Early yesterday morning, we woke up to the shocking surprise that Microsoft had purchased the world-renowned gaming studio Zenimax. Known primarily for their subsidiaries (Bethesda, id Software, Machine Games, and more), the acquisition of Zenimax is profound to say the least. Thanks to the purchase, the likes of Wolfenstein, Fallout, and even The Evil Within (hilariously considering a very sour experience between creator Shinji Mikami and Microsoft in the past) are now all under the same wing as Halo and Gears of War. Odds are good that this doesn’t mean PlayStation, PC, and Switch will have to say goodbye to those franchises, as Microsoft hasn’t made much claim to the titles produced by companies they’ve purchased in the past. For instance, Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds still released on everything, even post-purchase. Some are hoping that perhaps Sony can follow suit.

Across the internet, fans have been calling on Sony to purchase Konami, (theoretically to set the company back on track to making the games they want to see, namely Metal Gear and Silent Hill), so much so it was even trending on Twitter a few hours ago. There have been these sorts of cries for years of course, and there was even a (very short lived) rumor a few years ago that Microsoft was looking to at the least buy the Silent Hill IP. While the idea of this sounds lovely to jilted fans of Konami’s properties, we’re sorry to say that it more than likely isn’t a thing that will really happen, for a number of reasons.

The first reason is tied to the massive difference between Konami Holdings Corporation and Zenimax. Zenimax directly owns multiple studios; the aforementioned Bethesda, id, etc. — Konami on the other hand…doesn’t. Konami hasn’t actually had an in-house development studio for console titles in years, with what few internal developing teams they have left focusing on mobile titles and the Pro Evolution Soccer series, formally having announced as much several years ago. Of course, Konami has since back-tracked on that (especially after Japan cracked down hard on gambling machines), stating that they believe “console games are the most important” a year ago. Even with that change in stance, it doesn’t change how Konami’s internal studios handle things — which means it would require Sony to step up to the plate in developing said games.

From big to small titles, Sony would be required to either outsource the development anyway (basically just reshuffling the deck with the same results), or redirect one of their main studios away from other exclusive projects in order to make one of these new games. That remains the same regardless if it was a purchase of Konami as a whole or just the individual IPs. Odds are pretty slim that Naughty Dog would get yanked off of whatever their next project is to revive Castlevania, or Santa Monica Studio delaying the next God of War to jump on Silent Hill. Even if that sounds great as a fan, Sony isn’t going to be setting aside what those studios are actively working on for the sake of any of Konami’s properties — even the biggest ones. Silent Hill for example, despite how much we love it, has only moved about 9 million units total over its 20 years of life. God of War 4 alone sold 10 million within its first year on store shelves, and Silent Hill‘s direct competition, Resident Evil, has sold over 100 million units now. They just aren’t worth it, even on a case-by-case basis.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Sony really was all-in on that, and decided to try and acquire Konami anyway. Konami is much, much more than just its gaming properties. As a matter of fact, as can probably be surmised by their disinterest in console titles, it’s almost not even a thing for them anymore. Instead, Konami’s arm has been wrapped thoroughly around their sports, gambling, card production (like YuGiOh), and more. Did you know that Konami owns and operates fitness clubs in Japan? Sony taking all of these things on along with their gaming properties on top of what Sony already operates would be a very different end game than just trying to snipe Silent Hill away from the company. It’d be a corporate buyout on a scale nothing like Microsoft picking up a game studio that owns other game studios.

Now, you might be wondering, if this is the case, doesn’t this mean that the rumors of Sony working with Konami on the Silent Hill revival (which we’ve covered extensively) aren’t true either? Nope. In fact, it’s far and away the more likely outcome, if there is an outcome to be found at all here. First parties helping to produce a third party’s title for the sake of exclusivity is incredibly common. Nintendo doesn’t own Platinum games — the studio has continued to produce titles for other platforms (like the Nier franchise), but Nintendo holds an exclusivity deal with them for the Bayonetta sequels. Helping foot the bill on Bayonetta 2 (and now 3… eventually) allowed them to retain them as exclusives to their systems.

Sony helping to fund a new Silent Hill with the caveat that it remain a PlayStation exclusive sounds just about on the money and would be a massive win-win for the company. Helping revive the series would get them in good graces with the aforementioned jilted fans, having it as an exclusive to their shiny new system would move hardware, and if the game ends up being terrible, it’ll be Konami’s fault, not theirs. Tit for tat, Sony wins out in such a scenario.

Of course, there’s still no confirmation of any kind that this is what is/will be happening, but it’s the most likely outcome. If you were hoping that a situation like what transpired between Microsoft and Zenimax could happen here, I’m sorry to reiterate that it just isn’t in the cards. We remain hopeful here that the Silent Hill revival title is happening, but for now, it’s best that we all keep our heads in the game, and focus on real possibilities and not excited fantasies.

The post Broken Silence: Sorry, Sony Probably Isn’t Going To Buy Konami, or Silent Hill appeared first on Rely on Horror.

You’ve no doubt heard the rumors and rumblings of Silent Hill being reborn with a new title, some have been quick to wave it away, others still have held on to each new scrap of potential information with hopeful anxiety. I’ve decided to gather that information in one convenient little spot, starting from the beginning and going all the way to the ‘now’. At the time of this writing, all of this is still rumor and speculation — nothing has been revealed one way or another, and Konami’s only response to the rumors thus far has been to deny them. Regardless of that denial, something is happening with Silent Hill. Take all of this information any way you like, the point here isn’t to convince you of anything; I only want to put all the pieces on the table. You can be the judge of whether or not it makes a picture.

Death

Where exactly to start is a bit hard to tell, as a lot of little things happened before the ball really started to get rolling. Obviously, the very beginning is really just the end of the previous generation of the series — P.T./Silent Hills. That’s a bit too far back though, and it’s been talked about to death. Following that event, Konami went into somewhat of a hibernation regarding games in general.

In early 2017 Konami began marketing that they were seeking developers to join their team, specifically noting the need for ‘Game Programmers, Designers, Planners, Network Engineers, Server Programmers, Scenario Writers, and developers with either home console or mobile experience’. While it may have been the very first glimmer of hope, I should point out that Silent Hill is noticeably absent from all of this ‘now hiring’ marketing. A few months later, however, Super Bomberman R released a Pyramid Head costume for the player character. Chibi and smol, it was remarkable in that it was the first time Konami had publicly acknowledged Silent Hill (outside of Pachinko machines) since P.T. was taken down off of the PlayStation Store — two whole years after.

A year later, Konami filed new trademarks for Silent Hill in the US and another in Canada a year after that. Some got hopeful, but it ultimately turned out to be for a second gambling machine. That said, almost immediately before that machine’s reveal, Konami’s European president Masami Saso gave an interview with gamesindustry.biz about the future of the company as a whole. It’s a mostly uninteresting read, generally talking about mobile markets and the success of the PES series, but at one point Saso talks about the ‘third pillar’ of Konami’s entertainment structure — console games. He didn’t talk about it much, but it piqued my interest:

“Even with new platforms coming out, we believe high-end console games are the most important. We challenge for innovative ideas and technology within our console games and apply them to other devices, so we will continue to put effort into our console games. We also plan to increase our portfolio. In addition to the multi-device titles for PES and Yu-Gi-Oh, we plan to work on projects with other globally known IPs in the near future.”

It struck me as funny timing that this statement followed closely behind the announcement that the Japanese government was going to crack down hard on Pachinko machine regulation — which would be very damaging for one of Konami’s three pillars. But that hope wasn’t to last — what looked to be the final nail in a coffin that appeared to be made entirely out of nails appeared out of nowhere. Konami allowed the SilentHill.com web domain to default, and for weeks the webpage was available for purchase. It later appeared to be confirmed that some plucky fan with an extra 10k laying around snapped it up, and has been using it to host memes since. Doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot, especially as the page had essentially been parked for a decade before that, just acting as a way to search for the series titles.

Generally speaking, things looked grim. Grimmer perhaps than they’d ever been back when Silent Hills had been canceled and the future of the series was merely unknown. All of this seemed to point to a pretty definitive “It’s dead, Jim.” And then the rumors started.

Rumors

Early this year, Resident Evil leaker AestheticGamer/DuskGolem dropped a bombshell on all of us.

I’ll mention there is a couple new Silent Hill games in the works. Konami about two years ago reached out to various developers to pitch ideas for two Silent Hill games, one a soft-reboot of the franchise, the other an episodic TellTale/Until Dawn-style game to go alongside the reboot. I don’t know anything more than that though, but I sure do hope Konami’s given it the appropriate budget and found the right developer to make those games succeed.

We were particularly excited, as this actually lined up with some rumblings we’d heard through our own channels, but had chosen not to report on for fear of exposing the parties that leaked it to us. It was also interesting timing, lining up the comment that Konami started looking ‘about two years ago’ — which would line up with Konami’s hiring of new developers in 2017. Regardless of our own excitement and AestheticGamer’s track record with Resident Evil (which is damn near impeccable), everyone was assured that salt had to be taken with this information. It just wasn’t worth getting hopes up and a rumor is just a rumor until stated otherwise by Konami proper.

And then Konami proper talked about Silent Hill, saying the name out loud, in public, for the first time in 5 years. PCGames Network reached out to ask about the rumor and a Konami spokesperson responded:

“We cannot share anything at this point, but we are listening to customer feedback and considering ways to provide the next title”

If there was any one thing that truly sparked a turning point in this whole story, it was that. Following up almost immediately was the startling reveal of a third Silent Hill film, which took everyone by total surprise. The director of the first film had been giving a very casual interview with a French film site, Allocine, when he commented briefly on projects he had in the pipeline. He’s been working on a Western Fatal Frame/Project Zero film adaption for ages, which he mentions, but then out of nowhere:

“And we’re also working on a new Silent Hill. The project will always be anchored in this atmosphere of a small American town, ravaged by Puritanism. I think it’s time to make a new one.”

I cannot think of a more inexplicable way to announce the third entry in that franchise, but that’s how it happened, so here we are. About a month later, Pyramid Head (and Silent Hill creatures in general) designer Masahiro Ito made a few weirdly cryptic tweets about his beloved monster. Right before AestheticGamer’s leak, he’d revealed on Twitter that he had been hired on as a “core member” of some unknown project and that he hoped the title “wo[uldn’t] be canceled.” That verbiage caught the attention of a lot of fans, drawing lines between that statement and the cancellation of Silent Hills.

Now to properly explain this next bit, way back in 2017 Ito was asked if he’d consider joining a reborn Team Silent to work on a new game, and his one stipulation was “If it’s not [a] sequel and I don’t have to use Pyramid Head or can kill him in the opening.” Fast forward to February of this year, and Ito made an inexplicable tweet out of nowhere:

Pyramid Head, R.I.P.

— 伊藤暢達/Masahiro Ito (@adsk4) February 28, 2020

Fans immediately drew a connection between that and his early comment about killing Pyramid Head, and it sent fans buzzing with theories and excitement. Following that, we actually entered the ring on our own. In early March, we were able to speak with multiple insider sources about the development of a new Silent Hill game and broke the story. From our report:

We have a trusted source regarding this news, and another source has corroborated with us that Masahiro Ito (creature designer for the first four titles in the series) is indeed working on a Silent Hill game as previously speculated. These same sources name Sony as the driving force behind bringing the series back.

Keiichiro Toyama (director and writer of the original 1999 Silent Hill) and Akira Yamaoka (composer for the majority of the franchise) are also returning alongside Masahiro Ito. The trio will helm a “soft reboot” of the Silent Hill series, possibly just called Silent Hill. SIE Japan Studio, which possibly includes team members from “Project Siren,” the group behind Siren: Blood Curse for the PlayStation 3, will be behind its development in some capacity (either in full or in part). Our source states that this title has been in the works for about a year. Our second source — which has no connection to the first — was aware of Ito’s involvement in a new Silent Hill title and informed us of that information some time ago.

Along with that we also touched on a rumor regarding a revival of Silent Hills, although that had much shakier footing than that of the other leak. Konami denied the contents of our report when we reached out to them for comment, stating:

“We’re aware of all the rumors and reports but can confirm that they are not true. I know it’s not the answer your fans may want to hear. It’s not to say we are completely closing the door on the franchise, just not in the way it is being reported.”

With or without our report, however, the rumors continued to spread. The month following our story, manga artist Suehiro Maruo (known for The Strange Tale of Panorama Island and Ultra Gash Inferno) posted to his Instagram about visiting Konami in order to work on what he pretty blatantly teases as being ‘Silent Hills‘. No subtlety about it.

Perhaps he was just teasing us, no? Fans can often read way too much into stuff, like that time that RE2‘s original director went to Capcom HQ (most likely when he was invited to try out REmake 2). Well, the story doesn’t end there — but we now enter a new stage of this story.

Awakening

Amidst rumors and questions, it could be argued that the majority of fans still had zero reason to believe any of it was actually happening. And then suddenly, things…started to happen.

In May, asymmetrical multiplayer game Dead by Daylight revealed that their next DLC was to be entirely based on Silent Hill, to the shock of everyone. Heather (renamed to her birth name, Cheryl) Mason, Pyramid Head, Midwhich Elementary, and a bunch of cosmetics based on the first and third games were announced to be joining the game. All playable, and even including a special remix of the Dead by Daylight menu theme by Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka. It was pretty wild, and I can’t really describe just how hyped I was waking up and seeing that in my work inbox. That hype reached a fever pitch the following day when that manga artist, Suehiro Maruo, suddenly turned up again. Once more he took to Instagram, posting an Instagram story that read:

The timing couldn’t have been more impeccable for inciting hype. This wasn’t just a one-off, easy to misinterpret comment like Masahiro Ito’s “RIP Pyramid Head” Tweet. Just like Maruo’s earlier Instagram post, this was being very direct as to what he was talking about. Whatever it was specifically that “we” had just started, it was undoubtedly tied to Silent Hill.

The Dead by Daylight DLC dropped and it was pretty awesome. I loved it personally, and I’ve been rockin’ Survivor’s boats with Pyramid Head like crazy since release. Some fans had hoped that Silent Hill might show up alongside Resident Evil 8: Village during Sony’s E3/Not E3 streaming event in June, but when it skipped the event, fans started to drift back towards disbelief. Maybe there really was nothing going on and our cages all got rattled for nothing.

Just after the Sony event, fans discovered that the Silent Hill Facebook page, which had been idle since November of 2017, was suddenly posting again. It had been doing so since March (long before the Dead by Daylight DLC was announced), with a small post about a new hoodie baring the Halo of the Sun sigil becoming available for sale. When the DLC was announced, the page continued to update fairly regularly up through the 31st of last month, with both marketing for the DLC as well as posting about community events like charity streams.

Following up that interesting development, Konami’s official Twitter account posted a blank video that simply played the Silent Hill 2 air raid siren. Fans went nuts, and the Konami PR person tried to settle everyone down, stating that they were merely “watching streams of Dead By Daylight and thought [they] would share the noise and feel of being hunted.” Oh well, right? Well…not so much. They followed up one last time when the rabble wouldn’t settle down, and it’s… perhaps the lynchpin to any possible belief or doubt in this whole affair.

We are sorry we got people fired up. Anything official would come from first from @SilentHill or an event or something, not from us. We were just being fans and enjoyed the noise/memories. Sorry everyone, did mean to kill your Friday mood.

— Konami (@Konami) July 31, 2020

If you didn’t catch it, and it took a little while for most to do so, that @SilentHill account is…brand new. Opened just two months ago, this apparently official Silent Hill Twitter account has been quietly sitting there, tweeting out ads for merchandise, the Dead by Daylight DLC, and liking/retweeting fan art. Its last tweet was on Aug 21, advertising Pyramid Head’s new costume for Dead by Daylight. This Twitter account’s existence was a sudden surprise to pretty much everyone, especially as it really doesn’t look all that official. Fans have taken note that it’s following streamers along with console manufacturers (and even site contributor Thomas Duff, because he asked nicely).

There has been a Silent Hill Twitter account, still is technically — but only in Japan. The original Japanese Silent Hill Twitter account remains inactive, its final Tweet being sent in 2014, although to be fair, Dead by Daylight might not be big in Japan like it is in the West, at least not enough to be worth firing back up again. As such, it’s truly fascinating to watch multiple English language official Silent Hill social media hubs fire up, all at once. One could easily wave them away as simply being used as an aid for the new Dead by Daylight content but Behavior Interactive presumably can handle their own marketing. As far as I can tell (and correct me if I’m wrong) Twitter accounts for other guest franchises (like SAW and Halloween) have never mentioned Dead by Daylight on their social media platforms. Netflix briefly touched on the Stranger Things DLC, but that was it, and it wasn’t on the Stranger Things Twitter account.

These social media accounts aren’t just being run by some random fan, these are official arms of the Konami marketing branch, and as such must follow directions from Konami’s PR and are run by employees of the company. Simply firing them up for the sake of marketing a DLC that’s about to be made old new in just a few weeks and then going quiet again forever seems like it’d be kind of a waste of money, and time, especially when Behavior can (and has been) handling marketing on their own.

Update 8/31: Earlier today it was discovered that Konami has finally released the entire (excluding a few bonus editions and expanded versions) soundtrack collection for Silent Hill on the Western version of Spotify. Interestingly, this release contains a major surprise for fans that followed the score for Book of Memories since its release. The final track on the album, Love Pslam, secretly included Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka on guitar for the piece, and producer Tom Hullet has explained in the past that it was done both without Konami’s permission and that the inclusion was something he wasn’t even sure they were ever aware of. For the first time since its 2012 release, this Spotify version credits Akira Yamaoka as being involved with the track (previously only crediting singer Mary Elizabeth McGlynn).

Update 10/1: Out of nowhere, Silent Hill 4: The Room was released on GOG for PC. While it’s just the original PC version from 2004 (bugs and all), it’s a staggering action from the series, being the first officially released retail game in the series since 2012. Fans are hopeful that this won’t be the last sudden re-release of an old Silent Hill game, especially as there’s been quite a lot of work put into modding Silent Hill 2 into something much more friendly with modern PCs.

Update 10/6: In case there was any doubt left, the @SilentHill Twitter account has now been verified, checkmark and all. It strangely hasn’t updated once since the last Dead by Daylight Pyramid Head costume released back in August, not even tweeting about the Cybil costume or the GOG release of Silent Hill 4. We can only wait and see, I suppose.

Update 12/3: It was announced that Keiichiro Toyama, creator of Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush, was leaving Sony Interactive Entertainment to found his own studio, Bokeh Game Studios Inc.. Toyama had previously been rumored as heading up the Silent Hill reboot, but this obviously throws a wrench in that possibility. While there is still a chance that he left the project mid-production (which happens constantly, it’s happened to Halo: Infinite multiple times now), that Bokeh will be formally adopting production as its first project, or that his work on the game was finished.

Update 2/4/21: Series composer Akira Yamaoka was interviewed as part of a YouTube podcast, where he commented that he’s working on a new project. Whatever it is, it’s being announced this summer, and it’s “the one you’re kind of hoping to hear about”. UPDATE: The interview has since been taken down at the request of an unknown third party. There are rumors that the YouTube channel explained that it was taken down by “pachinko games company”, but the tweet that information was supposedly in has since been deleted. UPDATE: It appears Yamaoka was referring to his work on the recently announced Slitterhead, from Bokeh Games Studio.

Update 2/18/21: Earlier this morning, the CEO of Bloober team conducted an interview with GamesIndustry.Biz, where he explained that the studio was working with a “famous publisher” on a horror IP. Many fans have jumped on the idea that the title may be the rumored Silent Hill ‘Tell Tale’ style game that was rumored along with the reboot entry.

Update 6/19/21: This isn’t exactly substantial enough to warrant a full article, but it did catch my interest never the less. Spotted by Redditer u/Lolhithere, the official Konami Shop Twitter account, which is operated by Konami, inexplicably followed a small Silent Hill revival Twitter account. The account only has 55 followers at the time of writing (including Aesthetic Gamer, who’s been dancing around leaks for this game for years), and it seems remarkable that the Konami Store account would even find it, let alone follow it.

Update 6/30/21: Out of nowhere, Bloober Team and Konami have announced a “strategic partnership” that will involve “cooperation in the development of contents and the exchange of know-how”. This follows up on the 2/18 update that the studio confirmed it was working with “a very famous gaming publisher” on a horror IP.

Update 10/1/21: Multiple sources have reported that Konami is working on bringing back three of their biggest franchises, with Silent Hill being one of them. The rumor is more or less the same as everything that’s been stated previously, however the Gematsu article surprisingly re-confirms the original rumor that Kojima Productions is working on a Sony-backed Silent Hills revival.

Update 3/15/22: Not necessarily unexpected, but Konami re-upped their trademark on the Silent Hill IP in Japan, filing for the usual sorts of arts and entertainment-type content the series would be categorized under. This isn’t necessarily anything too crazy, as Konami has re-upped the trademark multiple times since abandoning the franchise, but this time one of the things the series was categorized under was virtual reality, which is completely out of left field. This doesn’t necessarily mean a home-console VR experience of course, Resident Evil for instance has had multiple arcade VR games, but it is remarkable nevertheless.

Update 5/13/22: DuskGolem, one of the leakers who have been the most persistent about the series revival, revealed a set of supposed screenshots from at least one of the rumored new games. Immediately after uploading one more image, a piece of concept art supposedly produced by Pyramid Head designer Masahiro Ito, Dusk was hit with a DMCA copyright strike by (according to him) Konami. The images have since been removed from Dusk’s Twitter account, but the images themselves have begun to circulate the internet and shouldn’t be hard to find for anyone interested.

Update 5/15/22: Following up on DuskGolem’s leak, eagle-eyed fans caught a striking similarity between one of the screenshots and a very old set of Tweets from Silent Hill creature designer, Masahiro Ito. The tweets are from 2018, but the artist expressed interest in trying to create a horror visual that incorporated cherry blossom trees. Low and behold, this creature (and environment) design in a piece of concept art attributed to Ito from DuskGolem’s leak appears to show just that, a mysterious creature with a cloud of pink/red post-it notes for a head, very similar to the look of a cherry blossom tree.

Update 5/16/22: Another massive explosion of leaks from multiple sources all over the internet, including from Twitter and respected sites like VGC, point to the fabled “multiple Silent Hill titles in development” as a PS5 exclusive Silent Hill 2 remake developed by Bloober Team, and possibly a smaller, episodic game developed by Annapurna Interactive (Outer Wilds, The Artful Escape), along with a new mainline Silent Hill game. VGC also indicates that the screenshots leaked by DuskGolem the other day are in fact from a small P.T.-style teaser game. All of this was meant to be announced last year, as per multiple sources having stated in the past that Silent Hill would have a big reveal last E3, but Konami backed out at the last second for unknown reasons.

It should also be noted that PlayStation Lifestyle has also reported that Bloober Team has signed a “significant license and distribution agreement” with Sony, which they speculated may be tied to either their Silent Hill title, or to a PlayStation+ deal. Given that Sony announced their new PlayStation Plus upgrade’s title lineup and it didn’t include a single Bloober Team title… well, I guess we have our answer.

Update 9/5/22: A number of new screenshots have leaked, both from Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 Remake‘s “pitch concept” (see: not the final game in any way shape or form) as well as one of the other titles in development, something that is called “Silent Hill Playable Concept: Sakura“, which appears to be the source of the Masahiro Ito cherry blossom (Sakura is also another word for cherry blossom) monster design as well as the other previously leaked imagery and screenshots.

Update 9/26/22: A new Korean rating certification for a game titled Silent Hill: The Short Message has been filed by Konami (through their Korean publisher UNIANA). While there isn’t much to go on just yet, the certification is for console games specifically (CC-NV, as opposed to CC-OM), so it’s for sure not a mobile game. It’s also worth remembering the aforementioned Silent Hill Playable Concept: Sakura, with a title like The Short Message, it seems very likely that these two are one and the same. With Sakura’s theming being around post-it notes and “short messages”, it’s not a huge leap to make.

Update 10/7/22: The apparently loose-lipped Silent Hill film director, Christophe Gans, yet again casually dropped major information regarding the series during an interview. Speaking with French website Movie and Game, Gans talks about working with Konami on his upcoming Silent Hill film sequel, and how he’s been working with the developers in order to get the film right. While doing so, he comments that Konami is indeed making multiple Silent Hill games with various developers, confirms that the Silent Hill 2 Remake is real, and capped it off by seeming to say that members of the original developer, Team Silent, are involved with these new games in some regard. So that happened.

Update 10/16/22: Konami has officially announced that a Silent Hill Transmission is coming 10/19/22, containing “The latest updates on the Silent Hill series”, complete with an all-new web portal and logo. To follow this up, creature designer Masahiro Ito also shared the announcement, cementing his involvement as speculated. We may, after two years, finally be looking at the end to this article. We’ll see you in three days.

Final Update 10/19/22: Silent Hill 2 Remake, developed by Bloober Team (with art design by Masahiro Ito and music by Akira Yamaoka), Silent Hill: Townfall, Silent Hill: Ascension, and Silent Hill F have all been announced during the Silent Hill Transmission video update. Return to Silent Hill, a feature film adaption of Silent Hill 2, was also announced with Christophe Gans returning to produce and direct. Thank you for following along my two years of reporting on this developing story, I’m happy to have finally reached the end of this long road together.

Future

For now, that’s where the story ends. AestheticGamer recently commented on Silent Hill once more, simply commenting that it was ‘still in dev‘ when talking about several future releases he’s privy to. From the lowest of lows to (while perhaps not the highest possible) highs, the winding road on the way to a new entry in this series has been quite the adventure to follow. Could it be possible that after so long lost in the fog, the series could finally be reemerging? Anything’s possible, and I actually have hope in my heart for the first time in a good long while. There’s still plenty of reason to doubt though.

While all of this went on, there were plenty of other, some very convincing, theories and threads on the subject. From the Black Hound incident to the Never Be Game Over subreddit, there were many scrutinizing gazes at ‘evidence’ that was very convincing. Some of it even became straight-up conspiracy theories after a certain point, and as each possibility was laid to rest, it seemed that there was simply no chance of resurrection. That’s part of why I find all of this so interesting — these are not putting together random, unrelated pieces together, or reading in between lines that were never really there. The evidence collected here (besides rumors and our own sources, which you’re welcome to take or leave) relates directly to the actions of Konami and other industry professionals and studios.

There’s no telling what exactly is in store for the future of this beloved series. The point of this article, as stated before, is not to try and convince you — rather, let you come to your own conclusions. New game, new pachislot machine, just a new line of T-shirts, who knows. This is everything we’ve collected over the course of these past two years, and we’re about to find out where it has lead.

The post Broken Silence: Following The Road to a Silent Hill Reboot appeared first on Rely on Horror.

“ I walked. I could do nothing but walk. And then, I saw me walking in front of myself. But it wasn’t really me. Watch out. The gap in the door… it’s a separate reality. The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you? ” — Silent Hills, Paper Bag

For all of its achievements in environmental storytelling, the teaser for Silent Hills alludes to perpetuating negative stereotypes about mental illness, but, perhaps, the full game would have dug deeper and had something meaningful to say. Sadly, due to Silent Hills‘ cancelation, we may never know what Kojima Productions had planned for their first true foray into horror. That is unless reports about Sony’s efforts to revive the project are correct and Sony accomplishes their goal.

The post Silent Hills and Reflections on Mental Health appeared first on Rely on Horror.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the North American release of the original Silent Hill for the PlayStation. Published by Konami and designed internally by a small team known as Team Silent, Silent Hill is a third-person horror adventure videogame which follows a father as he searches through the eponymous American town for his missing daughter. It redefined the survival horror genre and set a bold new standard for how we experience fear in videogames. Upon its release, it was well received by both critics and players alike and was recognized for being an atmospheric, disturbing title that pushed the technical limits of the original PlayStation. It would go on to become a part of the original PlayStation’s Greatest Hits library, selling over two million copies and establishing itself as one of the most iconic horror titles of all time.

Since its debut in 1999, it has spawned multiple sequels, movies, comic books and spin-offs, and has appeared regularly on numerous top ten lists of the best horror games of all time. To celebrate this historic milestone, I’ll be taking a look back at the creation, history and legacy of the first game, to examine just what makes it so special and why it continues to endure to this day. So, grab your flashlight, turn your radio up and keep those health drinks handy, as we step back into everyone’s favorite foggy town.

“Every town has its secrets. Some are just darker than others.”

Pictured: Keiichiro Toyama (director), Akira Yamaoka (sound designer), Takayoshi Sato (CG designer) and Gozo Kitao (producer)

Development on Silent Hill began in September of 1996 with an estimated budget of between $3-5 million. The original concept for the game came from the corporate side of Konami and their initial intent was to reproduce the Western success of Resident Evil by creating a game that would appeal to players in the United States. A small development team of 15 people within Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, known internally as “Team Silent,” was assembled from a group of employees who hadn’t had much previous success within the company. Consisting of a small group of outsiders with a few failed projects between them, the team was unsure how to realize Konami’s directive of a broader “Hollywood-style” action horror game. As time went on, development began to stagnate and management at Konami began losing faith in the project. Eventually the development team decided to ignore the directives of their higher-ups and opted instead to create a much more psychologically-driven horror game, one which would scare players on an instinctive level. The approach ultimately resulted in a title that far surpassed Resident Evil’s action-oriented, campy style of horror. While never as commercially successful as its zombie-infested cousin, Silent Hill firmly established itself as the gold standard for the genre, with its effects on videogame horror still felt to this day.

A major defining feature of the game was that it was an Eastern interpretation of Western horror. This concept informed every decision and design implemented in the game. Director Keiichiro Toyama created the game’s scenario, and along with the other Japanese designers, took various ideas and tropes from Western literature and film. They borrowed elements from Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, and filtered them through an Eastern point of view to create something familiar yet altogether different. A mashup of all these disparate elements should have felt tired and clichéd, but somehow the game incorporated them in a way that felt completely new, similar to the way in which the original 1977 Star Wars took various elements of mythology, fantasy and science fiction and melded them together to form something fresh. This unique style of interpretation would become a staple for the series.

Anytown, USA

Some examples of this use of familiar elements can be seen in the street names on the town map, which refer to various horror and science fiction authors. Character names and designs also frequently referenced popular characters from films, TV and books. Harry Mason’s original name was “Humbert,” a reference to the main character in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962). The name was later changed to Harry, since Humbert was not a very common name in the West. Another subtle reference occurs later in the game, in a scene featuring antagonist Dahlia Gillespie and her daughter Alessa arguing in a dark hallway. The architecture, layout and even the wallpaper is taken directly from Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Silent Hill is littered with such references. They serve as an homage to the past and a recognition of the game’s heredity. The developers incorporated these various references to create a specific Western story.

Beyond the many direct referential examples, there are also more substantial Western themes and influences utilized in the game. One such example is the structure of the story itself. In addition to his role as event programmer, Hiroyuki Owaku also contributed as the writer for the game’s puzzles, while character designer and CGI creator Takayoshi Sato assisted with additional elements of the game’s story. The archetype of a Western horror story typically begins with the introduction of “the ordinary world.” This introduces us to the normal world of the characters and provides a baseline for our emotions. Often times the world of the ordinary focuses on minutia and the mundane. At a certain point a shift occurs, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary or supernatural. This shift could be the introduction of a new character, the discovery of something which spurs a character to action or it could be a first glimpse into a different world. In the case of Silent Hill, the mundane is Harry’s vacation trip to a small resort town.

Things quickly escalate

The developers wanted to make the player feel as if the world of the game existed. They used the general setting of a Midwestern American town as their basis and built the horror on top of it. Chicago was used as one of their Western references, and the team took inspiration from areas close to lakes, since Silent Hill is supposed to be a lakeside resort. The U.S. state the town resides in would later be officially identified as Maine by scenario writer Hiroyuki Owaku. This focus on the real helps players relate to the town as an authentic, tangible place where things work the same as they do in our world – doors open and lock the same way, streets intersect and wind in a natural way, etc. This real-world connection was crucial to the game, because once players believe in the reality of the town, they also believe in the horror.

The introduction of the supernatural happens shortly thereafter with the appearance of a young woman who walks into the middle of the road, causing Harry to crash his jeep. When he comes to, his daughter Cheryl is missing. Things only get worse from there. The town is deserted and snow is falling out of season. Once Harry enters the back alley behind Finney Street, a distant air raid siren heralds a dramatic change. The town quickly transforms into a negative of itself; day turns to night; it’s suddenly raining, and the game plunges players into a world of darkness, decay and rust. This transition is a literal shift between worlds, evidenced by the aforementioned nocturnal switch and geographical shifts from one location to another. The town is also blocked off and characters are unable to escape, due to giant sections of the roads having simply dropped off into nothingness. All of this helps to create a persistent, ominous mood.

Stephen King’s The Mist, a novella about a small town enveloped in an unnatural fog filled with deadly monsters, was a direct influence on the game’s story and informs key elements, such as the setting of the town, the fog and the inexplicable monsters which emerge out of it. The Mist starts off in the ordinary world, with a family’s quick trip to the town’s local supermarket to pick up a few groceries. However, once they arrive, the fog rolls in and the situation quickly changes. Its story also follows a father in his quest to combat supernatural forces to protect his family. While Silent Hill shares a number of similarities with the premise of The Mist, the developers ultimately used it more as a jumping-off point.

Look familiar? A scene from the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist (2007)

Silent Hill has a simple premise, a father in search of his missing daughter. Harry Mason is an everyman, a neutral character that everyone can easily relate to. He’s also not your typical action-oriented videogame protagonist; he’s an average, everyday guy. Harry is the player. His aim isn’t great. He stumbles sometimes and gets out of breath after running for a while. Aside from Harry, there are only six other characters in the game, but every one of them has a purpose and a specific role to play. They’re all pieces of the puzzle that Harry is trying to solve.

Cybil, a cop from the next town over, aids Harry in his quest to find his daughter. Dahlia is a mysterious woman who cryptically guides Harry to different points of the town, her motives unclear. She ends up becoming one of the game’s main antagonists, along with the duplicitous and self-serving Dr. Kaufmann. Lisa the nurse is a local and provides Harry with info on the history of the town. Cheryl and Alessa are revealed to be two halves of the same soul, split years ago and yearning to reunite. Both characters serve as catalysts for the story. Cheryl wanted to go to the town and Alessa caused Harry to crash his jeep, both events drawing these characters closer to the town. Through these characters Silent Hill explores the nature of loyalty, corruption, innocence and duality to name a few.

As with most of the game, much of the character development is beneath the surface, encouraging players to dig deeper to understand their various motivations. Even though the game is largely plot-driven, many of the details are in the background. The developers provide a general framework to hang the story on, but much of what happens is subjective. Players enter the town knowing very little. By the time they leave, they have some answers, but many of the bigger mysteries are, for the most part, left unresolved and largely open to interpretation. This allows the player’s imagination to fill in and shape the details. The game has a total of five different endings, each with its own set of consequences based on the player’s actions. Specifics are oftentimes left purposely vague and ambiguous, a hallmark of the series. This is yet another example of simplifying the structure to streamline its effectiveness.

Even as the game filters Western themes and ideas through its cultural consciousness, it still retains distinct elements of Asian culture and tradition. One of the major cultural differences between Asian and American horror is the structure. In the West, the structure is typically direct: we discover something supernatural is going on; we figure out what it is; and we figure out how to solve it. In Asian horror, the supernatural is something much bigger than we are. There is no defeating it. In traditional Japanese ghost stories, tragedy, suffering and loss all feature prominently. Ghosts are often born out of a rage brought about by some traumatic event, like murder or suicide. This trauma marks or stains a place, creating a curse. Asian horror is also subtractive, characterized by its minimal use of elements to inspire fear. It relies more on suggestion and suspense, rather than gore and violence. Stories are more open-ended, and there is typically less explanation about what’s happening. There’s rarely much closure either, just like in real life. In the game, crucial details about the characters and plot are withheld, and even though Harry is able to escape the town with a new form of his daughter, the question of why Silent Hill is the way it is, is never answered. These are just some examples of how various elements of Eastern horror are woven into the game.

Keiichiro Toyama (above center), producer and director; Akira Yamaoka (above left), composer and sound director; and Takayoshi Sato (above right), character designer and computer graphic artist

Another major defining trait of the game is its emphasis on psychological horror. Plenty of other games before Silent Hill had dabbled in the horror genre, most notably on the PC. Beginning with Alone in the Dark (1992), a handful of other games, including some text adventure games, H.P. Lovecraft adaptations and Phantasmagoria (1995), explored various aspects of the genre, with varying degrees of success. But the closest console games ever got was a more action-oriented approach to horror, in games like Konami’s own Castlevania (1986) and the TurboGrafx-16 gorefest Splatterhouse (1988). Some notable exceptions were Sweet Home (1989) on the Famicom and Uninvited (1991) on the NES, which both placed an emphasis on story and atmosphere. It wasn’t until the next generation of 32-bit consoles that developers had the technical means to effectively explore psychological horror in videogames.

Silent Hill was one of the first earnest attempts by game developers to get to the root of what horror is. Character designer Takayoshi Sato said the team didn’t want to do anything too obvious and avoided shallow illustrative monsters or atmosphere. They carefully chose designs and scenarios which were ambiguous and chaotic, ones which could generate twisted images in the minds of players. The developers also frequently betray player expectations. When players expect something to jump out and scare them, nothing happens, and vice versa.

Monster and background designer Masahiro Ito designed the creatures that inhabit the town in an abstract, often amorphous style, giving players just enough detail to let their imaginations and subconscious wander. Ito drew inspiration from the works of British figurative painter Francis Bacon and infused his own designs with a similar organic, fleshy aspect. Grotesque creatures such as skinless dogs, pterodactyl-like air screamers, child monsters and others, all populate the town and terrorize the player in different ways. Silent Hill, both the game and the town, excels at creating this type of abstract terror. In the uncertain space of our imaginations, we can insert everything that terrifies us. Everyone’s fears are different, and the deliberate choice to let the player’s imagination mold the game and customize it to whatever fears each player has was innovative and inspired. This core concept of exploiting the abstract helped set the game apart from its competitors and is one of the main reasons that it endures today.

Simple but effective

Advanced for its time, Silent Hill pushed the graphical limits of the original PlayStation. Characters, objects and environments were designed using a limited number of polygons to create simple, but recognizable forms. The same way the cubist art movement simplified three-dimensional forms into abstract representations for expressive effect, Silent Hill’s polygonal graphical style helped to define the visual language of the game by representing its subject matter as simplified 3D models, further advancing the abstract aesthetic of the game’s overall design. One of the ways the game’s graphics differ from its contemporaries is by using a dynamic moving camera and real-time 3D environments, as opposed to the static, pre-rendered backgrounds of Resident Evil. This enables a greater degree of player agency and makes for much more dramatic presentations.

The fog which covers the entire town is one of two critical visual elements in the game. It limits the player’s field of view and obscures details around them, which helps to build suspense. Since players can’t see very far in it, they never know what’s going to jump out. The inclusion of the fog was partly a result of the game’s engine not being able to fully render the expansive surrounding environments. In addition to adding to the game’s ominous atmosphere, the designers also included it as a way to mask the technical limitations of the PlayStation’s hardware. The creative byproduct of this technical compromise was that it significantly enhances the mood of the game. It would go on to become the single most defining iconographic feature of the series.

The other critical visual element of the game is the flashlight, which serves a similar gameplay function as the fog. The majority of the players’ time is spent alternating between light and dark. Depending on the area, they’re either enveloped in fog or darkness. One of the essential items they have to aid them is the flashlight, which can be turned on or off. Players rely on it to see where they’re going, but it only illuminates so far in front of them. It can also be a liability, since it can attract nearby monsters. Since players can’t see very well to begin with, the flashlight highlights when something actually does appear. This dynamic emphasizes the element of suggestion and creates anticipation and expectation in the game, ratcheting up the player’s tension.

Even though the game’s focus is on psychological horror, it doesn’t shy away from weapons or combat either. Harry is armed with a diverse mix of melee weapons and firearms to combat the evil creatures that stalk through the town. Combat is broken up by a number of cerebral puzzles. In addition to discovering general details about the town, players can also inspect the environment for clues. Oftentimes riddles or environmental puzzles require the player to manipulate an object or system in order to obtain an item or proceed forward. Frequently these puzzles involve everyday items like pianos and water drains, further reinforcing the idea that the town, and the logic behind it, is based in a real, believable world. Puzzles regularly relate to the story and ensure that the game isn’t just a mindless hack-and-slash affair, without any substance.

There’s blood on some of the keys…

One of the gameplay conventions Silent Hill retains from its predecessors is the third person “tank” control scheme, named for its rigid steering mechanics. The majority of 3D survival horror titles of the time featured this distinct setup. Movement in this control style happens relative to the position of the player character, as opposed to the position of the game’s camera. For example, pressing “Up” on the controller’s directional-pad moves Harry forward, regardless of which direction he’s facing. While some players find this setup to be clunky and cumbersome, others can easily acclimate to it and appreciate the consistency of being able to easily maneuver their character around, regardless of changes in camera angles. Some believe it adds to the tension of the game, while others think this “challenge” is simply an artificial result of the clunky mechanics.

Character designs and cutscenes in the game were created by Takayoshi Sato. He was also responsible for the creation of the environmental modeling, texturing, animation and lighting. Sato didn’t think players would be afraid of typical “scary” designs. Instead, he utilized two main factors that evoke players’ fears to help him in the design process: first, was the concept of players seeing something beyond their understanding; and second, to see concealed their true-selves. He applied these ideas to help govern how the visual language of his designs would reflect the world of Silent Hill. His character designs covered a wide range of facial and body types, from young children and elderly characters, to tall male figures. He took extra care to create visual signatures for each of the characters, such as the withered neck of Dahlia Gillespie. The reason why some of the characters resemble Hollywood actors like Bill Pullman, Cameron Diaz and Julianne Moore is because Sato didn’t have Caucasians models for determining specifics like skull shapes, etc. and often times used images of Western actors as a reference.

A wireframe model of one of the Sato-designed characters

Sato completed all of the game’s award-winning pre-rendered CGI cutscenes singlehandedly and without any staff assistance. This wasn’t by choice, however. He had to do it in order to get credit, since his boss at Konami was reluctant to credit such a young employee. The personal cost of such a monumental task was substantial. According to Sato, for one second of a cutscene, it took about three to four hours of rendering time. After all the employees had gone home, he used the computing power of roughly 150 workstations to render his work. In total, he spent almost 3 years working on the game. Perhaps no other single creator can be said to have had as much influence on the look of the game than Sato had. His work established the foundation for how characters would look in the series.

No retrospective of Silent Hill would be complete without mentioning the game’s groundbreaking use of sound. Silent Hill doesn’t just manipulate players’ emotions by what it shows them, it also manipulates them by what they hear. The sound design and music may just be the most distinctive quality of the game. Perhaps more than anything else, it affects the players strongly by establishing a singularly dark and ominous tone.

Both the soundtrack and sound effects were produced by Sound Director Akira Yamaoka, who had requested to join the development team after the original musician left. Yamaoka’s use of harsh industrial sounds blurs the line between sound effects and a traditional score. As players navigate the twisted underworld of the game they’re never sure whether that loud clanging noise they hear is happening inside the game or whether it’s just the soundtrack, further reinforcing the game’s overall ambiguity. Other ambient sounds, like persistent low pulsing and humming tones, which are heard throughout most of the game, add to the unrelenting nature of the dark, omnipresent atmosphere. From the dissonant cacophony first heard in the opening alleyway section to the violent staccato crescendo it reaches when battling the Incubus boss at the end, the sound assaults your senses and amplifies the terror. The soundtrack covers a broad range of musical styles, from haunting synth melodies and string arrangements, to experimental ambient compositions. The game’s opening mandolin theme and melancholy end piano theme are just two of the many tracks that are burned into the consciousness of countless players. The soundtrack would later see a release on CD, and more recently, a vinyl version.

Just as the fog and flashlight are critical visual elements in the game, a critical auditory element was the radio, which emits static whenever monsters are near. The player finds it early in the game and it quickly becomes a critical resource. It acts as a kind of radar or sonar device; the closer the monster, the louder the static. So, even though players don’t actually see the monsters, they still feel their presence. The radio is a key feature which ensures players never feel at ease, even in areas where there’s no visible threat.

Another iconic sound from the game is the air raid siren. It is first heard in the alleyway, when Harry chases after Cheryl, following their car crash. It heralds the transition between the ordinary world and the Otherworld. It’s a warning to players, establishing that a dramatic change is imminent. This recurring sound effect elicits a reflexive response of alarm and dread every time the players hear it. They know that even though they haven’t heard it in a while, it’s never very far off and they’re never truly safe. It also helps to effectively punctuate different sections of the game. It became another trademark of the series, sending a chill down many a player’s spine.

Silent Hill was released during a time when voice acting in videogames was still finding its groove, especially regarding English-speaking actors in Japanese titles. It was an awkward phase. Using professional voiceover talent in their games wasn’t a major priority for most developers. As the first console generation with the capability to feature full in-game voiceovers, 32-bit games suffered the most from a large number of subpar performances. Standards in quality were all over the place.

Resident Evil became notorious for its exaggerated, cartoony deliveries, while games like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and Metal Gear Solid used professional actors and were recognized for their quality voice work. Silent Hill fell somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, utilizing a combination of talent with varying degrees of technical expertise. Performances were delivered in a dreamy, surreal style, with dialogue punctuated by deliberate pauses between each line. According to professional voice actor Michael Guinn, who played Harry in the game, the decision to have the roles acted in this affected style came directly from Konami, not the professionals who worked as voiceover actors on the game. He went on to say that the weirdest thing about his performance was that he wished that he would’ve been allowed to act more naturally, but acknowledged the distinct quality it gave the game. Some have called the voice acting stilted and distracting, but others believe those performances contribute to the game’s charm and simply see them as a part of the language of the game. The town and just about everything that takes place in it exists in a skewed, warped version of reality. It only makes sense that characters would also sound and act differently. While this may not necessarily have been the original intent of those involved, it nevertheless informs the game’s story and tone, and stands out because those performances are not normal.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Videogames are not passive experiences. They’re immersive. They draw players in and demand responses. A horror game is something unique. It dares players to survive it. It challenges them in ways other games simply can’t. It doesn’t matter that players sometimes play the game in the middle of the day; inside the game it is night, and they are nervously navigating a dark, rainy alley. Surviving this digital crucible is a kind of rite of passage. Just like Harry, players have to go through hell to finish it, and, when it is finally over, they feel elated.

Silent Hill is a masterpiece of horror that has stood the test of time and remains as potent and relevant today as it did when it was first released. The same way good stories are timeless, effective horror will always be scary on some level. Even though players might be able to predict when a corpse is going to burst out of a locker or when a dog is going to jump out of a blind alley, the things that truly terrify them remain embedded in the marrow of the game – the sense of dread, fear of the unknown, and the darkness of their own minds. Real horror leaves a stain.

Even though the series has fallen by the wayside, its relevance has not. Its legacy endures and continues to influence such popular modern titles as Outlast, Remothered and Lost in Vivo, as well as popular film and television, with Stranger Things co-creators the Duffer Brothers referencing Silent Hill directly as one of the show’s main influences. There are more horror games out now than ever before. It’s a new golden age. Just as the fog that perpetually covers the town itself, Silent Hill’s influence lingers and refuses to dissipate. It forever changed the face of videogames and has left a permanent mark on the landscape of survival horror. For this and many other reasons, it remains a horror classic.

The post Silent Hill: 20th Anniversary Retrospective appeared first on Rely on Horror.

My relationship with horror games has been quite a complicated one. I’ve always been fascinated by the gross, contorted monsters in series such as Resident Evil, Forbidden Siren and Silent Hill, yet I was too scared to even put the discs in my games consoles. Instead, I would pore over explanations of the plot and peruse fan sites and forum posts, trying to squeeze out as much information as I could about these absurd worlds without actually taking a character’s fate into my trembling hands.

I’m finally breaking through my fear and chipping away at this considerable horror backlog. And when I get around to Silent Hill 2 — one of the survival horror genre’s all-time classics – I know which ending I’m looking forward to the most: Maria’s.

I came across a GameFAQs forum post a few weeks ago arguing over whether the “Leave” or “In Water” ending was the most satisfying. For the uninitiated, in “Leave,” James walks away from the town of Silent Hill, having forgiven himself for mercy killing his wife and then embarks toward a new life, potentially with a new daughter in the form of Laura. In “In Water,” James cannot forgive himself for what was an act spawned from disgust towards his terminally ill wife, Mary, and he drives into the lake with her body in the trunk of his car to commit suicide.

These endings represent a fairly clear dichotomy – James as a benevolent spouse who blames himself too much and learns self-forgiveness, and James as an egotistical monster who realises he is irredeemable and wants to prevent himself from doing more harm. The first option attempts to draw a line under James’ traumatic experience in Silent Hill, yet we know that there is little chance James can go on to live a normal life (Laura perhaps can, since she is unable to see the “monsters” in Silent Hill because of her pure soul).

The second option doesn’t just draw a line, it completely severs the story at the root, with James deciding that the events of the past are inescapable for him. In a way, this is more realistic, because his visions of the town of Silent Hill were so distressing and corrupted that he will never see life the same way again. The progression from an amnesiac state of trying to find his wife, to learning that he is responsible for her disappearance and ultimate death, is a dark but natural development by the plot.

The third option on a first-time playthrough – the “Maria” ending – is perhaps not treated as a fully-fledged ending because it has a typical “bad” ending nature to it. It is so obvious to the player that going off with Maria, a manifestation of Mary who is more seductive, is not a good idea that it seems like a traditional dead end, rather than a true finale to the game. But this ending allows Silent Hill 2 to play out like a fable and it shows off James’ weakness more than any other ending (though “Rebirth” does a good job of showing James at his most desperate).

In the “Maria” ending, James leaves Silent Hill with Maria to pick up where he left off with Mary. And hey, didn’t Harry basically do this with the new Cheryl in the first Silent Hill game? So why couldn’t this work out for him? On the surface, he has what he sought to get by visiting Silent Hill – he found at least some version of his lost wife. It’s when Maria coughs, heavily hinting that history is about to repeat itself, that things get interesting.

The “Maria” ending is the one where James learns nothing from his time in Silent Hill. It’s almost like a parable for the weakness of man, blinded by beauty and sexual urges to the point that even the monsters and traumatic experiences of Silent Hill fade into the background. I love the idea of James being stuck in a cycle: perhaps he ends up coming back to Silent Hill every couple of years, once Maria turns back into Mary and is killed by his hands once again. And it’s not all that wrong of an ending: if you were stuck in the torment of Silent Hill, wouldn’t you want to latch on to the most convenient and alluring glimmer of hope you could find?

The “Maria” ending also depicts James not as an outright evil man, but as a flawed one. This is a departure from the other PS1-2 Silent Hill games, which treat their main character as good or largely neutral, though interestingly enough, both Homecoming and Downpour toy with this idea. Perfect people don’t end up in the purgatory-esque town of Silent Hill, yet fully malevolent people are not given the chance to redeem themselves — they’re damned in a sense. It’s interesting to think of Silent Hill as not only a manifestation of people’s nightmares, but also as some moral testing ground, or a place for people to exorcise their demons.

The idea of James being a burdened but loving husband who just snaps doesn’t fit with everyone else who is in Silent Hill. Eddie reacted poorly to bullying incidents and turned violent, and is clearly manifesting his own self-hate and guilt in the town. Angela feels a lot of shame and trauma from childhood abuse, misplaced feelings that she is ultimately unable to process. Laura is there not because of any acts she has committed, but because of her link to James through Mary and her knowledge of Mary’s misery prior to her death.

They are all shouldering burdens and trying to learn how to deal with crippling emotions, and most visitors to Silent Hill fail to do so. It makes sense that James would also fail to pass the test that Silent Hill stealthily sets him through Maria.

The Born From a Wish extra content was disliked by some fans for suggesting that Maria is an independent being with her own thoughts, but I like the idea of Maria trying to piece together who she is and not realising that she is just a spectre of Mary with no other purpose. This makes me think of the Blade Runner series and how the replicants do not know that they are replicants. To be a test for James, one that he ultimately fails, it’s important for Maria to keep up the pretense. The best way to ensure that she does maintain this facade is if she herself doesn’t know who she really is.

The character of Maria is one of the more interesting components of Silent Hill because she provides a choice to James – learn from his mistake or commit it once again. It is the only ending that really engages with his journey and focuses less on whether James forgives himself, because really, it’s implausible that James could ever come to terms with what he did to the woman he loved.

I think that Silent Hill 2 is best served by an intensely sad ending, which “In Water” offers up in spades. But the sting in the tail of the “Maria” ending elevates Silent Hill 2 from a moving mystery narrative to a modern fable about the dangers of superficial beauty.

The post Why the Maria Ending in Silent Hill 2 is Pretty Special appeared first on Rely on Horror.

Today is Silent Hill‘s 15th anniversary. On this very day, the first game in the series released in North America, exciting and terrifying PlayStation owners and creating a following of fans that still exists to this day. Silent Hill is one of the originals. It’s legacy has spawned many games that yearn to capture its unique brand of psychological/supernatural horror, but fail to do so.

Below, the staff of Rely On Horror has listed their favorite moments from the Silent Hill series (spoilers below). Please, let us know yours in the comments.

CJ Melendez: Silent Hill 3 puts us into the shoes of the girl that we worked so hard to save in the very first Silent Hill. After a long ride home– through a Mall, train station, underground area, and dept building– Heather finally escapes her nightmares. It’s been a long night for the poor girl, and all she wants is answers and the comfort of her father. It isn’t until Heather opens the front door of her apartment that her nightmare spirals even further downwards.

Her father, Harry Mason, is dead. This is a defining and heart breaking moment for fans of the series. We spent many hours playing as Harry, trying to find Cheryl. Being reunited with him was, no doubt, on many minds as fans booted up Silent Hill 3 for the first time, only to reach the apartments and discover that their reunion with Harry was denied – killed at the hands of Claudia Wolf. Heather’s sadness resonates with players of the first game in the series. We were once Harry, and we cared about him.

The scene perfectly wraps up in the most heart wrenching way, should players examine his dead body. Heather says the following line, “Dad… why did you have to die? You told me you were the strongest man in the world… Liar.”

Let the sadness flow through you.

Zack Furniss: Silent Hill 4 has always been a bit of a black sheep for the series, but I can’t help but keep going back to it, fully entrenching myself in that bizarre, uncomfortable exploration of the concept of home. Not even ten minutes have passed by when you realize that your apartment is locked from the inside. The idea that someone could go inside your home, and change your personal palace to a personal prison makes me all sorts of shivery. As the game goes on, the apartment suffers from increasingly insane (hallucinations?) hauntings. The first time you see something trying to crawl out of one of your walls is going to be something that sticks with you for a good while. We all know that schools, factories, and prisons can be terrifying places, but the steady degradation of your own sanctuary feels so much more personal, and infinitely more violating.

Rourke Keegan: Silent Hill: Downpour. It was my third or fourth time through, this time I was showing it to my girlfriend, who would rather watch me play. About halfway through the game, I was in the Orphanage stage. Walking around, I was taking every opportunity to look around at the pretty environment and was playing in 3D to enhance the experience. I was walking slowly through a sort of courtyard area, and the spooky music by Daniel Licht was playing softly in the background. I walked up to a particular tree with a tire swing, and stopped to look around once more before entering the building – the tire was now one of Murphy’s prison mates, hanging by his neck. On its own, creepy enough, but in 3D – Oh boy. We both jumped and she even gasped loud enough to be considered a scream. I love the psychological stuff, and the deep emotional roller coaster rides, but that single moment almost gave me a heart attack.

Brent Cook: My favorite moment in the entire Silent Hill series is the “Leave” ending in Silent Hill 2. After spending the entire game building something of an admiration for the character of James, and his dedication to finding his wife, the truth is revealed. While I expected to find out that James had killed his wife, I never expected it to be out of hate, and I never expected to be so understanding of it. Unlike Harry Mason before him, James was brought to Silent Hill not to find his wife, but to face his guilt for killing her. Following that revelation, we are brought back to where the game started: the letter. We see, now, that James had blocked out the rest of the letter, convincing himself to ignore the parts of the letter that would have let us on to why James really did what he did. The delivery of each line of the letter is not only heartbreaking, but perfectly reflects your trip through Silent Hill, and the growth of James’ character. Never before had I seen a game with such a complex, emotional pay-off, and it’s the one thing that always pulls me back to play the game again.

Casper Bronmans: When I received my PlayStation 1 as a gift from a relative, he also included all of his games. Some of these games didn’t come with a cover, so little, six-year-old me couldn’t look at the pictures before putting a game in the console. One of these games was the first Silent Hill, so when I started playing it, all I knew was that there was a lot of mist and a little girl.

I proceeded to follow the little girl, and this eventually led me to an alleyway. When I then reached the end of that path and saw some dude impaled on the fence, I kind of lost it.

Tarrah Rivard: Silent Hill 2 – The Burning Staircase.  While The Burning Staircase isn’t the most frightening moment of the series or even of Silent Hill 2 itself, it’s still a very moving scene and one that has stuck with me even after all these years.   To me, this scene seems like it would encapsulate almost perfectly what it would be like to be an abuse victim.  We all know that what happened to Angela wasn’t her fault. Yet despite all reason, she fully believes the abuse that she suffered was deserved; instilled in her from such a young age, hammered into her tiny skull so many times that it became her truth.  You want to help her, you want to tell her that everything will be alright, but it won’t be – and she knows that.

This is also the first time that the player sees another person’s version of Silent Hill.  You could theorize that James’ version of Silent Hill is shrouded in fog and darkness because he is working through the repressed memory of what happened to his wife.  Angela’s Silent Hill is full of fire because she is constantly tortured by the memory of her past, her truth. If anything, the scene reminds us that even when our own lives are full of despair, there are others fighting their own battles too.  And for them, it’s always like this.

Taylor Dean: If I had to pick one Silent Hill game that nails all of these and more, it would be Silent Hill 2. The long forest walk, dark apartment buildings, then onto the park and terrifying hospital, revolving underground, and finally the climactic and emotional hotel– there isn’t a single thing Silent Hill 2 does wrong (except for maybe the combat).

But, one defining moment in the game that I’ll always remember and cherish is the dual Pyramid Head encounter. The beautiful camera work, absolutely eerie and piercing musical score by Akira Yamaoka, and the weight of the situation that James and Maria are in still astounds me. When James falls to his knees and realizes everything at that moment, and then begins to close in on the resolution, goosebumps crawl over my entire body. It’s the one scene I’ve always wondered how it could be re-created in another Silent Hill game with a different protagonist (or antagonist?).

Kyle Campbell: Silent Hill 2 was a watershed moment for myself when it came to storytelling in the gaming medium. It was one of the first games to elicit an emotional response from me, and not one of joy, but utter sadness. It’s a game so brilliantly written, that it makes you feel sympathetic for a cold hearted murder. The scene that truly made the game for me was the journey down the long, barren hallway where you overhear a conversation between James and Mary. There’s nothing all that significant about the dialogue between them, at least in terms of the plot, but it tells you everything you need to know about their relationship leading up to Mary’s passing. Masterful storytelling, all without taking away player agency. That scene accomplishes more in a few short moments than most games do with their entire narrative, especially when it comes to forming an emotional connection between the characters in the game and the player.

Tobiichi Karlsson: Back in 2010 I was part of a stageplay based on Silent Hill 2 called Välkommen till Silent Hill (Welcome to Silent Hill). I both helped write the adaptation, and ended up playing the lead role of James Sunderland, despite not at all befitting that role, in theory. We worked on a lot of props and played around with light to set the atmosphere right on stage. As we worked on it, we managed to constantly improve on what we were doing. Red Pyramid was terrifying, the infamous rape scene from the apartment was striking and intact, and we even managed to rewrite the last act in a way that actually let the audience understand what had happened in James’ past, despite not having everything from the game in there.

What was the toughest bit in making the play was figuring out the ending. There are many endings in Silent Hill 2 and they’re all pretty damn good in their own ways. We ended up using the most common ending, “Leave,” and I think that to this date, that scene was my favourite of the bunch. It had no dialogue from me or anyone on stage, no big event or anything. It was just me, as James, sitting on a bench at the graveyard as Mary’s full letter was read aloud on a recording. Laura approached James, and they looked at each other until James finally got up, tossed Mary’s letter (to the audience) and walked off stage with Laura as the play ended. It was wonderful to write, and act, and even more so when we saw the test audience reacting to it all.

Unfortunately, the play never actually had its premier. A day before the intended day, we received a cease and desist letter and had to take it all down. It was a shame, too, as the cast had worked really hard on preparing everything. We had spent days working on choreography for nurses and lying figures, along with so much else that just went to waste in the end. The play was almost resurrected with the subtitle Restless Dreams, but never went far. An idea to adapt Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was considered before me and the people involved parted ways. While production never began on Shattered Memories, I did like the ideas we had to solve with the psychiatrist sessions on stage. It was pretty cool.

This wasn’t the first time I had been involved in trying to adapt something into a different format, and just like the times before (and after) it really gave me a lot more respect for people who work on adaptations. It’s really hard, and you can’t just take the same thing that’s in a game and just put it on stage/screen, because then it turns out awful in a different way than it might have otherwise. While it’s not a direct memory of any game, that’s my most vivid and important memory relating to Silent Hill. My only runner-up would be finding my brother sitting inside a dark closet watching the first Silent Hill movie on his laptop, scaring the shit out of me when I went to go get a shirt.

Whitney Chavis: My favorite moment from the Silent Hill series is definitely Lisa Garland’s death scene in the original game. The melancholy music and Sato’s CG animation is hauntingly beautiful; I still get chills watching it and even a little choked up hearing her pleas for Harry to somehow save her from her fate.

When I first played the game, I had hoped there was some sort of alternate path I could take to save the kind nurse, but now I think if there was a way, like there was to save Cybil in Lakeside Amusement park, her death would have had less of an impact all these years later.

The post Remembering Silent Hill – Celebrating 15 Years of Horror appeared first on Rely on Horror.

Today is the Silent Hill series’ 15th anniversary. This iconic survival horror series began with the release of Silent Hill for the PSX on January 31st, 1999. Conceived as Konami’s answer to Capcom’s successful Resident Evil game, Silent Hill helped define what the survival horror genre was, by introducing abstract constructs, a story with depth and complexity, and a brand of psychological terror unmatched by most. But the Silent Hill series didn’t just help craft the genre I hold so dearly, it helped craft me as a person.

I must admit, I can not say that I was a Silent Hill fan from from the day that the first game released in stores. When Silent Hill first appeared, I was rather young and inexperienced with most types of games. After owning an N64 only, my father soon picked up a PS1 – probably due to my frustration in seeing “Only On PlayStation” appended to cool-looking video game commercials. He bought me a couple of games: Spyro, Syphon Filter, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, and what ever else was popular that the time or appealed to my young sensibilities. My father also purchased me the first Resident Evil and soon after that Silent Hill. At the time, both of these were far too difficult for me to play. They actually managed to scare me as well. From what I recall, the farthest I was able to get in Silent Hill was to the school – not very far, I know. Did I consider myself a fan back then? Not really. Silent Hill was nothing more to me than a game that intrigued me but alluded me due to its complexity and ability to unnerve me. I did enjoy replaying the intro, though. I had to have been attacked in Cafe 5to2 over a dozen times before I ever managed to play through the entire game.

Several years later, much alike to when I was a child and I was bitter over PlayStation commercials showing me games I couldn’t play, I saw a TV spot for an new release. It was a Silent Hill 2 commercial. I faintly recall thinking to myself that it was interesting that they made a sequel, but I had no business playing it, because I could never make any progress in the first game. I can’t tell you exactly when I played Silent Hill 2 for the first time, but rest assured that it was quite a while ago. I do know that I played it through emulation on an Xbox 360, with emulations problems and all.

Jumping through my hazy timeline once more, the following memories were probably from 2005 or so. The Silent Hill movie was coming to theaters soon and I was excited to see the film based on that one elusive game that I could never complete. I thoroughly enjoyed the first Resident Evil film, so I expected to enjoy this one as well. In the end, I did enjoy it and still do to this day. It’s not the plot of the first game, but it’s not like I knew that at the time! Oops.

It wasn’t until roughly 2007 that my interest in the Silent Hill series began to return. Hot off the heels of the Silent Hill movie, I wanted to establish myself as a fan. Silent Hill: Origins was in development but I knew nothing of the game aside from that. At the time I relied on video game magazines, word of mouth, and my PSP web browser for video game news.

Blowback, a music track from Origins, managed to find its way on the internet mislabeled as “O.R.T”, a different track from the game. I listened to it almost daily, enamored by its melancholic tones and the moving voice of Mary Elizabeth McGylnn. I was probably a miserable High School student – like most – so the song resonated with my angst and depressive moods. I was admittedly pretty lame and geeky. But it’s hard to say that this song did not a hand in luring me back into the series – had I not stumbled upon it I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog post or blogging in general.

My memory is fuzzy on why, but I didn’t pick up Silent Hill: Origins at that time. It probably released during the period where I couldn’t afford any new games (a large reason why I missed out on so many amazing PS2 horror games). I did play it a few years later on the PS2, and then on my Vita.

It wasn’t until Silent Hill: Homecoming began to be teased that I joined the Silent Hill fandom. The game was still titled as Silent Hill 5 at the time I joined a Silent Hill fan forum by the name of SilentHill5.net. The site had changed its name from SilentHillorigins.net to match with the upcoming game in the series. My first first forum post there was an off-screen image of Pyramid Head being in the game. As expected, fans weren’t really happy to see PH return, but the movie’s popularity ensured that he became the series’ “mascot” from that point forward.

I have no clue how long into my membership it was, but I was soon elevated to a moderator on the forum. The site owner and I became good friends, talking regularly about Silent Hill and non-gaming things. I was eventually given an admin position to take care of the site while he was away on personal matters. Along with the forum, SilentHill5.net had a small homepage for Silent Hill news. When the site owner asked the forum community for news writers, I volunteered after much deliberation (Would I want this responsibility? Would I have time?). If it were not for what I call a “fuck it moment”, I probably wouldn’t have discovered my passion for game blogging. I accepted the responsibility of writing news and informing fans of the site of the latest happenings with the series.

Homecoming came and gone. The forum soon evolved its homepage and focus to encompass all horror games. SilentHill5.net became Hell Descent, a name derived from a level within Silent Hill: Homecoming (the most visually appealing level in the game, if you ask me). The owner of the site, Bradley, put me in control of the site. I worked hard seeking out horror news, interviews, exclusives, and developing my writing skills. As with the Silent Hill series itself, I owe Bradley so much. Were it not for him, I don’t think that I would have ever taken the leap into blogging. He gave me the opportunity to discover how much enjoyment I get out of writing to an audience and delivering news and information.

Eventually Hell Descent was put into my ownership. With the site under my creative control, I continued blogging my head off alongside a group of editors from the forum community (including Whispers in the Dark podcast co-host Whitney and Rely on Horror editor Taylor). My work on Hell Descent eventually led me to my first press event. Little 18 year old me was invited by EA to preview Dead Space: Extraction. EA was also the first publisher to put Hell Descent on their press list for review copies – this was a big moment for me as it meant that my site was established enough. We passed the vetting process and were considered worthy!

Let’s jump ahead to E3 2008; Silent Hill 8 had been announced by Konami. My favorite series had returned. Forum stuff happened as usual, and I wrote and moderated. To secure us an exclusive, I reached out to Daniel Licht, the announced composer of Silent Hill 8. It wasn’t long after I sent my request to Licht that I received an email from Devin Shatsky, producer of the game. He informed me that the interview was a-go, and thanks for reaching out and showing interest. He also shared that he was a fan of Hell Descent. Imagine my excitement when I heard that someone behind the game I was excited for was a fan of my community and website.

Devin Shatsky, and eventually Tomm Hulett – associate producer of Silent Hill 8, joined the Hell Descent forum to interact with fans. The community became a place where fans could interact with the developers behind the latest Silent Hill game. Our feedback and complaints were seen and acknowledged by the game’s creators. I jokingly tell people that the Hell Descent community are responsible for the button prompt and item shimmer settings in Silent Hill: Downpour (we did complain about it a lot!)

Sadly, the original iteration of Hell Descent had to close due to technical issues out of my control (although it’s back now as Rely on Horror’s official forum), but my blogging and passion for the Silent Hill series continued on the very site that you see before you. I could get into the whole process behind joining Rely on Horror, but the short version is that we were both aware of each other and the team was eager to scoop me up when I announced that I was closing shop.

One of my first big pieces on Rely on Horror was my long planned previews for both the Silent Hill HD Collection and Silent Hill: Downpour. Whitney, being an editor at Hell Descent and owner of her own Silent Hill fansite (Silent Hill Historical Society), and I played both games well ahead of their respective release at a preview event. While Downpour blew us away, I wish I could go back in time Terminator style and warn the publisher of how upset the HD Collection was going to make people.

It is now the series’ 15th anniversary. Silent Hill: Downpour, the HD Collection, and Book of Memories are things of the past. I’ve spent countless hours writing, playing, and talking about the Silent Hill series. Despite not being a fan from the very start, the series grabbed me many years ago and turned me into a life long fan. It brought me to a community filled with people that I’m still friends with to this day, and it introduced me to the game industry and my aspirations to work in it. Silent Hill is not just a video game series that I enjoy for its writing, aesthetics, and music; it’s a series that helped me discover my passion for the games industry.

The post Broken Silence: Remembrance appeared first on Rely on Horror.

It was recently revealed that Konami would be bringing Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance to the PC. Shortly after this announcement, the publisher announced that Castlevania: Lords of Shadow would come to the PC as well, via Climax Studios. Has Konami suddenly grown a soft spot for the PC platform? The last time I wrote a proper Broken Silence article, it was focused on how Konami could make amends for their unfaithful HD Collection with poor ports of Silent Hill 2 and 3. I suggested that the publisher could please fans by officially supporting the re-release of the PC versions of Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, and Silent Hill 4 by teaming up with GoG.com or Steam. And while that suggestion fell upon deaf ears, as I’m sure the below article will as well, discussing what Konami could do to better the Silent Hill series is still one of my favorite hobbies. So, let me tell you my latest idea!

With the announcement of PC ports of both Revengeance and Lords of Shadow, the latter being nearly a three year old title, it’s time for me to suggest that the publisher extend the same courtesy to Silent Hill: Downpour, the series’ latest main entry. Downpour released on March 13, 2012 to mixed critical reception – this alone may give Konami reason to ignore me, but hear me out. I loved the game; I would also love to see a superior version without the technical hiccups and muddy textures: a version of the game that can reach more people.

A lot of people ask, “where are the survival horror games?” The indie development scene on PC is where many contemporary horror games can be found. Amnesia is one such game in the indie scene that helped show people that quality horror experiences can be found on PC. Mods such as Cry of Fear, Day Z, and SCP showcase the creativity and ease in which passionate individuals have supported the genre on the platform. Silent Hill, as a series, doesn’t top charts. The series is niche, out of the public eye and cursed with a taboo that suggests that it was once great and has nothing else to offer. But amidst the widely known, classic survival horror series with strong legacies, Silent Hill remains survival horror. Silent Hill: Downpour embraced the genre, whether you believe that the gameplay was sub par, decent, or exceptional. It honored what makes a survival horror game about survival. Unlike Resident Evil or Dead Space, Downpour didn’t cave to becoming a more accessible horror title. Downpour gave us an underpowered character, a sad story, and a wonderfully designed town to explore. This is why I believe it deserves its chance among other survival horror games on PC.

A platform where many developers have the freedom to release a game in the genre that many larger publishers fear won’t sell well, is where Downpour could potentially get some attention from gamers. Even Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, an experimental no-combat survival horror game could receive some much needed attention on PC due to how much it would have in common with indie developed horror games. Book of Memories, an isometric dungeon crawler, could do well on the platform as well.

I won’t pretend that porting a game is a low cost and simple endeavor. If Konami didn’t see fit to releasing the game in a more-finished state and with better promotion before release, I’m sure they would be hard pressed to port the game to a new platform. What I do know – which is widely known information – is that the Unreal Engine, which Downpour was developed on, has been designed to allow developers to make multiplatform video games with less complications. The process will still require Konami to hire a development studio to do the laborious task, but the point is that there would likely be less complication in the process than if the game was developed on a less-PC optimized engine. As for publishing, Konami could easily partner with Steam to eliminate retail publishing costs.

Now, this is just me speculating here, but what if porting costs were relatively low enough that the risk would be outweighed by potential sales? Porting Downpour to the PC gives millions of gamers access to it. The nature of Steam Sales lures many people into dipping into low-cost but interesting looking titles out there. What if Konami were to release a PC port of Downpour at a budget price on Steam for less than $20 (retail console copies sell for about this price)? Would it be far fetched to believe that a low-priced Downpour port would be picked up by not only Silent Hill fans but also random buyers looking to nab some cheap games that look at least mildly interesting? I think Konami could very well make a profit here, which would be their motivation to port this year old game.

I understand that the fear of Konami screwing up exists. They’ve shown that they can easily do so with anything Silent Hill. Silent Hill: Homecoming released on PC some time after the console version and it was a broken game that fans had to patch themselves. Despite a slew of technical faults and mixed critical reception, Konami released Homecoming on PC at full price. Currently, the game is still being sold for $40. If Konami were to do this port, they would need to sell the game at a budget price. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Ultimate Edition is releasing on August 27th and that was a critically acclaimed game. A price around $20 at launch would be decent for a Downpour port–at least in my eyes. Konami must also be willing to adjust their price by working with Steam during sales periods. They have to have realistic expectations and be competitive.

It’s unfortunate that the publisher would probably cite Homecoming‘s PC sales and reception as fair reasoning for not porting Downpour, but clearly its failure was their fault alone and in no way an indication that future PC release would fail on the platform. Hopefully, now that they’re flirting with PC ports again, they’ve got a better idea of how to appeal to gamers on the platform. If Lords of Shadow and Revengeance do well, then maybe the Konami will walk away confident in the platform (assuming they do all the necessary things to earn that success).

With the onset of the next console generation, I have decided to make the PC my primary gaming platform. Silent Hill no longer appears on that platform, so this was a factor that prompted me to consider the possibility of Konami putting Silent Hill on PC, but I am not alone in sharing this hope. As console architecture becomes more and more like a PC, the “easier” (I use this term well aware that developing and porting is a arduous task) it will become to port their games to the platform.

Millions of gamers either have a gaming PC along with a console, or simply a gaming PC, at home. There is a market out there that Konami has recently decided to acknowledge with Metal Gear and Castlevania games, so why not Silent Hill? The publisher might be surprised if they were to take this potentially beneficial risk, as opposed to their bad ones in the past. If not Downpour, then perhaps Silent Hill 10…whenever that decides to start existing. If we can’t have Downpour on PC, then let’s hope that Revengeance and Lords of Shadow sell well enough to convince the publisher that the PC is a viable platform which money can be made from.

The post Broken Silence: Wet Components appeared first on Rely on Horror.

Something pointy, scary, and perhaps sexually charged arrived at my door this week. He slowly entered my home, knife dragging behind him, with a crazy man dangling in his grasp. Jumping right out of one of the best games ever made, Pyramid Head of Silent Hill 2 fame is now something we can invite into our homes. Produced by Gecco Corp and ToyMunkey Studios Inc, the Red Pyramid Thing figure is being distributed worldwide outside of Japan and can also be purchased from trade shops for roughly $150MSRP (don’t be fooled by Japanese imports for twice that price). Now that RPT is in hand and sitting on my table, I thought I’d let you guys know what I think of his pretty, little details.

The 13” figure of RPT has an immense amount of detail in his smock. Seams and gashes on the fabric which appear to reveal damaged flesh litter his form. Several buckles extended from the figure (2 on the front and 2 on the back) and a zipper can be found between its shoulder blades. Stains and an overall discoloration set the base tone of the smock. RPT’s flesh is a sickly grayish tan color with a spatter of visible veins, strong gashes, and exposed muscle. Despite being the classic Pyramid Head design, with a 7-sided dome, muscle detail is very visible on this sculpt. The sculptor, Shinya Akao of Headlong, specializes in male figures and it shows in the lean masculine arms.

Not very visible within the games itself or noticeable due to the game’s dark visuals, are clumps of flesh that spans the underside of RPT’s helmet. Obtruding from the back of the helmet (or head), a wad of flesh can be seen with a bolt sticking out of it. The helmet (or head) itself is a rusty, flaky, orange-red and black object with a bolt and hole on the surface. The cracking rust looks exceptionally detailed here. That iconic blood-rust color is ever present.

Aside from the helmet, Pyramid Head is known for his Great Knife. The knife is the only part of the figure that has to be attached when removed from packaging. I’m frankly too afraid to see if I can remove it after I set it in place. The knife’s overall texture is quite nice. The only downside I see here is a lack of a unique mark on it. The paint job is good and accentuates the texture of the knife, but its fairly uniform across its form (aside from a bolt on the backside of the hilt). A small observation but I felt that some type of distinctive mark would have given the knife a little more pizzazz.

Pyramid Head is known to be a lonely fellow. It’s hard to find the guy without something—or someone–in his grasp. This figure is essentially two in one. In PH’s grasp is a Lying Figure creature. The contorted straight jacket monster is suspended upside down. An immense amount of detail can be found on the Lying Figure’s groin area, thighs, and even its backside. Within the cracks on its legs ridiculously small muscle strands can be seen. Its head contains folds that give it the appearance of being wrapped in loose bag-like skin. Its torso and back reveals hints of skin tearing and stretching. It was quite a surprise to see the Lying Figure come with RPT as one purchasable unit. I’d say that’s some value to be had.

Would it be odd for me to talk about a figure’s box as if it was something worth displaying? Well, it is. The box for this figure contains new art by series creature designer Masahiro Ito. His latest rendition of Pyramid Head is beautiful to look at. Being printed on a 14 inch box also makes it a potential display piece of its own. The backside of the box contains the 9-square design from Silent Hill 2, which acts as a display window for the figure. Inside the box there is a paper backdrop that can be removed and set behind the figure itself. The design of the backdrop is also the iconic 9-square save point but as an image.

Avid Silent Hill collectors will be hard pressed to find much to dislike about this figure. ToyMunkey’s offering is already cheaper than the Konami Style Pyramid Head that we saw three years ago; it’s also the Silent Hill 2 version, not the muscle bound version seen in Silent Hill Homecoming and the two feature films. This rendition of Pyramid Head is the classic design in an action pose with a second creature in hand, which means there’s a whole lot of monster in this package. With an incredible amount of detail in the sculpt and the paint job, this monstrous Silent Hill creation is gorgeous in all of its disturbing qualities. The pretty box art and backdrop insert is a nice bonus to top it all off. I just may have to prevent myself from caressing it from time to time.

The post Impressions: ToyMunkey’s Red Pyramid Thing appeared first on Rely on Horror.

The Silent Hill series is well known for its strange way of gauging the player’s behavior. Silent Hill 2 secretly monitored how many times players observed the knife in their inventory, and how concerned they were about Maria’s health; Silent Hill: Shattered Memories did the same but personalized the system to the players’ own personality. Silent Hill: Book of Memories carries over a system much like the one found in Shattered Memories and combines it with its RPG gameplay. The result is a system that has many players of the game baffled.

The new alignment system is heavily rooted in the player’s play style. Because of this, Book of Memories is quite a complicated game that has stumped many players who are trying to control which ending and note alignment that they will receive. Thanks to Bobby Cowling (tortoiseontour on Twitter), who has figured out the system, we’re going to present one of the first guides to the game’s hidden story system. Now, this guide will clearly contain spoilers and be a big disservice if you use it before beating the game. We recommend that you play the game naturally before you cheat the system. Otherwise, you’d be controlling fate and writing your own memories. Get it?

Check out the full guide on how to control the game’s notes and endings, below!

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Basic Information:
During your journey through Book of Memories’ zones, you will come across several types of notes: challenge notes, world notes and boss notes. World notes can be determined by the colored row that they appear in within the Book of Memories. Ignoring the first colored row (notes #1-10) as they are all flavor notes, the second colored row is where notes become categorized by their world. For example, the second row is red, which is representative of the fire world, the third row is brown for the wood world.

Challenge notes are the second, third and fourth notes for each world (notes #12, #13, #14, #22, #23, #24, etc.). Their purpose is to infer three challenges for each world that affect world notes. These challenges include things like: fully exploring zones, playing a certain way, or determining what weapons you can use.

World notes are the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth notes for each world (notes #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #25, #26, #27, #28, #29, etc.) and will change as you fulfill the challenges dictated by each world’s challenge notes. Which challenges you complete will determine whether world notes shift to light or blood, which will also change the contents of each note to either good (light) or bad (blood) events. A world note’s alignment can be easily seen in your Book of Memories; the icon that appears on a world note will be either a red symbol for blood or a white symbol for light. Once a world note has been obtained, players no longer need to re-find them if they wish to change the note’s alignment; they must simply perform the note’s challenge.

Boss notes are the tenth note for each world (notes #20, #30, etc.). To change them, you must defeat the boss associated with that world with 3 to 5 of your world notes being either light or blood; the affinity of which will affect the alignment of the boss note. For example: killing the fire world boss after acquiring four blood-aligned world notes will result in a blood-aligned boss note.

Other notes are generally flavor notes, such as the first note for each world (notes #11, #21, etc.), which merely details story elements from the player character’s point of view. In addition, the first 10 notes describe the events of Book of Memories from the Order’s point of view, while the notes that appear after steel world’s boss note (notes #81 and onward) are all flavor notes, with some that reference characters from previous games like James Sunderland from SH2 and Alex Shepherd from Homecoming.

CHALLENGE NOTES

Here are the challenges implied by each world’s challenge notes. Please be aware that any challenge marked with a question mark (?) has not been fully researched and might not be the correct challenge contained in that note. Please leave a comment if you have anything to add and we’ll edit this guide accordingly.

#1 – Fire World: Zones 1-3

Note 12
“Derek, honey, I know you don’t want advice from your mom, but I am your mom so I’m going to say it anyway. Have you thought about taking some time off? You’ve been so busy at work I’m just worried you’ll burn out. I know you. You’re “on” all the time, and that’s wonderful, but we all need to take time off and just rest. Go to the park and sit in the shade, or feed the ducks, or something fun. Love you dear. -Mom”

Light Shift: Keep flashlight on during zone.
Blood Shift: Do not use flashlight during zone.

Note 13
“From the Desk of Dr. K

Derek wants to be a responsible, accomplished person. It’s clear from his descriptions of work that he’s willing to take any assignment given to him, regardless of who requests it or how many missions he’s performed for that person. Derek is eager to help with any task. However, he tends to react badly when this doesn’t result in praise or reward. He seems frustrated he’s ‘suffered in silence’ for so long.”

Light Shift: Complete Valtiel’s missions.
Blood Shift: Do not complete Valtiel’s missions.

Note 14
“to: sd.17159@kn-mail.com
from: galvin75@kn-mail.com

In regards to your question, I assigned the task to Derek because he never backs down from a puzzle or takes the easy way out. Every time he encounters an obstacle, he finds a solution. His dedication to the job is an asset to our team, and he’s one of our stars. I stand behind my choice.”

Light Shift: Complete puzzles without using the hint lever.
Blood Shift: Use the hint lever to complete puzzles.

#2 – Wood World: Zones 4-6

Note 22
“CLASS SCHEDULE
student: Katie Collins

1. Math 120 – M/W 9:00 – 10:30
2. Hist. 110B – M/W 10:30 – 12:00
3. Health Science 203 – M/W 1:00 – 2:30
4. Social Psych. 350 – T/Th 10:30 – 12:00
5. Dance 301 – T/Th 1:00 – 2:30
6. Health Science 205 – F 1:00 – 4:00

Notes: Student is enrolled in a Health Science scholarship. She must maintain an average above 70% in Health-related courses.”

Light Shift: Maintain your health above 70%.
Blood Shift: Do not maintain your health above 70%.

Note 23
“If I had to describe my perfect guy, let’s see… he’d have to be kind to others, funny. He’d dress nice– not super fancy, but clean! Umm… I think it might be nice if he bought me nice little surprises sometimes. Nothing big, but if he got me a little something whenever he was out shopping, it’d be nice. I’d know he was thinking of me. What about you? Pass back! -Katie”

Light Shift: Buy alt items at Howard’s store (clothing, weapons, artifacts)?
Blood Shift: Buy regular items at Howard’s store (ammunition, wrenches, health packs)?

Note 24
“SEATING A17
ADMIT

Nolan Gardens presents
GLOWING ORB
& Kukeiha

THE FAILURE: NOT AN OPTION TOUR

SAT 8 MAY 2010 DOORS 6:40”

Light Shift: Do not fail mission orb missions?
Blood Shift: Fail mission orb missions?

#3 – Light World: Zones 7-9

Note 32
“From the desk of Dr. K

I truly think Graham and Lorelai Reynolds have a chance of reconciling. The key here is Graham has plenty of opportunities to heal the marriage. However, he wastes his energy healing other areas of his life–his job, etc. If he could hold onto this energy, he could stockpile it for his wife. I’d like Graham to recognize these healing opportunities and cherish them, rather than expending his energy elsewhere.”

Light Shift: Stockpile health packs.
Blood Shift: Deplete health packs.

Note 33
“SHINING LIGHT AWARD

We hereby acknowledge Officer Graham Reynolds for his fine service to our community. He is a Shining Light casting out the shadows of our city.

Reynolds is a fine example to the police force he dutifully serves.”

Light Shift: Use the flashlight.
Blood Shift: Do not use the flashlight.

Note 34
“You’re damn right I won’t take this sitting down. Graham’s a good cop and doesn’t deserve his name being dragged through the mud. Especially not for something like shooting a fellow officer. If you made a list of things that man is capable of, that’d be the goddamn rock-bottom. He’s loyal to a fault, and he’d sooner take a bullet than risk hitting another uniform. You took one of my men off the street for three weeks to rot in a courtroom, and for what? Nothing.”

Light Shift: Do not use guns.
Blood Shift: Use guns.

#4 – Water World: Zones 10-12

Note 42
“Katie,

[Player’s Name] is no good for you. He’s not your type, as you’ve probably realized by now. I know I wasn’t perfect. I was always buying things for myself and then cheaping out on dates. I get it. I just wanted you to know I’m saving all my money from now on. Really– stashing away all my spare cash. I’m saving up for our life together. Once this phase is over and you’re ready to try again you’ll see I’m a new man. I only buy the necessities, and save the rest for you. For us.
-Trent”

Light Shift: Do not buy items from Howard’s store.
Blood Shift: Buy items from Howard’s store.

Note 43
“Ashwood 20 Presents
* THE EXECUTIONS
Theater 20
Admit1Gen

8:20 PM Sat 2/20/10”

Light Shift: Get (20) executions?
Blood Shift: Do not get executions?

Note 44
“GUIDANCE OFFICE

I spoke with Trent Baker today about his academic advancement. I do have concerns about this young man’s insistence on a single path to success. Trent has armed himself with a singular skillset, and refuses to give anything a chance other than what he’s familiar with. While it IS possible to find success this way, it takes an incredible amount of dedication and a little luck.”

Light Shift: Use one weapon type exclusively.
Blood Shift: Use multiple weapon types.

#5 – Earth World: Zones 13-15

Note 52
“RECORD OF JUDGEMENT

This court finds the defendant, Jack Merrick, guilty of four counts of murder, two counts aggravated assault.

However, on the charges of assault with a firearm, the court finds Mr. Merrick not guilty.”

Light Shift: Use guns
Blood Shift: Do not use guns

Note 53
“WANTED
First-Degree Murder, Aggravated Assault

DESCRIPTION
Jack Merrick
6′ 3″
Brown hair, short
Blue Eyes
Identifiable Markings include a tattoo on right arm which reads “Karma’s a bitch.””

Light Shift: Collect karma
Blood Shift: Do not collect karma

Note 54
“Name: Jack Merrick
Parole: DENIED

Overview: This board has once again denied Merrick’s application for parole. We believe this man has a number of compulsions which he must break before he can return to society. It would represent a collapse of the justice system if such a broken individual was released. With a career starting at destruction of property and advancing to more serious convictions, we don’t see such a change happening overnight.”

Light Shift: Do not break furniture?
Blood Shift: Break furniture?

#6 – Blood World: Zones 16-18

Note 62
“Graham I need to see you tonight. I need to see you every night. I can hardly stand it when we’re apart. It’s difficult to breathe. It’s impossible to think. My heart beats in tune to yours–you must know that. I’m falling so fast, Graham. Please call me when you get this; I’m sure I’ll need to hear your voice–I always do. You’re my constant light; I’m in darkness without you.”

Light Shift: Play multiplayer? Play with light on?
Blood Shift: Do not play multiplayer? Play with light off?

Note 63
“Dear Diary,

I am so proud of my Graham. A few years ago he arrested a dangerous criminal, Jack something or other–didn’t even have to use his gun! It took months, he was a big hero. Well! Turns out Jack just escaped from prison and Graham’s been a wreck since– he really needs to keep his health up. But I know he’s going to catch him again–this time for good. Graham is such a great policeman…”

Light Shift: Do not use guns, keep health up?
Blood Shift: Use guns, do not keep health up?

Note 64
“(Shannon, you should come!)

What: Party of the Century
Where: Doug’s Party Station
(1028 Bramble Rd.)
Who: You! Bring a friend if you’ve got boobs
Deets: Liquor wanted! We’ve got beer, beer, and more beer. ‘Other’ welcome but not included!”

Light Shift: Play multiplayer if female?
Blood Shift: Do not play multiplayer if female?

#7 – Steel World: Zones 19-21

Notes in Steel world are affected by the affinity of each world’s boss note (#20, #30, #40, #50, #60, and #70). Steel world’s boss note (#80) directly affects the ending of the game. There are 6 endings in total.

ENDINGS

Ending #1 – Bad+/Pure Blood
Requirements: Have 5 or 6 boss notes be blood.

Ending #2 – Bad-/Blood
Requirements: Have 4 boss notes be blood.

Ending #3 – Neutral
Requirements: Have equal numbers of blood and light boss notes (3 light and 3 blood).

Ending #4 – Good-/Light
Requirements: Have 4 boss notes be light.

Ending #5 – Good+/Pure Light
Requirements: Have 5 or 6 boss notes be light.

Ending #6 – Joke Ending
Requirements: Have the White Feather (#47), Dog Tag (#15) and Channeling Stone (#11) artifacts equipped when you defeat the Steel world boss.

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