Silent Hill 5: Cons (What you don't like)

[simeonalo]

So all posts after yours are just...useless.

[UndeadFishtank]

So all posts after yours are just...useless.

No, they were useless long before I decided to post.

[simeonalo]

Well I can agree with that, but what can we do This thread has been milked. It's not really going to stop other people like me who just post the same thing over again.

[SPRINGS02]

Eh a lot of threads go around in circles, what's new? It's not that big of a deal anyway. I still feel the same way about homecoming that simeonalo does.

[UndeadFishtank]

Well I can agree with that, but what can we do

Have a silly little debate. Such as this.

[simeonalo]

Haha, I think I'll pass

Back on topic:
It's not so much that Alex's design bothered me, but his clothes were a bit distracting, at least to me.

[Miette]

The major con I found was that you will have an unbelievable amount of enemies coming at you at some of the worst possible times. I believe you were in the police station, and you had about 3 Schisms coming at your item-starved ass.

I only had about 2 health drinks, and a handful of shotgun ammo. I ended up having to run.

Then you had to fight a Siam in the sewer, then dive into a fight with 3 or 4 Needlers. Luckily, my health bar messed up when I respawned and I was nearly at full health.

[Heartbroken_Heather]

The only thing that truly bothered me was evasion. Not dodging, but running away. I had a conga-line of those monsters chasing me down the street. In the other games, you could shake your pursuers after a certain distance. Homecoming had a programming oversight, not allowing you to get away. Other minor whines: Love interest seemed forced, game borrowed too heavily from the film, flashlight was damn near useless, everything else has already been mentioned by other posters.
Loved the improvement to the combat engine, loved the town of SG, loved Wheeler. <-Yep

[ww_andi]

the only con i can remember having about this game

is the simple fact that the otherworld should have been utilized more

[Dr-G0nz0]

My cons:

*Pyramid... Why was he in it again?*
*Film influences put into the game.*
*Awkward hit, dodge combat system, I never fully got used to.*
*Fighting the cult! (that ruined the rest of the game for me)*

[ShatteredHill2010]

The cons, and these are serious cons:

1 The collective is making the graphics "dynamic" instead of "static"
This will take away the "arty" feeling of the images. The light and enviroment will not feel like a Rembrant painting and the graphics will feel more technical then artistic. The previous games utilized the "making something ugly, beautiful" style that directors like David Fincher made with films like Se7en and Fight Club. The dynamic graphic engine will create some massive epic effects but is that really what Silent Hill is about? It's especially interesting that games like Resident Evil, that is known for it's action approach to horror, uses static graphics for their next game; Resident Evil 5. As a sidenote to that, the early images of Resident Evil 5 looked far better then the early images of Silent Hill 5, mainly because of the fact that Resident Evil 5 uses static instead of dynamic graphics.
What should The Collective do?
I'm hoping for a total change into static graphics to go back to the artistic feel that is a core element of Silent Hill. If they have to have the dynamic engine, they need to make a kind of mix, or else the images will become dead and boring.

2 The close connection/resemblence to the "Silent Hill Movie"
Having this connection and resemblence to things in the Silent Hill movie speaks heavely about how low the creativity is at The Collective. It's one thing to be inspired by other works of art and popular culture and to steal or use an exact copy of something. Best example is the video of the nurse coming out of the toilet booth, that is an exact copy from the scene in the movie.
I mean, what is The Collective thinking here? That approach is clearly out of making the franchise appeal to an audience that isn't embracing works of art and instead want the cool features that the movie had. Nurses are also exactly the same as in the movie. The previous games even had differences between the nurses in each game.
There are so many clichés and uncreative things that could be spotted from what The Collective said in interviews and what could be seen in the videos.
What should The Collective do?
Take away everything that is a direct steal from the movie. This game isn't "Silent Hill: The movie: The game", it's Silent Hill 5, a new story, were things should be new and original. I would have complained even if they used copies of previous monsters in the serie, so it's not just about the connection to the movie. They need to use a better art-director that has the same approach to design as teamsilent. It doesn't have to be the same as teamsilent, but it needs to be the same approach to art.

3 Combat system should not be a focus
The Collective have stated numerous times that they will not focus on combat; still, in the interview, they got all excited when questions came to the combat system. Looking back at the "making of" docs about Silent Hill 2 and 3, teamsilent never spoke of combat, because the main focus was the Story and "psychology" of the game. The atmosphere has always been more important then the combat. The dynamic graphics and the way they talk about the combat, it's clear that it will have more action this time. It will be more "epic", then close to the characters. Silent Hill is all about characters, story and atmosphere. That is the three core elements that is combined into what Silent Hill is known for. Going away from that isn't creative and original, it's making Silent Hill something it's not. Originality and creativity should come from versions of those three core elements. You can make something totally new without loosing them. I could make a movie with the same core elements and the movie will feel like Silent Hill, while not being it.
What should The Collective do?
Go through the gameplay and compare it to the atmosphere of the previous games. If the atmosphere is more actionpaced, they need to change the combat system and reduce it.

4 This is speculation, but, The Collective seems to not focus on storytelling
Having a good story isn't the same as telling a good story. The storytelling should be the main focus. Silent Hill is mostly based upon how the characters behave between eachother, their backstories and the atmosphere of the cutscenes. The slow pace of the storytelling is of a Tarkovsky quality and I have little hope in that The Collective draws atmospheric inspiration from movies like that. I believe that The Collective will focus on a faster tempo, which will strangle the pace and storytelling.
One important thing when talking Silent Hill is "Silence is more important then sounds". Akira said this about the sounddesign, but it's also very important for storytelling. What characters don't say is more important then what they say; it's a basis for all good storytellers in cinema and theatre. If the dialogue is written without this important storytelling part, it will loose it's soul and life. It will become a cliché.
What should The Collective do?
Collaborate with a teamsilent director or a director that isn't from the gaming world.
Silent Hill 2 hired a storytelling advisor on this part and that showed. The Collective should do the same. Silent Hill is all about the story. It's more about using the interactive parts to create a higher level of horror, then creating just a game.

I'm basing these things on anylizing the interviews, what they said and how they said it, rather then just basing it on the gameplay videos.

I have more opinions, but those are more details then core elements.

Im with you buddy

[Nix]

The new combat system (which strongly reasembled the new RE games).
Didin't like it at all.

[BlackRose]

-Too combat focused.
-Annoying characters.
-Obvious ending.
-Frustratingly hard combat.
-Cheap storyline.
-Too many ideas from the rubbish movie.
-Pyramid head appeared for no reason other then fan service.
-Not enough save points.

[nothingbut3%]

My list is:

- The game

[Pleasant Sinner]

Yeah, this does probably go around in circles seeing that Pyramid Head's cameo (or the "Bogeyman" what have you) is one of the top picks.

Most of my nitpicks have already been discussed, however, I believe the details in the game (not talking about symbolism, I understand that it's present) were...well...not good? Things like the loading screen to the save points and much more lacking of little details really irritated me. I'd write them down, but that'd take WAY too long.

[UndeadFishtank]

loading screen

Did anyone else notice that they didn't even re-render the images they used for the loading screens? They all still had his mid-development haircut. I mean, that's just lazy. They probably thought no one would notice.

[Pleasant Sinner]

Did anyone else notice that they didn't even re-render the images they used for the loading screens? They all still had his mid-development haircut. I mean, that's just lazy. They probably thought no one would notice.

Hell yeah! That bugged me quite a bit too and made me wonder if that was the Alex the fanbase didn't want. I'm also glad that I'm not the only who that noticed that!

[Dr-G0nz0]

My list is:

- The game

Haha good one.

[Fevered Dream]

loading screen

Did anyone else notice that they didn't even re-render the images they used for the loading screens? They all still had his mid-development haircut. I mean, that's just lazy. They probably thought no one would notice.

Better yet, did anyone even care? Seriously, we're complaining about the model of Alex used in the loading screens? I suppose people just ran out of things to complain about.

[UndeadFishtank]

loading screen

Did anyone else notice that they didn't even re-render the images they used for the loading screens? They all still had his mid-development haircut. I mean, that's just lazy. They probably thought no one would notice.

Better yet, did anyone even care? Seriously, we're complaining about the model of Alex used in the loading screens? I guess people ran out of things to complain about I suppose.

If they were too lazy to do that, who knows what else they might have overlooked? I just think it was kind of silly not to fix it.