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The Silent Hill 2 remake’s combat trailer misrepresents the game, according to one of its own developersIt doesn’t capture the “spirit” of the full thing, apparently
It doesn’t capture the “spirit” of the full thing, apparently
TheSilent Hill 2remake’s State of Play trailer doesn’t give a full and proper representation of the game, Bloober Team’s president Piotr Babieno has observed in an apparent swipe at publisher Konami, who Babieno portrays as responsible for the upcominghorrorgame’s marketing. If you missed it, the trailer in question focuses on the “modernised” combat. It shows alleged “everyman” protagonist James Sunderland getting all Gears of Warry with some maggoty marionettes and rancid demon nurses.
Silent Hill 2 - Combat Reveal Trailer | PS5 GamesWatch on YouTube
Silent Hill 2 - Combat Reveal Trailer | PS5 Games
“It’s not the spirit of what used to be, or what we’re creating now,” Babieno went on. “We’re trying to fully capture this romantic vision of a game that debuted 22 years ago. It seems to us that when players see real gameplay, a real game, they will judge it in a completely different way.”
As regards the PS1-PS2 trilogy’s combat, it’s often more of a fight against the constraints of the simulation, adding to the feeling that the game is out to get you. There’s a move you can do in the original Silent Hill 2’s final bossfight using Pyramid Head’s great knife, where you back into a corner and essentially bounce the huge, tarnished blade off the walls to increase James’s swing speed. That’s how I want Silent Hill combat to feel - an awkward mess born of tank controls and your character’s lack of martial training, which might require you to glitch things a bit to prevail.
Image credit:Konami
But “make the combat feel bad” is a tough pitch for any publisher, and I can understand why Bloober and Konami are taking the spec-ops route with the remake, though I think they’re inviting comparisons they can’t survive. The trailer’s scenes of smooth, over-the-shoulder gunplay, with mutants vaulting over cover to lock you into QTEs, feel cut-and-pasted from Capcom’s latestResident Evilgames - a series Silent Hill once made a point of standing apart from, and which the remake is unlikely to measure up to, bullet for bullet. With its apparent limb damage and full player control of the perspective, it feels about as Silent Hilly as an iPod.
DarkwoodandGolden Light, for example, are games with “deep” combat systems that feel just as unclean as Silent Hill, though they’re worlds apart in many respects. Do you have any recommendations for horror games in which the combat is great because it feels so bad? If you’ve got Hill on the brain right now,Silent Hill Memorieshas a great archive of antique Team Silent interviews.
