The monster from someone's mind to punish them line you no the reason the series when down hill, that only happened in 2, 1's monster where about Alessa fears and inspired by fairy tales from books read to her, 3's where again born from Heather's fears made by the demon fetus in her, 4's where mainly Walters victims. why does everyone think this and even the trauma line doesn't work Alessa wasn't traumatized by nurses and doctors or fairy tale creature and Henry wasn't even the catalyst for the monster in 4,
I believe the original ones, 1 to 4, are like books in game format. The story/atmosphere is the soul of these games, and what brings pure immersion. After that, they became a little like park rides. While there are some decent entries with what a would call "good" moments, no game after nailed the experience the whole way through.
@@ozy667 4 is the better sequel anyone could ask. Silent hill is not about the foggy town per say, but about different stories of personal trauma that usually have a connection to that town.
What really infuriates me is when people say Silent Hill cannot return without Kojima, except that aside from a Playable Teaser, he never had any involvement in the franchise
[Citation needed]. I do believe you are making a dishonest narrative there. As an truly ancient fan of the series, I honestly believe that the mid-2010's Kojima Productions was the last realistic change to bring the IP "back home" and thus resurrect it with grace. He himself stated not to have much to do with the development of the PT / Silent HillS, but he definitely was good friends with all the key members of the ex-Team Silent, many who would've obviously contributed to the development of the game. Kojima's also one of the few actually passionate game directors with the entrepreneur attitude, willing to take on projects that most (AAA) publishers and devs would consider as "huge risks" in the post-PS2 era industry.
It's not that it's impossible, because there probably are a decent amount of game developers who could make a good new entry, it's just that the likelihood of any of them aside from kojima being able to make a silent hill game is so low that it's practically impossible. If any competent studio could make a new game, that would be a different story, but game production and licensing makes that a lot more complicated than would be ideal. We've seen a lot of different developers have a crack at the series since kcet, and kojima was the only one to show any real promise and make something memorable with a super strong identity of its own. It was so different from everything that came before it, it's like how silent Hill 4 was completely different from the past three games, and how silent Hill 1 was so different from every other horror game on the market at the time. Also I think it says a lot that just for making a pretty short demo, not even a full game, but just a concept demo, he made not just one of the most memorable things attached to the silent Hill franchise ever, but one of the most memorable and iconic and influential pieces of video game media ever in general. With that said though, silent Hill f looks very promising considering who the writer is. I have no idea how good the gameplay will be, the studio developing the game doesn't have an amazing track record of titles under their belt, but a bare minimum, the writing will be phenomenal.
I am a big Kojima fan and MGS is my favorite game of all time. But damn he has nothing to do with Silent Hill. P.T. was amazing but it was not a full game.
Silent Hill just isn't a franchise idea. The fact they managed to make 4 similar and yet different enough games about this topic while keeping each interesting was impressive in itself. You can't just keep making new protagonists find themselves in the town and having to deal with their supressed traumas over and over and over again. At that point you're not saying anything, you're not expressing an idea, you're just creating a corporate product. The first game already did most of the work. It establishes most of the lore, it explains most everything, and depending on the ending you could argue it even wraps up the whole thing. If it were a movie by someone like Lynch, there would be no sequels. But then they make a sequel and manage to surpass the original, not by bringing back the characters with higher stakes and adding bonkers combat, but by essentially taking the core idea of the town's spiritual power and creating a spinoff that focuses more on psychological horror and less in lore, rituals, conspiracies, etc. Great. Then they make another sequel, but of course they're not gonna redo SH2 and make another spinoff where another new character deals with trauma, that'd be stupid. Right? RIGHT? So instead they go back to the original plot and create some arguably unnecessary loose ends, BUT, they change the game's feel entirely by avoiding setting the game in the town for most of the duration, and exploring interesting ways to bring the horror into a character's everyday life. And then as a last resort, they mix the idea of a spinoff character of SH2, with the bringing the town's influence out of the town from SH3, and add in some of the most creative ideas I've seen in a game so far, and make SH4. And that's it, the well's dry, they squeezed all they could from the franchise and then squeezed a little more, all without letting it go stale. Aaand cue countless more western-made sequels where the protagonist finds themselves in the town and must deal with their supressed trauma after that. They've been beating a dead horse ever since after SH4. Not only have the ideas been derivative, they lack any of the essence of the original games. They're like a hollow, soulless simulacrum of the original games.
A game doesn’t have to “new” things to be good. I could explore someone’s hidden traumas infinitely. Seeing new monsters and trying to figure out where the story is going is why I love these games, and the horror and gameplay comes second to me. I’m happy we’ve got new stuff coming, even if I think they’re going to absolutely fuck up the remake. The new stuff is still going to give me a chance to go through that gameplay loop all over again.
@@reginlief1 Silent Hill having no "new" things is exactly why it failed. You can't just put out the same thing over and over again with each new entry being worse than the last. They have been reusing Silent Hill 2 amnesia story format for so many damn times now. Luckily Silent Hill f is going in a new direction setting the game in 1960s Japan.
@@akwilson1676 This is very true. I'm still heartbroken by the fact that we're getting a remake of SH2 before a remake of SH1 (if that's even gonna happen). Not only that, but we're also getting a film adaptation of SH2 and two new Western-developed games that are bound to be the same type of SH2 shit yet again. It's tragic, it's like SH1, SH3 and SH4 doesn't exist anymore.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Those games exist and they’re incredible works of art that each furthered the potential of horror in video games. But like all art they were conceived within a specific context in a specific time and place which has long passed and can’t be returned to, can’t be replicated. The environment and artists that produced them are no longer in the picture and any attempt to recapture the magic is pointless. It’s okay to let the franchise die; make something new that isn’t beholden to fulfilling the monumental legacy that those first four games established. It was never a series that could be franchised and milked forever because from the start it’s artistic goals were too distinct. That’s what made them magic. Just preserve the games properly so new generations have the ability to play some of the greatest horror games of all time. I don’t mean remaking them, just making the original releases more accessible on today’s platforms. Unfortunately Konami has proven to be very bad at that, but at least we have the SH2 Enhanced Edition
Honestly, I've been of the idea of just letting the franchise die; release proper remasters on all available platforms but do not do anything new. The last attempts at new games all tried to copy SH2, and because at that point the "SH is where you face inner demons" concept had become played out, that franchise disappeared as people at that point just wanted something new and more importantly different.
Tbh im already on the idea that no matter what a new silent hill game will never be like the original 4. It will be a new game in general with the name on it. As much as how possibly good P.T was it wasnt really silent hill. Thats not to say these new "silent hill" games will be bad, im just saying it wont recapture the original 4.
@@jmgonzales7701 I don't think it needs to. And with how many cases there have been, with people and fan bases and societies being so hung up on "the glory days", and suffering from the drug-like nature of nostalgia, something like that could always lead to some interesting concepts, as well as help try and form its own identity.
@@jmgonzales7701 I completely agree with this. It'll never capture the original 4. But I really like Downpour and SM and I think they could totally make a new Silent Hill that is amazing in it's own right.
@@melpenni8818 and what people dont understand that its ok to not copy the same thing that the original 4 had. It should remain untouchable tbh. There is room for innovation for the series and it can be good on its own thing. People had too many unrealistic expectations for silent hill.
My first SH was SH3 on PC. I was 17 at the time so I felt like I could really connect with Heather. I hadn't really known about SH outside of a couple of GameInformer articles and I hadn't ever planned to buy it. But one day my dad bought it for me and it heavily influenced me going forward. Funnily enough, my dad had also bought me MGS2 on the PS2 a couple years before and that was my first MG game and so I felt like I could really connect with Raiden as a character as a sort of fish out of water. At the time in 2003, Raiden was nearly universally hated so I'm glad I didn't have that sentiment. Both games greatly stood out to me and I felt like I could connect well with both protagonists. I hadn't really experienced that feeling in too many other games looking back on it all.
I was the same age when I played sh3 and yeah being able to relate to the protagonist in that level makes an already terrifying game somehow even scarier. The only time I ever had nightmares from a video game
Whereas the first four silent hills drew a lot from film, television, and literature for inspiration, the latter entries - and many of the "inspired by" deluge of pretenders - feel as if they draw exclusively from the influence of other games, with perhaps a smattering of modern jumpscare horror films to round it out. While PT was a wholesale different thing from the original SH spirit, it at least captured the sense of surreal horror buried within the mundane; everything else seems to settle on something way too high-concept.
I feel what really tanked the series was a loss of identity. The American stewards of the series had a lot of tunnel vision on the SH2 "personal hell" journey and cared little for the entire cult side of the story. For almost 3 games we had "Generic guys who maybe did something awful and then a grim twist toward the end." And as you mentioned that has become common in the years since. In hindsight The Room was probably the way to go with ongoing SH games. Experimental in setup and tone, but ultimately the psychological horror was still on point. It still managed to feel like a new SH game. Of course we can only dream about what Kojima's Silent Hill would have been like ~
Silent Hill 4 will go down as perhaps the most misunderstood entry in the entire franchise. So many people hate it just because it did something different and the brutal Silent Hill 2 stan backlash to it not just being Silent Hill 2.5 literally killed the franchise. It is THE game I think of when I talk about how people need to reign their rage in and judge games by their own merit because I've seen this happen time and time again. A struggling but great franchise needs to come back into relevance, it tries something new, then people thrash the new game for being different and not giving it credit where it was due, and it either kills the franchise outright or the IP gets passed along to other people because stupid fans DO NOT understand that game devs don't exist in a bubble; they're commanded by greedy executives and publishers. Soul Calibur 5 didn't get the appreciation it deserved for its combat and got shat on for everything else, so fans had to wait a DECADE for Soul Calibur 6 which improved on everything EXCEPT the combat and lord knows if we'll get another game now. Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite had a turbulent development history, bad graphics, and was being horribly micromanaged by Marvel while also not having the rights to certain characters, but it would have turned out okay with it got some support as those rights were just around the corner, DLC people were looking forward to was in the works, and graphics could have been improved post launch. NOPE. It got shat on, people acted like DBZF was gonna take over the FGC, not DBZF is gone like a fart in the wind and people are wishing we still had MVC when Infinite's failure made Marvel decide the franchise wasn't worth pursuing. I SHUDDER to imagine what would have happened to Resident Evil if the people who hated 7 had picked up more of a bandwagon.
That's clearly not what happened, the cult stuff is the most boring part of the series and the western games are an incredibly poor attempt at horror. It has nothing to do what took from who, those devs straight up have an anti horror mindset.
@@Impalingthorn I was with you at first, since I like SH4, it's just a bad game to play and the 2nd half is obviously half baked. Until you defended MvC: I, graphics shouldn't improve post launch, that's a bad take. Deadass. I mean I get it, it was fun, but no one wants to play something that has nothing they like (you a "functions" guy?). No one wants MCU, they wanted the comic shit because it's more fun.
I think SH's strongest skill was creating an atmosphere using a "more is less" approach. The scares depend on preying on your imagination through creative set-pieces and sounds rather than showing what you should be afraid of. This is part purposeful, part dependant on the hardware limits. Without those limits, a modern sh would likely focus on "showing" way too much and the balance would be gone. The og sh team understood the draw of the games was the environment and atmosphere, which is seen in the combat design. Combat is short, simple, doesn't have item management so you can see more places quickly in order to get back to being afraid. It frees up your imagination more by reducing my focus on logistical situations. Every game that focuses more on complicated combat is not good in most fans eyes. And those games see reduced atmosphere and environment design bc of it in order to accommodate to the combat. Homecoming has to show you why you should be afraid in cutscenes bc you spend the rest of your times in long combat sequences where nothing scary happens outside the cutscenes. Shattered memories is beloved bc of the attention to atmosphere and environment and it doesn't even have combat lol. I think this problem would only get worse in a new modern game, so I don't mind letting the series lay down in it's dirty defiled grave
Agreed. And it's funny because the first SH actually had better combat than Resident Evil. Every-man Harry out there swinging and shooting while moving. The combat was only as good as it needed to be for the team to tell their visceral story.
Western silent hill games barely count, also why does combat matter, seems like a weird criticism to have for shattered memories when the style clearly fits the mood for it's environmental storytelling
I tried to make my gf play silent hill 2 and she was so scared going through the beginning dirt path and she made it to the city and then walked all the way back because of the scary atmosphere and then back to the city and she turned the game off when she saw the silhouette through the fog lmao. So that showed me how good the environment and atmosphere in Silent Hill is.
@@MGrey-qb5xz the combat in Homecoming was pretty good, it felt a lot smoother and of the time than other silent hill games, I just wish there was more combos and stuff you could do with your weapons.
To me, the silent hill brand is this artistic balance between something hauntingly beautiful, experimental, atmospheric/dreamy and opressive. It's not really about monsters, mechanics or characters, but how the games would experiment with (new forms of) storytelling and heavy subjects through abstract symbolism and introspective atmosphere. The series was so innovative that SH1 influenced a whole generation of psych horror, just like PT (a demo) influenced the genre to a certain aesthetic. Sure, you can bring up a lot of games with monsters being manifestations and heavy subjects today, but you'd be hard pressed to find one so deliberate, beautiful and artistic.
Silent Hill 1-3 may be products of its time, but their style is too unique to replicate. Everything from direction to music is just perfect. That intro of Silent Hill 2 with James walking out of the public toilet is just brimming with melancholy and sadness that are presented through visuals, camera movement and perfect ambient score. Or that intro in SH 1 in the alley slowly building up from dread to outright panic with the same tricks. It's not just about tired tropes of psychological horror, it's about presentation, the delicate balance between assaulting the player's senses and letting him find rest within the same environment. The fog world of Silent Hill, despite being hostile, feels like a warm blanket after traversing through the Otherworld. Silent Hill plays tricks on your senses all the time, it's dangerous and comfortable at the same time. Other horror games always make you feel fear or dread. At the very least, anxiety. Frankly, I haven't seen a single psychological horror game that presented itself with so much subtle, carefully constructed style, especially in the AAA industry. Everything is pretty basic when it comes to presentation.
After fighting the lizard boss in SH1, the school reverts to a "bright fog" that feels so welcoming & safe it's unreal. There's a lot of these moments. Melancholy too. The amusement park in SH3 feels sad instead of scary, watching the horses spinning round & round. Most other games can't replicate any of this.
The video is weird too like of all things he thinks resident evil is a good replacement. Silent hill has a lot of potential for different flavors of horror cause the town acts like it's own universe.
@@visionist7 the blurry line familiarity yet the unknown is what silent hill is known for , well at least the first 4 games. The rest were just made to fail
I have never met a silent hill fan that wants to play siren/forbidden siren, in fact I’ve seen SH fans actively avoid it like the plague because it has the original SH director working on it. shame the fandom dug itself a hole where they only want SH and then shit at it if its not as good as 2.
"Silent Hill 2 and PS2 game aren't two seperate concepts, they're one and the same." Really interesting point. I haven't played the game myself, but watching it, the PS2 aesthetic is very important to the atmosphere and unnerving nature. Gives it an almost 'found footage' sense of strangeness, even moreso now.
But there can be a different aesthetic. Why not indeed present a newly made game with a degraded VHS filter on it? Someone made that sort of filter for Unreal Engine just the other day, looks stellar
Your summary of what part of each residential evil "resident evil" somehow took me by suprise. I never thought of it that way even tho I've played so many of them and yet it makes perfect sense.
The P.T. Silent Hills demo inspired RE7, Visage, layers of fear and a bunch more. That demo was the reinvention that the series needed but the game got cancelled and other developers took those ideas and expanded on them. P.T. was a big missed opportunity. I think its fine for a new Silent Hill game to be different as long as the tone of the earlier games is maintained. The atmosphere of SH is not just scary its haunting.
Basically what I came down here to say. This one single demo that could be beaten in less than 20 mins pretty much inspired every horror game that came out afterwards, including RE. Rember the "Kitchen" demo for Resident Evil 7, it was very similar to P.T.
P.T. was not a reinvention. It was just using the Silent Hill name to slap onto a concept too alien to the series. It didn't have that Silent Hill feel to it. And if you ask me, inspiring all these derivative first person style, spooky house kind of horror games has been more a negativity than something to praise for. There's simply way too many of these types of horror games on the market and it's getting old.
@@IkariMetalSlugger P.T. felt like a modern reimagining of the apartment scenes in SH4 (then again, a lot of so-called SH fans hate SH4 so I guess that doesn't matter).
@@EndOfSmallSanctuary97 Yeah, I didn't get any SH4 vibes from it. The only similarity is that there's a first person view. But the style and tone is completely different. And SH4 wasn't entirely in first person.
@@IkariMetalSlugger pt wasn’t gonna actually be like that it was just a puzzle standalone demo to hold off the actual announcement trailer it got canned super early
The leaked Masahiro Ito “Silent Hill Sakura” concept looks like a fresh take on the series that could bring it back. It’s alien aesthetically and could offer the first real surprises from the franchise since 4. Though I imagine the leaks have caused people to already write it off.
I trust Konami about as far as I could throw them. Remember Survive, and Rogue Corps? Keep your expectations low when it comes to Konami. REALLY low. Edit: I meant Survive. FUCK! How could I get them confused?!
I’m only 40 seconds in and I just think the hardest part about continuing the series is maintaining the mystery of the town and making compelling and interesting stories. We did father and daughter. Husband and wife. And then daughter and father. These dynamics are what makes them so appealing and without them it’s hard to care as much. I could go on for like 5 years why it can’t continue and why it’s so good.
Yeah just finished it and I agree with everything you said completely. Just a very hard series to try and continue over and over. Maybe a game that follows Cybil going after the cult when she finds out about what happened to Harry in 3.
One thing I see a lot especially as of late is this sentiment people have that Silent Hill (and all of the other Konami franchises for that matter) should be given away to another developer that will actually put them in use Which is a rather odd thing to want to have SH games to be farmed from different studios each time *when that's precisely what caused the downfall of the series,* are people that desperate to see their favorite franchise return that don't think of what's best for it; to be over?
@@AydarBMSTU It's funny to me how the day before this video was uploaded Konami announced a bunch of new Silent Hill products and projects, including a SH2 remake, all of them outsourced to 3rd-party studios and the community is 100% ambivalent to all of them despite of all the begging lmao
Accepting that Silent Hill 4 was and is the last good Silent Hill game we're likely to ever get is genuinely one of the hardest pills I've ever had to swallow.
The fundamental concept behind Silent Hill has a finite amount of things you can do with it before it gets either repetitive or ridiculous. It's a bit like the Halloween franchise in that sense, only SH had a couple games' worth of material instead of just one film. That's far more than most concepts in the world of horror, which is filled primarily with standalone stories. It's pretty amazing that even one great SH game exists, let alone three or four.
I don't always agree with Charlie, but this video is 100% spot on. I've been saying for awhile now that I think the series should be put to rest, it just feels like its carcass is just being dragged at this point.
As it pains me to say this, I agree. Any new game feels like an attempt with the Silent Hill name slapped on it. The supposed remake of 2 is something that I both dread and anticipate. I anticipate it because I'm really curious on how the source material is handled, and I dread it because no matter how good it is going to be, it will always be overshadowed by the original. We need new fresh ideas and games. I think the game The Mortuary Assistant is a very good step in the right direction.
"I think the series should be put to rest" I hate it when people say that, because there are many gamers like me who want a new Silent Hill game and at this point it does not matter whether it's a good or bad one. I don't understand the logic of following Silent Hill news and be like "eh, fuck it, let's cancel silent hill, because I got tired of waiting". Like... Play something else or do something with your like instead of waiting.
I hate this logic yall have of "well, the last couple of games weren't great, lets just cancel the whole series". If it the series dies, we'll just remain in the same status quo anyway, but if a new title gets made, then AT LEAST we would have something new to explore and analyze. Like, give these new projects a chance for gods sake
@@endisfox6217 I'm not tired of waiting, I'm tired of them continuing to beat a dead horse. Not everything needs to have endless sequels, it's fine for something to reach a logical conclusion.
I just think western devs don’t really understand the series very well. Silent Hill wasn’t a madly cursed place, it was a place that a cult plunged into its hellscape by performing some awful ritual. The protagonists on the original 4 aren’t super special people aside from Heather. Harry was literally just a guy who happened to come across a cursed baby, James was a guy who had a tiny bit of history with the town and a dark past that brought him back, and Henry was just a victim. Every single western dev SH protagonist just seems like James, some guy with a dark past who’s meant to be tortured by silent hill. Not to mention most of the horror aspects and monster designs feel way too over the top, as weird as that is to say. And they keep trying to mess with the OG backstory and making more holes in the story. After 3 the series felt complete. 4 still manages to feel like an SH but after that no one’s really captured the essence of SH to me. Also shout outs to Your Favorite Son, he has an incredible retrospective on the entire series.
@@MGrey-qb5xz Idk some of them can hit their mark (Dead Space). I just don't think SH should have ever left the east, you can even see how bad the remakes are with the voice casting and direction.
@@TheNoMoreGamer oh you didn't get what I mean, the devs who made the western silent hill games only and no not the entire studio cause to be honest on a technical level they are impressive, just that their skills won't shine in horror.
@@TheNoMoreGamerYou’d be surprised that Shattered Memories nearly started as Cold Hearted, but production got into a mess when n-Space marketed a Wii game called “Winter”…which didn’t get released. All that change for nothing.
I agree with all of this. Those original games where special in a way few games are, and any new games with the same name will manage to recapture what made them special. All I want is for 1-4 (and the post Team Silent sequels for that matter) to be easily available for people to experience them.
@@rorybell2161 You can get Silent Hill 1 on the playstation-store on PS3, but that sort of proves my point. If you want to play all of these amazing games without emulating you need at least 1 of 3 defunct consoles. Silent Hill 4 is amazingly available on GOG now, but I wonder where you got 2 and 3? Was it the god-awful "HD"-collection?
@@freaknr1 There were PC ports of 2 and 3 that were wonky as hell. Fans have mostly ironed them out but they aren't available on any major storefronts. you can still find them though, if you know which archives to search through.
f is really interesting, since it's not only giving us new (places) but also expanding the world of SH, we all thought SH was the only supernatural ghost town in this world and now we have another. I think P.T hinted at this because the title was Silent Hills plural.
silent hill is a feeling. its not the graphics, the horror, or the acting that makes it silent hill. it's something you actually feel when playing the game. I remember playing sh 1 and 2 growing up and recently played them again. got the exact same feel i did when i was 13. idk what it is.
@@MGrey-qb5xz Shattered Memories is one of the western games, though. It was developed by Climax Studios, the same team that did Origins. They're British.
I think there are two large problems, though certainly not the only problems though. First would be the fundamental misunderstanding of the story of the first four games. Which leads into the second problem, the misconception that everything in silent hill is up for interpretation. Which exasperates the first problem and makes it easier for the developers post team silent to excuse their misunderstanding of the series.
Resident Evil having familiar characters and/or mechanics to use as a foundation to fallback on despite making large sweeping changes throughout the years was something I have never considered. And the best part is that if the new characters/mechanics are well received can be added to the foundation to make it even more versatile. Fatal Frame also has some Legacy Characters that occasionally make a comeback, but their core identity is definitely the Camera Obscura mechanic. Dead Space has Isaac and the whole limbs cutting mechanics as well.
Silent Hill was always just a really comfy game for me; in a way no other horror game ever really achieved. It's difficult to discern but the feeling I get playing something like The Evil Within 2 just isn't the same despite being in a similar ball park.
Something doesn’t have to be surprising to be engaging. I still find enjoyment in looking at HOW the old silent hill games explored the psyche of their protagonists. Being able to see what’s coming is irrelevant in that regard. If that were the case, after all, no movie could ever be watched a second time, because you already know what’s coming. Instead, I want new games, because the gameplay loop of doing a dungeon, seeing some freaky imagery, trying to understand its symbolism, and repeat, is so engaging, that I really REALLY miss it. Barring remakes, because I just don’t trust anyone to not fuck that shit up, but I guess we’ll see now! Oof.
Basically what most devs that created SH games after team Silent misunderstood is that the original trilogy was way more spiritual and symbolistic as direct and actionful. Thats the main difference between SH and Resi. Resi is direct, in your face, more like a traditional horror or 80's slasher, Silent Hill feels more like a really heavy thriller with horror elements. Thats why the gameplay was not that important like the atmosphere and authenticity itself.
I think Silent Hill could be compared to the Mother series in the sense that they are so well made and beloved that we wish we had more of them. It just sucks to think of it as an old memory and nothing more. The hype of PT and execution of it also spurs that desire and emptiness we feel as well.
And both had to rely on different people outside of the original team to get a sequel. Sure, the fangames won't exactly count, but to me it does in spirit.
It seems like every time someone talks about SH sequels, they lend credence to the western games and the logic behind them. Outside of time and place (Japan and the late '90s), you'd be hard pressed to find a team that didn't- or wouldn't- just appropriate the town into a theme park to shove a scared protagonist into. Focus on the unknowable, demonic force of the first game. Remember, Alessa's power was a catalyst. The cult only defines the power in their own way, making the demon born from Alessa's impregnation ritual into something they recognize: an incubus, or the judeo Christian notion of ultimate evil (or the virgin Mary, the highest form of human good, depending on your ending). So you go with that completely alien, unknowable evil intruding into our own world, but the imagery we all associate with Silent Hill (metal grates, fans, occult symbols, fog) have been retranslated into something hardly recognizable. We need to go further into the unknown power for a sequel, rather than rehashing SH2 again.
This is why I think Silent Hill f is the most promising game in the announcements. A different place, a different time, and with a new but acclaimed horror writer at its helm (Ryukishi07) -- its the one that's taking the proper steps out of this stagnating hole the series is stuck in. I really hope it delivers, and show everyone one last time why Silent Hill is so renowned.
My main take away from this is. The stuff you love will still be there. Even if it comes back there's no guarantee the new thing will even be /for/ you anymore. It's okay to want things but tying your happiness to the perpetuation of a brand only leads to disappointment. Which is no fault to you or the people who made it. Some stuff is legit just a product of its time. And in my personal opinion, horror is a genre that works with less. You can drag an rpg, platformer, shooter, etc out forever. It's very hard to maintain that sense of dread and mystery when you're up to Silent Hill 7.
Fucking lol. Konami went a little bit over board a just announced shit load of SH. The only one that has my interest is SH f. Its not like they could make a MGR 2 or a new Castlevania. Nah fuck that shit. Here buy a piramid head plushie and do the soy wojak face when you see some FOG
The closest time Resident Evil ever went to being like Silent Hill is without the benefit of a doubt Resident Evil 8's House Beneviento and the escape of the giant fetus made for one tense and scary encounter that I will never forget. Also it was believed that this whole segment was an homage to PT when in the demo you can find a fetus in the sink but Resident Evil made Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro's fetus live on. Also Team Silent were simply the best developers for the series(even though I know they created Silent Hill to begin with) but once they no longer had control of the franchise some of the talent split from Konami and created the Forbidden Siren franchise and Team Silent as a studio was no more which is a damn shame since if any group of people who could save Silent Hill it would have been Team Silent but now it is too late to fix Silent Hill and Konami killed it.
Fetus was cringe, it just excepts you to be scared rather then be actually scary. Stuff like necromorphs would just laugh at this poor man's attempt at horror.
Games like Tormented Souls took a lot of inspiration from oldschool RE and SH, they even included some clever and subtle scary moments, grotesqe imagery and delayed jumpscares without going overboard, and even the puzzles were cryptic which could've easily been in one of those franchises. All in all, it felt like a great spiritual successor while still feeling like it was made from the same era as the other titles, I highly recommend that game.
The reason is because Silent Hill was a series that was the unique vision of a small pool of individuals. They happened to concoct a unique property that stood out and captured significant acclaim from gamers. The problem arose when those who run Konami, treated it as some sort of cookie cutter commodity, whereas they mistakenly believed they could release yearly entries and milk Silent Hill property like Capcom did with the Resident Evil series. What should have happened was Silent Hill's end, after Silent Hill 4. The series should've ended development after 2004. Unfortunately for fans, that didn't work out too well after that original pool of individuals stopped after the 4th Silent Hill entry. What should have happened was Silent Hills end after Silent Hill 4 in 2004. There should have been no more Silent Hill games in development without the original creators overseeing another entry. But of course, Konami wanted more Silent Hill, not understanding that you can't outsource Silent Hill to just any outside Joe shmoe developer, especially when those outside developers haven't a clue of what Silent Hill is narratively about. Couple that with mediocre production values compared to other survival horror properties, and you have the joke the disappointment and sad comedy that Silent Hill would eventually become. Hopefully, these upcoming new entries in the series will deliver what fans have been wanting for nearly 20 years - a worthwhile Silent Hill entry. Honestly, no new Silent Hill games should be in development until they properly remaster and port the original four entries. It's also insulting to the legacy of the series that Silent Hill 2 is getting a remake after all these decades, but NOT the original Silent Hill. Makes no sense, outside of greed.
The franchise super peaked early with SH2, it was lightning in a bottle type deal, from there on out everything was gradually down hill, SH3 and the Room still excellent in they're own right mind you, but with SH2 everything came together perfectly, gameplay, tone, atmosphere and it's miserable depressing story in perfect harmony, the sum of it's parts elevated itself above it's own genre
That's the thing it peaked for west but not for japanese players whose tiny minds were more focused on the generic cult stuff. This is why 3 felt more like a sequel to 1 by diverting away from the unknown and focusing on humans.
@@znegjorinorino5735 mine neither, but for a first time playthrough it had the biggest impact on me, in very much the same way watching Jakobs Ladder for the first time when I was younger, from it's disturbed visuals most of the way through.. it turned into something more real and very tragic which completely flipped the tone of what I thought up until that point to be a horror movie
For the same reason why fan games and spiritual successors also fail miserably, the devs just don't get it, either due to unfamiliarity with the previous games or the major problem, being overly analytical of them. Some people are so mentally stuck on how cool Silent Hill 2 was they fail miserably to see what made it so good and instead parrot the main plot points and end up falling flat (Downpour and Homecoming do this of the official ones, but also the majority of horror indie games). This is such a big problem with the franchise that the only way to make a Silent Hill game work now is to simply do something completely different like Shattered Memories, and even the fandom is plagued so much by it that games like Homecoming become good entries again once you stop having such insane expectations. PT would have likely been a really good horror game, but only because it'd probably be as far removed to Silent Hill as possible. tl;dr Silent Hill fans like to smell their Silent Hill farts and when it comes time to make a game about it they're too full of it to see what they're doing.
Because it was an artistic vision created by a small, focused team. It's like making a sequel to The Shining, which did happen, and it was actually a good film, but it didn't have that Kubrick touch that made the original so uniquely unsettling. Silent Hill was essentially artistically hijacked.
Silent hill should have never been an infinite franchise. It is like Dark Souls in a way, remember how Dark Souls 3 was about how repeating the same thing over and over again? They stopped because the mystery that kept it alive was not a mystery anymore. They knew it had to end. Silent Hill should have ended with 4
What I like the most about Silent Hill, and what I'd say sets it apart from Resi, is that it deliberately focuses less on the mechanics and more on the narrative and atmosphere and surrealism. Part of the experience is coming up with your own theories as to what different things could possibly represent, it's about projection and introspection. Silent Hill is in itself a mind puzzle, as impossible to solve as it is alluring.
More than anything, Shattered Memories killed any sense of horror for me very early in the game when it became obvious that the majority of the game, outside of the therapy sessions, fall into the same three gameplay styles where you're only ever in any real danger during the one, the chase segments. During the exploration and puzzle segments there is nothing that can harm you outside of looking at liquor bottles for too long in the environment and getting the drunk ending by default, and it just makes it as nerve-wrecking to play as a Kirby title.
Will you do an analysis on Silent Hill 4? I know it's considered to be inferior to the first 3 games but still, it would be interesting to hear what you have to say about it
I just finished SH4 a couple of days ago, and people are way too hard on it. I really liked it. It has so many great ideas. The game is very flawed, but the good heavily outweighs the bad for me. I would also love a video on SH4!
Based on comments Brit made during one of his Twitch-streams, he's certainly planning on making a video on it eventually, but were I to hazard a guess, it propably isn't among his immediate priorities.
This is such a wonderful video. Thank you for making it. You hit the nail on the head in multiple points imo. ~ Silent Hill was about the intangibles. The atmosphere. That ship has kind of sailed, so to speak. It’s still my favorite series, and likely always will be, but I too, don’t think I could ask for more entries.
the OG Silent Hill games felt like walking around a Dreamworld, constantly shifting between a normal dream (fog world) and a nightmare (other world) and it even gave you that feeling of "not even the developers can control, what will happen in this town"; the western silent hill games feel like interactive splatter movies from hollywood
You make an excellent point that a lot of people don't consider - what exactly would a new Silent Hill game do that isn't already being done with horror games? The Team Silent games were great and unique because they actually experimented and did things that no other games were doing at the time - they were breaking new ground and pushing the envelope in a variety of ways (storytelling, characters, themes, atmosphere, technical prowess). The first four games were so influential that they basically created the realistic psychological horror subgenre of modern video games (as opposed to the action-horror of Resident Evil). Now almost every horror game is doing things those early Silent Hill games pioneered, so it's no longer unique or interesting or experimental - it's just the norm. If a new Silent Hill game just repeated the same things as the Team Silent games, it wouldn't be viewed as anything special anymore. The only way to actually continue the legacy of the Team Silent games would be to reinvent the series again, really do something new and unexpected - P.T. seemed to be doing that to some extent. But the problem is, a lot of Silent Hill fans basically just want another Silent Hill 2 and aren't interested in anything else: see the response to Silent Hill 4, which really did experiment and try to do new things and take the series in a different direction, and most fans hated it and just wanted a SH2 clone (even though Team Silent intentionally avoided doing this and were not interested in doing another game like SH2).
I think a great Silent Hill game is entirely possible, but you have to give it to some creative people and let them rest on their artistic vision. You can't make it a traditional franchise; each entry should be a new canvas
If you cannot apply to the set rules and style of an already established franchise, you should by all means just make a brand new IP instead. But obviously this is more risky from the biz-minds' perspective. It's easier to cash-in with both nostalgia and the collective cultural consciousness phenomenas, than it is to make a break through with a totally new name.
I would love to see a SH title that takes place in the past, when the town was being colonized. It could shine a light on the mysterious spiritual power that would be twisted by the Cult later, while also making a statement about the torture/death/genocide of the indigenous people that inhabited the place.
thats an interesting idea. a silent hill in a colony would be pretty cool aesthetic wise. and many monsters could be inspired by the folcore of the time like wendigos, the headless knight and etc. i dont know about the political statement part, its would be nice to perhaps show how human kind can be horrible and good hearted at the same time. from both parties. hell. the protagonist could be a soldier/native warrior who has guilt for for killing or not saving his people. SH is about personal stuff, it kinda has to have this element anyways your idea is awesome and all of this is just a thing i thought when i read your comment.
I know it's a tall ask, but an indie game carrying the torch of SH to a new universe would be my ideal at this point. If it gets popular enough it'll be a great spiritual successor and maybe leave the door open a little better for sequels. If not, it'll still (hopefully) be a great game that proves that the thoughtful vibes of these classics can be at least tangentially revived again.
Well, it's still early on so no promises on anything, but I'm currently working on a 2D Silent Hill inspired game that uses Beksinski's art style for the alternate world's aesthethic. It's not gonna be strictly silent hill, but my goal is to make a game with the same kind of horror and atmosphere even though it'll be it's own game still if things work out.
Indie gaming has been carrying the superficial aspects that SH fans have really latched onto for years now. It's not the best time to be a Silent Hill fan, but there are so many passionate creators out there who can do everything but travel back in time or straight-out call their game Silent Hill.
That's exactly what I've been thinking about for a while now, AND what some recent indie-titles like the Tormented Souls and the Simulacrum both have aimed to do. In a very authentic manner at that. Even before that, smaller indie-titles / mods like the Cry Of Fear or the Afraid Of Monsters were fine tributes to the classic SH and RE games.
I agree with your thoughts about remakes. I don’t think a highly artistic game like Silent Hill is suitable for it. I mean, look what happened to Demon’s Souls; the visual changes scrubbed out much of the lore, and they had no respect for its symbolism… in a game with almost no item descriptions. Ffs people want to lower Bloodborne in to the Bluepoint meat grinder next. This gen wants graphics at the cost of everything else.
As a concept artist, I’ve been influenced by SH design language and it’s always been in the back of my mind how someone could expand on the concept. It’s a particular type of emptiness and isolation that the genre of modern action horror lacks and would need to be very well put together to create a similar experience - but if done well it would be a breath of fresh air? I’m thinking, how they also made successful Ju On/ the grudge sequels (also a limited location/even more so with the single antagonist, but still had some successes) with a mix of different stories and approaches that upholds rather than changes the original concepts. Ie, a timeline story swap of the town of individual original occupants where the town had morphed into what it is now at a different stage for every character, and you can experience the events that propagated it via SH's enviro storytelling (with a resolution that won’t clarify how the town happened so the environment elements are never explained, but only little character resolutions - that’s the formula I think needs to be preserved). Silent hill will always have merits as a massively environment driven and design experience, I personally believe it will never stop having potential.
I've only played silent hill 1-4, and frankly don't have any interest in the games not made by the original team(s). But I would very much like the series to return. Resident evil has been reborn or restructured many times, while still maintaining its identity. I feel like silent hill could very much do the same. Team silent were on the right track in many ways with 4, taking the series in a bold new direction while still feeling distinctly silent hill. I still have some hope that the leaked project sakura could be a brilliant resurgence for one of my favorite series. Keep up the good work you absolute lad.
12:08 Well, looks like you were right. Silent Hill f just got announced, and while it's fair to say it doesn't look like it has much to do with SH as a property (although I'm 100% willing to give it a chance, it has enough there so far for me to say it does kind of resemble SH), the trailer looks great, and it's being written by Ryukishi07, the man responsible for two of the absolute best visual novels ever made, both of which are also great, disturbing horror experiences. So maybe f won't have much to do with Silent Hill, but I honestly don't care. It looks really promising, and I'm excited for it.
I think it's wrong to say Shattered Memories had nothing to go with the OGs - it WAS trying to manifest someone's personal horror; the player's. Obviously this wasn't perfect since you can't actually play as yourself, but I do think they pulled it off quite compellingly minus the monster bits and it's probably why people say it's the best one since the OGs, because it did something new with one of the few core ideas that runs through the series.
I would argue that Biohazard/Resident Evil hasn't thrived since slipping out of the control of Shinji Mikami. If anything, the series in the non remake games is chasing trends of current horror games like Outlast and is not creating anything that's cutting edge. Silent Hill, as a game, needs those who understand psychology of why the series was terrifying to begin with in order to make it scary. You can't just simply be doing a paint by numbers affair and just give the franchise just to any studio. It needs to be in the hands of those who know why the original game worked so well.
Dude, it took me so many watches to realise the significance of that last part. The scene where james first sees maria playing while the narrator says: "I'd rather just move on than delude myself that what i loved is still alive in something different." If you know the plot of SH2 you would get it. I'm not spoiling it for those who don't though, since one of the main appeals of this video is that it's spoiler free and even people who never played silent hill can watch it (i only started getting into the series after watching this video anyways and it spoilled nothing).
I feel like whilst the series has had its own franchise fatigue, it's probably more of how the series was handled, rather than acting like it's impossible to follow on. I don't really expect there to be a game to 1-1 recapture what the first 4 did, but really, considering the whole trying to do something fresh and stuff (and how much of society, much less media and fandom have been intoxicating themselves on nostalgia, to where it might as well be as serious as a drinking/drug addiction), I can imagine that, even if it isn't completely original, given enough time, dedication and all that, it is possible for the series to get a new spark of life. Heck, with the whole concept of how drug-like nostalgia can become, I can easily see that bringing an interesting twist on certain themes and such. And not just regarding a person's inner demons, either.
The concept for a new SH game was already there in the form of PT, however, since its release, everything in that demo has been copied wholesale by every indie horror game that came out, it's no longer new or novel in any of its concepts, so I guess Silent Hill is still doomed.
In resident evil, you always knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel. In silent Hill it always made you feel like that light might not be there at the end even though you knew it was. Always kept me feeling like I couldn't make it through.
Personal conflicts, Konami rebuilding itself into a scammy (pachislot and mobile) company for more profit. Haven't you noticed that even MGS V came out remarkably unfinished? Sure PT game would have been likely critically acclaimed and seemingly successful, but it would also need a lot of time and a massive budget, so it's never possible to guess whether it could have paid off.
P.T. didn't feel anything like a Silent Hill game. It just seems like another of those first person spookhouse style games. It would have been the wrong approach to go for. Silent Hill has had some games with different vibes to it, sure, like Silent Hill 4 while still preserving that SH feel. But P.T. was too drastically different. Plus, having Kojima in charge of a SH game was never a good idea. You can't ask for somebody more incompatible with SH's style of writing.
@@Z-A-C Not necessarily. It's not a bad idea for a series to take a break or go on hiatus until a better idea can be thought of to bring it up. P.T. wasn't the answer. I want a new SH game just as much as the next guy, but not if it means sacrificing its identity in the process like P.T. and Kojima seemed poised to do.
Maybe they should make one where they build on what Vincent said in SH3 and you are killing normal Silent Hill citizens and imagining the whole town being spooky etc.
I've long since passed by the anger, denial, bargaining, and depression stages of grief with Silent Hill. I've been in Acceptance for a long time. It's okay. We got 4 good games(3 depending on who you are), and that's enough. There are plenty of good psychological horror games these days, many made by fans of Silent Hill, and I think that's enough. You ever play Lone Survivor? Now that's a good one.
The fact that Kojima was able to create Silent hill demo. It honestly felt a new step forward sad that he wasn’t able to truly bring it to life. Kojima feels the video game equivalent to Guillermo de toro in creativity.
Because it was the creative fruit borne by specific people at a specific time in their lives. Everything after that is franchise product. They caught lightning in a bottle with 2 and should have concluded with 3. Even 4 feels creatively spent, I can't imagine Team Silent would have produced anything as quality as the first three games even if they had been able to continue the series themselves. I agree with your last point - the series should be left alone. All of the following games after that just feel like uninspired fan-fiction relying on the same played out tropes. I know people were hyped for PT and I'm sure it would have been a decent scary game but I sincerely doubt it would have captured that original essence. The only thing that should be done with the series is official, faithful, and high-quality ports (lol) on modern platforms so people can continue to experience the games. The endless unnecessary franchising of everything is the death of art and creativity. Supposedly Bloober Team is remaking SH2, which I imagine will be akin to the experience of watching a modern episode of The Simpsons.
I recently beat both and tbh impressive graphically but it really....really fails at what it's trying to execute. Unless they were trying to make an oversized COD Zombies Map...
7 & 8 are meh. For weirdly drastically different reasons. They went from one extreme to the other. It died at 6 I would say. With maybe Revelations 2 and RE2R being bright spots.
Silent Hill was a product of it's time and I believe it's a franchise that should be put to rest being used only as an inspiration for new stuff that is to come in the future. Obviously is there is to be a new silent Hill game, perhaps a remake, I'll cheer for and hope that it turns out being good.But if it never happens, i won't be sad, and I'll keep being a fan of what we've already got.
If someone asked you to "hit me up on telegram" in the comments, it's a scam and not me.
I was wondering what that was about😂
I genuinely don't understand how people don't understand this.
Please review ninja gaiden 3 razor edge.
The monster from someone's mind to punish them line you no the reason the series when down hill, that only happened in 2,
1's monster where about Alessa fears and inspired by fairy tales from books read to her,
3's where again born from Heather's fears made by the demon fetus in her,
4's where mainly Walters victims.
why does everyone think this and even the trauma line doesn't work Alessa wasn't traumatized by nurses and doctors or fairy tale creature
and Henry wasn't even the catalyst for the monster in 4,
"Legendary show"
Lol, you think too highly of yourself you wannabe-something narcissist.
"How sustainable is one town as the crux of your franchise?"
Well...
I did play like 8 or 9 games in Kamurocho, so...
I believe the original ones, 1 to 4, are like books in game format. The story/atmosphere is the soul of these games, and what brings pure immersion. After that, they became a little like park rides. While there are some decent entries with what a would call "good" moments, no game after nailed the experience the whole way through.
4 is and will always be, unfinished trash.
@@ozy667
vai se lascar rapaz, Silent Hill 4 é daora.
@@ozy667 That is a trash opinion.
@@ozy667 Bad take
@@ozy667 4 is the better sequel anyone could ask. Silent hill is not about the foggy town per say, but about different stories of personal trauma that usually have a connection to that town.
What really infuriates me is when people say Silent Hill cannot return without Kojima, except that aside from a Playable Teaser, he never had any involvement in the franchise
People say that? Sheer ignorance of people
Kojima fanboys are among the most obnoxious and delusional segment of gamers in the world.
[Citation needed].
I do believe you are making a dishonest narrative there. As an truly ancient fan of the series, I honestly believe that the mid-2010's Kojima Productions was the last realistic change to bring the IP "back home" and thus resurrect it with grace. He himself stated not to have much to do with the development of the PT / Silent HillS, but he definitely was good friends with all the key members of the ex-Team Silent, many who would've obviously contributed to the development of the game. Kojima's also one of the few actually passionate game directors with the entrepreneur attitude, willing to take on projects that most (AAA) publishers and devs would consider as "huge risks" in the post-PS2 era industry.
It's not that it's impossible, because there probably are a decent amount of game developers who could make a good new entry, it's just that the likelihood of any of them aside from kojima being able to make a silent hill game is so low that it's practically impossible. If any competent studio could make a new game, that would be a different story, but game production and licensing makes that a lot more complicated than would be ideal. We've seen a lot of different developers have a crack at the series since kcet, and kojima was the only one to show any real promise and make something memorable with a super strong identity of its own. It was so different from everything that came before it, it's like how silent Hill 4 was completely different from the past three games, and how silent Hill 1 was so different from every other horror game on the market at the time. Also I think it says a lot that just for making a pretty short demo, not even a full game, but just a concept demo, he made not just one of the most memorable things attached to the silent Hill franchise ever, but one of the most memorable and iconic and influential pieces of video game media ever in general.
With that said though, silent Hill f looks very promising considering who the writer is. I have no idea how good the gameplay will be, the studio developing the game doesn't have an amazing track record of titles under their belt, but a bare minimum, the writing will be phenomenal.
I am a big Kojima fan and MGS is my favorite game of all time. But damn he has nothing to do with Silent Hill.
P.T. was amazing but it was not a full game.
I guess having SH 2 plot twist repeated over and over again by western developers is one of the reasons
Silent Hill just isn't a franchise idea. The fact they managed to make 4 similar and yet different enough games about this topic while keeping each interesting was impressive in itself. You can't just keep making new protagonists find themselves in the town and having to deal with their supressed traumas over and over and over again. At that point you're not saying anything, you're not expressing an idea, you're just creating a corporate product.
The first game already did most of the work. It establishes most of the lore, it explains most everything, and depending on the ending you could argue it even wraps up the whole thing. If it were a movie by someone like Lynch, there would be no sequels. But then they make a sequel and manage to surpass the original, not by bringing back the characters with higher stakes and adding bonkers combat, but by essentially taking the core idea of the town's spiritual power and creating a spinoff that focuses more on psychological horror and less in lore, rituals, conspiracies, etc. Great. Then they make another sequel, but of course they're not gonna redo SH2 and make another spinoff where another new character deals with trauma, that'd be stupid. Right? RIGHT? So instead they go back to the original plot and create some arguably unnecessary loose ends, BUT, they change the game's feel entirely by avoiding setting the game in the town for most of the duration, and exploring interesting ways to bring the horror into a character's everyday life. And then as a last resort, they mix the idea of a spinoff character of SH2, with the bringing the town's influence out of the town from SH3, and add in some of the most creative ideas I've seen in a game so far, and make SH4. And that's it, the well's dry, they squeezed all they could from the franchise and then squeezed a little more, all without letting it go stale. Aaand cue countless more western-made sequels where the protagonist finds themselves in the town and must deal with their supressed trauma after that.
They've been beating a dead horse ever since after SH4. Not only have the ideas been derivative, they lack any of the essence of the original games. They're like a hollow, soulless simulacrum of the original games.
A game doesn’t have to “new” things to be good.
I could explore someone’s hidden traumas infinitely. Seeing new monsters and trying to figure out where the story is going is why I love these games, and the horror and gameplay comes second to me.
I’m happy we’ve got new stuff coming, even if I think they’re going to absolutely fuck up the remake. The new stuff is still going to give me a chance to go through that gameplay loop all over again.
@@reginlief1 Silent Hill having no "new" things is exactly why it failed. You can't just put out the same thing over and over again with each new entry being worse than the last. They have been reusing Silent Hill 2 amnesia story format for so many damn times now. Luckily Silent Hill f is going in a new direction setting the game in 1960s Japan.
@@akwilson1676 This is very true. I'm still heartbroken by the fact that we're getting a remake of SH2 before a remake of SH1 (if that's even gonna happen). Not only that, but we're also getting a film adaptation of SH2 and two new Western-developed games that are bound to be the same type of SH2 shit yet again. It's tragic, it's like SH1, SH3 and SH4 doesn't exist anymore.
@@Jonipoon So true. Silent Hill 2's reputation overshadows everything else about the series. Victims of their own success in a literal sense.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Those games exist and they’re incredible works of art that each furthered the potential of horror in video games. But like all art they were conceived within a specific context in a specific time and place which has long passed and can’t be returned to, can’t be replicated. The environment and artists that produced them are no longer in the picture and any attempt to recapture the magic is pointless.
It’s okay to let the franchise die; make something new that isn’t beholden to fulfilling the monumental legacy that those first four games established. It was never a series that could be franchised and milked forever because from the start it’s artistic goals were too distinct. That’s what made them magic.
Just preserve the games properly so new generations have the ability to play some of the greatest horror games of all time. I don’t mean remaking them, just making the original releases more accessible on today’s platforms. Unfortunately Konami has proven to be very bad at that, but at least we have the SH2 Enhanced Edition
Honestly, I've been of the idea of just letting the franchise die; release proper remasters on all available platforms but do not do anything new.
The last attempts at new games all tried to copy SH2, and because at that point the "SH is where you face inner demons" concept had become played out, that franchise disappeared as people at that point just wanted something new and more importantly different.
Tbh im already on the idea that no matter what a new silent hill game will never be like the original 4. It will be a new game in general with the name on it. As much as how possibly good P.T was it wasnt really silent hill. Thats not to say these new "silent hill" games will be bad, im just saying it wont recapture the original 4.
@@jmgonzales7701 I don't think it needs to. And with how many cases there have been, with people and fan bases and societies being so hung up on "the glory days", and suffering from the drug-like nature of nostalgia, something like that could always lead to some interesting concepts, as well as help try and form its own identity.
@@jmgonzales7701 I completely agree with this. It'll never capture the original 4. But I really like Downpour and SM and I think they could totally make a new Silent Hill that is amazing in it's own right.
@@melpenni8818 agreed downpour has great Atmosphere
@@melpenni8818 and what people dont understand that its ok to not copy the same thing that the original 4 had. It should remain untouchable tbh. There is room for innovation for the series and it can be good on its own thing. People had too many unrealistic expectations for silent hill.
My first SH was SH3 on PC. I was 17 at the time so I felt like I could really connect with Heather. I hadn't really known about SH outside of a couple of GameInformer articles and I hadn't ever planned to buy it. But one day my dad bought it for me and it heavily influenced me going forward. Funnily enough, my dad had also bought me MGS2 on the PS2 a couple years before and that was my first MG game and so I felt like I could really connect with Raiden as a character as a sort of fish out of water. At the time in 2003, Raiden was nearly universally hated so I'm glad I didn't have that sentiment.
Both games greatly stood out to me and I felt like I could connect well with both protagonists. I hadn't really experienced that feeling in too many other games looking back on it all.
Your dad has good taste!
Are you blonde too? 😮
That game must be confusing asf without the context of the first game
@@Nemesis_T-Type Definitely, tho even with context MGS2 is still confusing
I was the same age when I played sh3 and yeah being able to relate to the protagonist in that level makes an already terrifying game somehow even scarier. The only time I ever had nightmares from a video game
Whereas the first four silent hills drew a lot from film, television, and literature for inspiration, the latter entries - and many of the "inspired by" deluge of pretenders - feel as if they draw exclusively from the influence of other games, with perhaps a smattering of modern jumpscare horror films to round it out. While PT was a wholesale different thing from the original SH spirit, it at least captured the sense of surreal horror buried within the mundane; everything else seems to settle on something way too high-concept.
Imagine a Silent Hill game, but inspired by Rob Zombie/Paul WS Anderson’s works…
I feel what really tanked the series was a loss of identity. The American stewards of the series had a lot of tunnel vision on the SH2 "personal hell" journey and cared little for the entire cult side of the story. For almost 3 games we had "Generic guys who maybe did something awful and then a grim twist toward the end." And as you mentioned that has become common in the years since.
In hindsight The Room was probably the way to go with ongoing SH games. Experimental in setup and tone, but ultimately the psychological horror was still on point. It still managed to feel like a new SH game. Of course we can only dream about what Kojima's Silent Hill would have been like ~
Silent Hill 4 will go down as perhaps the most misunderstood entry in the entire franchise.
So many people hate it just because it did something different and the brutal Silent Hill 2 stan backlash to it not just being Silent Hill 2.5 literally killed the franchise.
It is THE game I think of when I talk about how people need to reign their rage in and judge games by their own merit because I've seen this happen time and time again.
A struggling but great franchise needs to come back into relevance, it tries something new, then people thrash the new game for being different and not giving it credit where it was due, and it either kills the franchise outright or the IP gets passed along to other people because stupid fans DO NOT understand that game devs don't exist in a bubble; they're commanded by greedy executives and publishers.
Soul Calibur 5 didn't get the appreciation it deserved for its combat and got shat on for everything else, so fans had to wait a DECADE for Soul Calibur 6 which improved on everything EXCEPT the combat and lord knows if we'll get another game now.
Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite had a turbulent development history, bad graphics, and was being horribly micromanaged by Marvel while also not having the rights to certain characters, but it would have turned out okay with it got some support as those rights were just around the corner, DLC people were looking forward to was in the works, and graphics could have been improved post launch. NOPE. It got shat on, people acted like DBZF was gonna take over the FGC, not DBZF is gone like a fart in the wind and people are wishing we still had MVC when Infinite's failure made Marvel decide the franchise wasn't worth pursuing.
I SHUDDER to imagine what would have happened to Resident Evil if the people who hated 7 had picked up more of a bandwagon.
That's clearly not what happened, the cult stuff is the most boring part of the series and the western games are an incredibly poor attempt at horror. It has nothing to do what took from who, those devs straight up have an anti horror mindset.
@@Impalingthorn
I was with you at first, since I like SH4, it's just a bad game to play and the 2nd half is obviously half baked.
Until you defended MvC: I, graphics shouldn't improve post launch, that's a bad take. Deadass. I mean I get it, it was fun, but no one wants to play something that has nothing they like (you a "functions" guy?). No one wants MCU, they wanted the comic shit because it's more fun.
@@MGrey-qb5xz most "boring"? are you kidding? you can speak for yourself with that one
@@clenshin97 no
9:50 oh boy
I think SH's strongest skill was creating an atmosphere using a "more is less" approach. The scares depend on preying on your imagination through creative set-pieces and sounds rather than showing what you should be afraid of. This is part purposeful, part dependant on the hardware limits. Without those limits, a modern sh would likely focus on "showing" way too much and the balance would be gone. The og sh team understood the draw of the games was the environment and atmosphere, which is seen in the combat design. Combat is short, simple, doesn't have item management so you can see more places quickly in order to get back to being afraid. It frees up your imagination more by reducing my focus on logistical situations. Every game that focuses more on complicated combat is not good in most fans eyes. And those games see reduced atmosphere and environment design bc of it in order to accommodate to the combat. Homecoming has to show you why you should be afraid in cutscenes bc you spend the rest of your times in long combat sequences where nothing scary happens outside the cutscenes. Shattered memories is beloved bc of the attention to atmosphere and environment and it doesn't even have combat lol. I think this problem would only get worse in a new modern game, so I don't mind letting the series lay down in it's dirty defiled grave
Agreed. And it's funny because the first SH actually had better combat than Resident Evil. Every-man Harry out there swinging and shooting while moving. The combat was only as good as it needed to be for the team to tell their visceral story.
Western silent hill games barely count, also why does combat matter, seems like a weird criticism to have for shattered memories when the style clearly fits the mood for it's environmental storytelling
I tried to make my gf play silent hill 2 and she was so scared going through the beginning dirt path and she made it to the city and then walked all the way back because of the scary atmosphere and then back to the city and she turned the game off when she saw the silhouette through the fog lmao. So that showed me how good the environment and atmosphere in Silent Hill is.
@@MGrey-qb5xz the combat in Homecoming was pretty good, it felt a lot smoother and of the time than other silent hill games, I just wish there was more combos and stuff you could do with your weapons.
@@bobbybrine6547 it was a slog fest and ruined the entire feeling, game was just an action horror at that point
I still remember silent hill as the only game to introduce me to the horror genre as a whole.
Yeah resident evil was ahhh I'm gonna die but silent hill is like omg I just heard a noise downstairs
To me, the silent hill brand is this artistic balance between something hauntingly beautiful, experimental, atmospheric/dreamy and opressive.
It's not really about monsters, mechanics or characters, but how the games would experiment with (new forms of) storytelling and heavy subjects through abstract symbolism and introspective atmosphere. The series was so innovative that SH1 influenced a whole generation of psych horror, just like PT (a demo) influenced the genre to a certain aesthetic.
Sure, you can bring up a lot of games with monsters being manifestations and heavy subjects today, but you'd be hard pressed to find one so deliberate, beautiful and artistic.
Then do it with another franchise. This isn’t a critique of silent hill but rather saying there isn’t more to the series
Silent Hill 1-3 may be products of its time, but their style is too unique to replicate. Everything from direction to music is just perfect. That intro of Silent Hill 2 with James walking out of the public toilet is just brimming with melancholy and sadness that are presented through visuals, camera movement and perfect ambient score. Or that intro in SH 1 in the alley slowly building up from dread to outright panic with the same tricks. It's not just about tired tropes of psychological horror, it's about presentation, the delicate balance between assaulting the player's senses and letting him find rest within the same environment. The fog world of Silent Hill, despite being hostile, feels like a warm blanket after traversing through the Otherworld. Silent Hill plays tricks on your senses all the time, it's dangerous and comfortable at the same time. Other horror games always make you feel fear or dread. At the very least, anxiety. Frankly, I haven't seen a single psychological horror game that presented itself with so much subtle, carefully constructed style, especially in the AAA industry. Everything is pretty basic when it comes to presentation.
After fighting the lizard boss in SH1, the school reverts to a "bright fog" that feels so welcoming & safe it's unreal. There's a lot of these moments. Melancholy too. The amusement park in SH3 feels sad instead of scary, watching the horses spinning round & round.
Most other games can't replicate any of this.
The video is weird too like of all things he thinks resident evil is a good replacement. Silent hill has a lot of potential for different flavors of horror cause the town acts like it's own universe.
@@visionist7 the blurry line familiarity yet the unknown is what silent hill is known for , well at least the first 4 games. The rest were just made to fail
I too am filled with melancholy and sadness when walking out of a public toilet.
1-4* (highly recommend a 4 revisit, by far the most oppressive in the series)
So about that Silent Hill 2 remake and new game.
I have never met a silent hill fan that wants to play siren/forbidden siren, in fact I’ve seen SH fans actively avoid it like the plague because it has the original SH director working on it. shame the fandom dug itself a hole where they only want SH and then shit at it if its not as good as 2.
because they care about brand name first see from the guy who started it all second
that much is clear
That makes me sad. The Siren games are great in their own way.
If it makes you feel better, thanks to you i will try it after i finish Downpour and fatal frame
@@orlandofurioso7329 Crimson Butterfly is the best Fatal Frame game by a mile.Don't miss on that if you liked 1
"Silent Hill 2 and PS2 game aren't two seperate concepts, they're one and the same." Really interesting point. I haven't played the game myself, but watching it, the PS2 aesthetic is very important to the atmosphere and unnerving nature. Gives it an almost 'found footage' sense of strangeness, even moreso now.
But there can be a different aesthetic. Why not indeed present a newly made game with a degraded VHS filter on it? Someone made that sort of filter for Unreal Engine just the other day, looks stellar
@@SianaGearz Fair, it's not impossible to create a similar effect
Your summary of what part of each residential evil "resident evil" somehow took me by suprise. I never thought of it that way even tho I've played so many of them and yet it makes perfect sense.
Idk man there’s only so many times those hills can be silent.
The P.T. Silent Hills demo inspired RE7, Visage, layers of fear and a bunch more. That demo was the reinvention that the series needed but the game got cancelled and other developers took those ideas and expanded on them. P.T. was a big missed opportunity. I think its fine for a new Silent Hill game to be different as long as the tone of the earlier games is maintained. The atmosphere of SH is not just scary its haunting.
Basically what I came down here to say. This one single demo that could be beaten in less than 20 mins pretty much inspired every horror game that came out afterwards, including RE. Rember the "Kitchen" demo for Resident Evil 7, it was very similar to P.T.
P.T. was not a reinvention. It was just using the Silent Hill name to slap onto a concept too alien to the series. It didn't have that Silent Hill feel to it. And if you ask me, inspiring all these derivative first person style, spooky house kind of horror games has been more a negativity than something to praise for. There's simply way too many of these types of horror games on the market and it's getting old.
@@IkariMetalSlugger P.T. felt like a modern reimagining of the apartment scenes in SH4 (then again, a lot of so-called SH fans hate SH4 so I guess that doesn't matter).
@@EndOfSmallSanctuary97 Yeah, I didn't get any SH4 vibes from it. The only similarity is that there's a first person view. But the style and tone is completely different. And SH4 wasn't entirely in first person.
@@IkariMetalSlugger pt wasn’t gonna actually be like that it was just a puzzle standalone demo to hold off the actual announcement trailer it got canned super early
The leaked Masahiro Ito “Silent Hill Sakura” concept looks like a fresh take on the series that could bring it back. It’s alien aesthetically and could offer the first real surprises from the franchise since 4.
Though I imagine the leaks have caused people to already write it off.
I just dont see how an alien aesthetic will make it work. But ill be happy to be proven wrong
@@jmgonzales7701 ufo ending tho...
I trust Konami about as far as I could throw them. Remember Survive, and Rogue Corps? Keep your expectations low when it comes to Konami. REALLY low.
Edit: I meant Survive. FUCK! How could I get them confused?!
@@str8apem88 Eh rogue cops wasn't even made by konami i still gonna take this game with a grain of salt
I hope they make the games more like the team silent versions and not the western garbo attempt at horror.
I’m only 40 seconds in and I just think the hardest part about continuing the series is maintaining the mystery of the town and making compelling and interesting stories. We did father and daughter. Husband and wife. And then daughter and father. These dynamics are what makes them so appealing and without them it’s hard to care as much. I could go on for like 5 years why it can’t continue and why it’s so good.
Yeah just finished it and I agree with everything you said completely. Just a very hard series to try and continue over and over. Maybe a game that follows Cybil going after the cult when she finds out about what happened to Harry in 3.
One thing I see a lot especially as of late is this sentiment people have that Silent Hill (and all of the other Konami franchises for that matter) should be given away to another developer that will actually put them in use
Which is a rather odd thing to want to have SH games to be farmed from different studios each time *when that's precisely what caused the downfall of the series,* are people that desperate to see their favorite franchise return that don't think of what's best for it; to be over?
Many people don't understand what they actually need
@@AydarBMSTU It's funny to me how the day before this video was uploaded Konami announced a bunch of new Silent Hill products and projects, including a SH2 remake, all of them outsourced to 3rd-party studios and the community is 100% ambivalent to all of them despite of all the begging lmao
It's just hating on konami because of muh kojima
"Guys, I think Silent Hill should be put to rest"
"But-but-but what if they-"
Accepting that Silent Hill 4 was and is the last good Silent Hill game we're likely to ever get is genuinely one of the hardest pills I've ever had to swallow.
You NEED to play Signalis if you haven't already! Best Silent Hill game in over a decade.
The fundamental concept behind Silent Hill has a finite amount of things you can do with it before it gets either repetitive or ridiculous. It's a bit like the Halloween franchise in that sense, only SH had a couple games' worth of material instead of just one film. That's far more than most concepts in the world of horror, which is filled primarily with standalone stories. It's pretty amazing that even one great SH game exists, let alone three or four.
I don't always agree with Charlie, but this video is 100% spot on. I've been saying for awhile now that I think the series should be put to rest, it just feels like its carcass is just being dragged at this point.
As it pains me to say this, I agree. Any new game feels like an attempt with the Silent Hill name slapped on it. The supposed remake of 2 is something that I both dread and anticipate. I anticipate it because I'm really curious on how the source material is handled, and I dread it because no matter how good it is going to be, it will always be overshadowed by the original. We need new fresh ideas and games. I think the game The Mortuary Assistant is a very good step in the right direction.
Yes and no... we havent had a game in 10 years, doesnt feel dragged, but i dont think it can go back on the right path too
"I think the series should be put to rest" I hate it when people say that, because there are many gamers like me who want a new Silent Hill game and at this point it does not matter whether it's a good or bad one. I don't understand the logic of following Silent Hill news and be like "eh, fuck it, let's cancel silent hill, because I got tired of waiting". Like... Play something else or do something with your like instead of waiting.
I hate this logic yall have of "well, the last couple of games weren't great, lets just cancel the whole series".
If it the series dies, we'll just remain in the same status quo anyway, but if a new title gets made, then AT LEAST we would have something new to explore and analyze. Like, give these new projects a chance for gods sake
@@endisfox6217 I'm not tired of waiting, I'm tired of them continuing to beat a dead horse. Not everything needs to have endless sequels, it's fine for something to reach a logical conclusion.
I just think western devs don’t really understand the series very well. Silent Hill wasn’t a madly cursed place, it was a place that a cult plunged into its hellscape by performing some awful ritual. The protagonists on the original 4 aren’t super special people aside from Heather. Harry was literally just a guy who happened to come across a cursed baby, James was a guy who had a tiny bit of history with the town and a dark past that brought him back, and Henry was just a victim. Every single western dev SH protagonist just seems like James, some guy with a dark past who’s meant to be tortured by silent hill. Not to mention most of the horror aspects and monster designs feel way too over the top, as weird as that is to say. And they keep trying to mess with the OG backstory and making more holes in the story. After 3 the series felt complete. 4 still manages to feel like an SH but after that no one’s really captured the essence of SH to me.
Also shout outs to Your Favorite Son, he has an incredible retrospective on the entire series.
Western devs made the most non horror games possible, it's not about understanding just full on incompatible with the very genre we are talking about.
@@MGrey-qb5xz Idk some of them can hit their mark (Dead Space). I just don't think SH should have ever left the east, you can even see how bad the remakes are with the voice casting and direction.
@@TheNoMoreGamer oh you didn't get what I mean, the devs who made the western silent hill games only and no not the entire studio cause to be honest on a technical level they are impressive, just that their skills won't shine in horror.
@@MGrey-qb5xz Agreed. Like he stated in the vid, Shattered Memories feels like the best one, and it has no business putting SH in its name.
@@TheNoMoreGamerYou’d be surprised that Shattered Memories nearly started as Cold Hearted, but production got into a mess when n-Space marketed a Wii game called “Winter”…which didn’t get released.
All that change for nothing.
I miss the silent hill series when it was made by team silent.
I agree with all of this. Those original games where special in a way few games are, and any new games with the same name will manage to recapture what made them special. All I want is for 1-4 (and the post Team Silent sequels for that matter) to be easily available for people to experience them.
Yes, it's frustrating that you can only get 2 & 3. I've never played the first one, started with 2 on the OG Xbox.
@@rorybell2161 You can get Silent Hill 1 on the playstation-store on PS3, but that sort of proves my point. If you want to play all of these amazing games without emulating you need at least 1 of 3 defunct consoles. Silent Hill 4 is amazingly available on GOG now, but I wonder where you got 2 and 3? Was it the god-awful "HD"-collection?
exactly all i want is being able to play SH1-4 on modern consoles (and be good this time) that's all
@@freaknr1 Yes. It's not the same but at least you can choose the OG voice cast.
@@freaknr1 There were PC ports of 2 and 3 that were wonky as hell. Fans have mostly ironed them out but they aren't available on any major storefronts. you can still find them though, if you know which archives to search through.
This video is saying: PS2 games will never ever replicate... And I agree 100%
Aaaaand just like that Silent hill F, silent hill 2 remake, and several other silent hill games are in the works
f is really interesting, since it's not only giving us new (places) but also expanding the world of SH, we all thought SH was the only supernatural ghost town in this world and now we have another. I think P.T hinted at this because the title was Silent Hills plural.
@@mordercainear9573 Homecoming did that first but nobody actually plays or pays attention to that game
*Gaming Brit:* Why is it so hard to make a SH sequel?
*Konami:* Challenge accepted, here's 4.
i'm sure they are all going to be disappointing.
@@dfghj241Now imagine Rob Zombie’s Silent Hill…
He’s gonna need the school setting.
silent hill is a feeling. its not the graphics, the horror, or the acting that makes it silent hill. it's something you actually feel when playing the game. I remember playing sh 1 and 2 growing up and recently played them again. got the exact same feel i did when i was 13. idk what it is.
Lonely, anti-nostalgaic feelings... bittersweet dreamy associations between things experienced and things unexperienced.
Exactly and saying shattered memories is not a true silent hill game shows you either play the western ones or just youtubed the series a bit.
@@MGrey-qb5xz Shattered Memories is one of the western games, though. It was developed by Climax Studios, the same team that did Origins. They're British.
@@HydefHyde that doesn't count, it's actually good, also wii u games are usually masterpieces
I think there are two large problems, though certainly not the only problems though. First would be the fundamental misunderstanding of the story of the first four games. Which leads into the second problem, the misconception that everything in silent hill is up for interpretation. Which exasperates the first problem and makes it easier for the developers post team silent to excuse their misunderstanding of the series.
I think they need to bring back the first games for newer consoles. Don’t change anything, just make them available for people to play easier.
Resident Evil having familiar characters and/or mechanics to use as a foundation to fallback on despite making large sweeping changes throughout the years was something I have never considered. And the best part is that if the new characters/mechanics are well received can be added to the foundation to make it even more versatile. Fatal Frame also has some Legacy Characters that occasionally make a comeback, but their core identity is definitely the Camera Obscura mechanic. Dead Space has Isaac and the whole limbs cutting mechanics as well.
Who needs new games when you can remaster everything and sell the same game again.
That's why for me Silent Hill died with "Team Silent" now it's just oficial fanfic endorsed by Konami
Silent Hill was always just a really comfy game for me; in a way no other horror game ever really achieved. It's difficult to discern but the feeling I get playing something like The Evil Within 2 just isn't the same despite being in a similar ball park.
Something doesn’t have to be surprising to be engaging.
I still find enjoyment in looking at HOW the old silent hill games explored the psyche of their protagonists. Being able to see what’s coming is irrelevant in that regard.
If that were the case, after all, no movie could ever be watched a second time, because you already know what’s coming.
Instead, I want new games, because the gameplay loop of doing a dungeon, seeing some freaky imagery, trying to understand its symbolism, and repeat, is so engaging, that I really REALLY miss it.
Barring remakes, because I just don’t trust anyone to not fuck that shit up, but I guess we’ll see now! Oof.
Clearly the original developers should make a game called Loud Mountain.
Basically what most devs that created SH games after team Silent misunderstood is that the original trilogy was way more spiritual and symbolistic as direct and actionful. Thats the main difference between SH and Resi. Resi is direct, in your face, more like a traditional horror or 80's slasher, Silent Hill feels more like a really heavy thriller with horror elements. Thats why the gameplay was not that important like the atmosphere and authenticity itself.
Western versions feel like re5 and 6 developers forced to make or do an attempt at normal horror. It's like they aren't compatible with the genre.
I think Silent Hill could be compared to the Mother series in the sense that they are so well made and beloved that we wish we had more of them.
It just sucks to think of it as an old memory and nothing more.
The hype of PT and execution of it also spurs that desire and emptiness we feel as well.
And both had to rely on different people outside of the original team to get a sequel. Sure, the fangames won't exactly count, but to me it does in spirit.
I've obviously watched this video five times in the past thirty seconds. It's good. Make an only fans
Wat
💯
that escalated quickly.
It seems like every time someone talks about SH sequels, they lend credence to the western games and the logic behind them. Outside of time and place (Japan and the late '90s), you'd be hard pressed to find a team that didn't- or wouldn't- just appropriate the town into a theme park to shove a scared protagonist into.
Focus on the unknowable, demonic force of the first game. Remember, Alessa's power was a catalyst. The cult only defines the power in their own way, making the demon born from Alessa's impregnation ritual into something they recognize: an incubus, or the judeo Christian notion of ultimate evil (or the virgin Mary, the highest form of human good, depending on your ending). So you go with that completely alien, unknowable evil intruding into our own world, but the imagery we all associate with Silent Hill (metal grates, fans, occult symbols, fog) have been retranslated into something hardly recognizable. We need to go further into the unknown power for a sequel, rather than rehashing SH2 again.
This is why I think Silent Hill f is the most promising game in the announcements. A different place, a different time, and with a new but acclaimed horror writer at its helm (Ryukishi07) -- its the one that's taking the proper steps out of this stagnating hole the series is stuck in. I really hope it delivers, and show everyone one last time why Silent Hill is so renowned.
@@whoareyoutoaccuseme6588 I flipped out when I saw the trailer. It's like they listened!
My main take away from this is. The stuff you love will still be there. Even if it comes back there's no guarantee the new thing will even be /for/ you anymore. It's okay to want things but tying your happiness to the perpetuation of a brand only leads to disappointment. Which is no fault to you or the people who made it. Some stuff is legit just a product of its time.
And in my personal opinion, horror is a genre that works with less. You can drag an rpg, platformer, shooter, etc out forever. It's very hard to maintain that sense of dread and mystery when you're up to Silent Hill 7.
Fucking lol.
Konami went a little bit over board a just announced shit load of SH. The only one that has my interest is SH f.
Its not like they could make a MGR 2 or a new Castlevania. Nah fuck that shit. Here buy a piramid head plushie and do the soy wojak face when you see some FOG
The closest time Resident Evil ever went to being like Silent Hill is without the benefit of a doubt Resident Evil 8's House Beneviento and the escape of the giant fetus made for one tense and scary encounter that I will never forget. Also it was believed that this whole segment was an homage to PT when in the demo you can find a fetus in the sink but Resident Evil made Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro's fetus live on. Also Team Silent were simply the best developers for the series(even though I know they created Silent Hill to begin with) but once they no longer had control of the franchise some of the talent split from Konami and created the Forbidden Siren franchise and Team Silent as a studio was no more which is a damn shame since if any group of people who could save Silent Hill it would have been Team Silent but now it is too late to fix Silent Hill and Konami killed it.
Fetus was cringe, it just excepts you to be scared rather then be actually scary. Stuff like necromorphs would just laugh at this poor man's attempt at horror.
Now imagine a Resident Evil game made by Rob Zombie, Len Wiseman, & Sebastian Gutierrez…
Games like Tormented Souls took a lot of inspiration from oldschool RE and SH, they even included some clever and subtle scary moments, grotesqe imagery and delayed jumpscares without going overboard, and even the puzzles were cryptic which could've easily been in one of those franchises. All in all, it felt like a great spiritual successor while still feeling like it was
made from the same era as the other titles, I highly recommend that game.
The reason is because Silent Hill was a series that was the unique vision of a small pool of individuals. They happened to concoct a unique property that stood out and captured significant acclaim from gamers.
The problem arose when those who run Konami, treated it as some sort of cookie cutter commodity, whereas they mistakenly believed they could release yearly entries and milk Silent Hill property like Capcom did with the Resident Evil series. What should have happened was Silent Hill's end, after Silent Hill 4. The series should've ended development after 2004.
Unfortunately for fans, that didn't work out too well after that original pool of individuals stopped after the 4th Silent Hill entry. What should have happened was Silent Hills end after Silent Hill 4 in 2004. There should have been no more Silent Hill games in development without the original creators overseeing another entry. But of course, Konami wanted more Silent Hill, not understanding that you can't outsource Silent Hill to just any outside Joe shmoe developer, especially when those outside developers haven't a clue of what Silent Hill is narratively about. Couple that with mediocre production values compared to other survival horror properties, and you have the joke the disappointment and sad comedy that Silent Hill would eventually become.
Hopefully, these upcoming new entries in the series will deliver what fans have been wanting for nearly 20 years - a worthwhile Silent Hill entry. Honestly, no new Silent Hill games should be in development until they properly remaster and port the original four entries. It's also insulting to the legacy of the series that Silent Hill 2 is getting a remake after all these decades, but NOT the original Silent Hill. Makes no sense, outside of greed.
Man I miss Silent Hill...
Nice! I love when you talk about spooky games, especially Silent Hill. Thanks for making my night.
Silent hill 4 was always meant to be a silent hill game. That rumor came from a mistranslation of an article. I’m surprised you don’t know that.
The franchise super peaked early with SH2, it was lightning in a bottle type deal, from there on out everything was gradually down hill, SH3 and the Room still excellent in they're own right mind you, but with SH2 everything came together perfectly, gameplay, tone, atmosphere and it's miserable depressing story in perfect harmony, the sum of it's parts elevated itself above it's own genre
That's the thing it peaked for west but not for japanese players whose tiny minds were more focused on the generic cult stuff. This is why 3 felt more like a sequel to 1 by diverting away from the unknown and focusing on humans.
@@MGrey-qb5xz I wouldn’t call the cult “generic”, especially in Silent Hill
SH2 isn’t even my favorite (3 and 4 are the best ones for me), but damn is it good
@@znegjorinorino5735 mine neither, but for a first time playthrough it had the biggest impact on me, in very much the same way watching Jakobs Ladder for the first time when I was younger, from it's disturbed visuals most of the way through.. it turned into something more real and very tragic which completely flipped the tone of what I thought up until that point to be a horror movie
2's gameplay is quite bad tho.
For the same reason why fan games and spiritual successors also fail miserably, the devs just don't get it, either due to unfamiliarity with the previous games or the major problem, being overly analytical of them. Some people are so mentally stuck on how cool Silent Hill 2 was they fail miserably to see what made it so good and instead parrot the main plot points and end up falling flat (Downpour and Homecoming do this of the official ones, but also the majority of horror indie games). This is such a big problem with the franchise that the only way to make a Silent Hill game work now is to simply do something completely different like Shattered Memories, and even the fandom is plagued so much by it that games like Homecoming become good entries again once you stop having such insane expectations. PT would have likely been a really good horror game, but only because it'd probably be as far removed to Silent Hill as possible.
tl;dr
Silent Hill fans like to smell their Silent Hill farts and when it comes time to make a game about it they're too full of it to see what they're doing.
Because it was an artistic vision created by a small, focused team. It's like making a sequel to The Shining, which did happen, and it was actually a good film, but it didn't have that Kubrick touch that made the original so uniquely unsettling. Silent Hill was essentially artistically hijacked.
Silent hill should have never been an infinite franchise. It is like Dark Souls in a way, remember how Dark Souls 3 was about how repeating the same thing over and over again? They stopped because the mystery that kept it alive was not a mystery anymore.
They knew it had to end. Silent Hill should have ended with 4
What I like the most about Silent Hill, and what I'd say sets it apart from Resi, is that it deliberately focuses less on the mechanics and more on the narrative and atmosphere and surrealism. Part of the experience is coming up with your own theories as to what different things could possibly represent, it's about projection and introspection. Silent Hill is in itself a mind puzzle, as impossible to solve as it is alluring.
More than anything, Shattered Memories killed any sense of horror for me very early in the game when it became obvious that the majority of the game, outside of the therapy sessions, fall into the same three gameplay styles where you're only ever in any real danger during the one, the chase segments. During the exploration and puzzle segments there is nothing that can harm you outside of looking at liquor bottles for too long in the environment and getting the drunk ending by default, and it just makes it as nerve-wrecking to play as a Kirby title.
Will you do an analysis on Silent Hill 4? I know it's considered to be inferior to the first 3 games but still, it would be interesting to hear what you have to say about it
I just finished SH4 a couple of days ago, and people are way too hard on it. I really liked it. It has so many great ideas. The game is very flawed, but the good heavily outweighs the bad for me.
I would also love a video on SH4!
Based on comments Brit made during one of his Twitch-streams, he's certainly planning on making a video on it eventually, but were I to hazard a guess, it propably isn't among his immediate priorities.
yes he posted a pic of his 4 SH copies when he uploaded the SH1 or SH2 review
so the SH4 review MAY happen eventually maybe next year
This is such a wonderful video. Thank you for making it. You hit the nail on the head in multiple points imo.
~
Silent Hill was about the intangibles. The atmosphere. That ship has kind of sailed, so to speak. It’s still my favorite series, and likely always will be, but I too, don’t think I could ask for more entries.
Forget having sexy, monster nurses, let's have more hunky Pyramid Head, that's what's really important in Silent Hill 😉😆🤣
Did not expect this video tonight
the OG Silent Hill games felt like walking around a Dreamworld, constantly shifting between a normal dream (fog world) and a nightmare (other world) and it even gave you that feeling of "not even the developers can control, what will happen in this town"; the western silent hill games feel like interactive splatter movies from hollywood
Just started going through your old videos again last night. Coincidents are neat
You make an excellent point that a lot of people don't consider - what exactly would a new Silent Hill game do that isn't already being done with horror games? The Team Silent games were great and unique because they actually experimented and did things that no other games were doing at the time - they were breaking new ground and pushing the envelope in a variety of ways (storytelling, characters, themes, atmosphere, technical prowess). The first four games were so influential that they basically created the realistic psychological horror subgenre of modern video games (as opposed to the action-horror of Resident Evil). Now almost every horror game is doing things those early Silent Hill games pioneered, so it's no longer unique or interesting or experimental - it's just the norm. If a new Silent Hill game just repeated the same things as the Team Silent games, it wouldn't be viewed as anything special anymore. The only way to actually continue the legacy of the Team Silent games would be to reinvent the series again, really do something new and unexpected - P.T. seemed to be doing that to some extent. But the problem is, a lot of Silent Hill fans basically just want another Silent Hill 2 and aren't interested in anything else: see the response to Silent Hill 4, which really did experiment and try to do new things and take the series in a different direction, and most fans hated it and just wanted a SH2 clone (even though Team Silent intentionally avoided doing this and were not interested in doing another game like SH2).
I think a great Silent Hill game is entirely possible, but you have to give it to some creative people and let them rest on their artistic vision. You can't make it a traditional franchise; each entry should be a new canvas
If you cannot apply to the set rules and style of an already established franchise, you should by all means just make a brand new IP instead.
But obviously this is more risky from the biz-minds' perspective. It's easier to cash-in with both nostalgia and the collective cultural consciousness phenomenas, than it is to make a break through with a totally new name.
4 & Shattered Memories were great games!
I would love to see a SH title that takes place in the past, when the town was being colonized. It could shine a light on the mysterious spiritual power that would be twisted by the Cult later, while also making a statement about the torture/death/genocide of the indigenous people that inhabited the place.
thats an interesting idea. a silent hill in a colony would be pretty cool aesthetic wise. and many monsters could be inspired by the folcore of the time like wendigos, the headless knight and etc.
i dont know about the political statement part, its would be nice to perhaps show how human kind can be horrible and good hearted at the same time. from both parties. hell. the protagonist could be a soldier/native warrior who has guilt for for killing or not saving his people. SH is about personal stuff, it kinda has to have this element
anyways your idea is awesome and all of this is just a thing i thought when i read your comment.
I know it's a tall ask, but an indie game carrying the torch of SH to a new universe would be my ideal at this point. If it gets popular enough it'll be a great spiritual successor and maybe leave the door open a little better for sequels. If not, it'll still (hopefully) be a great game that proves that the thoughtful vibes of these classics can be at least tangentially revived again.
I totally agree. Kinda like what The Callisto protocol is doing. The spiritual successor to Dead Space.
Well, it's still early on so no promises on anything, but I'm currently working on a 2D Silent Hill inspired game that uses Beksinski's art style for the alternate world's aesthethic. It's not gonna be strictly silent hill, but my goal is to make a game with the same kind of horror and atmosphere even though it'll be it's own game still if things work out.
Indie gaming has been carrying the superficial aspects that SH fans have really latched onto for years now. It's not the best time to be a Silent Hill fan, but there are so many passionate creators out there who can do everything but travel back in time or straight-out call their game Silent Hill.
That's exactly what I've been thinking about for a while now, AND what some recent indie-titles like the Tormented Souls and the Simulacrum both have aimed to do. In a very authentic manner at that. Even before that, smaller indie-titles / mods like the Cry Of Fear or the Afraid Of Monsters were fine tributes to the classic SH and RE games.
What a great video to start spooky month with!
Besides that, the only comment I have to make is I’m surprised you didn’t mention PT at all.
I agree with your thoughts about remakes. I don’t think a highly artistic game like Silent Hill is suitable for it. I mean, look what happened to Demon’s Souls; the visual changes scrubbed out much of the lore, and they had no respect for its symbolism… in a game with almost no item descriptions. Ffs people want to lower Bloodborne in to the Bluepoint meat grinder next. This gen wants graphics at the cost of everything else.
As a concept artist, I’ve been influenced by SH design language and it’s always been in the back of my mind how someone could expand on the concept. It’s a particular type of emptiness and isolation that the genre of modern action horror lacks and would need to be very well put together to create a similar experience - but if done well it would be a breath of fresh air? I’m thinking, how they also made successful Ju On/ the grudge sequels (also a limited location/even more so with the single antagonist, but still had some successes) with a mix of different stories and approaches that upholds rather than changes the original concepts. Ie, a timeline story swap of the town of individual original occupants where the town had morphed into what it is now at a different stage for every character, and you can experience the events that propagated it via SH's enviro storytelling (with a resolution that won’t clarify how the town happened so the environment elements are never explained, but only little character resolutions - that’s the formula I think needs to be preserved). Silent hill will always have merits as a massively environment driven and design experience, I personally believe it will never stop having potential.
I've only played silent hill 1-4, and frankly don't have any interest in the games not made by the original team(s).
But I would very much like the series to return. Resident evil has been reborn or restructured many times, while still maintaining its identity. I feel like silent hill could very much do the same. Team silent were on the right track in many ways with 4, taking the series in a bold new direction while still feeling distinctly silent hill.
I still have some hope that the leaked project sakura could be a brilliant resurgence for one of my favorite series.
Keep up the good work you absolute lad.
12:08 Well, looks like you were right. Silent Hill f just got announced, and while it's fair to say it doesn't look like it has much to do with SH as a property (although I'm 100% willing to give it a chance, it has enough there so far for me to say it does kind of resemble SH), the trailer looks great, and it's being written by Ryukishi07, the man responsible for two of the absolute best visual novels ever made, both of which are also great, disturbing horror experiences. So maybe f won't have much to do with Silent Hill, but I honestly don't care. It looks really promising, and I'm excited for it.
I think it's wrong to say Shattered Memories had nothing to go with the OGs - it WAS trying to manifest someone's personal horror; the player's. Obviously this wasn't perfect since you can't actually play as yourself, but I do think they pulled it off quite compellingly minus the monster bits and it's probably why people say it's the best one since the OGs, because it did something new with one of the few core ideas that runs through the series.
It was also, uh, a reimagining of SH1's story? I like this channel, but I don't think he researched well enough for this video.
I would argue that Biohazard/Resident Evil hasn't thrived since slipping out of the control of Shinji Mikami. If anything, the series in the non remake games is chasing trends of current horror games like Outlast and is not creating anything that's cutting edge.
Silent Hill, as a game, needs those who understand psychology of why the series was terrifying to begin with in order to make it scary. You can't just simply be doing a paint by numbers affair and just give the franchise just to any studio. It needs to be in the hands of those who know why the original game worked so well.
You've nailed it. 👏
People have been ranting and raving about a new gamd Signalis, would love to hear your thoughts on it
Can't wait for the New 'N' Tasty Dead Wife remake, now with extra wind
Dude, it took me so many watches to realise the significance of that last part.
The scene where james first sees maria playing while the narrator says:
"I'd rather just move on than delude myself that what i loved is still alive in something different."
If you know the plot of SH2 you would get it. I'm not spoiling it for those who don't though, since one of the main appeals of this video is that it's spoiler free and even people who never played silent hill can watch it (i only started getting into the series after watching this video anyways and it spoilled nothing).
I feel like whilst the series has had its own franchise fatigue, it's probably more of how the series was handled, rather than acting like it's impossible to follow on.
I don't really expect there to be a game to 1-1 recapture what the first 4 did, but really, considering the whole trying to do something fresh and stuff (and how much of society, much less media and fandom have been intoxicating themselves on nostalgia, to where it might as well be as serious as a drinking/drug addiction), I can imagine that, even if it isn't completely original, given enough time, dedication and all that, it is possible for the series to get a new spark of life.
Heck, with the whole concept of how drug-like nostalgia can become, I can easily see that bringing an interesting twist on certain themes and such. And not just regarding a person's inner demons, either.
Silent Hill Downpour is my favorite one and it gets slept on because of its horrific launch
That closing line is gold
The concept for a new SH game was already there in the form of PT, however, since its release, everything in that demo has been copied wholesale by every indie horror game that came out, it's no longer new or novel in any of its concepts, so I guess Silent Hill is still doomed.
Been waiting for a R&C video for awhile😅
Oh Boy, 3 AM!
In resident evil, you always knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel. In silent Hill it always made you feel like that light might not be there at the end even though you knew it was. Always kept me feeling like I couldn't make it through.
I don’t understand why they didn’t just commit to the PT silent hills. It would’ve struck gold with horror fans.
Personal conflicts, Konami rebuilding itself into a scammy (pachislot and mobile) company for more profit. Haven't you noticed that even MGS V came out remarkably unfinished? Sure PT game would have been likely critically acclaimed and seemingly successful, but it would also need a lot of time and a massive budget, so it's never possible to guess whether it could have paid off.
P.T. didn't feel anything like a Silent Hill game. It just seems like another of those first person spookhouse style games. It would have been the wrong approach to go for. Silent Hill has had some games with different vibes to it, sure, like Silent Hill 4 while still preserving that SH feel. But P.T. was too drastically different. Plus, having Kojima in charge of a SH game was never a good idea. You can't ask for somebody more incompatible with SH's style of writing.
@@IkariMetalSlugger Couldn't have put it better.
@@IkariMetalSlugger that’s true but it’s better than what we have now: AKA nothing at all!
@@Z-A-C Not necessarily. It's not a bad idea for a series to take a break or go on hiatus until a better idea can be thought of to bring it up. P.T. wasn't the answer. I want a new SH game just as much as the next guy, but not if it means sacrificing its identity in the process like P.T. and Kojima seemed poised to do.
Maybe they should make one where they build on what Vincent said in SH3 and you are killing normal Silent Hill citizens and imagining the whole town being spooky etc.
I've long since passed by the anger, denial, bargaining, and depression stages of grief with Silent Hill. I've been in Acceptance for a long time. It's okay. We got 4 good games(3 depending on who you are), and that's enough. There are plenty of good psychological horror games these days, many made by fans of Silent Hill, and I think that's enough. You ever play Lone Survivor? Now that's a good one.
The fact that Kojima was able to create Silent hill demo. It honestly felt a new step forward sad that he wasn’t able to truly bring it to life. Kojima feels the video game equivalent to Guillermo de toro in creativity.
Nah, it would definitely be much better without the sh name attached to it
Konami was Konami, dissolved Team Silent and gave the IP to western studios. RE remained at Capcom in Japan.
Because it was the creative fruit borne by specific people at a specific time in their lives. Everything after that is franchise product. They caught lightning in a bottle with 2 and should have concluded with 3. Even 4 feels creatively spent, I can't imagine Team Silent would have produced anything as quality as the first three games even if they had been able to continue the series themselves. I agree with your last point - the series should be left alone. All of the following games after that just feel like uninspired fan-fiction relying on the same played out tropes. I know people were hyped for PT and I'm sure it would have been a decent scary game but I sincerely doubt it would have captured that original essence. The only thing that should be done with the series is official, faithful, and high-quality ports (lol) on modern platforms so people can continue to experience the games. The endless unnecessary franchising of everything is the death of art and creativity. Supposedly Bloober Team is remaking SH2, which I imagine will be akin to the experience of watching a modern episode of The Simpsons.
Resident Evil is at its peak? Have you played the last two games?
I recently beat both and tbh impressive graphically but it really....really fails at what it's trying to execute. Unless they were trying to make an oversized COD Zombies Map...
This is also the same guy who loved RE6, so there’s that lol
God, RE3 Remake was trash
7 & 8 are meh. For weirdly drastically different reasons. They went from one extreme to the other. It died at 6 I would say. With maybe Revelations 2 and RE2R being bright spots.
@@burge117 7 is meh. 8 is a dumpster fire
Silent Hill was a product of it's time and I believe it's a franchise that should be put to rest being used only as an inspiration for new stuff that is to come in the future.
Obviously is there is to be a new silent Hill game, perhaps a remake, I'll cheer for and hope that it turns out being good.But if it never happens, i won't be sad, and I'll keep being a fan of what we've already got.
will you ever make video about your thoughts on SH 4: the room?