Silent Hill series

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Part of the problem is that the people making it now have no idea what the concept of the original series is about, and they wouldn't know symbolism or subtly if it bit them in the ass. It's also not psychologically scary, and is scary in the sense of how the original Resident Evil series was scary. There are no subtle hints of anything being off or anyone straight up lying to the character to make you think something is wrong, and the monsters are really not that great. I played Homecoming and Origins and was bored to tears, and Origins gameplay and camera was annoying as hell. I didn't care at all for Shattered Memories since I thought it wasn't scary, the psychological test was a joke, and it was super easy to dodge all the monsters. The ending was meh.

Western horror doesn't go well with psychological horror at all since Westerners tend to do horror as really gory, graphic, and as bloody as humanly possible. While psychological horror messes with you the entire time and uses tension and atmosphere as a tool to make you think something is wrong. Then there's also the characters, as I've previously mentioned, that act strangely and don't see the same things as your character does.

I'd love to see a Silent Hill game like the first 3 (not so much The Room since I have mixed feelings about that one) and I want the series to be good again, but I don't see it.

Silent Hill 3 was by far the most terrifying one (although that may be because I respond badly to body horror).

The reason they can't make new Silent Hills like the first four is because it doesn't fit the shareholders' vision of a profitable game. They have to emphasize player combat, non-subtle characters, and put a focus on graphical power. In comparison to games today, Silent Hill 4 is kind of abysmal. It doesn't give you enough inventory/storage, handles terribly, is a bit moon-logic driven, very easily results in a bad ending, and the combat is one-note and painful. All of this was great in the context of what SH4 was, but if you put forward a motion to make another game like it, you'd be laughed out of the room by the shareholders.

Also that.

Horror games just don't sell that well anymore.

 

[lacktheknack]

captcha: giant bunny rabbit
Oh, like the one sort of from Silent Hill 3?

<youtube=wdaSeHaWHrs&autoplay=1>

Robbie the Rabbit was actually a bit hilarious until you looked too carefully at his mouth.

 

[daveman247]

The REAL question is why Konami thought it was okay to piss on the memory of SH2/3 with a HORRID, PATHETIC, EMBARRASSING 'HD' collection that looks and plays WORSE then the originals.

I've heard this thrown around A LOT. No fog, game breaking bugs, broken audio and lip syncing etc. The weird thing is i never encountered any of it, bar maybe one game-breaking bug that was easily worked around. There was plenty fog and plenty rust :/ Certainly worked better than trying to play the xbox 1 version of silent hill 2 on the 360.


I also liked the re-done voice work quite a bit. A lot of the dialogue in SH2 in particular was pretty cringeworthy.

 

[daveman247]

Fuck the Silent Hill cult bullshit.

I can get behind that. The whole cult thing that seems to come up every few games was pretty weak. Was much better when they just stuck to silent hill being a supernatural, unexplained town.



Also never got the hate behind SH4. Yes it had many problems but it is still the one which scared me the most by far. Except the burping enemies, not sure what the hell that was about XD

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

Silent Hill had very little Japanese horror [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_horror] (note how Silent Hill is not on the videogame list). The one that comes closest to it is SH4 with its plethora of ghosts, possession and exorcism themes (and not in the typical Catholic portrayal we see in media such as The Exorcist). Silent Hill 1 and 3 (and 2, to a lesser degree) were entirely based on European occult lore, with American aesthetics, Western authors as influences and psychological horror by way of magical realism instead of classic kaidan stories.

I think what most people mean by "Japanese horror" in this thread is actually "psychological horror", which are obviously not the same thing (just because Japanese horror uses psychological horror doesn't mean it has a trademark or monopoly on it). The main influences on Silent Hill were Western horror books and films from the 70s and 80s (and a bit of the early 90s), back when psychological horror was still seen as a valid take on the genre in the West. This is also probably why Konami handed over the development to Western studios, by the way, because to them it had very little to do with Japanese culture, and the most Japanese game of the series (SH4) had sold poorly when compared to the aggressively Western first three.

Right, but I don't mean the tropes of Japanese horror but rather the overall feeling it gives. I haven't figured out exactly what it is yet, but it's something that nearly all the Japanese horror I've experienced has while little of the western horror does.

 

[Darken12]

Right, but I don't mean the tropes of Japanese horror but rather the overall feeling it gives. I haven't figured out exactly what it is yet, but it's something that nearly all the Japanese horror I've experienced has while little of the western horror does.

Have you actually experienced Western horror before the late 90s (and I don't mean exploitation movies like Cannibal Ferox)? David Lynch? Jacob's Ladder? All of the authors that the streets in Silent Hill are named after?

Here, just watch this:

Spoiler: Streets of Old Silent Hill Explained

and this:

Spoiler: Rest of the Streets Explained

Western horror had subtlety, atmosphere and relied heavily on the psychological once upon a time. And it irks me quite a bit when people dismiss the entirety of Western horror as continuum of unsubtle gorefests because they can't be arsed to do their bloody research.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

Right, but I don't mean the tropes of Japanese horror but rather the overall feeling it gives. I haven't figured out exactly what it is yet, but it's something that nearly all the Japanese horror I've experienced has while little of the western horror does.

Have you actually experienced Western horror before the late 90s (and I don't mean exploitation movies like Cannibal Ferox)? David Lynch? Jacob's Ladder? All of the authors that the streets in Silent Hill are named after?

Here, just watch this:

Spoiler: Streets of Old Silent Hill Explained

and this:

Spoiler: Rest of the Streets Explained

Western horror had subtlety, atmosphere and relied heavily on the psychological once upon a time. And it irks me quite a bit when people dismiss the entirety of Western horror as continuum of unsubtle gorefests because they can't be arsed to do their bloody research.

I have, actually...Like I said, I've been getting into David Lynch and Stephen King recently. And one of my favorite movies of all time is The Haunting (1963).

 

[Dfskelleton]

I've been a horror fan for a long time, as well as a long time Silent Hill fan, and this is something I'd like to mention; I don't believe the series' gradual decline was due to the shift from Japan to the U.S.; it's due to the shift from developers who knew what they were doing to developers who don't.
Good horror depends on who made it; not it's country of origin. True, each country has a different horror culture, and this will inevitably influence the artist's work, but ultimately, the quality depends on the creator.
Also, I think someone mentioned this before, and I can't agree more; a lot of people confuse "psychological horror" and "Japanese horror".
Frankly, Japan's traditional style of horror is actually a little bit goofy, at least to me. Sure, we've got serial killers in rubber masks slaughtering idiotic teenagers, and just as that gets old for us, I'm sure a lot of them are a bit tired of the "creepy little ghost kid" thing as well. And, just like us, Japan gets maybe a few good horror flicks every once in a while, amidst a sea of knockoffs and mediocrity.

Also, we must remember that the original 3 games could get away with things that you could never do today. Such as the loading screens before each room; it was slow and tedious, but it was very tense too; there's always this horrible dread that the first thing you hear will be your radio blaring awful static. Oh, and let's not forget the controls, the extremely limited visibility outdoors, the camera that's out to get the player every bit as much as the monsters, if not even more so, etc., etc. And since games cost so much to produce these days, a company just can't afford to do risky things anymore.
Survival horror is the last surviving relative of the Adventure Game, and it's currently on it's deathbed, and it's had to sell most of it's posessions to the action genre just to pay the medical bills.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Because something about japanese horror translates better to videogames than american horror. American horror is all about the jumps and the gore, japanese horror is all about atmosphere, getting under the consumers skin and being outright bizarre...

As a result, japanese horror lends itself better to being a game thats actually unnerving and tense. American horror lends itself best to violent spectacle shooters like dead space that have a few jump scares littered about (every. fucking. vent.)

I don't know, Silent Hill's atmosphere was influenced very heavily by an American movie called Jacob's Ladder, as well as a tiny bit by Twin Peaks. Silent Hill 2 even had a bit of Lost Highway (another David Lynch creation) in it in the form of the videotape.

[sub]Seriously, it was hard for me to find this scene without Silent Hill music strapped to it.[/sub]​

What made the first 3 SH's in particular scary was partially due to the hardware they were presented on. The graphics were fuzzier, the animation was more choppy, and the camera control wasn't the greatest either. All this helped to achieve a sense of uneasiness. The current generation is too slick and clean for the old SH horror to work.

I'd say the closest we've come to this old school type of horror in this generation are the Souls games. And this is exactly because those games don't have silky smooth controls and a have twitchy camera.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

The main reason is after part 4 the original team which made the games Team Silent disbanded and development shifted from Japan to the US which have a different style of horror.

Not really... Origins was made by an english team, Homecoming, i'll give you that, was made in America, Shattered Memories hat the same creators as Origins and Downpour was... uh... polish? Romanian? I don't quite remember but i'm pretty sure it was an eastern european team.

And yes, all these teams brought their distinctive style to the series. Though i wouldn't say Silent Hill 1 - 4 had the exact same style. 1 had that slightly B-movie-like story about an evil lovecraftian cult and it's vengeful god, Silent Hill 2 replaced the occultism with a more personal story while Silent Hill 3 returned to SH1s storyline but still kept some of SH2s elements. SH4 was... kinda weird, to be honest. More of a spinoff, really.

I'm not particulary discontent with the series. Homecoming was pretty bad, yeah. But Origins was a perfectly decent prequel to SH1 with a few good ideas, Shattered Memories had gameplay problems but a story that rivals Silent Hill 2 and a downright beautiful artstyle and Downpour, while a bit lacking in monsterdesign, did a good job of sticking to the gameplay of the original trilogy while taking it into new and interesting directions. I might not like it as much as Shattered Memories but i still enjoyed it.

 

[The White Hunter]

Because something about japanese horror translates better to videogames than american horror. American horror is all about the jumps and the gore, japanese horror is all about atmosphere, getting under the consumers skin and being outright bizarre...

As a result, japanese horror lends itself better to being a game thats actually unnerving and tense. American horror lends itself best to violent spectacle shooters like dead space that have a few jump scares littered about (every. fucking. vent.)

I don't know, Silent Hill's atmosphere was influenced very heavily by an American movie called Jacob's Ladder, as well as a tiny bit by Twin Peaks. Silent Hill 2 even had a bit of Lost Highway (another David Lynch creation) in it in the form of the videotape.

[sub]Seriously, it was hard for me to find this scene without Silent Hill music strapped to it.[/sub]​

What made the first 3 SH's in particular scary was partially due to the hardware they were presented on. The graphics were fuzzier, the animation was more choppy, and the camera control wasn't the greatest either. All this helped to achieve a sense of uneasiness. The current generation is too slick and clean for the old SH horror to work.

I'd say the closest we've come to this old school type of horror in this generation are the Souls games. And this is exactly because those games don't have silky smooth controls and a have twitchy camera.

Huh, the more you know.

See horror is always an intresting genre for me, because I'm yet to find a scary game beyond the odd jump. [sub]Yes, I've played Amnesia, it was okay, it wasn't scary, nice atmosphere though[/sub]. I get more out a good atmosphere and the sense that death is inevitable and survival is a struggle than anything else with horror, which is why Id islike co-op in my horror so much.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

The REAL question is why Konami thought it was okay to piss on the memory of SH2/3 with a HORRID, PATHETIC, EMBARRASSING 'HD' collection that looks and plays WORSE then the originals.

I've heard this thrown around A LOT. No fog, game breaking bugs, broken audio and lip syncing etc. The weird thing is i never encountered any of it, bar maybe one game-breaking bug that was easily worked around. There was plenty fog and plenty rust :/ Certainly worked better than trying to play the xbox 1 version of silent hill 2 on the 360.


I also liked the re-done voice work quite a bit. A lot of the dialogue in SH2 in particular was pretty cringeworthy.

Watch this review if you want a really, REALLY long explanation as to why the HD collection is much worse than the normal versions.



All those things may seem like little gripes to you, but they're really not when you add them all up.

 

[Eternal_Lament]

Part of the problem with 3 on the HD collection is that one of the scariest aspects of it had been completely botched up. Even on a PS2 today with an HD tv Silent Hill 3 had some of the creepiest, and down-right most terrifying visuals not only of the series, but perhaps of most games. The graininess, which would be impossible to do today, was what added to that. You knew there was something there, but it was always obscured. The most terrifying things were the things you could never get the best look at or comprehend, and that's what made them great. The HD version of 3 though removes most of those elements, and it just comes across as annoying, especially if (like me) you have the original.

2 I'm not sure about. To me the HD version seems fine, but that's because I never played 2 when it came out, and I can't find a regular copy anywhere.

4 has many issues. I still quite like it because a) a change of pace with the styles and themes, b) while not as terrifying, somewhat creepier visuals than 3, and c) while the main character is bland, the story and lore in 4 is some of the best in the series. Unfortunately, gameplay is also bad, perhaps ranking near the bottom.

Origins was trying to ape 1 and 3 too much with hints of 2 (the Butcher would've been a better enemy than boss) while Homecoming was trying to ape 2, 3, and 4. Downpour though I'd say is actually pretty good, and I think a sign that the series still has potential. It didn't have much in the way of scares, but the town design was amazing and I thought the team at least had a good grasp of what could be used to be scary.

As for why they don't return to the original roots, it just wouldn't work today. If they released a game like say on PSN/XBLA/Steam for $15 it could probably work, but not at a full $60. Considering the standards gamers have today, just recreating a game in the vain of the originals isn't enough.

Also, while I used to think SH went down hill because of American horror, I know realize that in fact no, were it not for American horror the SH series wouldn't have started in the first place. I attribute the slump not to change of origin, but a) just a basic change in teams, and b) the general decline of horror across all genres (in terms of quality, not quantity. Also, no, I haven't seen/played/read everything, so it is quite likely that stuff has just flown over my head) In fact, given the nature of horror games coming out of Japan now, I don't think saying "The series should've just stayed in Japan" is any better than what the previous slumps became.

 

[mohit9206]

the only silent hill i have played is shattered memories. it was a good scary tale of a father looking for her lost daughter in the town of silent hill following a car accident.
however i have yet to play silent hill 2,3 and 4 coz they are unavailable here. so if anyone wanna lend me theirs please do so. also i havent played downpour . it looks like its a true return to series roots but i saw some people not liking it. anything particularly wrong with downpour ? i hope it comes to pc

 

[Frezzato]

Spoiler: click to expand

Right, but I don't mean the tropes of Japanese horror but rather the overall feeling it gives. I haven't figured out exactly what it is yet, but it's something that nearly all the Japanese horror I've experienced has while little of the western horror does.

Have you actually experienced Western horror before the late 90s (and I don't mean exploitation movies like Cannibal Ferox)? David Lynch? Jacob's Ladder? All of the authors that the streets in Silent Hill are named after?

Here, just watch this:

Spoiler: Streets of Old Silent Hill Explained

and this:

Spoiler: Rest of the Streets Explained

Western horror had subtlety, atmosphere and relied heavily on the psychological once upon a time. And it irks me quite a bit when people dismiss the entirety of Western horror as continuum of unsubtle gorefests because they can't be arsed to do their bloody research.

You're right. The one thing that creeps me out about certain 70's horror movies is how they really took their time in telling a story. There weren't too many rapid cuts in editing. Some movies (Sybil) had really slow panning camera shots--slow enough to make the viewer uncomfortable. And instead of a real soundtrack you might have a single, screeching violin note playing in the background. Directors weren't afraid to just leave the camera sitting there. I think the best, most recent example would be John Carpenter's The Thing versus the prequel/remake.

Even older, "regular" movies from back then leave me with an uneasy feeling because of the aging film stock they used, mixed in with the oppressive California daylight (where most films were/are made) which gave movies an overexposed look. I can't blame anyone for not knowing their older movies though, because you have to go out of your way to find them.

OT: It'll always be Silent Hill 2 for me. INB4 "You always love the first one you play". Nope, I played SH1 first.

 

[daveman247]

snip

Hm, they had afew good points (such as the fresh paved roads - which i DID notice. As well as a few censored scenes). The rest of it, (particulary part 2) just came off as whiny bitching of the hardcore fans :/ Especially when they got to the audio changes. Which is just personal taste IMO.

Im convinced that the technical issues only existed in the ps3 version. Every problem i have seen has been in the ps3 version. I played it on 360, and there was definitley no slow-mo parts for example.

 

[daveman247]

snip

I enjoyed downpour. It wasnt particulary scary (certainly creepy, might be desensitized at this point though) and they REALLY dropped the ball on monster designs. But the spin on the rain being a bad thing and the return to more exploration and puzzles, rather than combat was good. It felt like they were starting to "get" what the older silent hill games were about. I liked that they made it semi-open world too. With many sidequests to do. Had some weird glitches and a REALLY jumpy framerate though.


Unfortunatly i doubt downpour is going to come to PC. Downpour didnt sell that well, and i THINK the dev that made it has been shut down :/ A shame.

 

[Darken12]

I have, actually...Like I said, I've been getting into David Lynch and Stephen King recently. And one of my favorite movies of all time is The Haunting (1963).

Good, then I'm sure you'll be quick to realise that the influence of traditional Japanese horror in the Silent Hill series was next to nil (save, as always, for SH4).

Also, I think someone mentioned this before, and I can't agree more; a lot of people confuse "psychological horror" and "Japanese horror".
Frankly, Japan's traditional style of horror is actually a little bit goofy, at least to me. Sure, we've got serial killers in rubber masks slaughtering idiotic teenagers, and just as that gets old for us, I'm sure a lot of them are a bit tired of the "creepy little ghost kid" thing as well. And, just like us, Japan gets maybe a few good horror flicks every once in a while, amidst a sea of knockoffs and mediocrity.

That would be me. Japanese horror (and overall Japanese storytelling) can be extremely unsubtle and hamfisted when it wants to get a point across (see: Hideo Kojima and his verbose elocutions on why nuclear weapons are baaaaaaaaaaaaaad and other matters of war, or almost every manga/anime/videogame ever). Giving props to the Japanese for something that they only sometimes get right strikes me as highly disingenuous, especially when the West has been getting it right just as often.

I don't know, Silent Hill's atmosphere was influenced very heavily by an American movie called Jacob's Ladder, as well as a tiny bit by Twin Peaks. Silent Hill 2 even had a bit of Lost Highway (another David Lynch creation) in it in the form of the videotape.

Thank you.

You're right. The one thing that creeps me out about certain 70's horror movies is how they really took their time in telling a story. There weren't too many rapid cuts in editing. Some movies (Sybil) had really slow panning camera shots--slow enough to make the viewer uncomfortable. And instead of a real soundtrack you might have a single, screeching violin note playing in the background. Directors weren't afraid to just leave the camera sitting there. I think the best, most recent example would be John Carpenter's The Thing versus the prequel/remake.

Even older, "regular" movies from back then leave me with an uneasy feeling because of the aging film stock they used, mixed in with the oppressive California daylight (where most films were/are made) which gave movies an overexposed look. I can't blame anyone for not knowing their older movies though, because you have to go out of your way to find them.

Pretty much, yeah. John Carpenter's Halloween, for example, was a supremely decent and acceptable take on psychological horror, particularly by way of Psycho. Having a clearly unstable character stalking the protagonist, with pretty much no gore, a low body count, and large amounts of time where nothing exciting happens (to build tension) were what made it a solid entry into the psychological horror category. That the ending implies (again: subtlety!) that the demented stalker has become an actual supernatural force veers firmly into Magical Realism, a genre where subtlety is key and which Latin America has been exporting non-stop (though, admittedly, not in the horror variety) since Jorge Luis Borges [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges], Ernesto Sabato [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Sabato] and Gabriel Garcia Marquez [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_garcia_marquez] started writing about seemingly normal locales with subtle supernatural elements. The very concept of Silent Hill, a town that is almost perfectly normal, quiet and boring, but where something has clearly gone supernaturally wrong, is so Magical Realism it physically hurts.

You can find examples of psychological horror all over Western media, but it most often crops up in literature, since books cannot, by their very nature, rely on jump scares or visceral gore. Literature has to be psychological, or else it fails, since it has no other way of grabbing the reader and making them feel emotions.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

snip

Hm, they had afew good points (such as the fresh paved roads - which i DID notice. As well as a few censored scenes). The rest of it, (particulary part 2) just came off as whiny bitching of the hardcore fans :/ Especially when they got to the audio changes. Which is just personal taste IMO.

Im convinced that the technical issues only existed in the ps3 version. Every problem i have seen has been in the ps3 version. I played it on 360, and there was definitley no slow-mo parts for example.

The changed voices are quite clearly explained in the video. To me they changed them to be more dramatic and gamey, when Silent Hill 2 and 3's voice acting was great for the game it was in. A clear example is Douglas Cartland, he actually sounds 50 years old in the original SH3, but in the HD version he sounds like a 20 year old trying to sound 50. If they really cared about the original games and liked them, the team would have simply done what other companies have doing for every other damn HD collection. Which is keep the entire experience intact, but put better framerates and make it 720p. The original games were fine, they didn't need any changes for the modern day.

The MGS HD collection was amazing, since it kept the original games exactly how they were but made the framerate much better and the graphics really nice. The Silent Hill HD collection is like the Star Wars special editions, unneccesary changes to an otherwise perfect game/movie. I would say they're even worse, since it wasn't the original creator who did it but a guy who didn't really like the original games.

And why the hell didn't they add in SH4? It just screams of laziness and no actual love for the series.

 

[Frezzato]

Watch this review if you want a really, REALLY long explanation as to why the HD collection is much worse than the normal versions.

Spoiler: click to expand

Spoiler: click to expand

All those things may seem like little gripes to you, but they're really not when you add them all up.

Wow, I just watched those two videos (no really) and I'm glad I didn't purchase the HD collection. I had only read that they were bad ports; seeing the disdain the new team has for the original SH games means I will be actively seeking out games they're involved with and NOT buying them. I can't imagine being in the position of working on a remake while actively mocking the original source material.