Hiya!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about how Silent Hill 2 Remake’s development isn’t going too well. Despite all my qualms on how Konami and Bloober Team were messing up Silent Hill 2 Remake based on the videos then, I was still kind of hopeful. That was 2 years ago. Flash forward to the most recent Silent Hill Transmission, which was done a couple of days ago. It was devoted solely to show how much progress they’ve made with Silent Hill 2 Remake.

The Silent Hill Transmission did alleviate some of my previous concerns about the game, such as the sound effects during the combat coming off as really weak and the environments of the town does manage to capture the atmosphere of the original game. After watching it, however, a bunch of new concerns reeled their ugly head and it seems like, although Bloober Team is doing a competent job at some areas, they’re totally flubbing it in others.

Because I’m being generous, I’d like to talk about some of the good things I saw during the Silent Hill Transmission. For one thing, the environments shown do look good. The sleepy town of Silent Hill looks dilapidated and worn down just like I would imagine this seemingly abandoned city infested with monsters would be. I remember hearing how the Team Silent, the original ragtag team behind the Silent Hill games, used the fog to cover up the poor draw distance of the first PlayStation but Team Bloober is now using the fog to enhance the dreary mood. They even mixed in the flying bits of debris used in the live-action Silent Hill movie and I do think that’s a brilliant direction as it does make the entire town look more worn down, which is the effect you want.

The combat, like I said, also looks much better. Striking a monster doesn’t come off as mushy as they did a few months back. This is mostly thanks to the improved sound effects in the latest trailer. There is a much more satisfying smack sound when James Sunderland strikes a Lying Figure with the Nail with Board weapon. Gunshots ring out nice and loud with every shot and the bullets land with a sickeningly sweet squishing sound when they enter a Bubble Head Nurse‘s cranium. I also do like the unnerving squelch the Bubble Head Nurse makes when they… scream, I guess? Whatever it is, it just works for me.

While those bits were good, the rest range from bad to worse. Let me talk about the little niggling problems which rubbed me the wrong way in the Gameplay trailer first. The animations for the human characters come off a really stiff. James Sunderland walks around Silent Hill with an uncanny valley kind of gait. The arms don’t swing around naturally and it just comes off as robotic. The windup for whenever he’s about to wail on someone with a steel pipe just doesn’t look natural. There are also the other weird things, like when James pushes a door after he’s already began to walk through it.

The thing which really annoyed me is the how the lips never synch properly when they talk. Maybe I’ve gotten used to watching other “remakes” like Capcom‘s Resident Evil 2 Remake or Square Enix‘s Final Fantasy VII Remake where the mouths move in the correct way. This feels like a huge backstep in progress as it makes it look like Silent Hill 2 Remake is some kind of foreign movie and then dubbed into English. It just looks so wrong now since we’ve all gotten a taste of what correct lip syncing looks like!

I also do have to touch on Angela Orosco’s character model because… oof! I can see what Bloober Team was going for as they wanted to, in a sense, make Angela look a little more “realistic” than how she looked like in the original version. However, this does seem to be doing a disservice to her as, honestly, she doesn’t look interesting anymore. I get making her look more like what a “real” person may come off trendy nowadays. The problem is I don’t have the inkling to try to “save” her anymore. In my mind, the reason why James Sunderland does want to protect Angela is because she was supposed to be good looking. That’s an important aspect to the psychology of James but we’ll talk about that more in a bit.

There’s also something off about Angela’s performance because, well, she’s not hysterical. I’m going to dive into SPOILERS from the original Silent Hill 2 from here but, in short, she’s supposed to sound a little crazy because, like everyone you meet in the game, they all are a little crazy! In the game, it’s strongly hinted Angela was abused by her father, hence her mental state. When she screams to James that she’s “not lying” in the original, this always came like a reflection of Angela, when she was much younger, telling adults about what her father was doing to her but no one believed her. She is sick and tired of people telling her she’s lying, which is why she yells at James. In the Remake, she says it in a very calm tone, which doesn’t match her state of mind.

This, to me, might be the biggest problem Bloober Team may be making while developing Silent Hill 2 Remake: they don’t understand the psychology of the game. Silent Hill 2 wasn’t scary because of “Boo! Monsters!” Silent Hill 2 was scary because of how mentally scarring it can be. It dives into how the human mind can negatively deal with stress and how we perceive the world.

The biggest offender of this lack of understanding is Maria‘s character or, more specifically, her character design. Maria looks like Mary, James’ dead wife, because that’s how he wishes Mary was. James wanted Mary, who was probably much more conservative when she was alive, to have a wilder side. So, in the original Silent Hill 2 game, Maria dresses in a more revealing outfit. She has a bare midriff and a miniskirt to show off her legs. She’s also much more sassy and outspoken, which are other traits James probably wishes Mary was like. However, Bloober Team missed the point and made their version of Maria to wear a sensible dress and jacket ensemble. While she does sport a bit of cleavage, she should look more sultry because that’s what James wants!

Heck, one of the main ideas is how the town of Silent Hill 2 reshapes itself to fit your innermost thoughts. This is why Angela’s monster is the Abstract Daddy, which is strongly linked to her being abused as a kid. This is why, despite the Bubble Head Nurse’s grotesque faces, they have rather sexy bodies because of James’ repressed urges. This is also the reason why Laura, the little kid James runs into, doesn’t see any monsters because, to her, Silent Hill doesn’t have any. I’m not even the biggest Silent Hill 2 fan but these were just things I understood while watching my brother play the game all those years ago and I was a young teen then! If I understood these themes, I can’t figure out why Bloober Team or Konami can’t!

There is still some hope as, after all, the Silent Hill Transmission only gave us a small taste of the game. I’m honestly going to get the Remake despite all of the issues I’ve seen because, well, I haven’t played a Silent Hill game and I want Remake to be my first. Is there a chance it’s going to be a huge disappointment? Sure! However, most people have said Silent Hill 2 is the best in the franchise so, even if the Remake doesn’t live up to the original, a Remake of a really good game can’t be all that bad, right?

Right?

Byee!

What did you think of the recent Silent Hill Transmission and how the Silent Hill 2 Remake is coming along? Let me know in the comments section below!