Topic: New Silent Hill from Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro

[Claimh Solais]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/12/5996537/silent-hill-ps4-hideo-kojima-guillermo-del-toro

The P.T. playable demo that Sony announced at Gamescom has been confirmed that it was actually a teaser for a new Silent Hill game. Thoughts?

Personally, I saw this coming ages ago, since I've heard talks of it, but now that it's real, I'm hyped.

[darkmanx_429]

Everything about this and plus Norman Reedus is good!

[DragonSlayr81]

Holy shit! Del Toro AND Kojima!

Literally, when I heard about this, my eyes bugged. Let alone, I heard about this on a horror movie site! Totally cool!

[Kingshango]

Everything about this is awesome.

[Inccubus]

I find almost everything about this depressing.

I'd rather have a professional voice actor than Hollywood actor any day of the week.
If this is Silent Hill then why are all the lights on.
There was nothing scary or, more importantly, disturbing about this demo.
Fuck first person view.
Kojima? Meh, I'm really not into any of his work for the last 10 years.
Del Toro? That is interesting because of Pan's Labyrinth, but most of his work seems more geared towards fantasy than horror.

With this combination of factors this will either be surprisingly good or absolutely atrocious.

[Claimh Solais]

I'd rather have a professional voice actor than Hollywood actor any day of the week.

Damn, if there's a thing I'll agree with, it's this. Especially when the Hollywood actors don't understand that voice acting is more than just talking into a microphone, and that more often than not, their characters are written FOR them, when voice actors have to actually work toward being that character.

[Shiroi Koumori]

The current trend in 3D video game development now requires the voice actors to be motion capture and facial capture actors, thus studios are more than willing to hire hollywood actors rather than pay two people: one to provide the voice and another to provide the motion capture. And they get more people interested in their game due to the star power pulled by the actor.

[Munchy]

Gahd damn, this made my day. Del Toro would likely be a better fit for Castlevania, but who knows? Can't be worse than Homecoming or Downpour.

For people complaining about the demo, keep in mind it's a teaser. There's a disclaimer at the end saying as much; it's not actually a demo for the final game as much as "Hey, look what the Fox Engine can do for indoor spooky stuff."

Which is quite a lot. The lighting looks fantastic, especially looking around with the flashlight. And there was a special kind of fucked up that 1st person achieved in SH4, so I'm kind of glad to see it return. Provided this doesn't end up being yet another Outlast or Amnesia clone, which would suck.

And this begs the question of how the final game will play. I highly doubt a 1:1 copy of the old games with shiny new graphics would work very well in this day and age, and people would probably be upset at a Shattered Memories esque removal of all confrontation. But Silent Hill to me has always been one of those games-as-an-experience, unlike, say, a Resident Evil, which is horror themed but ultimately a well crafted action game.

Whatever else they do with it, my main hopes are the return of Masahiro Ito for monsters (or at least monster supervision) and Akira Yamaoka for music. I'm really curious about more details, like the extent of Guillermo del Toro's and Kojima's involvement. These international projects are always interesting.

(Also, the voice over at the end of the teaser takes on a hilarious meaning if you interpret the speaker as Silent Hill as a series, and his "father" as Konami.)

[Abnormal Freak]

The current trend in 3D video game development now requires the voice actors to be motion capture and facial capture actors, thus studios are more than willing to hire hollywood actors rather than pay two people: one to provide the voice and another to provide the motion capture. And they get more people interested in their game due to the star power pulled by the actor.

Why would they necessarily have to be actors to be motion captured? Guy Cihi wasn't an actor, and he did the voice and motion capturing for James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2, which brought an incredible realness to that character.

Sometimes actors in movies are dubbed by voice actors, often to great success.

I don't buy that the one who does motion capturing also has to do the voice; and if that has to be the case, I can't see why having a live-action actor do it is necessary. I think it's all a bunch of bunk, really. This was the reason Stephen Russell wasn't brought in to do the voice of Garrett in the new Thief, and that's outrageous considering he makes that character.


As to the new Silent Hill, I'm cautiously optimistic. Every game after 4: The Room has screwed with the mythos of the original series, so I'm not sure this one will be any different. Having del Toro on board is a good start, however; maybe he's enough a fan to get it right. He has had good success with horror (Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth).

I love that it's first-person, actually. One of the best parts of 4: The Room was the apartment. Shattered Memories was also a really good game in my book, which did good with its third- and first-person perspectives. We'll see...

[Shiroi Koumori]

Why would they necessarily have to be actors to be motion captured? Guy Cihi wasn't an actor, and he did the voice and motion capturing for James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2, which brought an incredible realness to that character.

Sometimes actors in movies are dubbed by voice actors, often to great success.

I don't buy that the one who does motion capturing also has to do the voice; and if that has to be the case, I can't see why having a live-action actor do it is necessary. I think it's all a bunch of bunk, really. This was the reason Stephen Russell wasn't brought in to do the voice of Garrett in the new Thief, and that's outrageous considering he makes that character.

I have no idea why developers do that too, must have been the churning of the industry and the changing of the times. However, there are some VAs who cant do motion capture. And there are a lot of actors going into voice acting on the side when hollywood does not call and voice acting hands over a nice paycheck. and i think developers believe that such actors own the character more since they technically provided everything that can be inputted in the computer software.

[Abnormal Freak]

It's just depressing because like someone else mentioned, Hollywood actors tend to just speak rather than take command of their vocal cords to really deliver a faceless performance. I guess when you're motion capturing the actual actor and making a digital rendition of their likeness, the ability to properly voice act becomes a bit less important, but it's still a sad state for gaming in my book.

There's of course somebody like Mark Hamill whose voice work I'd argue tops his live-action work, and Paul Williams (The Penguin in Batman: The Animated Series) who does both excellent voice and live acting, but for the most part, celebrity-voiced works (movies, games) just sound bad.

With the exception of 1986's Transformers: The Movie, of course, because voice effects, robots, awesome.

[Inccubus]

Another thing for some reason using a known actor that I already saw in The Walking Dead really takes me out of the experience.
It really kills the surreal nature of the game for me when you show me a real world person.

...
...
... Now if you said Andy Serkis was going to do the role and his likeness wasn't going to be used then that would make me squee.

[Shiroi Koumori]

... Now if you said Andy Serkis was going to do the role and his likeness wasn't going to be used then that would make me squee.

Me too!
Though I think he is preoccupied with a lot of projects.

[GuyStarwind]

Question is does Kojima have a lot of influence or is this like LoS? I could be wrong but I heard he didn't have a lot to do with that game even though his name is on it.

[Ratty]

Question is does Kojima have a lot of influence or is this like LoS? I could be wrong but I heard he didn't have a lot to do with that game even though his name is on it.

The impression that I get is that he is unto a God at Konami so his influence will be as big or as little as he wants it to be. He probably could have told them to turn Silent Hill into a 2D platformer and they would have done it.