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Silent Hill PS3 / Broken Covenant : Climax's 2006 Unreal Engine Pitch

B

Borman

Member
Back in early 2006 when Climax LA was working on Silent Hill Origins, they were also trying to get some then-next gen projects off the ground. Konami was entertaining pitches for a console Silent Hill, so they used some of the assets they had already made for Origins to create this pitch using early UE3 tech.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8wS2nUxYcY

It was actually two pitches in one by the end, as Silent Hill didn't seem to go anywhere but the team was proud of their concept. So they also pitched it as Broken Covenant, which was essentially the same idea, minus the Silent Hill ties.

I haven't found anything updated past August 2006, and it obviously didn't get picked up, so that looks to be the end of the road for the game.

It would have featured stealth sections, some action, a somewhat open world, and a bit of a change for Silent Hill games at the time in taking place in Arizona.

Of course, people wouldn't have been pleased regardless since it isn't a "Team Silent" game, but I still thought this was an interesting pitch.

fwndX96.png


48EeJzX.png


btgNGnB.png
Click to expand...
 
Whompa02

Whompa02

Member
Seems interesting to be honest. I would have been interested in at least giving it a try.

Not sure about the priest character though tbh. Some of the narrative seems a little goofy. Also shooting against demons with guns...eh...
 
B

Borman

Member
It's fun checking out these pitches. Some of them are pretty bleh, but with this one it was obvious that the small group really cared.
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
Borman said:
It's fun checking out these pitches. Some of them are pretty bleh, but with this one it was obvious that the small group really cared.
Click to expand...

Climax easily had the best to offer from a Western perspective at the time. Origins and Shattered Memories to me were both good games. Downpour wasn't half bad either, but more than a few dumb decisions in it and questionable ideas hurt it.
 
B

Borman

Member
To be fair, it's one of those things they probably threw in as that link. Pitch what you think they want. Just two words on a page
 
M

mollipen

Member
Jawmuncher said:
Climax easily had the best to offer from a Western perspective at the time. Origins and Shattered Memories to me were both good games. Downpour wasn't half bad either, but more than a few dumb decisions in it and questionable ideas hurt it.
Click to expand...

Downpour is a way, way better Silent Hill game than Shattered Memories was, even if you GAF doofuses are in love with the latter. It had some utterly garbage parts to it, the biggest of which was the laughably bad monsters and anything to do with fighting them—but when it worked, oh lord did it work.

I actually liked Origins for was it was. To me, it felt like the closest thing to an actual sequel to the original Silent Hill that we'd get in terms of gameplay. However, weapon breakage was a stupid decision, I hated what they did to Lisa, and it was a game that never needed to nor should have existed. Sometimes it's better to not explain how certain things happened or came to be.

Homecoming was somebody finding a big "how to make a Silent Hill game" instruction manual and following it step-by-step, and then filling in their own ideas where they didn't understand something. I can't say it's good, but I also can't say it's bad—it just exists.
 
T

Taruranto

Member
mollipen said:
Downpour is a way, way better Silent Hill game than Shattered Memories was, even if you GAF doofuses are in love with the latter. It had some utterly garbage parts to it, the biggest of which was the laughably bad monsters and anything to do with fighting them—but when it worked, oh lord did it work.
Click to expand...

Downpour felt like a "PS1/PS2 third person survival horror on next gen" which was NICE, after so many first person horror/TPS pretending to be Survival Horror.

The game had some nice ideas too (The sub-quests) and some parts of the narrative were genuinely interesting. (Of course, they do not touch Silent Hill team best efforts)

... but ultimately, it was brought down by the team inexperience, a lot of stuff really didn't work or were generally mediocre. (For example, the game final dungeon strips you of all your items/ammo/etc essentially making all your progresses until that point, including the sub-quests, moot. WHY.) It feels like the game could have been a very good game with maybe a more experienced director and whatnot.

Among the three non-Team Silent works (Homecoming, 0 and Downpour), I would say it's the best. SHO is like a bad Silent Hill 1 fanfiction explaining and showing things that shouldn have never been explained, and Homecoming is just... ugh. A genuinely terrible game.
 
fart town usa

fart town usa

Gold Member
Not to be off-topic, I really don't have anything to add to the topic, but I never really understood all the distaste for Homecoming.

I don't necessarily think it's a brilliant or flawless game but the atmosphere to me is top notch. Man, Yamaoka's sound work in that game puts me on edge every time I play it. I find that game to be really unnerving and frightening.
 
B

brandonh83

Banned
stfuppercut said:
Downpour isn't awful either. Honestly the game would have been a decent entry if it was technically sound. The framerate and tearing on the PS3 version legitimately gave me a headache.
Click to expand...

I loved Downpour and found the story fantastic. It was held back by some bad technical issues.
 
R

Ridley327

Member
stfuppercut said:
Downpour isn't awful either. Honestly the game would have been a decent entry if it was technically sound. The framerate and tearing on the PS3 version legitimately gave me a headache.
Click to expand...

It really should have had a PC port, just so the hardware could have brute-forced past the technical problems. It would have a much better reputation without those issues present.
 
T

Taruranto

Member
fart town usa said:
Not to be off-topic, I really don't have anything to add to the topic, but I never really understood all the distaste for Homecoming.

I don't necessarily think it's a brilliant or flawless game but the atmosphere to me is top notch. Man, Yamaoka's sound work in that game puts me on edge every time I play it. I find that game to be really unnerving and frightening.
Click to expand...


The plot was awful*. Homecoming version of the cult felt like a bastardized, simplified version of SH1-3 cult/story so that even people who only watched the movie could understand it.
The monster design was forgettable. You even fight FUCKING HUMANS, and not even Silent Hill 3 "Are they monsters or humans??" version of them.
The focus was on the combat, but it was generally awful. I remember a lot of rolling around in narrow corridors... do Silent Hill fans want a lot of combat anyway?
I don't even remember if it had puzzles
It was horribly unbalanced, you could go hours without finding a new healing item. Did I mention how focused on the combat it was? Yeah. There are like, less healing items than Silent Hill 3 on hard. Scarlet was a particularly infamous boss because it.
I can listen to the OST on Youtube.


* People who think Homecoming team had any grasp of the Silent Hill storyline should read about Homecoming originally pitch. It's hysterical.
 
fart town usa

fart town usa

Gold Member
Taruranto said:
The plot was awful*. Homecoming version of the cult felt like a bastardized, simplified version of SH1-3 cult/story so that even people who only watched the movie could understand it.
The monster design was forgettable. You even fight FUCKING HUMANS, and not even Silent Hill 3 "Are they monsters or humans??" version of them.
The focus was on the combat, but it was generally awful. I remember a lot of rolling around in narrow corridors... do Silent Hill fans want a lot of combat anyway?
I don't even remember if it had puzzles
It was horribly unbalanced, you could go hours without finding a new healing item. Did I mention how focused on the combat it was? Yeah. There are like, less healing items than Silent Hill 3 on hard. Scarlet was a particularly infamous boss because it.
I can listen to the OST on Youtube.


* People who think Homecoming team had any grasp of the Silent Hill storyline should read about Homecoming originally pitch. It's hysterical.
Click to expand...

Lol, fair enough
 
H

How About No

Member
Not really sad it didn't get made, but sounds better than Homecoming

The buildings coming out of the ground or materializing sounds interesting too

fart town usa said:
Not to be off-topic, I really don't have anything to add to the topic, but I never really understood all the distaste for Homecoming.

I don't necessarily think it's a brilliant or flawless game but the atmosphere to me is top notch. Man, Yamaoka's sound work in that game puts me on edge every time I play it. I find that game to be really unnerving and frightening.
Click to expand...

I honestly dislike Homecoming so much that I can't even enjoy the otherwise good soundtrack in solitary lol
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

Member
Borman said:
Surprised there's no pyramid head spinoff series at this point
Click to expand...

Quiet! Konami might hear about this and actually do so!

Taruranto said:
* People who think Homecoming team had any grasp of the Silent Hill storyline should read about Homecoming originally pitch. It's hysterical.
Click to expand...

I'm currently playing 3, so I still have two games to go before I reach Homecoming. So was the pitch really that terrible?
 
L

Lime

Member
over the shoulder cam *shudders*

cool to see though. I still am disappointed that Konami had Climax change Shattered Memories into a reboot of SH1 instead of a standalone title with the series' second female protagonist

SilentHillColdHeart-pitch_00_cover.jpg
SilentHillColdHeart-pitch_01_intro.jpg
coldheartbook.jpg
Click to expand...
 
G

Garlador

Member
Lime said:
over the shoulder cam *shudders*

cool to see though. I still am disappointed that Konami had Climax change Shattered Memories into a reboot of SH1 instead of a standalone title with the series' second female protagonist
Click to expand...

Silent Hill always had far more potential than Konami was ever willing to give it a chance on.

"Put in Pyramid Head. Make it like the old games. More action! Just put in SH1 characters. Throw in another creepy kid. Etc."

A lot of the concepts thrown out are very promising. No guarantee they would've panned out, but I imagine they at least would have brought more fresh ideas to the series than what we got.

I'm still amazed we got P.T... and not even surprised Konami balked at it, even after its positive reception.
 
S

Sun Bather

Member
Everything about this sounds and looks terrible. I would say thank fuck some common sense denied this to be made.


Borman said:
Of course, people wouldn't have been pleased regardless since it isn't a "Team Silent" game, but I still thought this was an interesting pitch.
Click to expand...

What kind of Tomm huelett thinking is this.
 
S

Sun Bather

Member
Fantastical said:
Shattered Memories is fantastic.
Click to expand...

I think it's alright. Which is a great deal more than you can say about something like homecoming and book of memories. But really, at the end of the day, it didn't come close to 1 to 3. I would even prefer 4 to it really. But it's a decent game and at least doesn't just try to badly copy the old games, without understanding them at all. So it's certainly the game out of all the post team silent games, that I respect the most.
 
P

Peter Ian Staker

Member
Taruranto said:
Downpour felt like a "PS1/PS2 third person survival horror on next gen" which was NICE, after so many first person horror/TPS pretending to be Survival Horror.

The game had some nice ideas too (The sub-quests) and some parts of the narrative were genuinely interesting. (Of course, they do not touch Silent Hill team best efforts)

... but ultimately, it was brought down by the team inexperience, a lot of stuff really didn't work or were generally mediocre. (For example, the game final dungeon strips you of all your items/ammo/etc essentially making all your progresses until that point, including the sub-quests, moot. WHY.) It feels like the game could have been a very good game with maybe a more experienced director and whatnot.

Among the three non-Team Silent works (Homecoming, 0 and Downpour), I would say it's the best. SHO is like a bad Silent Hill 1 fanfiction explaining and showing things that shouldn have never been explained, and Homecoming is just... ugh. A genuinely terrible game.
Click to expand...

That's what you get when you want to outsource your game development on the cheap.
No offense to the people at Vatra but I am pretty sure Konami didn't give the game to an inexperienced team in the Czech Republic because quality was their primary concern.

The best non-Team Silent game for me was clearly Shattered Memories because ,even though it didn't have very good gameplay design, it had a genuinely good story.
Add to that some good art and graphics(for the Wii) and it confidently rises above the rest of the other western developed Silent Hill games.

Sun Bather said:
I think it's alright. Which is a great deal more than you can say about something like homecoming and book of memories. But really, at the end of the day, it didn't come close to 1 to 3. I would even prefer 4 to it really. But it's a decent game and at least doesn't just try to badly copy the old games, without understanding them at all. So it's certainly the game out of all the post team silent games, that I respect the most.
Click to expand...

It copies a lot of story beats from 1-3 but at least does it in a genuinely tasteful way.
It uses them to subvert fan expectation in a similar way to MGS2.
 
H

How About No

Member
-shadow- said:
Quiet! Konami might hear about this and actually do so!



I'm currently playing 3, so I still have two games to go before I reach Homecoming. So was the pitch really that terrible?
Click to expand...
Alessa and Josh super-saiyan battle for control of Silent Hill
so the final game at least showed some restraint
 
T

tintin1029

Member
Sun Bather said:
I think it's alright. Which is a great deal more than you can say about something like homecoming and book of memories. But really, at the end of the day, it didn't come close to 1 to 3. I would even prefer 4 to it really. But it's a decent game and at least doesn't just try to badly copy the old games, without understanding them at all. So it's certainly the game out of all the post team silent games, that I respect the most.
Click to expand...

It's not a good Silent Hill game, but it's a fantastic story driven horror game imo.
 
B

Borman

Member
Lime said:
over the shoulder cam *shudders*

cool to see though. I still am disappointed that Konami had Climax change Shattered Memories into a reboot of SH1 instead of a standalone title with the series' second female protagonist
Click to expand...

I actually have a slightly updated pitch of this one, in the sense that it lost a placeholder image that is in the PDF version online.
 
L

Look! The Pie!

Member
-shadow- said:
Quiet! Konami might hear about this and actually do so!

I'm currently playing 3, so I still have two games to go before I reach Homecoming. So was the pitch really that terrible?
Click to expand...

First of all, it would have been a trilogy. You think Homecoming is bad? Well, imagine three games even worse than what we ended up getting. Let's see...Heather was planned to return, Elle would be revealed to be a grown up Laura from SH2 (get it, "L?" Even though Laura was an orphan and Elle had a family, which Double Helix apparently forgot about). There would have been MUCH more stuff imported from the movie, and the finale would have involved Alessa (representing fire) and Josh (representing water) having a supernatural battle over Toluca Lake for control of the town. Yeah.

As much as Team Silent fans love to give Tomm Hulett shit, he helped stop all that from happening.

legacyzero said:
Good thing. You'd done enough to Silent Hill, Climax.
Click to expand...

Bye. Shattered Memories is a legit high point for the series and even Origins is better than SH4 from a pure gameplay perspective.
 
L

luminous

Member
Look! The Pie! said:
First of all, it would have been a trilogy. You think Homecoming is bad? Well, imagine three games even worse than what we ended up getting. Let's see...Heather was planned to return, Elle would be revealed to be a grown up Laura from SH2 (get it, "L?" Even though Laura was an orphan and Elle had a family, which Double Helix apparently forgot about). There would have been MUCH more stuff imported from the movie, and the finale would have involved Alessa (representing fire) and Josh (representing water) having a supernatural battle over Toluca Lake for control of the town. Yeah.

As much as Team Silent fans love to give Tomm Hulett shit, he helped stop all that from happening.
Click to expand...

Just thinking about the possibility that this could've been what actually happened made me physically cringe so hard jfc. Especially the part of Alessa randomly appearing and fighting the literally who kid. This reads like really terribad fanfiction
 
F

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
As a Silent Hill game, yuck. Which is super hypocritical of me because right now I'd buy a new Silent Hill game in a heartbeat regardless of how terrible it was. I am one of those suckers that bought Downpour at $60, but I think the fans are just tired of Western people making Silent Hill games. Part of the excitement for Silent Hills was Japanese development again.

As an independent horror game, yeah that might have been cool. Just going off that prototype, I saw some cool ideas at play even if the general gameplay sounded very meh to me(the barricades and vehicle sections mostly). That end where the church rose through the building is pretty cool, enemies made of swarms of bugs is pretty cool, and a story about a man going to save his brother when he joined a cult sounds like the building blocks of a decent horror story. man, i really hope some big name publisher goes "wouldn't it be cool if we made an expensive horror game? Seems like people were really disappointed Silent Hills became nothing."
 
D

Defuser

Member
Isn't Origins is by Climax UK not LA? Since they struggle doing Origins that it had to be handed over to UK branch?
 
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