New Silent Hill by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro

[RightClickSaveAs]

This is all over the internet by now, so I'm sure everyone will have seen it already, but it looks like this is a thing that's going to happen: http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/12/599653 ... o-del-toro

Kojima is not a name I would have expected to hear associated with Silent Hill. I have to be honest, I'm not that familiar with what he's done, as I don't know a lot of the Sony games, but could this be the kind of kick the Silent Hill series needs to get started up again?

[miumiaou]

Well hope this'll be a good game but on the other side it's great that the Silent Hill license isn't dead yet

[matt]

While I am certainly excited that there is a new Silent Hill game, and I'm sure I'll buy it, I'm not really sure any of the news that has been announced is exactly "good" for Silent Hill fans.

I'm not exactly a fan of Kojima's games, but in my opinion the cornerstones of Kojima games are:
1) Convoluted and nonsensical stories
2) REALLY long cutscenes
3) Stealth

Perhaps that's not fair and those are just cornerstones of Metal Gear Solid.

I've expressed in developer diaries that true horror games just don't have the audience to carry a AAA budget, and I think that is true of Silent HillS. I think Konami realizes it, and the game is really being carried by names. If you look, the game has a bunch of somewhat random names attached:
1) Silent Hill - While I haven't played P.T. yet, it doesn't seem SUPER Silent Hill-y.
2) Kojima - Exactly what role he plays in development remains to be seen. Who is the developer I wonder? Kojima Productions was involved in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, but I doubt he had much to do with it
3) Guillermo Del Toro - While he worked on THQ's inSANE IP, he doesn't exactly have a lot of experience with games. Is he just providing a story treatment? I don't know.
4) Norman Reedus - The big reveal was holy crap, you are playing as Daryl from the walking dead.

All of the P.T. announcement just seems to be centered around "star power" and names, which seems a bit bizarre. I think Konami doesn't have faith in the horror genre and are trying to attach a lot of other things to make it more appealing to consumers. I suspect that will mean sweeping changes from the Silent Hills we know and love. If you look at the sales every other Silent Hill game they didn't sell the multiple million units required to be a success these days in the market. We live in a world where 6 million units sold is a disappointment (as with the new Tomb Raider). Obviously they may not go all out with the budget (which would be smart), but fundamentally, I think we are looking at a completely different animal than the old Silent Hills. Plus, Norman Reedus kicks too much ass to be a proper Silent Hill protagonist.

So while I am excited, I am expecting something completely new and not really Silent Hill-y, but it is better than nothing! hahaha I was so desperate for more Silent Hill, I recently bought the underwhelming Downpour. hahah

Hopefully I'm proven wrong though, but everything I've seen so far isn't exactly a "good" sign. I didn't play the P.T. demo yet. I'm worried I'll get stuck like the Polygon guys who just gave up and decided they saw everything in it. hahah I am looking forward to giving it a try, but I'm not sure I'm going to play any games until I ship Neverending Nightmares, so it might be a while.

*EDIT* Well, I played the P.T. demo, and while it had some interesting things it was pretty terrible overall as a game. I gave up out of frustration. I watched walkthroughs, read on gamefaqs, tried a bunch of crap, but it seems like it is completely arbitrary and randomly ends if it "likes" you. The gameplay consists of walking in a short hallway that loops and pressing a button to look closer at different things. Sometimes that triggers things. Maybe. Probably? There is an "end" section that has random things happen, but no one seems to know how to REALLY trigger the end section. The other stuff you can sort of stumble through... Maybe they made the demo so only a certain percentage of people can ever trigger the ending. Some people were saying they tried the end section for hours but couldn't trigger it.

Did anyone else play it? I kind of liked the atmosphere, but the completely opaque game design really ruined the whole experience...

[JPrice]

I'm somewhat torn on this news to be honest.

On the one hand its nice to see that the Silent Hill franchise is still held in such esteem that it was given to such high profile names within their respective industry. Shows that they haven't entirely given up on the franchise as a whole after the less than stellar previous entries. Also I can respect that Kojima has made some highly regarded games which shows that he does know how to make something of high quality, that in tandem with Guillermo Del Toro's eccentric and unique design work has the potential to create a great horror game.

On the other hand, from a gameplay perspective this is the first time that Kojima has made a horror game (As far as I'm aware) so there's a lot of room for error. Also there's been no concrete news on what studio is developing the game so it could still end up being poorly put together. Something else that I'm unsure of is the choice of casting Norman Reedus as the protagonist (Assuming he is). I mean he is a good actor don't get me wrong but he's become largely synonymous for playing Daryl in The Walking Dead to a lot of people. I mean even someone like me who doesn't watch the show, when I saw him in the render I was like "Oh hey that's the guy from The Walking Dead". I don't know if that was the wisest choice in my eyes, seeing as that constant concious association may impede me from fully getting invested into the world, characters etc.

I think its too early to say if the game will be any good or not, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't hopeful. After the apparantly lackluster Homecoming and Downpour, it'd be nice to have a new good Silent Hill game.

Also they better release it on PC otherwise I'll be peeved that I can't play it if it does turn out to be good! Hahaha

[Harry Sunderland]

Aside from MGS, the other series I know Hideo is associated with is Snatcher. I've never played it, but it is supposedly good. Maybe I'll try it out just to get a taste of his other chops.

I know he produced Zone of Enders, but I'm not sure how influential the producer is in game development (perhaps Matt can elaborate on that).

But I echo the sentiments of Matt and JPrice...I'm just not sure if Norman Reedus is well suited for the kind of "vulnerability" I typically associate with someone going through Silent Hill. But then again, the last two garbage games have been moving away from vulnerable protagonists and moving towards bad-asses (ex-military and a prisoner), which is a trend I hope will stop, but with Norman but I seriously doubt.

What I think is really disappointing is that the series is going with ANOTHER male protagonist. I really feel like we need another female lead in SH. Heather Mason was great, and I'd really like for the series to stop being about, "Ugh I'm such a tortured man going through this silent.....hell?"

I'm excited for the game because I like SH and I like HK, but it remains to be seen how the series will be treated. Hopefully GDT will keep the plot from being garbage, keep the visuals slick, and hopefully Hideo can keep his bing bong in his pants and not go full on perv as he has a tendency to do .

[RightClickSaveAs]

It's good to see everyone else's opinions, I'm probably the least familiar with Hideo Kojima out of anyone here. Guillermo del Toro I love what he's done, but he has the tendency to have his name basically put on stuff he's not necessarily creatively involved with (such as the mostly average movies Mama and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark), so who knows what his actual role will be in the game's development. I don't think he's done anything related to games in the past.

Norman Reedus is a weird choice for sure. They don't even try to make him look like anyone other than Daryll in that teaser either!

and hopefully Hideo can keep his bing bong in his pants and not go full on perv as he has a tendency to do .

Oh man, I'm unfamiliar with what this is about. Do I want to know?

[matt]

I don't think he's done anything related to games in the past.

He worked with Volition and THQ on inSANE, which was a horror game, but pretty much no information was released about it other than it was Lovecraft inspired.

I think when referring to full perv, he means something like this:


Kojima frequently features scantily clad characters and created a small controversy when he said that he wanted to make a character more erotic to to encourage cosplay. Granted, English isn't his first language, but I feel like the ladies in MGS dress very impractically.

Snatcher is fondly remembered, but I wonder if it really stands the test of time because it was a Sega CD game. There aren't too many classic Sega CD games. The coolest pat is that you can use the Lethal Enforcers light gun with it. I *LOVE* light gun games. I always meant to play it but never got around to it. Too bad light guns don't work with modern TVs.

[Miao]

If del Toro sticks to (the sorta) horror as in Pan's Labyrinth or the Orphanage it could turn out fine*.

However... I really, really hate the fact that Reedus might be a part of this. While his character on Walking Dead is ok (he seems to really enjoy this role), I'm so annoyed by the "Daryl-fandom" ('if he dies, we riot'). Just to give those, who buy the game because of him, their money's worth, the character will probably a copy of Daryl (without the crossbow).

Hm, SH had always a strong "sexual component" (nurses, anyone? James Sunderland?), so that would probably work. Heck, Reedus and sexual connotations would work for quite a lot of fans quite well.

Well, and the SH franchise with its last installments surely went downhill. It's not only the badass protagonists, it's also the graphic and very explicit elements (less psychological horror more gore). Oh, and the minigames are insultingly easy (sliding games). Hm, haven't seen the last movie (some wise person said, that something with the name 'revelation' in it is bound to be crap) but my brother had. He meant it was so bad, it made him want to gorge out his eyeballs



*recently I started to watch/read his "the Strain". While it's not giong to be a must-know classic, it's highly enjoyable, IMHO

[matt]

Do you mean "The Devil's Backbone"? I don't think Del Toro did a movie called "The Orphanage". The real question is how involved will he be. As someone mentioned, he attached his name to Mama, which wasn't that great.

I think the complaint was that Kojima doesn't handle sexual content very maturely, which I think is a fair criticism. I agree with Phil Fish that Silent Hill handled the sexual content very maturely, so it'd be a shame if they just made characters sexy to sell toys/costumes/whatever.

Silent Hill Revelations was not a "good" movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I still enjoyed it because I pretended I was playing Silent Hill 3 while watching. hahah

I quite enjoy "The Strain". I just ordered the book.

[Miao]

I guess that Japanese makers of any popular content (film, comics, games etc.) consider the cosplay-factor, it's a wonder the SH franchise dogged that bullet for so long (yes, I'm aware there are SH-cosplayers). Worst case would be monsters, which are less Freudan but more sexy-scary.

There's a Spanish movie called The Oprphanage, which has a "del Torrean" feel* (and the director has some contacts with him) so I mixed this up

You cheated while watching "revelations






*it's a bit like Julia's Eyes