And it's gone on vacation!
I'm not going to mince words; Silent Hill was dead for a very long time under the purview of professional franchise-ruiners; Konami. The people who seem so uninvested in the process of video game creation it's been a wonder that they haven't prostrated themselves in front of any of the trigger-happy company purchasers during the spate of recent buyouts. (I wonder if there's some behind-the-scenes offers they've been making around some of the big boys.) Konami have been spending their fan credits with speculative abandon on quite literally anything that captures their singular fancy, including Pachinko gambling machines and NFTs. I've been guessing for months now that the team have been building up to a quick u-turn out of gaming for good. But it would seem that I either am standing here with massive egg on my face, or Konami weren't able to summon up enough escape funds in time because he we are in the middle of a self-confessed Silent Hill revival.
Of course if you've had literally any ear-to-the-ground in the industry, or just have google geared your news feed towards gaming in the slightest, you've probably been drowning in rumours regarding everyone who has been working on Silent Hill projects. Well it seems we're just capped off the end of Daggerfall because quite literally all the endings are true at the same time; everyone who was said to be working on a Silent Hill product is indeed working on one, and despite being checked out of gaming for the better part of the past 4 years or so; Konami are still leakier than the roof of a Waffle House. (A little Waffle House humour for you there... not sure how many people go to Waffle House...) Luckily, I was lazy enough not to cover these rumours else I would have end up saying something woefully poorly aged like 'Konami can't find their head out of their assess, let alone commission four games simultaneously!'
But here we have, kicking off the announcements, a remake that is sure to be one of Bloober Team's most challenging to date. Especially since they're known to be one of the most successful mediocre horror game developers currently working. But I suppose we have yet to see them tackle the gruelling work of remastering a classic and brining it back to life in stunning detail that will capture every aspect of the original and bring more richness to the graphical fidelity without doing something weird and adding aprons over all the gory bodies or something. (Seriously, what is the Dead Space Remake doing?) But Silent Hill 2 is one of the those games that makes you question whether it even can be remade. The perfectly off-kilter pacing and jarring performance delivery matched with thick white fog that was invented to circumvent engine limitations but weaponised into one of the most iconic gaming features of all time. And then, of course, you have the iconically twisted monstrosities all designed around a psychological evaluation of the protagonist's guilt. The best of the franchise is all there, and a lot of it seems untouchable.
But to Bloober Team's credit, they seem to have nailed everything; even the voice acting! I really thought their pride would prevent them from going with such haunting, yet blank, performances but right now I honestly can't tell if lines are rerecorded with new actors or just digitally enhanced from the original; and that's a good confusion to have when talking a remake of a classic! The visuals look stunning too, with Bloober team seeming to have, at least in these curated snippets of gameplay, nailed the look of the fog. My only issue is that the fog seems not to be as consuming as the original, and I wonder if creatures will be able to spawn out in that 'uncomfortably close but not directly on top of you' distance which the original nailed so well. It's just a big question of taste and tweaks which will be quite honestly impossible to judge until it all comes together. And even then the majority of the world will have to wait another year at least after launch, because Playstation executives are greedy scumbags and I hate them.
There is also a movie on the horizon and, before you groan, it's actually by the same producer as the first Silent Hill move which was... not awful. The real problem with the original movie was that it borrowed the imagery of Silent Hill and removed it from the contextual and psychological significance. Why adapt the bubblehead nurses if they're not representing the main character's guilt of his subconscious fetishization of the nursing staff working at the hospital his wife was dying in? (Wow, that is a weird sentence; I really have missed this series. ) And why resummon Pyramid Head if he isn't representative of... actually I've never quite been able to nail the significance of the Pyramid. I assume he's a representation of James and the... way that he locks his mind away from the crime he committed? Nah, that's weak as heck; I truly don't know. The point is the movie is getting a sequel and I'm cautiously optimistic about it. I know that this series revival is being spurred by this new movie, so I hope it's good enough to justify all this hubbub.
And there's also a... very unclear community style horror game with a cool new main monster, I like the design. As far as I can tell, and I'm putting together context clues here; this is going to be an interactive visual show where people online will vote for events to happen and thus influence the events as they unfold. Kind of like the exact inverse of Defiance, a TV Show that actively influenced the world of a subsequent MMO of the same name. This is going to be a show that people themselves change as a collective so they have a chance to, in the words of the creators, "influence Silent Hill canon." Which is quite the prize in an anthology series that contains next to no continuous canon. It looks weird, I'm not sure about it.
Then there was another game, a live action something, who cares; the real kicker was Silent Hill F; oh my god it looks insane! The very first Silent Hill not set in that sleepy ghost town but instead brought to rural Japan, I've said before how well Japanese nowhere towns and American nowhere towns substitute for one another. The teaser trailer we got was creatively gorgeous in all the most unnerving ways, with blossoming red fauna that spider-webs after our new school-girl protagonist like veins under the skin, to the deliciously haunting visual of a girl being entombed in billowing mushroom growths up her entire body and over her head until her face literally peels off. Richly visual, refreshingly striking, everything you want in a new Silent Hill product. I want it, so bad. Those in the know have also praised the name of the man writing for Silent Hill F, saying he is something of an auteur in the Virtual Novel space; which actually makes me a bit nervous as some the Japanese VN's I've read are incredible works of narrative art and if this man stand out even amidst them- then this game might be shaping up towards giving me some mad inferiority complexes.
As far as reviving a dead series goes, I'd call this perhaps the most solid showing that Konami could have mustered. Offering a remake for old fans and an incredible visual treat of a teaser for the ever curious, mixed with a bunch of filler for niche folks to latch onto. I'm not sure if Silent Hill needs to be a franchise of content into of itself, it seems like every one is trying to do that nowadays with their properties, as if no one remembers what happened to the Deus ex 'Universe' initiative. (I remember how that crashed and burned.) I just hope that Konami are taking notes for when it comes to their inevitable relaunch of the Metal Gear franchise. Whatever terrible affront you guys want to do upon the Metal Gear Universe next; make sure it comes alongside a remake of Snake Eater and we'll let it slide. Mostly. We'll complain quietly about it.
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