Typographenia said:
So... just keep remaking the earlier games in the series?
It's not like the old teams didn't change up the games some, but how many different games are you realistically going to get from the same pillars in the team?
It has nothing to do with 'change'. It has to do with extremely talented individuals that came together and did some damn creative things. Konami tried to fix what wasn't broken- and they've been bumbling around different outsourced teams for over 4 years now. The result is a once very strong brand name diminishing.
These guys apparently had a lot of ideas. Hell, Imamura even admitted back when SH2 came out that he would love for the series to take a 'Twilight Zone' approach; i.e. different horror stories containing different characters and situations but the primary foundation is the bizarre, multi-dimensional town of Silent Hill. It wouldn't just be SH2-2, SH2-3, SH2-4, ad nauseam.
Production team was on board and it was proposed to help costs because they would be using the SH2 engine (one that, I must say, still looks
great 10 years later).
It was a fantastic idea that would have allowed the series to maintain strong legs among the fanbase for a long time, IMO. KCET shot the idea down and we all know the history post-SH2.
I don't even mind outsourcing. I thought MercurySteam made a fantastic Castlevania game and I am thrilled to see what they do next. The work SonyBend has done on existing franchises has been outstanding.
If these major companies want to outsource their popular franchises, you'd hope they'd do some research and actually take the time to find the right set of minds/talents to be considered appropriate for the respective series.
Double Helix had no idea. They made a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game. Homecoming's final result was right around the level of a fanfic with a little bit of a budget. After various videos, I'm starting to feel the same way with VATRA. Sure, they say all the right things in interviews, but where the hell is all of that promising talk when you showcase the actual game?
But you can't just throw the blame on these outsourced teams.
The reality is that in 1998, KCET wanted to jump on the bandwagon and have their own 'survival horror'. They pulled together a team of ragtags, let them do their thing under minimal upper management supervision, and hopefully ride Capcom's RE wave. It was the potential of low risk/high reward, as SH didn't have near the budget of a RE game.
The end result was an amazingly creative horror game that was so far away from RE it was refreshing for gamers, sold enough to make the production justified, and even formed a faithful cult (no pun intended) following.
In early 2000, with Toyama gone to SCEJ, KCET once again tells 'Team Silent' (now being run by Imamura)- "Do it again. Here's your budget and your deadline" and essentially leaves them alone. KCET was far more invested in their golden goose- MGS2.
All SH fans know what came from that.
The bottom line is: the success got to Konami's head. They no longer had a little niche game with a cult following, they had a bonafide FRANCHISE! What was originally made just to eat into Resident Evil's marketshare became a legitimate competitor.
I don't blame the little outsourced teams for Silent Hill's decline into mediocrity. I blame Konami for overall mismanagement of the series and an apparent either A. lack of understanding as to what made it 'work' or B. simple apathy.
This can be corrected. I just don't think Konami has the ability to do it these days. The series needs to sit on the bench for a while until someone at Konami figures out how to make a game worthy of the vision of the original productions.
