[UPDATE] Rumor: Multiplayer Creeping Into Silent Hill

[Just_A_Glitch]

Going to copy what I posted on the Kotaku article I read this from originally.

If its just like Left 4 Dead's Survival mode, where you and three others just have to rally together to stay alive in Silent Hill for as long as possible, I think it could actually work pretty well. Doesn't have to be competitive, which would be stupid.

As long as it wouldn't hinder the single player game (which from the sounds of it, they won't even be connected), then I am fine with this possibility. Imagine you and three friends trying desperately to board up a window as you hear Pyramid Head shambling just outside, his giant knife scraping across the ground. Or if each character has some different neurosis that causes them to see different shit. Your friend could be dying, and you'd just be looking at him, not being able to see what was attacking him.

This could actually have a lot of potential. I doubt it would be as good as I'm hoping, but damn it, it could be.

Sure, it worked great in resident evil too after all.

Oh wait.

The only Resident Evil game I've put more hours into than RE5 was RE4, and that's not by much. I think they did Co-Op damn well.

 

[pwnzerstick]

I word: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....

 

[King of Wei]

It'll be interesting to see how Silent Hill does multiplayer. It would be kinda cool if they have the kind of cult "safe heaven" like they did in the movie and Homecoming. Go out with a group of survivors, scavenge for equipment and haul ass back to the hideout when the air raid siren sounds, less you get maimed by pyramid head.

Glad they're not tacking this onto a main SH title too, means all resources will still be devoted to the single player experience.

 

[Delock]

This is why I have no hope for the Silent Hill these days.

From the new monsters (that seem to be zombies right now) to the idea of multiplayer, it's removing the whole idea of being alone in an alien place.

The only way I could see this working out is if you were to do it in the style of an MMO or Demon's Souls.

For the first style, you'd need to have it so you can't tell who is out to get you and who isn't, having players either be disguised as monsters sometimes, or have monsters hiding among players.

The second one would be the safer idea, as it worked as a horror idea in the game it came from already. Have the player be mostly alone and have others appear rarely as hallucinations or as enemies.

Maybe you could also have a multiplayer only mode where your character is randomly assigned to a mystery that to unlock the good ending, you must get clues (in the forms of items or other such) from players on a different story path, but make it so that not only would certain stories contain items that would set you towards the bad ending, but you would also only be able to interact with players in hubs set in the "normal" Silent Hill.



Of course, a better option is for Konami to try a crossover that would help 2 of their series, namely one between Silent Hill and Castlvania. Think hard for a moment about the idea of being a normal person trapped in Dracula's Castle or about how the first part of Bram Stoker's tale showed off a villain more than capable of outdoing even the iconic town in terms of messing with his victims before you dismiss that.

 

[Boom129]

do I need to spell it out for you people
COOP IS NOT SCARY, MULTIPLAYER IS NOT SCARY,ISOLATION IS SCARY

 

[Mr. Eff_v1legacy]

I think this is a terrible idea, and will only further devalue an excellent series.

The Outbreak games were good and scary because they kept the tension up. You were in short missions, with monsters biting at you, and a virus counter constantly reminding you that you will soon be a walking corpse.

Silent Hill is scary for different reasons. It has typically been about being alone, in darkness, surrounded by weird creatures and environments that have been altered into something not quite right (and in some cases, complete abominations!)
Silent Hill messes with your head. And that isn't something that I think can be created with a multiplayer experience.

And an MMO would be even worse than an Outbreak style game. Monsters should be scary and threatening, and as such should be avoided. MMOs, through leveling up and searching for items, push you TOWARD the monsters. And where would puzzles, good characters, and a good story fit in?

It makes me really sad to see my favourite series being treated so lightly. It should have ended with four.

 

[Fleaman]

The thing that makes Silent Hill scary is that you are utterly alone in an alien place. Throwing in extra people would ruin that. If they DID insist on doing this, then there are two rules that need to be put in place:

If you die, YOU ARE DEAD. No rescuing from a closet, no reviving after a set amount of time. Dead. Done. Finished. And your death has to hurt the team so badly that they will try to save you instead of just running for their lives.

When you die, no more talking. You mic gets cut off and you can't chat with the other players. No giving hints, no making jokes to ease the tension.

These things must be put in place to try and keep the feeling of Silent Hill intact, but for the record I still think multiplayer is a bad idea.

You're basically describing the design behind Left4Dead. And while that worked well as a way to make zombie apocalypse scary and intense again, that is the exact opposite of what Silent Hill multiplayer should be.

We're very used to the idea of co-op now. Stick together, split up, got your back. The theme is camraderie. Silent Hill does not know what this is. In Silent Hill, you and your buddy enter the town, and ONE of you is immediately swallowed by the Otherworld and vomited out on the other side of the lake. You work together to solve Weird Puzzle Shit and to try to reunite and kick some ass, communicating by radio except for when your radio is only playing static. Sometimes you get messages from ten minutes ago. Sometimes you get the same messages twice. Sometimes Silent Hill makes them up.

Most of the game will probably be trying to figure out if you're talking to a human or to the town. When you meet up, one of you is probably the game.

One thing that could make this work is if you go back to the roots of Silent Hill. Remember, in many of the games you were never sure if you were actually seeing monsters, or if your mind was turning against you and the things you've been bludgeoning to death are actually people. If Konami makes a multiplayer game, one way to keep it scary is to show other people as monsters, or not at all. You could be running around in the dark with a bunch of other people, but all you see is random stuff moving as the other players interact with it, or you see some monsters running around with you. In order for this to work, there would have to also be actual monsters, but in a multiplayer game, that's a given.

Also, they could show random flickers of the characters, like how in cutscenes you see other people, but they're actually memories? Maybe every once in a while the game records a players death and plays it back. Now it's starting to sound like Demons Souls, but if it was implemented properly it could be extremely effective.

My point it, don't just start bashing Konami for deciding to try something new. If you just say "Silent Hill is about being alone, therefore multiplayer will suck balls", then if you do try it out you'll have the preconceived notion that it sucks and won't ever like it. Also, please try this at home: play a scary game with a friend. I assure you, their reactions will scare the shit out of you more than the game will.

This is a good idea.

The point is that the security of having allies must be eliminated either by making them unreliable (maybe), unavailable (maybe), or untrustworthy (maybe).

 

[Sniper Team 4]

The thing that makes Silent Hill scary is that you are utterly alone in an alien place. Throwing in extra people would ruin that. If they DID insist on doing this, then there are two rules that need to be put in place:

If you die, YOU ARE DEAD. No rescuing from a closet, no reviving after a set amount of time. Dead. Done. Finished. And your death has to hurt the team so badly that they will try to save you instead of just running for their lives.

When you die, no more talking. You mic gets cut off and you can't chat with the other players. No giving hints, no making jokes to ease the tension.

These things must be put in place to try and keep the feeling of Silent Hill intact, but for the record I still think multiplayer is a bad idea.

You're basically describing the design behind Left4Dead. And while that worked well as a way to make zombie apocalypse scary and intense again, that is the exact opposite of what Silent Hill multiplayer should be.

We're very used to the idea of co-op now. Stick together, split up, got your back. The theme is camraderie. Silent Hill does not know what this is. In Silent Hill, you and your buddy enter the town, and ONE of you is immediately swallowed by the Otherworld and vomited out on the other side of the lake. You work together to solve Weird Puzzle Shit and to try to reunite and kick some ass, communicating by radio except for when your radio is only playing static. Sometimes you get messages from ten minutes ago. Sometimes you get the same messages twice. Sometimes Silent Hill makes them up.

Most of the game will probably be trying to figure out if you're talking to a human or to the town. When you meet up, one of you is probably the game.

Oh, I like that idea. That could work for Silent Hill. And I know I described Left 4 Dead. The things I listed that they needed to avoid can be found in L4D. Still being able to talk, being able to come back to life after a brief time. That just feels like cheating to me. I want to feel alone if I lose one of my teammates, not have them going, "Watch out, there's a monster around that corner because I'm a ghost and can travel all over the place warning you now."

 

[Mr. Eff_v1legacy]

The thing that makes Silent Hill scary is that you are utterly alone in an alien place. Throwing in extra people would ruin that. If they DID insist on doing this, then there are two rules that need to be put in place:

If you die, YOU ARE DEAD. No rescuing from a closet, no reviving after a set amount of time. Dead. Done. Finished. And your death has to hurt the team so badly that they will try to save you instead of just running for their lives.

When you die, no more talking. You mic gets cut off and you can't chat with the other players. No giving hints, no making jokes to ease the tension.

These things must be put in place to try and keep the feeling of Silent Hill intact, but for the record I still think multiplayer is a bad idea.

You're basically describing the design behind Left4Dead. And while that worked well as a way to make zombie apocalypse scary and intense again, that is the exact opposite of what Silent Hill multiplayer should be.

We're very used to the idea of co-op now. Stick together, split up, got your back. The theme is camraderie. Silent Hill does not know what this is. In Silent Hill, you and your buddy enter the town, and ONE of you is immediately swallowed by the Otherworld and vomited out on the other side of the lake. You work together to solve Weird Puzzle Shit and to try to reunite and kick some ass, communicating by radio except for when your radio is only playing static. Sometimes you get messages from ten minutes ago. Sometimes you get the same messages twice. Sometimes Silent Hill makes them up.

Most of the game will probably be trying to figure out if you're talking to a human or to the town. When you meet up, one of you is probably the game.

One thing that could make this work is if you go back to the roots of Silent Hill. Remember, in many of the games you were never sure if you were actually seeing monsters, or if your mind was turning against you and the things you've been bludgeoning to death are actually people. If Konami makes a multiplayer game, one way to keep it scary is to show other people as monsters, or not at all. You could be running around in the dark with a bunch of other people, but all you see is random stuff moving as the other players interact with it, or you see some monsters running around with you. In order for this to work, there would have to also be actual monsters, but in a multiplayer game, that's a given.

Also, they could show random flickers of the characters, like how in cutscenes you see other people, but they're actually memories? Maybe every once in a while the game records a players death and plays it back. Now it's starting to sound like Demons Souls, but if it was implemented properly it could be extremely effective.

My point it, don't just start bashing Konami for deciding to try something new. If you just say "Silent Hill is about being alone, therefore multiplayer will suck balls", then if you do try it out you'll have the preconceived notion that it sucks and won't ever like it. Also, please try this at home: play a scary game with a friend. I assure you, their reactions will scare the shit out of you more than the game will.

This is a good idea.

The point is that the security of having allies must be eliminated either by making them unreliable (maybe), unavailable (maybe), or untrustworthy (maybe).

I have played Silent Hill 1-4 with my best friend. Seeing his reactions to the hideous things in the game were definitely interesting, but his presence did not make the game scarier.

It's not just the fear factor that would suffer. Multiplayer games are built around action and fast pacing. The earlier Silent Hill games had puzzles and were deeply story oriented. I feel that those would probably be pushed aside. As such, being forced to face monsters would also make them less scary, in my opinion, as they wouldn't be something to be feared and avoided, rather, something to be fought and defeated.

Maybe I would have more faith in the idea if the last three games had been scarier and more true to the series.

 

[LadyPhera]

The idea was scrapped? That's too bad, I think it would have been interesting if it was done right. I certainly would have loved to have given it a chance. Not sure how they would have managed to make the town adapt to each person, but it would have been something new. Maybe it could have worked better as an add on to an existing game, like shattered memories. They already had the monsters change according to the player's actions and behavior in that game right? If they added it to that game then the monsters could have varied per player in the multiplayer, in theory anyway. But then again, maybe turning silent hill into multiplayer game is more trouble than it's worth.