Saving Silent Hill
- Thread starter maninahat
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I don't think it's gone to shit (though I haven't played Downpour yet) but it has certainly fallen from what it used to be.
My recommendation: Give it to a small studio with a project leader who knows what "Silent Hill" scary is. Now, I also haven't played Amnesia but if it's half as good as I hear, they'd be a great candidate for developing a new Silent Hill game.
Larger studios like Monolith (Condemned: Criminal Origin) or Remedy (Alan Wake) may also be able to pull it off.
My recommendation: Give it to a small studio with a project leader who knows what "Silent Hill" scary is. Now, I also haven't played Amnesia but if it's half as good as I hear, they'd be a great candidate for developing a new Silent Hill game.
Larger studios like Monolith (Condemned: Criminal Origin) or Remedy (Alan Wake) may also be able to pull it off.
I wouldn't do anything because I don't really think it needs "saving."
All you guys want is to force Team Silent back together, lock them in a room, and make them churn out Silent Hill 2 over and over again.
I say let it continue changing hands every few iterations. Downpour was a step in the right direction. I'd rather let other people experiment around with it then give it to the same group so it can stagnate.
All you guys want is to force Team Silent back together, lock them in a room, and make them churn out Silent Hill 2 over and over again.
I say let it continue changing hands every few iterations. Downpour was a step in the right direction. I'd rather let other people experiment around with it then give it to the same group so it can stagnate.
I am a fan of the old Silent Hill games (by which I mean Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, I still think SH3 was terrible and The Room should have remained a game separate from the franchise as was the original intention), but I really, really liked Silent Hill Downpour. Why? Because I played Homecoming and Shattered Memories. That should be enough of an explanation, but if you want more, I suppose I should add 'and they were absolutely atrocious games'.
If I were to want to 'save the series', I would say... keep going in the same direction Downpour went, but go back to the days of the monsters being monsters and having some sort of psychological significance for the protagonist. Or victim, if you rather. (Honestly, I'd like to see a Silent Hill game on the scale of Downpour with the types of monsters in SH2 and the motivations of SH4. When I found out the main character of Downpour was a prisoner I knew right off the bat it had something to do with his dead child or wife and that's just getting too predictable. I liked how SH4 mainly had you looking out for yourself, and then your neighbor unless you just gave her a bicycle chain and let her at it.)
If I were to want to 'save the series', I would say... keep going in the same direction Downpour went, but go back to the days of the monsters being monsters and having some sort of psychological significance for the protagonist. Or victim, if you rather. (Honestly, I'd like to see a Silent Hill game on the scale of Downpour with the types of monsters in SH2 and the motivations of SH4. When I found out the main character of Downpour was a prisoner I knew right off the bat it had something to do with his dead child or wife and that's just getting too predictable. I liked how SH4 mainly had you looking out for yourself, and then your neighbor unless you just gave her a bicycle chain and let her at it.)
step one: stop making silent hill
step two: hope that the former members of the development team go and help make other fresh new horror games.
Problem solved.
step two: hope that the former members of the development team go and help make other fresh new horror games.
Problem solved.
I always thought that it was because they were trying to make Silent Hill 2 over and over, that the series had got into a rut.Gorilla Gunk said:
I think the problem with the series is that, besides 4, they've all followed a similar basic formula: Player character get lost in Hilent Hill, has to fight off monsters, has lots of flashbacks to something bad that happened previously in their life, tries to escape. I think they should mix it up. There is only so many times you can have someone walk around the same, miserable looking town before it feels the same.
My idea would be to not set it in Silent Hill at all. Have a character who has already left the town by the beginning of the game, and who tries to lead a normal life. As he goes about his day to day life, Silent Hill finds ways to creep into his world. Many of the games have a theme of repressed issues or PSTD regarding some past problem. How about making Silent Hill, that past problem? By doing it this way,you can still have elements of Silent Hill, whilst trying new environments; a pastoral landscape or a busy New York Street, transforming into a foggy, dead land.
Save it? Hell that's gonna take a miracle seeing as the developers that have it, or have made on, need to look up the definition for metaphor and not try so damn hard. /rant
Anyways, give it to Frictional since I seriously believe those are the only people that knows how to make a game terrifying.
Anyways, give it to Frictional since I seriously believe those are the only people that knows how to make a game terrifying.
I....actually really like that idea. You mean like having a character that's been to Silent Hill before and is now surviving the whole experience right? That would be pretty damn sweet the more I think about it.maninahat said:
I love the first 3 Silent Hill games to death,... but that type of survival horror won't work anymore.
A lot of what made the initial games scary was due to the hardware limitations of the PS2, and I don't just mean the fog. The animations, the grainy graphics, the scratchy sound effects, the spastic camera, and of course the clunky controls all contributed to the sense of wariness.
Today's games look too clean and polished, and have too accurate controls for the Silent Hill type fear to work. It sounds crazy, but that's the way it is.
A lot of what made the initial games scary was due to the hardware limitations of the PS2, and I don't just mean the fog. The animations, the grainy graphics, the scratchy sound effects, the spastic camera, and of course the clunky controls all contributed to the sense of wariness.
Today's games look too clean and polished, and have too accurate controls for the Silent Hill type fear to work. It sounds crazy, but that's the way it is.
Don't make anymore after Silent Hill 2? God knows I stopped playing them after SH3. Although to be fair, I don't even really like Silent Hill 1 that much. I just don't like the whole "evil cult" angle and never have.
It's more than that. The entire landscape of gaming has changed drastically this generation, and survival horror has an extermely difficult time fitting in.usmarine4160 said:
Even if you'd have a game with scares on par with Silent Hill, constantly having messages, friends requests, a tropies/achievements pop up tends to disrupt the atmosphere of being alone in a hellish world. Atleast, it does to me.
I agree with a couple on this thread, just stop making it. Every game with Silent Hill slapped on the front will have great expectations, to live up to SH2.
Unfortunately, that cannot happen easily. Move on, make a new horror series. I'd prefer to have a collection of truly scary new games on the market as opposed to one series having 1 every now and then!
Unfortunately, that cannot happen easily. Move on, make a new horror series. I'd prefer to have a collection of truly scary new games on the market as opposed to one series having 1 every now and then!