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Silent Hill Origins Interviews
Game Informer: A lot of Silent Hill fans are assuming that Origins is going
to be remake of the first game...
William Oertel: Silent Hill: Origins is going to be a prequel to Silent Hill
One. It’s not a remake. I know that a lot of people were clamoring for a remake
or they were thinking it was going to be a remake. The idea there was, "Why put
all the time and effort into something that everyone already knows?" Yeah, you
get nice graphics but people are going to play it and be like, "Well, it looks
nice and the voice work is better but I already know how it ends." My personal
creative preference would be to not to tell the same story but to take the story
to a different angle.
GI: Can you set up the storyline for Origins?
Oertel: You play as a character named Travis O’Grady and he is a truck driver.
He has his own set of issues and the town, of course, has its own complex and
they sort of join. So he’s going to go through the town but he just want to get
out. But as he does go through the town, like all Silent Hill characters, they
learn more about themselves. They find out what their problems are and things
like how they became the way they are. At the same time, the events that are
happening in the town are intertwining with his desire to get out of the town.
So that’s the kind of story it is as it weaves together. At the end, there are
connections to Silent Hill One, but we don’t want to explain why all of these
things happened.
GI: How will gameplay be affected by the move from PS2 to PSP?
Oertel:It’s going to be different than One, Two, Three, and Four because it is a
big PSP game. It’s going to feel similar to One in terms of the structure.
You’re going to have this town that you want to go in, that you’re obviously
going to want to walk around in. So when you’re going around, you will find clue
to help you to know where to go next. So with each of those pieces, you will
move on to another and eventually get to the end.
Bringing this to the PSP, you know, forces us to rethink a lot of the things
that are part of Silent Hill. Because you have a small screen, you can’t pull
that camera so far back like you can in the other Silent Hill games. So we had
to bring it forward. That combined with the character being more physical, it
creates a bit more of an action-oriented experience but it's not a run and gun
game. It’s going to feel like past Silent Hill games. It’s going to be
responsive. That’s what we’re focusing on is to make sure the controllability
and the playability felt very modern. If you’re trying to move a character and
you can’t control him very well, that will accentuate the frustration of playing
it so we wanted to eliminate that.
One thing that we added was some new interactive elements. Let’s say you come
across a monster for the first time and he’s going to assault you. At key
moments, its going to change, the game doesn’t follow the same control scheme
anymore. You’re going to have to do button presses and movements to avoid or
react to the monster that is attacking you. That’s going to lead into custom
animations, custom camera angles and custom actions that you’re not going to see
throughout the game. So there will be a sequence to a monster attacking you and
you will have to move to the side then run over here and pop one in the back of
his head and then run over here. You know, little scripted sequences that you
have control over that if you don’t initiate the right sequence, you’re going to
die or something else is going to happen. So that’s one thing that is a bit
different.
Even with puzzles, you can’t view them from this angle. So even the puzzles will
come up on screen and you can then see them very clearly. You kind of take it
for granted on a console because you have a big TV. You don’t take them out of
the experience; you leave them in the game world and initiate the puzzle and the
action from there. You can’t really do that here. To see the puzzles and the
action, you need to bring it up on screen. All of the things kind of forced us
to rethink a Silent Hill game in a different perspective. We will see how the
ideas pan out. Right now they feel pretty good. The ultimate test comes down to
when people play it, they either like it or they don’t like it. If they like it,
then it will be something that we can build upon for future products on the PSP
or other platforms.
GI: So that’s kind of like the knife fight in Resident Evil 4 where you see the
buttons pop up on screen or do you just memorize certain actions?
Oertel: Good question. Yeah, there will be button queues on screen, a lot like
God of War actually. Yeah, God of War is an example we use a lot, but it is in
the context of Silent Hill. It’s that build that makes you feel kind of scared.
GI: So why did you choose the PSP for Origins and not a PlayStation home console
like all of the other games in the series?
Oertel: Well, in terms of the PSP only, we had looked at what was out there for
the PSP and who was covering survival horror. No one is covering survival horror
and we see it as an opportunity. Konami has always been very innovative at
bringing new properties and new games. The Silent Hill Experience and Metal Gear
Solid Digital Graphic Novel are great examples of that. Things are just
different and no one else is doing it. Bringing this major franchise the PSP
will have people saying, "Wow, how are you going to do that?" I think there are
some serious limitations and we are scratching our heads wondering what if you
play in the day time, how do you see what’s on screen or how do we adjust the
coloring? Do we go dark or what? Some of these things are hard decisions and
we’re going to just have to make them. But then there are some things like the
bringing in the camera for the action that we are forced to do that is actually
good for the franchise.
On the portability side, another analogy I’m going to use is when you’re
listening to music at home on your big speakers, that feels different than when
you are listening with your headphones. You know, I get lost in music. I will be
driving in my car and put my headphones on… and I know I shouldn’t, but I do and
I will just pass my exit, just skip it. You know, "Oh god, that was my exit
right there." I get lost in thought. In college, you could do that a lot, just
sitting there listening to music, you forget about school. You sit there on a
bench and just zone out. You know, not drug induced. Stay off of drugs. (laughs)
But that’s the analogy when people play this with the headphones. You can
already get lost in music but now you can get lost in visuals. The goal for us
is to create a compelling story, a compelling environment, and character that is
going to make you want to get lost in it. If we have things in there that are
going to break up the suspension, we are going to lose users.
GI: So are you going to have like a slip of paper in the game box saying: “For
the best experience, use headphones!”
Oertel: (laughs) I think they will already know that with many PSP games, they
will get the most out of it with headphones. Silent Hill has always had sound
and music be so important. This is not going to be any different. We didn’t want
to cheap out on this or that. We have a full soundtrack for the game. Akira
[Yamaoka] just finished composing it. We are treating it like a full game. An
expensive game and big too. I was looking at the maps and damn, this game is
huge. You have the town and other environments with multi-floor and multi-room
buildings. It’s going to be a big, long game. And that’s what people wanted. The
goal now is to just get it all done in time.
GI: I’m sure you guys get asked this a lot, but what is the general consensus of
the movie?
Oertel: Well, you know, fans loved it and critics panned it. I liked it a lot. I
thought it was hard enough to bring something like this to film. I think
Christophe [Gans] did a great job on how he did the visuals and the sound. You
know, conveying certain ideas from the games. I look at that and I say wow, I
want to do that next. I want to do it like that, I want to build on that. There
are some great characters in there that I would loved to do something with. But
I don’t want to break the history of the past games.
There’s a timeline, there’s a history. We can't manipulate that. But we can add
certain elements. Why not integrate them, why not put them in? If there is an
area that is plausible that we can put it in and it brings a tighter connection
with the movie and the games. Then you invest more time into playing the games
and watching the movie and reading the comic. You're going to reach Silent Hill
nirvana.
So yeah, I liked the movie. And Akira was involved right from the beginning.
That’s all of his music in there and he saw early clips and I saw early clips.
And Christophe is a huge Silent Hill fan. You sit there and go whoa. You don’t
think he’s going to be as into the property. He’s played them all and he took
pieces from each of the games and put them into the movie.
source :
Game Informer http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200607/N06.0724.1920.38992.htm
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