New Silent Hill Announced

[Multidirectional]

Ohhh, this is like that bullshit in high school where they'd make you read a book and then ask something like "what did the duck represent in the story?" and then they'd try to tell you that you're wrong when you answer "It represents a duck, the animal from nature".

To me, he's just a big dopey blind guy with a sword that he can't use properly.

There is nothing ambiguous about Pyramid Head, it's not up to interpretation. The game makes clear what he is by the end of it.

 

[Multidirectional]

SH1>SH2>SH3>SH4

Pretty straightforward decline (followed by being set on fire and kicked off a cliff into a bottomless pit of spikes and acid countless times)

SH3 is very nice technically but it's not really super interesting.

Mostly agree but I'm not sure if I could say SH3 is superior to SH4. The Room at least had identity of its own whereas SH3 was just tryhard attempt to be SH1 turned up to 11, similar to how Dark Souls III is in relation to Dark Souls. It was just annoying to me for the most part, especially with the amount of enemies it throws at you and those noises they make.

 

[jaekl]

Ohhh, this is like that bullshit in high school where they'd make you read a book and then ask something like "what did the duck represent in the story?" and then they'd try to tell you that you're wrong when you answer "It represents a duck, the animal from nature".

To me, he's just a big dopey blind guy with a sword that he can't use properly.

There is nothing ambiguous about Pyramid Head, it's not up to interpretation. The game makes clear what he is by the end of it.

That's true, he's a visual representation of slavery, the pyramids being built by slaves as I'm sure you're aware. James is a slave to his wife's fat juicy puss.

 

[Morenatsu.]

SH1>SH2>SH3>SH4

Pretty straightforward decline (followed by being set on fire and kicked off a cliff into a bottomless pit of spikes and acid countless times)

SH3 is very nice technically but it's not really super interesting.

Mostly agree but I'm not sure if could say SH3 is superior to SH4. The Room at least had identity of its own whereas SH3 was just tryhard attempt to be SH1 turned up to 11, similar to how Dark Souls III is in relation to Dark Souls. It was just annoying to me for the most part, especially with the amount of enemies it throws at you and those noises they make.

SH4's is more 'interesting' but I'd rather play SH3 and its nice environments with however many enemies and eight million unlockables rather than dealing with SH4's copy-paste levels with worse controls and eight million golf clubs.

 

[Multidirectional]

SH4's is more 'interesting' but I'd rather play SH3 and its nice environments with however many enemies and eight million unlockables rather than dealing with SH4's copy-paste levels with worse controls and eight million golf clubs.

I guess I'd have to replay both now to make sure which one I actually rate higher and I cannot be arsed to do that. I just know that back in the day SH4 struck me as the more memorable one and I ended up playing it more times than SH3.

 

[Machocruz]

3 was possibly peak SH aesthetic/graphic design, but I also felt it more of the same and 4 more interesting. But we'll also never see its like again. Vision is dead in this hobby.

 

[Reever]

I used to rate sh3 pretty low as well until a few years back but I started to enjoy it more and more to the point that I think nowadays my ranking would be SH1>SH2=SH3>>>>>SH4. Hell, I think the first three are so close together that I wouldn't even mind someone rating them all equally. They each have their own strengths and I feel like they fit nicely into the trilogy.
The 4th one is just not on that level. The main character is boring and lifeless, the monster design is horrible and the environments are mostly forgettable The one thing that stands out for 4 is the plot being quite interesting.

 

[911 Jumper]

Konami is looking to employ game creators for "large-scale" Silent Hill projects

 

[Alienman]

It's dead already...

 

[Venser]

Check the replies to this tweet

 

[Tehdagah]

Check the replies to this tweet

I imagine most of these people didn't spend a single cent on the game.

 

[Venser]

I imagine most of these people didn't spend a single cent on the game.

Good, why would they? Why would anyone?

 

[Tehdagah]

I imagine most of these people didn't spend a single cent on the game.

Good, why would they? Why would anyone?

If you want to choose the scenes, for example.

 

[911 Jumper]

 

[Dr1f7]

can't wait

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

nowadays my ranking would be SH1>SH2=SH3>>>>>SH4.

SH=SH3>>>>>>SH2>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>SH4>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>post-Team Silent games

 

[Nifft Batuff]

SH2>SH1>SH4>SH3

 

[Morenatsu.]

my mom>your mom

 

[GamerCat_]

Regarding the trailer and new acting, why not recall how unusual and stylish the original trailers were:

These are really stunning. Watching these you can really understand how Silent Hill 2 became the Secondary Game. The parts it's made up of are absolutely beautiful, and they feel mysterious and rich in potential. When you're looking in from outside you can see all of these elements fully and at their best, with connections only being vague and implied.

Of course, then if you actually play the game, your encounters with pyramid head are less interesting than seeing him in pictures and trailers, and if you're coming later, he's also less interesting than how people hype him up online. He really does peak in this trailer, and ditto for virtually every element of SH2. The characters, their relationships and interactions, the aesthetic experience of the town as presented in this game. Silent Hill 2 works better as a music video and meme than a game.

Silent Hill 1 and 3 have aesthetic direction and narratives that are very violent and hostile, so they're able to integrate video game conventions fairly well. You spend a lot of time thinking and trying not to die, wandering around and killing things, but it works there in ways it doesn't in 2. The places you're in are far more interesting and justified by the events of the narrative, while in 2 it feels like they just wanted you to do a sufficient number of things before the ending. All of the original Silent Hill games have brilliant drive, vision, and ideas behind them, and are made out of brilliant parts. But they fail to come together in 2. The way for 2 to work I believe would have been to go all in on the artfag angle and have like an hour of game stuff over the whole thing and just make it a game about wandering around, watching cutscenes, looking at stuff and hearing nice music, then it ends in like four hours at the most.

But of course everything I read about nu Silent Hill 2 suggests that they're trying even harder to make it a game. Good luck with that.

Remakes sell not because old games are outdated, but because status anxious consumer retards from the west fetishise being there for cultural phenomena. Bald oldfag millennials shame "zoomers" for having missed the release of Donkey Kong Country and so declare them incapable of bearing culture. This is very retarded, but it does make an impact. What's sold when a remake comes out isn't the ability to play an old game. That's easy and can be done any time. The point is that it's a second release. It's renewal. You can now be there for the legendary gaming historic moment because we're doing it all over again.

Oldfags whose only claim to superiority is being old of course don't like this and fight back and declare arbitrary lines of media purity, so the remake is SHIT, but this works okay because The Discourse makes people more interested, maybe. But my point is that this whole phenomena of massive investments and burning years of time in the lives of world-class artisans for the re-realisation of old visions is only happening because America is culturally barren and its ageing consumer losers have made an ersatz filler culture about having experienced pop culture moments. Appreciation is never the key, they leverage having been there because that's something nobody can take from them that will always distinguish them. It requires no merit or talent. Some 18 year old could play SH2 today and form a more coherent, intelligent, and interesting appraisal than the oldest and baldest day one purchaser, but our cultural has formed away from respecting or acknowledging that because we all live to coddle old people now.

I really despise tasteless ageing consumers who define themselves by what they waste their time on without ever growing or having anything to offer the world for their time or experiences. These people are privileged to such an extraordinary extent in culture today that absurdities like Silent Hill 2 being made again happen ultimately just to flatter them. The Japanese artist needs to be protected from the gracelessly ageing American.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Guessing that post is by niggerman after his other account got suspended or a retarded leftist zoomer ranting about old people. Either way it's completely fucking stupid and so off point it's a fucking sphere.

Silent Hill 2 is the most popular for 2 major reasons and neither are Pyramid head.

Silent Hill lore is fucking retarded and very much 90's Japanese paranormal material. All the cult stuff is important in 1 and 3 and it's basically incomprehensible gibberish for the majority of people playing. By removing the cult from the story and making it about the characters in Silent Hill you make the game much more approachable and the story less retarded. Japanese story writing is often quite poor and Silent Hill's cult is badly expressed throughout the series so the game that does away with it is better off for it.

James is a very basic character on the surface to understand. He's a bad man because he did a bad thing and needs to be punished. The simpleton can see this and take Silent Hill 2 as a basic black/white morality tale where bad man gets justice facing his inner demons. But James isn't that simple of a character once you understand the full story and have real world experiences. Mary's letter at the end is gut wrenching to read if you have ever dealt with a chronic or terminal illness. She expresses how hard it is for her to be forced to hurt the people she loves through no fault of her own. And James has to come to terms with this and depending on your view he may not have even have been a bad guy. If Mary was suffering so badly the only way to help her is to put her to rest maybe he didn't murder his wife the way James feels he did and Silent Hill isn't justified in torturing him but he feels it is. The same way Angela is justified in protecting herself from her father. There are layers to these stories fans can explore and discuss while Silent Hill 1 and 3's depth is about a cult no one really cares about. And it's much easier to relate to the Silent Hill 2's cast and have one of them connect with you over random cultists, a nurse and a guy saying 'Have you seen my daughter?' over and over.

Silent hill 2 is considered the stand out not because people played it at release but because it's the game to use the cool bits of Silent Hill while discarding most of the baggage people don't really like. 3's story of abortion is very hard to relate to and it doubles down on 1. Which is it's self a pretty rough game and could have done with an honest remake instead of shattered memories. It's enemies are more suited to a 3rd person shooter and it's environments fit better with modern technology any way.

Remakes sell well because they have a built in marketing campaign and fanbase. It has nothing to do with FOMO bullshit. This thread got my attention because I like Silent Hill stuff and the name stands out to me so I checked it. I'm now aware of the release window and other stuff I'm not of games I don't know exist. Viral marketing does a lot to promote a game these days and it's lead me to play the recent Alone in the dark (thanks Codex thread!) which feels very Silent Hill at times. Remakes have built in audiences (young and old) willing to talk about it. Silent Hill is running off the fumes of those audiences now but it still has those fumes enough to be worth remaking old games.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Wait, somehow I've only learned just now that SH2 remake was given to some third rate potato devs. Wtf, what an utterly bizarre decision.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Wait, somehow I've only learned just now that SH2 remake was given to some third rate potato devs. Wtf, what an utterly bizarre decision.

Layers of fear is considered to be one of the best (walking sim) horror games ever. Outlast, LoF and Amnesia are the definitive modern style horror genre games. Blair witch (sucked) but it uses a lot of the same motives as Silent Hill 2 and implemented them in semi acceptable ways.

I won't defend Blooper team games, especially as they add woke garbage to retcon their older titles but they are one of the most successful horror studios of the modern age.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Wait. Wots going on here? Didnt they kill the good looking Silent Hills game stone dead ages ago? Wasnt del Toro on that? Isnt this owned by Konami and therefore its going to be utter trash designed to create hype for a pachinko machine? So many questions...

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Wait, somehow I've only learned just now that SH2 remake was given to some third rate potato devs. Wtf, what an utterly bizarre decision.

Layers of fear is considered to be one of the best (walking sim) horror games ever. Outlast, LoF and Amnesia are the definitive modern style horror genre games. Blair witch (sucked) but it uses a lot of the same motives as Silent Hill 2 and implemented them in semi acceptable ways.

I won't defend Blooper team games, especially as they add woke garbage to retcon their older titles but they are one of the most successful horror studios of the modern age.

Aside from being fabulously optimistic, I don't think they had anything to do with Outlast or Amnesia? Being good with "modern horror games" is also possibly not the metric to be looking for when it comes to reviving SH.

 

[GamerCat_]

Guessing that post is by niggerman after his other account got suspended or a retarded leftist zoomer ranting about old people. Either way it's completely fucking stupid and so off point it's a fucking sphere.

I think I'm going to enjoy this reply.

Silent Hill 2 is the most popular for 2 major reasons and neither are Pyramid head.

I can't wait for this.

Silent Hill lore is fucking retarded and very much 90's Japanese paranormal material.

Silent Hill's primary influence is 70s (and some 80s) Americana (and things which the Japanese will interpret as American).

Ringu i(the novel) is clearly a key inspiration, but Ringu itself is a kind of oriental take on these older stories. This back and forth of optimistic and corrupted new age fantasies shared between America and Japan is an old tradition. America writes Slan, Japan writes Toward Terra and Gundam. America makes Carrie and Scanners, Japan makes Akira. The creators of Silent Hill will have known about all of these things, but their key inspiration is obviously Brian De Palma's Carrie (perhaps also King's novel). De Palma's vivid reds that he used to depict a world falling apart and the psychotic mindscape of a tortured girl are undeniably present in SH1 and 3 to the point that they define them visually.

All the cult stuff is important in 1 and 3 and it's basically incomprehensible gibberish for the majority of people playing.

Yes, it's a shame people are so stupid. But I don't think I'd attribute that to the cult as a plot element. "The Cult" as a complicating factor is a recurring meme when people talk about this game, but their role in the story is minimal and not particularly important. SH1 and 3 are incomprehensible gibberish for the majority of people playing because the majority of people are idiots with a very limited capacity for comprehension.

By removing the cult from the story and making it about the characters in Silent Hill you make the game much more approachable and the story less retarded.

Silent Hill 1 and 3 are about their characters. Acting like they're about the cult is the way stupid people dodge their own oblivious reaction to what they were told was a powerful piece of media. "It didn't make sense or affect me in any way... the cult... must have been because it was about the cult... nobody told me that..."

Japanese story writing is often quite poor and Silent Hill's cult is badly expressed throughout the series so the game that does away with it is better off for it.

I found the storyline of SH1 and 3 is very clear and striking. At no point was I tripping over on account of the cult. I can't even understand how that would be possible. I believe that The Cult is an excuse because nobody can explain how they disrupt or worsen the story.

James is a very basic character on the surface to understand. He's a bad man because he did a bad thing and needs to be punished. The simpleton can see this and take Silent Hill 2 as a basic black/white morality tale where bad man gets justice facing his inner demons. But James isn't that simple of a character once you understand the full story and have real world experiences. Mary's letter at the end is gut wrenching to read if you have ever dealt with a chronic or terminal illness. She expresses how hard it is for her to be forced to hurt the people she loves through no fault of her own. And James has to come to terms with this and depending on your view he may not have even have been a bad guy. If Mary was suffering so badly the only way to help her is to put her to rest maybe he didn't murder his wife the way James feels he did and Silent Hill isn't justified in torturing him but he feels it is. The same way Angela is justified in protecting herself from her father.

Silent Hill 2 is a very simple story and you still somehow managed to be outright wrong in reading it.

You're acting like the fact that James killed his wife and the fact that it was an act of euthanasia were separate revelations. That is the only way that our appreciation of his experience could develop along the lines you lay out here. How could we believe that James is bad if we are never presented with the idea that he is a murderer?

Or are you just saying that appreciating the possibility of moral and emotional ambivalence was such a hard process for you that it was a multi-step affair and that your appreciation of this brief story beat presented with no intended ambiguity was a lot of work for you to make sense of? This is your idea of the difference between basic and depth?

Yes, this is the much lauded depth of Silent Hill 2's writing that I've seen time and time again. James had an emotionally ambivalent situation with his wife which had no painless resolution and he feels bad even though he did something which was arguably right. Stunning. Stunning and brave. My idea of literature is Planet Escape: Torrent so I am literally having my mind blown right now.

That you seem outright proud of your appreciation of this story should be embarrassing. This is basic. This is Hallmark Movie human drama. Your idea of depth is reducing a human dilemma to a fucking trolley problem. I think to most people it wouldn't even occur to them to read James as a character to be appraised morally. You've taken a dreamlike fantasy spin on what is fundamentally a Hallmark drama and made it even more juvenile and stupid.

This is what happens when a work which people appreciate intuitively (it looks nice and sounds nice and feels cool) is pushed into the spotlight, its fans get anxious, and in this state resort to received memes which they believe define quality rather than having faith in their own taste. This is your high school english teacher speaking through you. The work must be reduced to key THEMES (not that you're even competent enough to give me this). The character has a CONFLICT. Could you give me an intro, three paragraphs, and a conclusion so we can really appreciate how smart and prestigious this game is?

I don't hate Silent Hill 2. But I do disagree with pretty much the entirety of its fanbase over where its value lies. It's value is in those trailers linked above. It looks and sounds beautiful, and the dreamlike presentation of its human drama is far more intriguing and memorable than the actual content and substance of that drama.

What is compelling in Mary and James is not a moral dimension to their pasts. "Is self defense justified? Is euthanasia justified?" An essay on those thoughts might please your old English teacher, but it's just not interesting? What's interesting is just the emotional extremity of their pasts. We are human. We find extreme experiences of fellow humans innately compelling. The mere sight of another human being in despair is interesting. A sad story is interesting. The intention of these characters was not to make you think. It was to make you feel and react.

There are layers to these stories fans can explore and discuss while Silent Hill 1 and 3's depth is about a cult no one really cares about.

I have never seen or had an interesting discussion about Silent Hill 2 beyond how it looks, sounds, and feels. I do enjoy those elements and those discussions, and I know intelligent people who do to of course (the ones I talk to). But the stories, there's simply so little there.

Silent Hill 1 and 3 though. I can talk about how they look, sound, and feel, and we can actually get somewhere with their narrative/story. There's still only so much here, sure. But what's there I really like. And the fact it's actually somewhat subtle and complex means discussion can even be necessary to bring it out.

Silent Hill 1 and 3 are not about a cult. It's stunning to me that that idea perpetuates itself.

And it's much easier to relate to the Silent Hill 2's cast

So did you kill your wife or were you raped by your father?

and have one of them connect with you over random cultists, a nurse and a guy saying 'Have you seen my daughter?' over and over.

Silent Hill 1 is a very interesting game with regard to character. Nobody present is a particularly elaborate or interesting character. But the game has character. The entire plot is structured around the absence of its one substantial character, Alessa/Cheryl. Silent Hill is a new age horror story about a great human awakening gone wrong, explored through the figures adjacent to this human tragedy. The entire cast of Silent Hill are united by their relationships with Alessa. Much is implied, or can be inferred, both about them, Alessa, and their relationships. It all somehow led to the state of Silent Hill by the beginning of the game. They are not interesting characters in themselves. They are all angles from which we can learn more about Alessa. The matriarch who had plans for her, the cynical doctor who facilitated her exploitation, the kind nurse who went along with things, the surrogate father who gave her a second chance at life.

Between them and clues scattered throughout the town we can put together a picture of what Silent Hill is and what went wrong. Silent Hill is a story about the frustration, abuse, and exploitation of human potential. And that abuse was systemic and diffused across the whole town. Alessa was failed by everyone. This community was fundamentally corrupt. They were cruel religious hypocrites who sold drugs and sought to empower themselves by consuming their own brightest child. Just as every character is more insight into Alessa, every location is too. The town itself is like a character. And as a character is another antagonist. Another person who had responsibility over Alessa who abused and used her. We visit a school, a church, a hospital, these are institutions which defined Alessa's life, and as the real world comes to resemble Alessa's mindscape we can see them as she felt them. And they become horrible, dark, evil places. Silent Hill is not a town which Alessa's power turned evil. Silent Hill is an evil town which had its true nature physically manifested by Alessa's power. To its bright and most sensitive resident, Silent Hill was like this all along.

There are no random cultists in Silent Hill. These games have very few characters, and all of them play very clear and deliberate roles in the story. We can actually talk about them beyond contriving their backstories into moral dilemmas. They mean more than they are. Silent Hill 1 and 3 are a depiction of a view of the world. Not merely an episode of human drama.

Like Carrie, Silent Hill is about how awful, backward places are hardest on their finest. But while Carrie is a story about failure, Silent Hill offers a solution. That solution takes the form of a miracle and a guy asking "Have you seen my daughter?"

Alessa, after she is destroyed by the town's attempts to use her, is able to physically reincarnate herself outside of the town, where she is found and adopted by Harry. In her first life she didn't stand a chance. She was in the town's grip completely and while she found some sympathy, nobody saved her. Under Harry's upbringing she becomes her own, stronger person. But she is still herself and she feels compelled to go back and right things. They return to Silent Hill and the events of the game ensue. The psychic shock of her return destroys the town, but Harry's spiritual support in raising her better, and actual support in saving her from the last of the cultist resistance and plans, are what make that possible.

If awful places destroy promising people, the intervention of better people can make all the difference. A story much like King's original novel The Shining, in which the fellow Shining cook successfully saves the Shining boy. Good recognises and rescues good.

That's not a mindblowingly profound story. But its multimedia presentation elevates it and makes it lastingly interesting. The story is not very literary. You look, you see, you listen, you infer, you put it together yourself from organic interactions with many different brilliantly realised parts in a way that's only possible in a video game.

Silent Hill 3 builds on this foundation both as a direct narrative continuation of the first game, but it's also thematically constructed in the same way. Characters stand for more than who they are. There are no "random cultists". If the first game was about Harry's well-intentioned intervention overcoming the will of a malevolent town, Silent Hill 3 is the final test of his lasting influence against that of the town.

Alessa has gotten a real shot at life as Harry's daughter again. Now named 'Heather'. She appears to live as an ordinary American teenage girl, perhaps slightly psychically bothered by a sense of something weird she can't place. But this all comes to a head when the remnants of the cult from the first game want to try again. They invade Heather's life, leveraging the malevolent psychic distortions of Silent Hill against Heather, and she has to defend herself and get home. I found this game very pleasing as a story about Heather. We can see that she's an innately strong person this time around. Harry didn't raise her to be a paranoid survivalist psycho. But she has the strength of character to overcome adversity. The world starts shoving and kicking her and she fights back. She's not having any of it. She's the complete person Alessa never got to be but could have been all along.

Spoiler for a twenty odd year old game here. She does get home, but it's not safe. Harry has been killed. Heather is emotionally distraught, but she doesn't break. She won't give up or be taken and used. She fights back and wins. Wins so hard that she resolves to go to Silent Hill to find out what the hell is going on and put an end to it. She doesn't need Harry to survive and get through this. Because Harry has already given her all the help she needs. Alessa was abused. Heather was nurtured. The difference has made her strong enough to resist and overcome the town. And clear thematic continuation and conclusion to the ideas at the heart of the first game.

Our girl has made it and she's going to be fine. Human sensitivity wins. Sympathetic intervention makes all the difference.

All of these games are beautiful on many levels. But Silent Hill 1 and 3 are the ones with literary depth. They're the ones intelligent people can actually talk about on this level. They are not, the random cultist games. They aren't even about a cult at all. They're iterations in an established tradition of new age thrillers about the struggles of human complexity against the world.

Silent hill 2 is considered the stand out not because people played it at release but because it's the game to use the cool bits of Silent Hill while discarding most of the baggage people don't really like. 3's story of abortion is very hard to relate to and it doubles down on 1. Which is it's self a pretty rough game and could have done with an honest remake instead of shattered memories. It's enemies are more suited to a 3rd person shooter and it's environments fit better with modern technology any way.

Silent Hill 2 is also popular because it is the easiest to appreciate, as this post may demonstrate to some. Make up your own minds.

Remakes sell well because they have a built in marketing campaign and fanbase. It has nothing to do with FOMO bullshit. This thread got my attention because I like Silent Hill stuff and the name stands out to me so I checked it. I'm now aware of the release window and other stuff I'm not of games I don't know exist. Viral marketing does a lot to promote a game these days and it's lead me to play the recent Alone in the dark (thanks Codex thread!) which feels very Silent Hill at times. Remakes have built in audiences (young and old) willing to talk about it. Silent Hill is running off the fumes of those audiences now but it still has those fumes enough to be worth remaking old games.

This begs the question of why existing games are remade rather than new ones. The reaction to the success of Silent Hill 1 was to make Silent Hill 2. Not Silent Hill 1 2.



All else aside Silent Hill 3 is the most beautiful one.