Support NeoGAF

[Jocchan]

I'm just saying that they didn't accept the past as the past. They used the original cast as a jumping point. I'd say Downpour is the first game since SH4 to really try to be its own thing. It doesn't seem like it's going to rely on any nostalgia from the past games.

I doubt it, all the previews are filled with namedrops of Silent Hill 2.

So it didn't have the whole cult subplot with alessa? Wasn't that the point of SH1?

Pretty big Shattered Memories spoiler:

Spoiler

____No_____

 

[G-Fex]

That bewilders me

 

[Dascu]

That bewilders me

Point of SH1 was a father searching for his daughter. Heck, according to one particular ending to the game, the cult didn't even exist.

 

[Jocchan]

That bewilders me

Play it. The game has many flaws, but the atmosphere is top notch and the story is among the best in the series.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I doubt it, all the previews are filled with namedrops of Silent Hill 2.

Because it's pretty much everyone's favorite SH. Everything they've said indicates that there will be very few references to past games. They're avoiding using classic locations, enemies ect.

 

[bumpkin]

The developer would do well to look at games like Alan Wake and Heavy Rain and leapfrog off those games' advancements with regard to psychological intensity.

Using any of the past Silent Hills as barometer for improvement is not enough.

Alan Wake was, in my mind, exactly what a Silent Hill game should be like in terms of ambience, atmosphere and storytelling... The game had some really genuinely creepy moments and it was very playable to boot; the complete opposite of Silent Hill: Homecoming which I stopped playing because I got sick of dying due to its slow clumsy combat.

 

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

"they actually get it"

no, they really don't.

he's still talking about spookiness and how he wants to tactically scare the player but fails to understand that's still not quite what it was about. (see: the entire The Real Silent Hill Experience video series)

 

[brandonh83]

he's still talking about spookiness and how he wants to tactically scare the player but fails to understand that's still not quite what it was about. (see: the entire The Real Silent Hill Experience video series)

Yep. It's not a matter of a few elements-- everything has to come together in such a way that it literally bothers a player to be in any particular environment.

It's not the jump scare or the random noise that scares people. It's the possibility of it happening, and waiting to see if it does.

 

[Jocchan]

Because it's pretty much everyone's favorite SH. Everything they've said indicates that there will be very few references to past games. They're avoiding using classic locations, enemies ect.

I know, and I know it's mostly to sparkle interest after the latest lackluster entries in the series. Silent Hill 2 is regarded as the highest point ever reached by the franchise.
This is why namedropping it is basically equivalent to Sega's "returning to the series' roots".

 

[Shannara4]

The Silent Hill franchise has become just like the Sonic franchise. The next game is the one that is supposed to get it right and rejuvenate the franchise. I think it's time to give up, Konami.

 

[Aske]

What was it about Shattered Memories that appealed so much to those of you who consider it a high point of the franchise?

I get that the psych profiling changing aspects of the game's aesthetic was cool. But where was the atmosphere? Where was the dread, the claustrophobia, the sense of impending misfortune? Every second of that game felt safe, because I knew that there was nothing out there in the game world besides the occasional puzzle. If the world isn't blue, nothing's coming for you. There was no oppressive, pregnant Silent Hill atmosphere - no sense of wandering through a purgatory that was forever in danger of slipping into hell. Everything was fine, or it was blue and I knew I'd be chased for a couple of minutes. Unlike most people, I thought those sequences were fine. Wiimote controls to shake off attackers aside, the chases worked well. The best ones came later and included puzzles. Those were some of the best parts of the game, because they blended the gameplay elements together more seamlessly. But overall the whole experience felt too disconnected. The chases were like a series of mini games rather than an organic component of the game. And the exploration sections felt painfully shallow. The world felt plastic and contrived to me, and not in a clever 'walking around in someone's dream' kind of way.

I guess most of you loved the story. I didn't, but I can see why others would. Was the story enough to make the game one of the best in the series, or were there things about the original SH games that you hated so much that their omission in Shattered Memories is enough to push it beyond the first three in terms of appeal?

I guess I just don't understand how a Silent Hill fan could possibly enjoy the first three games (hell, first four games), and then play Shattered Memories and conclude that it was superior to any one of them in any way.

 

[G-Fex]

Yep. It's not a matter of a few elements-- everything has to come together in such a way that it literally bothers a player to be in any particular environment.

It's not the jump scare or the random noise that scares people. It's the possibility of it happening, and waiting to see if it does.

Disturbing Environments did it for me in Silent Hill 2.

The Apartments

The Prison

 

[Tucah]

This sounds pretty good but I'll keep my expectations low just in case.

 

[RobertM]

Shattered Memories was great and exactly the kind of thing they need to be doing with the franchise -- accepting that the past is the past and trying new things with it.

Actually this doesn't make any sense. If you're going to abandon everything that has been established so far as far as the story, characters, and the premise is concerned, then why the fuck are you calling this game Silent Hill?
I can see it being another disastrous Silent Hill that undermines the premise behind the series. They still don’t “get it” and you would be a fool to believe that after all those outsourced Silent Hill games. Fuck Tomm Hulett and his reimagining bullshit. His head was so up his ass that he had to put psychologist in place of the psychological horror; kidish physics puzzles in place of collection and mind breaking puzzles; combat? forget about it; cult? what cult? its all in her mind; Silent Hill? It's just a town of memories, nothing special about. Every time I hear developers say they "get it", it is more reason for concern than actual relief.

 

[Yuterald]

There is no Yamaoka, it's Vatra Studios, we'll see. My interest in SH games has been in the gutter since Homecoming. If the game does end up being somewhat chill then I'll probably dumpster dive it when it inevitably bombs.

 

[brandonh83]

Disturbing Environments did it for me in Silent Hill 2.

The Apartments

The Prison

And those environments were disturbing because of a multitude of elements that just came together perfectly. You can't just say oh, we have this underground prison, that's scary! The environment must literally make the player not want to be in it at all. When you're thinking, dear god, I've had enough of this place, but in a good way, that's when and only when the team has succeeded.

That's the problem I had with Shattered Memories, well, one of them. I never felt that way when playing the game, it just had these nifty special effects and nothing more. The best environment in that game was the park reserve. That's where a few elements really came together, most notably Yamaoka's music. It was just really spooky.

 

[badcrumble]

Actually this doesn't make any sense. If you're going to abandon everything that has been established so far as far as the story, characters, and the premise is concerned, then why the fuck are you calling this game Silent Hill?
I can see it being another disastrous Silent Hill that undermines the premise behind the series. They still don’t “get it” and you would be a fool to believe that after all those outsourced Silent Hill games. Fuck Tomm Hulett and his reimagining bullshit. His head was so up his ass that he had to put psychologist in place of the psychological horror; kidish physics puzzles in place of collection and mind breaking puzzles; combat? forget about it; cult? what cult? its all in her mind; Silent Hill? It's just a town of memories, nothing special about. Every time I hear developers say they "get it", it is more reason for concern than actual relief.

To be fair, getting rid of the cult was a really good move, because the cult is stupid and has been flogged to death as a plot element in too many of the games.

 

[G-Fex]

And those environments were disturbing because of a multitude of elements that just came together perfectly. You can't just say oh, we have this underground prison, that's scary! The environment must literally make the player not want to be in it at all. When you're thinking, dear god, I've had enough of this place, but in a good way, that's when and only when the team has succeeded.

That's the problem I had with Shattered Memories, well, one of them. I never felt that way when playing the game, it just had these nifty special effects and nothing more. The best environment in that game was the park reserve. That's where a few elements really came together, most notably Yamaoka's music. It was just really spooky.

Pretty much, the environment was one I didn't want to really trek through, the music of something that sounded like a record broken was effective. It really nailed it in those areas, the hospital too.

Even the puzzles were something that fit perfectly in that setting.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I know, and I know it's mostly to sparkle interest after the latest lackluster entries in the series. Silent Hill 2 is regarded as the highest point ever reached by the franchise.
This is why namedropping it is basically equivalent to Sega's "returning to the series' roots".

I agree. It's been the game that's been named dropped during the development of essentially every new SH game. So it doesn't mean a whole lot now. But it seems like they're still trying to create their own game. We aren't going to see Pyramid Head randomly pop up for no apparent reason other than fan service. I think that they're taking the approach that many have been wishing that developers would take. The town gives developers so many opportunities that it doesn't make sense to reuse so much shit from past games. They just need to do their own thing. If it fails then it fails. But at least it'll fail based on their concepts and not because they tried to imitate something Team Silent did.

 

[brandonh83]

To be fair, getting rid of the cult was a really good move, because the cult is stupid and has been flogged to death as a plot element in too many of the games.

I honestly don't mind the cult because I never saw the cult as the driving force behind what's going on in Silent Hill. The cult members end up getting fucked up real bad in the course of trying to "appease the gods" and this and that. They think that they have some control over it but that unknown, mysterious force, whatever is truly behind the evil of the town probably just laughs its ass off at them.

They're just a bunch of crazy loons who are so terrified of Silent Hill that they put themselves in a position that they believe will land them on the good side of whatever malevolent entity is behind the evil nature of the place. They have about as much authority over it as James Sunderland.

 

[MYE]

nvm

 

[timetokill]

How did they accept that the past is the past when they "reimagined" a past game?

Because they just took the general premise and gave a unique story to it. The point was that they didn't just say, "Let's try and ape every 'convention' of the series, no matter how poorly defined or inconsequential to the series.

I'm just saying that they didn't accept the past as the past. They used the original cast as a jumping point. I'd say Downpour is the first game since SH4 to really try to be its own thing. It doesn't seem like it's going to rely on any nostalgia from the past games.

Just because SM used some elements of SH1 as a sort of nod to fans of the series doesn't mean it relied on it. Plenty of people played it that never played the first game and frankly, they didn't need to. They accepted that the first game was done and there was no need to tell that same story again or to be chained by every single convention of the series.

Actually this doesn't make any sense. If you're going to abandon everything that has been established so far as far as the story, characters, and the premise is concerned, then why the fuck are you calling this game Silent Hill?
I can see it being another disastrous Silent Hill that undermines the premise behind the series. They still don’t “get it” and you would be a fool to believe that after all those outsourced Silent Hill games. Fuck Tomm Hulett and his reimagining bullshit. His head was so up his ass that he had to put psychologist in place of the psychological horror; kidish physics puzzles in place of collection and mind breaking puzzles; combat? forget about it; cult? what cult? its all in her mind; Silent Hill? It's just a town of memories, nothing special about. Every time I hear developers say they "get it", it is more reason for concern than actual relief.

Not everything was abandoned.
Every Silent Hill thread turns into this, but everybody has personal opinions on what makes Silent Hill what it is. I thought Shattered Memories was a fresh take on it, and I'd rather play something that tries something new than just trying to keep making SH2 over and over again and failing at it.

 

[badcrumble]

I honestly don't mind the cult because I never saw the cult as the driving force behind what's going on in Silent Hill. The cult members end up getting fucked up real bad in the course of trying to "appease the gods" and this and that. They think that they have some control over it but that unknown, mysterious force, whatever is truly behind the evil of the town probably just laughs its ass off at them.

They're just a bunch of crazy loons who are so terrified of Silent Hill that they put themselves in a position that they believe will land them on the good side of whatever malevolent entity is behind the evil nature of the place. They have about as much authority over it as James Sunderland.

I don't HATE the cult when it pops up, but it's completely unnecessary to make it an important part of the plot in every single game. It was fine in SH1 and SH3 and completely needless in SH4, Origins, and Homecoming, each of which would've been more interesting if their writers hadn't felt obligated to involve the cult somehow.

 

[RedSwirl]

Yep. It's not a matter of a few elements-- everything has to come together in such a way that it literally bothers a player to be in any particular environment.

It's not the jump scare or the random noise that scares people. It's the possibility of it happening, and waiting to see if it does.

That's pretty much what they were talking about in this interview - that it's more about the suspense than the action.

 

[brandonh83]

I don't HATE the cult when it pops up, but it's completely unnecessary to make it an important part of the plot in every single game. It was fine in SH1 and SH3 and completely needless in SH4, Origins, and Homecoming, each of which would've been more interesting if their writers hadn't felt obligated to involve the cult somehow.

Won't disagree there. Especially Homecoming. Origins kind of had solid reasoning as it was supposed to be a prequel to the Alessa plot, as shitty as the writing and execution was, but Homecoming I felt could have been a lot more original. I think Homecoming had its heart in the right place but the team relied too heavily on things that they found "cool" like how neat it is when the world transforms, Pyramid Head, etc. And this is coming from someone who didn't even dislike PH's inclusion in Homecoming.

However, something that these teams keep fucking doing is trying to pimp out the otherworld changing effects. There is nothing scary about it. Showing the world transforming before your eyes takes away from so much that I don't even know where to begin.

Remember in the earlier games when you would just end up in the otherworld without any warning? How it would change in a very creative and subtle fashion? Yeah, I miss that.

 

[MYE]

What was it about Shattered Memories that appealed so much to those of you who consider it a high point of the franchise?

I get that the psych profiling changing aspects of the game's aesthetic was cool. But where was the atmosphere?

It had plenty.

Where was the dread, the claustrophobia, the sense of impending misfortune? Every second of that game felt safe, because I knew that there was nothing out there in the game world besides the occasional puzzle.

I never knew when the Otherworld would take over so no, it didnt feel safe. I was always expecting the calmness to be interrupted by that fucking ice.
And being chased and not being able to fight back is pretty distressing to some.

As for "not being scary". Silent Hill games are not scary (to me).
They are creepy, moody and hopefully have good characters that tell interesting stories. Thats why i play them.

The chases were like a series of mini games rather than an organic component of the game. And the exploration sections felt painfully shallow.

Past Silent Hill games felt like you were controlling a tank....at the bottom of a river.
The worlds felt like small sections of rooms and corridors between loading times. Combat was clunky as hell.

See, its easy to make those sound shitty too.

I guess most of you loved the story. I didn't, but I can see why others would. Was the story enough to make the game one of the best in the series, or were there things about the original SH games that you hated so much that their omission in Shattered Memories is enough to push it beyond the first three in terms of appeal?.

Cult arc is shit. Any attempt to avoid it is a plus in my book. That and as you said, some enjoyed the story. I LOVED it.

I guess I just don't understand how a Silent Hill fan could possibly enjoy the first three games (hell, first four games), and then play Shattered Memories and conclude that it was superior to any one of them in any way.

You made it clear that there is a big difference between those and SM, and even though i dont agree on how diferent you think they are, maybe some love SM for the things that set it apart from the others?
Not that hard to understand, really.

 

[Prime Blue]

So it didn't have the whole cult subplot with alessa? Wasn't that the point of SH1?

The whole point of Shattered Memories was for Climax to develop an original game, then slap the Silent Hill name on it to get Konami to publish it.

"Let me start by pointing out something which a lot of fans haven't grasped yet: there was no homogenous 'Team Silent' that worked on all the Silent Hills," says producer Devin Shatsky.

[...]

"The old Silent Hill team mentioned several times that the series was about 'the town'"

Can't stick to one type of propaganda?

 

[MYE]

Actually this doesn't make any sense. If you're going to abandon everything that has been established so far as far as the story, characters, and the premise is concerned, then why the fuck are you calling this game Silent Hill?
I can see it being another disastrous Silent Hill *ect*

Spoiler tags

Use them

 

[RobertM]

To be fair, getting rid of the cult was a really good move, because the cult is stupid and has been flogged to death as a plot element in too many of the games.

But they are essential in explaining the paranormal events and Alessa's influence on the town and the people who venture into it/used to live there. No cult means no Alessa, no Sillent Hill, no paranormal events, no nightmares. So what are you left with? A child and a father, wait...that sounds like Shattered Memories.
I love people who are citing tank controls as their issue with the game. Did you guys enjoy Homecoming then? Tank controls have some design premise and so do fixed camera angles.

 

[badcrumble]

But they are essential in explaining the paranormal events and Alessa's influence on the town and the people who venture into it/used to live there. No cult means no Alessa, no Sillent Hill, no paranormal events, no nightmares. So what are you left with? A child and a father, wait...that sounds like Shattered Memories.
I love people who are citing tank controls as their issue with the game. Did you guys enjoy Homecoming then? Tank controls have some design premise and so do fixed camera angles.

SH1-3, 1 and 2 especially, make it clear that whatever's wrong with the town predates Alessa and the cult by hundreds of years and that the cult barely understands a hundredth of what they think they do.

edit: no cult means the two better stories in the series

 

[Prime Blue]

Spoiler tags

Use them

Interview threads.

Stay out of them.

 

[Vrakanox]

Agreed. I like the generalizations made in the article though. I remember the good old days, when all SH fans considered SH2 to be the best in the series, and all ranked the first three games just above the forth while generally despising the follow-ups. It was a golden age, when Silent Hill fans were united against SH:Lite games. These days, Shattered Memories and Homecoming have fans of their own, and they'll even rank those games above the three originals.

SH: Origins was the closest thing a western developer has made to a true SH game, but it suffered because it felt too by-the-numbers. Fans wanted new games true to the series' roots, but they also wanted them to evolve, like the sequels of any major franchise. Homecoming was a fine horror game, but it wasn't close to a solid SH title. It took too many cues from the movie, and its atmosphere was based more in style than substance. Shattered Memories had some interesting ideas, but it failed as a horror game because it segregated the monsters from the exploration, killing any sense of trepidation the player might have felt wandering around the environments; and the plot twist at the end was Sixth Sense obvious. Nothing about it felt like a Silent Hill title in terms of atmosphere or story. As far as I'm concerned it's the worst of the bunch.

I'll keep an eye on Downpour. It's not that I don't believe any western developer can nail a Silent Hill game, since the series' Japanese horror aesthetic is so heavily rooted in western traditions. The games are as much Twin Peaks as they are Ringu. Fingers crossed. I'll hope for the best, but expect something mediocre.

Well said.

 

[G-Fex]

But they are essential in explaining the paranormal events and Alessa's influence on the town and the people who venture into it/used to live there. No cult means no Alessa, no Sillent Hill, no paranormal events, no nightmares. So what are you left with? A child and a father, wait...that sounds like Shattered Memories.
I love people who are citing tank controls as their issue with the game. Did you guys enjoy Homecoming then? Tank controls have some design premise and so do fixed camera angles.

Pretty much, even the cult was in the second game well just mentioned.

Like that Real silent hill experience says; The whole area was sacred land to it's original native american residents but the land became corrupted and turned dark once the cult began it's dealings in the town itself.

 

[Neon_Icarus]

Getting rid of the dark fantasy elements that the cult brings to the games won't make them somehow more cerebral or deeper. I'd argue that even SH1 or SH3 weren't really about the cult. It was just window dressing for the exploration of other themes. I guess you could say that they weren't character studies like SH2, however.

While Shattered Memories was a decent game, it's

Spoiler

It was all just in your head lol!

- story premise is hardly what the series needs either. Completely lacking the atmosphere of the Team Silent games hardly helped either.

 

[MYE]

Interview threads.

Stay out of them.

I see DOWNPOUR on the title, not SM.

 

[Prime Blue]

I see DOWNPOUR on the title, not SM.

Then what was spoilered? He just mentioned the commonly known lame twist that it's not your father's Silent Hill.

 

[MYE]

Then what was spoilered? He just mentioned the commonly known lame twist that it's not your father's Silent Hill.

Oh its a lame twist. That makes it okay to fuck it up for others on a thread that isnt even about that game.

Carry on then.

 

[Aske]

MYE - thanks for posting. I hate to do point-by-point, but it seems the most efficient way to address your responses...

It had plenty.

Bad choice of words on my part, atmosphere is subjective. But comparing any of the environments in Shattered Memories to those of the first four games seems to highlight just how stark they were in SM.

SM:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeXxQya1dss

Silent Hill 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTUwE9gQzHk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm0-b__JaTM&feature=fvwrel

Silent Hill 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=952NoFhRBGA

In all cases, skip ahead to 3:00 or so to get to the gameplay. Check SH4's second link for third person gameplay. Pay close attention to the sound effects, and use of silence. Silent Hill 4, generally regarded as the weakest of the original games, is just oozing with subtle visual and audial cues calculated to unsettle. Glancing out of the window at the busy street, or through the peephole. The sound design in the echoing subway station, and the way the objects are arranged.

Even SH1, with Harry's awful voice acting and the weak PS1 visuals, begins with the chase sequence in the fog and the sense of being slowly drawn in to a town rather than immediately down a series of corridors. The direction of this sequence is magnificent - the world alters slowly, subtly and horrifically in the truest sense of the word.

Shattered Memories is atmospheric, sure, but it doesn't have that same attention to detail. Areas of the deserted town generally feel nothing but empty or abandoned; there's much less of a mysterious sense of some unsettling event having recently happened.

I never knew when the Otherworld would take over so no, it didnt feel safe. I was always expecting the calmness to be interrupted by that fucking ice.
And being chased and not being able to fight back is pretty distressing to some.

The transition killed the surprise. In the first games, you could wander from the comparatively safe fog-town into the hellish rusted nightmare world without even realising it. By contrast, the ice world was never subtle. It's not there and the world is totally safe, then gameplay stops, the ice sets in, and the chase begins. When the chase is over, you know your character is now completely safe for a good chunk of time. There isn't any possibility that the ice world will be back for several scenes. And the non-nightmare town of the old Silent Hill games was never safe. The world might shift from overtly menacing to merely creepy and even to apparently harmless; but nothing was ever truly safe. The sense of impending disaster was universal, and used to brilliant effect in places like SH2's prison.

Regarding the chase mechanics themselves, as I said, I think they were fairly well done.

As for "not being scary". Silent Hill games are not scary (to me).
They are creepy, moody and hopefully have good characters that tell interesting stories. Thats why i play them.

You'll note that I never used the word 'scary' in my post. We agree on this point completely. Which is why...

Past Silent Hill games felt like you were controlling a tank....at the bottom of a river.
The worlds felt like small sections of rooms and corridors between loading times. Combat was clunky as hell.

See, its easy to make those sound shitty too.

...Things like this didn't bother me. I would never defend these gameplay elements. Combat can be tense and humbling without being clunky, and tank controls are needlessly difficult: there are better ways to slow down player movement. As for the worlds feeling like small sections of rooms and corridors between loading times; in past SH games this was intentional, to contrast with the more open nature of the town's streets. I don't think the jarring disconnect between the ice world and the normal world in SM was intentional.

Cult arc is shit. Any attempt to avoid it is a plus in my book. That and as you said, some enjoyed the story. I LOVED it.

Is it fair to say that appreciation of the story adds the greatest weight in favour of SM over other SH games amongst most of its fans? I'm the same - the story of SH2 alone elevates it above 1, 3 and 4 for me, though I also think it's the strongest game overall for other reasons.

 

[TheJollyCorner]

...and thus the on-going battle between the Shattered Memories haters vs. defense force hath spilled onto the innocent crops of yet another peaceful farmland....


come on, guys.




On topic:

I'm a sucker. Each time I end up believing these guys in the interviews. "Yeah! It sounds like they 'get it'!" As others have pointed out- it's all about the delivery; the final product.

I do have to say I don't like how Shatsky downplayed 'Team Silent' as some faceless misconception. Although some team members came and went, a decent core of them worked from SH1 through SH4. Takuhi mentioned nine in particular earlier, but it's also worth mentioning Tsuboyama and Imamura, as well. These artists/programmers/writers made up the KCET 'Team Silent'- and their work was recognizable through 3 (arguably 4) games.

 

[ChackanKun]

Sounds good. Tom Waltz is a great writer, so I have faith on this one!

 

[I NEED SCISSORS]

I don't know how anyone can say they "get it" when the game currently looks more like Alan Wake 2 than Silent Hill 8.

 

[TheJollyCorner]

I don't know how anyone can say they "get it" when the game currently looks more like Alan Wake 2 than Silent Hill 8.

well... we've only seen basically one little foresty section. The initial trailer showed some great town and interior scenes.

But yeah... I hope there's a lot more variety.

 

[Dynamite Ringo Matsuri]

I know I'm part of the problem. I can actually relate to all of the posters in the Sonic threads because I'm always hyped for an SH game. It's one of my favorite franchises so it's hard not to be excited. And for what it's worth, I really liked Shattered Memories. I couldn't care less for the irritating chase sequences, but I loved the story and he desolate atmosphere. I'm really hoping Vatra take SH in the right direction, because Climax's effort gives me hope.

 

[disappeared]

I don't know how anyone can say they "get it" when the game currently looks more like Alan Wake 2 than Silent Hill 8.

Silent Hill 2 looked like Alan Wake ten years before Alan Wake came out. What's your point?

 

[Lime]

I don't know how anyone can say they "get it" when the game currently looks more like Alan Wake 2 than Silent Hill 8.

Problem is, "it" is incredibly controversial and debatable. Demarcating what denotes Silent Hill is almost impossible, considering the subtlety, esoteric and obscure explanations of the first couple of games.

Vatra and every other developer of the series would have been far better off if Konami had laid the series to rest after 4 and instead focused on new horror IPs in the same vein as Silent Hill. Or if the developers actually would have tried cutting all ties with the former games, instead of trying to mimic earlier entries (basically what solidsnakex said earlier in the thread)

Silent Hill 2 looked like Alan Wake ten years before Alan Wake came out. What's your point?

Although I see where you are coming from, I strongly disagree with Alan Wake and Silent Hill 2 looking alike, considering the actual locations of Silent Hill 2 (Apartments, Hospital, Prison, Hotel). Alan Wake is remembered for its generic forests, Silent Hill 2 for its visually amazing 'Otherworld'.

 

[I NEED SCISSORS]

Silent Hill 2 looked like Alan Wake ten years before Alan Wake came out. What's your point?

It really didn't... at all.

Downpour looks remarkably similar to Alan Wake in almost ever facet - lighting style, shaders, "cabin in the woods" art design, the mountainous environment, the cable cars.

 

[disappeared]

It really didn't... at all.

Downpour looks remarkably similar to Alan Wake in almost ever facet - lighting style, shaders, "cabin in the woods" art design, the mountainous environment, the cable cars.

It's a case of both series, both Silent Hill and Alan Wake, being heavily inspired by Twin Peaks.

 

[Cosmozone]

Before I read the interview I already knew they'd mention SH2 and how they're trying to live up to it. Everybody says that, so it means nothing.

 

[Acquiescence]

It really didn't... at all.

Downpour looks remarkably similar to Alan Wake in almost ever facet - lighting style, shaders, "cabin in the woods" art design, the mountainous environment, the cable cars.

Downpour looks like Alan Wake in approximately 6 of the couple o' dozen (give or take) screenshots that have been released thus far. And even then, at that stage in the game the protagonist hasn't actually set foot in Silent Hill yet; he's still on the outskirts of the town headed towards it. Who gives a shit about mountainous environments and a cable car if you only see them at the beginning segment of the game and never again.

 

[theinfinityissue]

I think it's completely a moot point to argue whether or not the new devs "get" Silent Hill, because there's one way and ONLY one way to find that out: Sit down, turn off the lights, and see what kind of game it is by playing it. There is no other path. All the interviews, videos, and previews in the world won't reveal one shred of true light on the subject like actually experiencing the game will. And I, for one, simply can't wait to put it to the test.