NEW SILENT HILL FROM HIDEO KOJIMA AND GUILLERMO DEL TORO

[madhair60]

https://store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/#!/en-ca/games/pt/cid=UP4511-CUSA01127_00-PPPPPPPPTTTTTTTT

shit yourself.  i saw someone streaming this... nope.  nope nope nope.

[madhair60]

http://www.twitch.tv/soapywarpig/b/557446887

GO TO 1hr14m

IT'S SILENT HILL

[madhair60]

[Glebe]

Fuck me, Del Toro working on a new Silent Hill?! I don't play games anymore, but this is interesting.

[Solid Jim]

Silent Hills: From the man who brought you Ground Zeroes.

Is Hideo Kojima being Lee and Herring?

[Thursday]

It looks great. An interactive teaser trailer has made me want a ps4 more than anything else released so far.

[Noodle Lizard]

This'll be shit I reckon.

Nah, not really.  But I'm carefully reminding myself that Guillermo Del Toro's name doesn't necessarily ensure quality.  That being said, I don't scare easily and one bit in that trailer really gave me a jump.  Almost shat myself, I don't mind telling you.

[Moribunderast]

While I'm always interested in new Silent Hill, I must admit that I'd prefer it were Keiichiro Toyama returning to the helm, rather than Kojima. Which is what I assumed was happening until I googled Kojima and saw he was the Metal Gear guy. Not a huge fan of that series but I do like Del Toro so I'll be keeping a close eye on this one. At the very least, it's revived interest in a franchise that's been pretty stale (despite my liking aspects of Downpour) and any attention for horror games is a good thing.

[VegaLA]

http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/13/kojima-del-toro-silent-hills/

Never played a silent Hill game. This could be my first!

[fit bird]

Another Mr Lizard?

[ziggy starbucks]

[Onken]

Shit your pants scary is the objective Mr Kojima described on some stream event just now.

[Rev]

I didn't play Downpour but it seemed to be on the right track, just hideously under-supported - didn't the studio end up being unable to patch some critical bugs because Konami wouldn't stump up the cash to get a patch released?  It seemed like an earnest attempt to return to form for a series that's been in the dumps since the third game, or possibly the fourth depending on your perspective.  Getting some big names aboard this time suggests it'll be treated as something of a big deal, so it doesn't really matter what I think of Kojima - it can only be a good thing.

[j_u_d_a_s]

Some very interesting speculation going on at the moment over the names in the credits here - http://silent-haven.com/post/94703875272

hmmm...

Akira Kanke - Akira Yamaoka

Masahiro Nose/Koichiro Ito - Masahiro Ito

Hiroyuki Nakayama - Hiroyuki Owaku

Takayuki/Takashi - Takayoshi Sato

It's pure speculation at this point, but still...

Wrote about a 1000 words on the reveal the other day. Long story short, I think the reveal of this is a masterstroke.
http://jaykayell.tumblr.com/post/94598074647

Watching a playthough on youtube now and where I may have dismissed it as a Slender clone before, looking at it knowing what we know now it's pure Silent Hill. More in the style of The Room (speaking of, hole in the bathroom wall anybody? Or is it gone now?) And a nod to David Lynch as well.

Dare I say it, I might be getting excited over a Silent Hill game again...

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

This is certainly an interesting announcement, but that picture of Norman Reedus gives me pause - Silent Hill protagonists aren't supposed be scowling crossbow types, they're meant to look frightened and confused. Also, neither Kojima nor Del Toro are really as great as they're made out to be, (although Del Toro certainly has an eye for creature design).

The series peaked with the second game. 3 was a by-numbers disappointment to me and none of the subsequent ones have sounded like a real return to form. If this turns out to be great, I'll dance a dainty jig, but I'm not holding my breath.

it's pure Silent Hill. More in the style of The Room

You're tearing me apart, Pyramid Head!

[Moribunderast]

The series peaked with the second game. 3 was a by-numbers disappointment to me and none of the subsequent ones have sounded like a real return to form. If this turns out to be great, I'll dance a dainty jig, but I'm not holding my breath.

I think Shattered Memories was very good and did something that Silent Hill should regularly do - change. As long as the setting and core atmosphere are kept intact, I see no reason for Silent Hill to always be laid out in the same manner as the early games. The second game was so great because it built on an established idea with a completely new, even more harrowing idea. I feel like they've lost this over the years as they try to stay true to the series. The series should be unpredictable. Silent Hill 2 isn't beloved because of it's gameplay - it's everything else that makes it what it is. Silent Hill developers should be willing to take risks with things like that. I'd rather a Silent Hill game be an ambitious flop (like Shattered Memories and The Room, to an extent) than a stale attempt at recreating what's come before.

Whilst I have reservations about Kojima, I have faith he might at least try to do something a bit different.

[Rev]

I think Shattered Memories was very good and did something that Silent Hill should regularly do - change. As long as the setting and core atmosphere are kept intact, I see no reason for Silent Hill to always be laid out in the same manner as the early games.

Absolutely true, and the problem with the series became its attempts to boil down to things that worked originally.  They only worked originally because they were surprising, and what I think we all want is to be wrong-footed by a Silent Hill game.

This has been Konami's mistake for ages, and not just with Silent Hill - seeing what flies and then running it into the ground.  The developers of the terrible 'Homecoming' were eventually open about what was imposed on them in making it:  it was the first game after the film, so whatever they did they had to include Pyramid Head, had to do the transitions in the same way as the film, and had to specifically address a Western audience by taking their cues from contemporary American horror films (meaning Platinum Dunes horseshit and Hostel).  I can't imagine they'll impose rules like this on the people involved this time, so it's theirs to fuck up really - a better scenario than the series has been in for a while.

[j_u_d_a_s]

You're tearing me apart, Pyramid Head!

Silent Hill protagonists aren't supposed be scowling crossbow types, they're meant to look frightened and confused. Also, neither Kojima nor Del Toro are really as great as they're made out to be, (although Del Toro certainly has an eye for creature design).

Downpour had in my view the worst cast of any of these titles. Murphy Pendleton was a father who also looked like a generic rocker badass, complete with facial scar and don't get me started on those monster designs...
I'm in agreement on Kojima and Del Toro. Still feel whatever they have to bring to Silent Hill will still be at least more interesting than another supposed return to roots ala Homecoming/Downpour. From what I've seen of P.T. it does hint at a sort of evolution in the way that The Room was meant to be. If only that title hadn't got rushed ahead...
Have to give massive credit for the way this was announced too. Make a game that at first is a clone of Slender, get it streamed all over the internet to an audience who loves horror games then when the discovery is made, watch everyone's jaws drop. Kojima has us all talking about Silent Hill again. Not even Downpour, Book of Memories and Revelations 3D could manage that.

This has been Konami's mistake for ages, and not just with Silent Hill - seeing what flies and then running it into the ground.  The developers of the terrible 'Homecoming' were eventually open about what was imposed on them in making it:  it was the first game after the film, so whatever they did they had to include Pyramid Head, had to do the transitions in the same way as the film, and had to specifically address a Western audience by taking their cues from contemporary American horror films (meaning Platinum Dunes horseshit and Hostel).  I can't imagine they'll impose rules like this on the people involved this time, so it's theirs to fuck up really - a better scenario than the series has been in for a while.

Always thought it was a case of Konami killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Silent Hill was expected to be a low seller, so when it became a sleeper hit along with the great sales of 2, they put 3+4 into development asap. Playing 4 now, it's obvious how many corners were cut to get it out there in the first place. A shame because it really holds up as a concept and there's a lot to like about it. SH Origins was a clusterfuck saved by a complete retooling by Climax UK. Homecoming as you mentioned was ordered to cash in on the look of the movie. Konami wanted it to do for Silent Hill what Resident Evil 4 did for that franchise. Except Double Helix were given a budget of about 50p. I don't think it's a terrible game per se, it has some half decent monster designs and flashes of something better but lacks the spark of the Team Silent games. Probably due to imitation rather than inspiration. Shat Mems had ambition not fully realised but a decent enough concept in itself and a very solid story well told. The chase sequences are piss annoying though. Downpour... an attempted mainstream reboot that was stillborn in every respect. Dull characters, dull monsters, dull soundtrack and fucking Korn. Book of Memories, I've not even bothered to finish it.

With Silent Hills, I'm interested yeah. P.T. has that wonderful quiet tension that I loved about the series. And no matter what, it's going to look pretty fucking gorgeous.

[Rev]

Have to give massive credit for the way this was announced too. Make a game that at first is a clone of Slender, get it streamed all over the internet to an audience who loves horror games then when the discovery is made, watch everyone's jaws drop.

I completely agree about the way this was announced, and you wrote it up quite nicely - but as an aside, you seem to treat Slender as some sort of year zero, when it's a very recent thing that was heavily influenced by a bunch of other games.  I mean, Shattered Memories springs to mind, but you also mention Amnesia on your blog, and there's also SCP Containment Breach of course.  I'm not sure what the first game to employ this kind of style was, but Slender was a bit of a late imitator, wasn't it?

[Moribunderast]

Absolutely true, and the problem with the series became its attempts to boil down to things that worked originally.  They only worked originally because they were surprising, and what I think we all want is to be wrong-footed by a Silent Hill game.

Absolutely. I still vividly remember my first foray into Silent Hill 2. The long slow walk through the fog, the footsteps heard crunching behind you, only to turn to find no-one there. It was such a disorienting way to start a game that you were immediately tense. Likewise the first Silent Hill, having you "die" and then get immediately attacked by flying creatures while you were just trying to navigate the new game/scenario you've been dropped into. The early games had a knack for creating instant tension and steadily maintaining it. That can't be boiled down to a formula. Outside the box thinking is required and, in that respect, Del Toro and Kojima are a fine pair to bring in. Kojima because I'm uncertain as to how his wild excesses will be applied to Silent Hill and Del Toro because I simply don't know how he'd approach working on a game. I could see the end result being either a spectacular failure or a brilliant triumph. Frankly, I'd be disappointed if it landed in the middle. May as well go all-out.

I still liked the idea someone posited on a SH thread here a few years ago of doing smaller games, one-off stories that can potentially overlap through episodes. You could do some very interesting things with that Telltale approach, with various characters nightmare-visions/Silent Hills coalescing and shifting in and out of one another. It'd be a high risk of failure but that's the kind of ambition Silent Hill deserves.

A friend recently commented to me, when I was discussing recent horror films and games I'd watched/played: "Your life basically boils down to trying to replicate the first time you played Silent Hill 2." That's quite true. I want something to match that feeling. There's been many good scary games and plenty of terrifying movies but only one or two things (Tin Can Man, for instance) have had me as scared, trepidatious and confused as that first SH2 experience.

[j_u_d_a_s]

I completely agree about the way this was announced, and you wrote it up quite nicely - but as an aside, you seem to treat Slender as some sort of year zero, when it's a very recent thing that was heavily influenced by a bunch of other games.  I mean, Shattered Memories springs to mind, but you also mention Amnesia on your blog, and there's also SCP Containment Breach of course.  I'm not sure what the first game to employ this kind of style was, but Slender was a bit of a late imitator, wasn't it?

I focus on Slender in the blog because the whole Slenderman mythology has really taken hold of the internet's consciousness. Amnesia Dark Descent was the previous big boy and yeah Slender's mechanics owe a lot to it. Slender really stripped it down though, most likely to it being something done and dusted in a few afternoons for shits and giggles. There's over 773,000 hits for 'lets play Slender' on youtube, it's less of a game and more an amusement. It's more or less a big jump scare waiting to happen and I think that's the main attraction to it. Loads of those lets plays have a reaction cam so you can see the player shit themself when they get caught. And yeah, there's been shit tons of crappy indie rip offs because it's such a simple set up. Daylight is one of the most blatant.

It's like, Resident Evil wasn't the first game to use that 3D character on 2D background style but no one refers to it as an Alone in the Dark clone. So in a way, Slender is a kind of year zero but owing to its popularity rather than innovation.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I still liked the idea someone posited on a SH thread here a few years ago of doing smaller games, one-off stories that can potentially overlap through episodes. You could do some very interesting things with that Telltale approach, with various characters nightmare-visions/Silent Hills coalescing and shifting in and out of one another. It'd be a high risk of failure but that's the kind of ambition Silent Hill deserves.

That's a really good idea. One thing I always wondered when playing the other games is how the town appears to the NPC characters. They've hinted at other perceptions before, such as Angela seeing the town wreathed in flame in SH2 and Vincent saying "They look like monsters to you?" in SH3. A prismatic narrative[nb]Looks like that media studies degree is finally paying off[/nb] would be a great way to explore that idea.

I wonder if the series might be a bit too A-list to go down the episodic route though. Obviously Valve did it with Half-Life 2 (but apparently their hearts weren't in it) and DLC expansion packs are common, but doing whole games that way seems more to be the preserve of smaller developers.

A friend recently commented to me, when I was discussing recent horror films and games I'd watched/played: "Your life basically boils down to trying to replicate the first time you played Silent Hill 2." That's quite true. I want something to match that feeling. There's been many good scary games and plenty of terrifying movies but only one or two things (Tin Can Man, for instance) have had me as scared, trepidatious and confused as that first SH2 experience.

That sounds familiar. Playing the original spurred me to get into David Lynch's work. I also tried reading some of the Silent Hill comics, but they were pants that totally missed the feel of the games.

[j_u_d_a_s]

Will say this is all just pure speculation here.

I replayed Born from a wish last night. The side story that comes with the directors cut of Silent Hill 2. Something Ernest says to Maria really stuck out to me, "James is looking for the you that isn't you". P.T. starts off with a screen asking you "Are you sure the only you is you?"

Masahiro Ito has just tweeted this:

Ah, I don't wanna mean Pyramid Head is "good man, good existence" or not. In short, SH2 is the James's story. What kind of way does he select ? How does he recognize his guilt? PH is the existence like a navigator, for him.
_ @GirlNextDoor303 @adsk4 なるほどー！I like this info very much. I used to think that Pyramid Head is just a random enemy. じゃあ、奴はいい人だね？
_ @adsk4 The pyramid Head, he is another James and he makes James realized his guilty.　So he attacks other creatures on James's delusion.

And this pic more or less spells out what that means.

http://twitter.com/H2O_mmd/status/500018667439280128/photo/1

SO! What can we expect from this? I reckon that question at the start will play a big role in Silent Hills. Similar to how it did in Downpour but won't be shit. Whoever Reedus is could be the 'otherworld' version. Which is an interesting place to start from.

Anyway this is all wild speculation but it's nice to be excited for a Silent Hill title again.

[Rev]

One thing I always wondered when playing the other games is how the town appears to the NPC characters. They've hinted at other perceptions before, such as Angela seeing the town wreathed in flame in SH2 and Vincent saying "They look like monsters to you?" in SH3.

I'm sure there's another reference in SH2 - that I helpfully can't remember - which suggests that the monsters aren't actually monsters, and it's more a case of James's perception.  This is, of course, the most disturbing concept you could drop on that one - that all of those ugly buggers were simply normal people approaching you to talk you down from waving your steel pipe around.

[Thursday]

It doesn't quite make sense like that though, because if you were literally walking around a functioning town with normal people just going about their business, then surely police would be called and the monsters would do more than just breathe on you.

But it's notable that the only time you encounter a monster in SH2 with a character besides Maria present, is Angela and she's obviously seeing it as her father. Obviously you find corpses near Eddie so he's seeing people mocking him for being fat everywhere. I imagine the demons of Silent Hill panicking behind the scenes as they realize their victim's personal hell's are getting their wires crossed.

[Rev]

It doesn't quite check out, no - but there are some reasons that I've decided are valid that lead me to call it a cast-iron concept.  The stop-start nature of playing games like this does make you forget that SH2 takes place over the course of a couple of hours, so it's not unthinkable that a sleepy resort town in the off-season wouldn't have managed to bring in the big guns before it was over.  He deliberately fucks off in a row-boat at one point too, which isn't even sensible from his perspective, so it'd be perceived as utterly mentile to any theoretical cops on his trail.

I'm not sure if it was me who was blathering in the old thread mentioned earlier, but I think I did mention an idea about having six characters (because it'd have been the sixth 'proper' game at the time), as different, shorter takes on some single event that ties them together.  I still think that's a good idea - not an episodic release kind of deal, a standard purchase made up of small chapters.  It'd at least allow a bit of experimentation with protagonists, because fuck me, if James is the most interesting lead there's been then the series has an obvious fault.

[j_u_d_a_s]

I'm sure there's another reference in SH2 - that I helpfully can't remember - which suggests that the monsters aren't actually monsters, and it's more a case of James's perception.  This is, of course, the most disturbing concept you could drop on that one - that all of those ugly buggers were simply normal people approaching you to talk you down from waving your steel pipe around.

In SH2, you find the Blue Creek apartment key next to what can only be described as half man, half lying figure. So to me this suggests that the population has been transformed. But what you also have to remember is that Silent Hill mostly takes place in the fog filled world that is a kind of limbo. Inbetween the real world and the otherworld. So what James, Angela and Eddie are seeing may not exist in the real world, but in limbo. The bodies you find around Eddie whenever you meet him are suggested to be not "real" too.

In SH3, it gets even more complicated with the line in this cutscene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVtT5F4pqXc "They look like monsters to you?". Vincent definitely knows more than he's letting on and is taunting Heather with it. So it's still unclear whether or not she's really killing actual people.

Personally I think they could be manifestations brought up by the psyche of the protagonist (in the case of SH2 anyway). James is feeling extreme guilt so it would make sense for his own delusions attacking him. In SH3, they're more Alessa's demons attacking another part of Alessa's psyche to make it more confusing. So basically, they're real creatures just not necessarily innocent tourists.

Fuck I love this series.

[Mister Six]

Personally I think they could be manifestations brought up by the psyche of the protagonist (in the case of SH2 anyway). James is feeling extreme guilt so it would make sense for his own delusions attacking him. In SH3, they're more Alessa's demons attacking another part of Alessa's psyche to make it more confusing. So basically, they're real creatures just not necessarily innocent tourists.

In SH2 they're definitely projections of the person's psyche. James feels guilty about murdering his wife, so his monsters are all very feminine (the leg-creatures, the nurses), connected to hospitals or beds (the hotel's bed creatures, the wheelchairs, the nurses again) or violently masculine (Pyramid Head).

Eddie is wracked with paranoia and self-loathing, so all he sees are people staring at, or taunting, him (I think the bodies you see around the place are just other doomed SH residents he's killed, not monsters). He probably couldn't see Pyramid Head because Pyramid Head was a projection of James himself - or else he saw it as a different figure. Like...

...Angela, who's similarly self-loathing, and also feels guilt about killing her father and brother after they raped her. Her monsters look like the bed creatures from the hotel. If James is seeing the same thing as her, it's most likely because that image works for them both: to Angela it's a representation of a man raping her; to James it's a representation of him smothering his wife.

And of course, there's the little girl, Laura, who sees no monsters at all, nor any sign of anything odd in Silent Hill, because she has no darkness in her.

There's a really great plot analysis of SH2 here, and an even better one of the first, more oblique Silent Hill game here. The original game was an amazing, virtuoso production. I'd love to see a straight-up remake: same plot, characters, dialogue, but modern-quality graphics and voice artists that don't sound like bored people reading out a phone directory.

[Thursday]

In SH2 they're definitely projections of the person's psyche. James feels guilty about murdering his wife, so his monsters are all very feminine (the leg-creatures, the nurses), connected to hospitals or beds (the hotel's bed creatures, the wheelchairs, the nurses again) or violently masculine (Pyramid Head).

Eddie is wracked with paranoia and self-loathing, so all he sees are people staring at, or taunting, him (I think the bodies you see around the place are just other doomed SH residents he's killed, not monsters). He probably couldn't see Pyramid Head because Pyramid Head was a projection of James himself - or else he saw it as a different figure. Like...

Actually that reminds me, Eddie mentions he saw some monsters and ran away when you first meet him. It's not exactly clear what he means by monsters, but it could just be he's seeing James' monsters briefly.

[Moribunderast]

This concept movie is bloody promising! So much to dread. If the game is paced well and uses this kind of imagery, I can imagine it being disturbing and scary as fuck. There's so much to be excited with for this game but it could still go very wrong. I'm fascinated.