Silent Hill's decay and the Konami virus
Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2024 3:53 am
I've stated this a few times over the years here, but I used to be a HUGE Silent Hill fan from back in the Team Silent days before Konami disbanded them. I thought the series hit rock bottom after the crappy western takes. Fuck was I wrong...
Silent Hill has been dragged to depths lower than I could have ever imagined by Neo-Konami. I had mild hopes of some kind of return to form after they announced Silent Hill F a year or so ago,but those fantasies have been ended by Silent Hill by Ascension, Short Letter and the SH2 remake(imagined). At this point, Konami has just reduced Silent Hill to a brand name that they clearly aim to use as the moniker for any horror-ish cashin they concoct.
The biggest problem with Silent Hill is that 95% of people just obsess over SH2's dramatic characters and its tropes as being what Silent Hill as a whole is about. SH2 is like the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part3(Stardust Crusaders now) was back in the day where no one knew or cared about any other arcs. Just part 3 and its memes. Its all the average fanboy seemed give a fuck about.
Every time people talked about Silent Hill, it was always "Pyramid head" or "Angela" because of her sexual abuse theme which westerns just ate up. They love anything that portrays sex negatively, and romanticize mental health issues and their inclusion in media.
The things I liked about Silent Hill is that, while everything revolved around the town, no 2 games share the same theme. SH1 was about saving your child and stopping plans of its cult, SH2 was about personal psychological trauma and guilt, SH3 was about revenge and greed, and SH4 was about obsession and delusion. The 5th "Team Silent" Silent Hill, which never got made, was going to be about "fear in the light". The other thing is what really made it special. Silent Hill, as stated by its original creators, was a Japanese take on western style horror. This is why no western made version could ever properly capture what made the games great. Its missing half of what made is special.
Ever since Team Silent was disbanded and the I.P. was whored out to different western devs and movie directors, people have just constantly tried to rehash Silent Hill 2, recycling the psychological trauma theme over and over. The worst thing to come of this is the endless recycling of Pyramid Head. This is similar to what happened to Tropico where the first game was about being an Island dictator, the second was about being a pirate, then, following the original creators losing the I.P., every game after the second has been about being an island dictator.
I've never before seen a video that so perfectly incapsulates my feelings about what happened to Pyramid head. Its almost like this was quoting my posts from the Hell's Descent forum back when that was still around. I was saying all this shit over a decade ago almost word for word. That they turned Pyramid head into Pinhead. A character that constantly has his lore and thematic presence cheapened to milk his popularity because people think he looks cool. They stick him or something like him into everything they can.
I hadn't kept up with news about it for a long time because I saw it as a dead do to the massive suckage of modern Konami, but seeing that Ito himself confirmed what I was saying years ago about Pyramid Head only supposing to have existed for James Sunderland in SH2 is a relief. All the other SH fans would echo the false claims that he was some entity that was a part of the towns history itself(even though Ito confirmed that was not the case) would just foam at the mouth at any mention or inclusion of Pyramid Head anywhere in anything. They were complete namesake fans that followed Silent Hill, not because of its content or creativity, but its brand name.
It comes as know surprised to learn that, in a now cancelled Silent Hill game that Ito tried to make a few years ago, he was going to have Pyramid Head get killed in the first scene because he hates his own creation so much do to how bastardized and overused it has become. He literally said he regrets ever having created the Pyramid Head.
This video sums up the short message and why it sucks thoroughly. He calls it a rip on Kojima's PT(which even that "I" thought was a garbage derivative knock-off), but that is giving it too much credit. This is just a cheaper Outlast knockoff. Run from unkillable pursuer enemy through narrow corridors until you collect the "key"(plot device item needed to move the story along) to end the chase sequence. Cue the injection of progressive themes and repeated trigger warning for the most shallow of garbage.
Silent Hill 2's combat trailer dropped and it was blasted for how awful it looked.
The worse thing to come of this is the confirmation that Konami has, indeed, retconned the lore of the entire franchise to make it where Silent Hill is now just a name they can glue own anything by turning it into a "phenomenon" instead of an actual location with mystical influence on its surrounding and inhabitants including the fog. Its now jus a trope they can use whenever its convenient.
When I first saw the trailer for Silent Hill f and saw how Japanese it looked(remember that Silent Hill is an actual place in the U.S. in the game world) I wondered how it was going to work. Like, maybe they would be exchange students or something.
How naive I was. After seeing the retcon they did to the lore in SH: TheShort Message, its clear that this is going to be the premise for Silent hill f and that The Short Message was just released to establish this as the new lore of the Silent Hill franchise.
Silent Hill f is going to be shit with a big budget...
Silent Hill has been dragged to depths lower than I could have ever imagined by Neo-Konami. I had mild hopes of some kind of return to form after they announced Silent Hill F a year or so ago,but those fantasies have been ended by Silent Hill by Ascension, Short Letter and the SH2 remake(imagined). At this point, Konami has just reduced Silent Hill to a brand name that they clearly aim to use as the moniker for any horror-ish cashin they concoct.
The biggest problem with Silent Hill is that 95% of people just obsess over SH2's dramatic characters and its tropes as being what Silent Hill as a whole is about. SH2 is like the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part3(Stardust Crusaders now) was back in the day where no one knew or cared about any other arcs. Just part 3 and its memes. Its all the average fanboy seemed give a fuck about.
Every time people talked about Silent Hill, it was always "Pyramid head" or "Angela" because of her sexual abuse theme which westerns just ate up. They love anything that portrays sex negatively, and romanticize mental health issues and their inclusion in media.
The things I liked about Silent Hill is that, while everything revolved around the town, no 2 games share the same theme. SH1 was about saving your child and stopping plans of its cult, SH2 was about personal psychological trauma and guilt, SH3 was about revenge and greed, and SH4 was about obsession and delusion. The 5th "Team Silent" Silent Hill, which never got made, was going to be about "fear in the light". The other thing is what really made it special. Silent Hill, as stated by its original creators, was a Japanese take on western style horror. This is why no western made version could ever properly capture what made the games great. Its missing half of what made is special.
Ever since Team Silent was disbanded and the I.P. was whored out to different western devs and movie directors, people have just constantly tried to rehash Silent Hill 2, recycling the psychological trauma theme over and over. The worst thing to come of this is the endless recycling of Pyramid Head. This is similar to what happened to Tropico where the first game was about being an Island dictator, the second was about being a pirate, then, following the original creators losing the I.P., every game after the second has been about being an island dictator.
I've never before seen a video that so perfectly incapsulates my feelings about what happened to Pyramid head. Its almost like this was quoting my posts from the Hell's Descent forum back when that was still around. I was saying all this shit over a decade ago almost word for word. That they turned Pyramid head into Pinhead. A character that constantly has his lore and thematic presence cheapened to milk his popularity because people think he looks cool. They stick him or something like him into everything they can.
I hadn't kept up with news about it for a long time because I saw it as a dead do to the massive suckage of modern Konami, but seeing that Ito himself confirmed what I was saying years ago about Pyramid Head only supposing to have existed for James Sunderland in SH2 is a relief. All the other SH fans would echo the false claims that he was some entity that was a part of the towns history itself(even though Ito confirmed that was not the case) would just foam at the mouth at any mention or inclusion of Pyramid Head anywhere in anything. They were complete namesake fans that followed Silent Hill, not because of its content or creativity, but its brand name.
It comes as know surprised to learn that, in a now cancelled Silent Hill game that Ito tried to make a few years ago, he was going to have Pyramid Head get killed in the first scene because he hates his own creation so much do to how bastardized and overused it has become. He literally said he regrets ever having created the Pyramid Head.
This video sums up the short message and why it sucks thoroughly. He calls it a rip on Kojima's PT(which even that "I" thought was a garbage derivative knock-off), but that is giving it too much credit. This is just a cheaper Outlast knockoff. Run from unkillable pursuer enemy through narrow corridors until you collect the "key"(plot device item needed to move the story along) to end the chase sequence. Cue the injection of progressive themes and repeated trigger warning for the most shallow of garbage.
Silent Hill 2's combat trailer dropped and it was blasted for how awful it looked.
The worse thing to come of this is the confirmation that Konami has, indeed, retconned the lore of the entire franchise to make it where Silent Hill is now just a name they can glue own anything by turning it into a "phenomenon" instead of an actual location with mystical influence on its surrounding and inhabitants including the fog. Its now jus a trope they can use whenever its convenient.
When I first saw the trailer for Silent Hill f and saw how Japanese it looked(remember that Silent Hill is an actual place in the U.S. in the game world) I wondered how it was going to work. Like, maybe they would be exchange students or something.
How naive I was. After seeing the retcon they did to the lore in SH: TheShort Message, its clear that this is going to be the premise for Silent hill f and that The Short Message was just released to establish this as the new lore of the Silent Hill franchise.
Silent Hill f is going to be shit with a big budget...