Was PT bad for the brand?

[Chris Sunderland]

Ahoy fellow otherside dwellers, much like the rest of you I've been browsing the Internet for Silent Hill content like Vatiel looking for a valve to turn. Across my various escapades I've noticed that a portion of the fanbases has turned quite sour and almost as if it should fail in its newest rebirth. I've also noticed quite a few new fans thinking that Kojima was more apart of the series then he actually was, even saw a guy acting like Kojima was responsible for SH2. Now I know two things, Kojima is awesome, love his games. He's basically the Tarintino of video games in that you like his work or you don't. Second PT is a great experience and on its own it's a highly influential work in horror video games. I'm not so certain it was good for the series however. It seems some have never gotten over Silent Hills cancellation and almost hold it over the series head. It's strange that a game that was never made has such a hold on the series. I often wonder in a timeline where Downpour was the last Silent Hill game, if a lot of the hatred would be absent. Not only did Silent Hills end affect the series but Kojima being involved brought the baggage of him being let go into the series discourse. Konami came out looking more like a villain than ever before because not only did they cancel Silent Hills, they also fired one of video games most famous faces BEFORE he could make a new Silent Hill game, a series which at that point many felt was being treated like a red headed step child. I think in a lot of ways the modern dismissal of anything to do with Konami began here and has carried weight for nearly 10 years. So what do y'all think? Baseless conspiracy or am I on to something.

[NanayaShiki]

Nah, I don't think so. Konami putting the series on ice for a decade and letting the fanbase fester in it's negative emotions was bad for the brand, for sure. But PT itself was the most relevant Silent Hill had been for a long time when it first hit. I remember the explosion of excitement and buzz about it being refreshing all that time ago. But within the larger context, it's ultimately just a small blip in the story of this series and the fanbase's general vibe. The thing one must keep in mind is that the negativity was already a thing before PT existed. There was consistent bickering, hatred, and straight up harassment over the 2006-2012 era of Silent Hill.

Now, in regards to the modern stuff, I do get SOME of the negativity. Like I said, Konami put the series on ice for a decade right after garnering a lot of bad will. But there's also concern over their current behavior too, as they seem to have just picked up from exactly where they left off with how they handle the series. That is, they outsource it to mid-budget studios willing to do it for cheap. Now that doesn't mean the games can't still be good. But announcing three to four different games all by different studios at the same time, all just to tie in/cash in on the next movie... yeah it really does feel like we're just picking right up from where 2012 left us off, so ultimately it doesn't really feel to me like PT even happened or had any lasting impact. It might as well be 2013 right now.

All that said, in regards to the Kojima stuff or people thinking Kojima was more involved in SH2 than he was. We can't help that unfortunately, people don't like doing research and often can't really visualize games are being by more than a singular artist, so Kojima's name getting attached will cause some people who weren't paying attention to make some incorrect assumptions. You see it all the time when people talk about video games. As a Final Fantasy fan, I'd take a shot every time someone claims "Nomura" did something that he had no part of, if I felt my liver could survive it.

[Chris Sunderland]

IDK I'm not really seeing that with the current Konami. They seem to be putting more effort now than they ever did in the post Team Silent era( it doesn't hurt that you can make much better looking games now thanks to Unreal on a budget than back in the day). Ascension was garbage for sure, but they could of sold The Short Message for 5 to 10 bucks but they used it to promote Silent Hill's come back. Also while Bloober hasn't made they greatest games ever, they have made popular successful horror games, with only The Medium being a true miss. It's way better than them farming out Silent Hill to studios that have no credentials like with Homecoming and Downpour. Townfalls developer has made some indie classics and Silent Hill f has a very respected author working on the story. What I'm saying is they seem to be aware they can't just throw Silent Hill at a random studio and hope for the best anymore and at least are getting actual talent involved to say nothing of the Team Silent members in the consulting roles instead of just having the composer be the middle man in "Huliet" era. Don't get me wrong I think 2024 Konami has a lot to prove, and it will take years and multiple successful releases for them to ever come close to fans viewing them in the same light as they did in the 90s and early 00s.

[NanayaShiki]

Only time will tell on the quality of everything in the works. I'm excited for Townfall and F personally, though while I have strong positive feelings towards the writer they got for F, I have some reservations over the actual developers of the game (they made the recent Resident Evil multiplayer tie-in games, all of which were bad). But my statement was less about the quality and more about the tactics. To be clear, I don't hate the post-SH4 games. I actually adore Shattered Memories, it's my third favorite game in the series. And I enjoyed Downpour despite it's technical faults. Origins and Homecoming are further down on my list for sure but there are others on here who like them. Even Book of Memories, as a spin-off, had some interesting ideas.

So it's really not about how much I like the game or the talent of the devs they chose. It's that they are following the same strategy they did before. Throw the IP at a dozen different studios, all of which are admittedly lower budget or indie, and hope that in the flood of releases there's one that makes a lot of money. It's what they did for that late 2000s/early 2010s stretch of time, and even if there are good games both back then and now, it's the strategy itself that I think is inherently flawed. And what PT/Silent Hills represented to a lot of people was the opposite, a return to making Silent Hill a more prestige series with a big high quality game made by their last big in-house devs (at the time). I think that's why so many have a hard time letting it go.

[Chris Sunderland]

I'm not talking about quality either, I think both Shattered Memories was great and Origins got classic Silent Hill down pat minus it's pointless storyline. I genuinely think Konami is handling how it treats the series much better. Back in the late 2000s and early 10s Silent Hill felt like the red headed step child that Konami was only acknowledging to shut up the die hard fans. Now they seem to at least pretend to treat it with reverence, even starting a new in house production team. They seem to have a GAME PLAN for the series, a direction besides "hey who wants 5 bucks to make us a new Silent Hill". Now it may all fail, the games may come and be subpar, but I have more hopes for the series now than I've had since Team Silent.




Except Ascension IDK what the hell they were thinking with that shit. I'm sure it sounded way better on paper.

[Burning Man]

I felt I had dodged a bullet when Silent Hills was cancelled. Konami made the right decision at the time all things considered. This action rekindled my hope that Konami would come around eventually.

I don't mind Konami testing the waters with different games to see which ones work for the fans. Their mistaken assumption in the 2010s was probably that they could churn out Silent Hill games using the same cookie-cutter method that the earlier games used. After more than 15 years, the game demographic has changed quite a bit, and they understand the limitation of following a single franchise ("Resident Evil") for establishing their fanbase.

Townfall is the only other announced game besides the Remake that interests me.

[Chris Sunderland]

I felt I had dodged a bullet when Silent Hills was cancelled. Konami made the right decision at the time all things considered. This action rekindled my hope that Konami would come around eventually.

I don't mind Konami testing the waters with different games to see which ones work for the fans. Their mistaken assumption in the 2010s was probably that they could churn out Silent Hill games using the same cookie-cutter method that the earlier games used. After more than 15 years, the game demographic has changed quite a bit, and they understand the limitation of following a single franchise ("Resident Evil") for establishing their fanbase.

Townfall is the only other announced game besides the Remake that interests me.

Why do you think the cancellation was a good thing?I can't really agree with. PT I feel may have been bad, but it's only bad because it promised something great and then pulled the rug out. Are you under the impression that the game would play like PT? Kojima said that it was just a teaser and had no bearing on the actual Silent Hills and was basically Kojima trying to build hype. It worked, only it built hype for something that would not come.
They still seem to be following Resident Evil for the remake at least, which I think is fine. Silent Hill took the blueprint established by Resident Evil and made it's own thing. I think SH2R taking gameplay cues from RE2R is funny enough sort of natural. I feel SH can be a lot of things and hope with success we will see more and more interesting ideas.
I think that's why SHf looks so interesting to me because it's probably gonna play like a modern survival horror game but it's 1960s Japanese aesthetic could really lead to something really fresh for the series.

One day I'd love to see them do something like Red Dead Redemption 2, a detailed open period piece with realistic physics but it's Silent Hill and shit gets bizarre.

[Burning Man]

>Why do you think the cancellation was a good thing?I can't really agree with.

I don't think Kojima had a good grasp of where he wanted to take the Silent Hill series. I think the TGS trailer sort of solidified my thoughts on the matter. If a game has no clear direction, it only makes sense to cancel it then and perhaps regroup if there is a more concrete plan.

Looking at OD today doesn't really give me confidence that we would have seen something amazing if Silent Hills went through.

PT may not have been reflective of what Silent Hills would have been, but I think it still showcased what Kojima had in mind as a creator. Namely:

• Kojima was going to use renown celebrities. Based on Death Stranding and OD preview, this seems like it would have been the direction for Silent Hills. While I don't have a particular preference either way, I know it is way more expensive to hire renown actors.
• Kojima wanted international-language-speaking community to come together to solve puzzles. There's that one puzzle where you collect a handful of memos written in different languages.
• Kojima was testing voice activation feature on the PS4. To this day, I don't think there is a clear workflow to unlock the Silent Hills trailer, but I believe a certain YouTube channel proposed that it was activated by the name you said into the microphone.
• Kojima wanted to get the attention of an influencer known for their "horror game reaction" videos. A low-pitch voice can be heard from the radio that speaks Swedish. There's a theory that Kojima was anticipating that PewDiePie would have played PT and exclaim that he knew what it said.

None of this has much to do with reviving Silent Hill as a franchise, but a creator who has become fascinated by the trend at the time.

[Lifetolifeless]

Personally, I didn't care for PT, especially as a Silent Hill property. But nonetheless, I believe it helped fabricate a slow but successful push to get the brand back into the public gaming consciousness. Enough to warrant a whole slew of new stuff, anyway. TBD whether that was ultimately a good thing in aggregate effect.

[Chris Sunderland]

Personally, I didn't care for PT, especially as a Silent Hill property. But nonetheless, I believe it helped fabricate a slow but successful push to get the brand back into the public gaming consciousness. Enough to warrant a whole slew of new stuff, anyway. TBD whether that was ultimately a good thing in aggregate effect.

It was different type of psychological horror, which is good because too many developers try to mix the first two games aesthetics with modern gameplay and call it done. This is why Shattered Memories is beloved by a lot of people, it did it's own thing. It would have been interesting to see how Kojima translated PT into a full on SH title,first or third person.
I agree it did generate good press for SH, infact I would say it was hyped more than any other title by a long shot at one point. Though there in lies the problem. PT was so popular and then influential too the indie horror scene that its cancellation has been mystified to a ridiculous degree. Konami went from a shitty company mishandling it's IPs too,well, "Fuck Konami". Now I don't really think this is all PTs fault but a symptom of a larger problem.