively taking part. Quicktime events destroy the illusion of being involved for me, you're not in control, you're just repeating commands.

TotalNightmare

Of all the 'WTF' moments in my life, a minor one was when I was milling about in London a few days ago and came across Silent Hill - The Arcade game. Which boggled my mind - as it in no way can be any good other than a quid's worth of play. No atmosphere, no exploration, just dodge, aim, fire...

Its a light gun arcade game and seemingly has a protagonist, on holiday to Silent Hill (?) whilst lamenting for his lost child (I gather, as i only saw a glimpse of the set up cut-scenes and saw a few people playing it, randomly shooting at slimy pink phallic monsters every few seconds.

Although (as previously whinged) I've yet to play a Silent Hill game (and I so want to) even I marvelled at the logic behind this arcade game.

Anyone gave it a proper play through (some how) or know more about it than the 10 minutes of my life I dedicated to watching some 14 year old play?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WA2M7kXmHk

Mister Six

Quote from: j_u_d_a_s on July 17, 2010, 02:12:21 PM
I felt it was too obvious in what it was doing myself. Each stage pretty much amounted to a cutscene. It didn't feel natural enough to me, I felt more like I was watching something rather than actively taking part. Quicktime events destroy the illusion of being involved for me, you're not in control, you're just repeating commands.

That's gameplay rather than storytelling, though. And while the Simon-style QT events were a bit of a pain, some of them - like the claustrophobia scene - were brilliant.

Glebe

Watched the film last night. Quite faithful to the style of the games, even features some music from them. Stylish and disturbing...

On an irrelevant arcade side note, I played Mario Kart arcade in China. Having not been to an arcade for about a decade before I started getting into SF4, the existence of this game caused a short-circuit in my brain. It was like something from a dream, to go with my thrift store CD compilation of the Roule records discography with a load of unreleased Bangalter demo bonus tracks.