Silent Hill Origins

[WARNING! This post is spoiler-riffic. And long.]

First, some background: You know those people who watch the TV show Lost and complain all over the forums about how the show is going nowhere and they need information or resolution? I'm not one of those. I was kind of bummed when the purpose of the island was revealved. I wouldn't have cared if Lost kept stringing me along for ten years with that stuff. I was loving the ride.

That's how I felt about the Silent Hill series. Silent Hill 1 was so bizarre and out of left field, it kept me guessing the whole time. By the end, I had no idea what had happened to the main character or why the town was so loco, but I enjoyed it. Silent Hill 2 was similar. After finishing it, I still had no clue what Silent Hill's story was, but I felt I had a pretty good picture of what the main character had gone through, (and "WOW" did I feel emotionally drained afterwards. That was a gaming first!)

It kept me wanting to return to Silent Hill. I played Silent Hill 2 again on Xbox just to experience the Restless Dreams content. I played Silent Hill 3. I imported the Lost Memories Collector's DVD. I found a page by page translation of a Japanese Silent Hill sourcebook online. I bought the Silent Hill Experience UMD. I read the Wikipedia entry on Silent Hill. I watched The Silent Hill Movie in the theater twice, and then bought the DVD. I wanted to know more!

...and after a while, I realized that I did. I knew the story of the town and what had happened. Perhaps it was my own fault, but the mystery was gone.

This is something of a problem for Silent Hill Origins. A prequel is typically designed to fill in the backstory of the previous chapters. If I already knew what was up with Silent Hill, what was there to look forward to?

Travis:
Like SIlent Hill 2, (and Lost, for that matter,) I had hoped it would be the intrigue surrounding the character(s). In that game, you know the basic back story of James Sunderland: his wife died, and some time later he gets a letter from her directing him to Silent Hill. But what was it about her death that brings him to the town? By the end you find out, and it is a soulcrusher. James was lured to Silent Hill to confront his surpressed inner turmoil brought about by the questionable moral decisions he made surrounding his wife's death as well as the subsequent guilt he feels over being attracted to other females. Heavy stuff, for sure!

Not so with Silent Hill Origins. Travis is a trucker, apparently just passing through. One could speculate that there was some force compelling to arrive there, but this would be a fiction imposed by the player as the game does not allude to this in any form. Yes, he has some tragic past event he must deal with, but not to the same magnitude that James Sunderland did. He just happened to be there and made to relive an unpleasant past experience over again; No deep Sunderlandesque inner conflict; No self realization. He's just a puppet for Alessa. He finds all of the pieces of the Flauros for her, but why? What is it about his demons that makes him the suitable candidate to assemble the device? There is no explanation. So all in all, Travis ends up being fairly one dimensional. There's no real reason to become invested in him and his experience in Silent Hill.

Result: The story falls flat. Not particularly bad mind you, just not as compelling as one would hope.

The Butcher:
The Butcher aims to be SIlent Hill Origins' Pyramid Head. But as Pyramid Head's Great Knife is to The Butcher's Cleaver, he just doesn't measure up. Sure, there are a couple of suitably creepy cutscenes, but the Butcher never ties into the story. Pyramid Head was a nightmare manifestation of the struggle James Sunderland had with his the male desires: giant pointy head, long thrusting knife, tendency to sexually dominate females... get the picture? The Butcher is just a guy with a knife, gutting other monsters for no apparent reason. He never threatens Travis until the confrontation in the kitchen. What are we supposed to learn about Travis from the Butcher? I suspect there is no greater mystery to be revealed by including the Butcher in Origins. He had no greater purpose other than the dev team being able to check the box on the list labelled "iconic monster."

Game Play:
So if the story ain't all that, how about the game play? Silent Hill Origins is an odd mix. It is almost as if the game changed direction mid way through development amd couldn't decide if it was going to be a survival horror game or an action game.

On one hand it only takes a few hits to die, your health does not recharge, the health meter is fairly ambiguous, and you've got a fairly limited supply of health items, (though I never used an ampoule.) This is typically good for survival horror as it increases tension! This is bad for an action game because it requires a lot of health management!

On the other hand, you have tons, and I mean TONS, of weaponry at your disposal. I must have had over 60 melee weapons and the full compliment of guns, (two of which I never used,) and hundreds of rounds of ammo by the end of the game. This is typically good for an action game as it promotes action! This is typically bad for a survival horror game, as it lessens the fear of being defenseless!

But then again, the fighting is pretty weak. The melee weapons break after a few hits and the character is not very agile. A lot of shooting happens offscreen when using a gun. This is typically good for survival horror as the player should fear being overcome by his enemies! This is typically bad for action games because... well that's just not what action is about!

Finally, by my estimation, 98% of monsters encountered can be avoided. In the streets, they spot you and give chase, but are easily out run. Indoors, you can turn off your light and walk right by them unmolested. Bosses are quickly dispatched from their poorly camera angled little rooms with the auto aim of a gun. I find the assault rifle makes very short work of any enemy, final boss included. This is typically bad for... heck, both types of games.

I wish Origins would have gone one way or the other. A straight up, old school, Silent Hill survival horror would have been the safe bet. That would have been just fine in my book. More interesting/risky would have been a Silent Hill action game. I could see that being REALLY cool, if done right. As it stands, it walks the fence and suffers for it.

Graphics:
Silent Hill origins looks pretty darn good. the shadow effects off of Travis' spot light look great. the Otherworld textures look convincing. I'm missing those "next gen" normal maps, but what can one expect on PS2 equivalent hardware? The monsters are cool and stay true to the SIlent Hill aesthetic, (save for Caliban, which is a good idea executed poorly,) the Travis model is decent; his face geometry looks kinda odd in a couple spots and there is some loss of volume when deforming in the limbs here and there. The fog is decent, with some intersection issues one might expect. Over all, a great looking PSP title.

Sound:
Phenominal. Definitely use headphones for the full experience.

So in conclusion: Great graphics, exceptional sound. Weak story, questionable game play. All that said however, I still enjoyed Silent Hill Origins. Wandering around the town and especially the Otherworld is still pretty fun. I clocked in at 6+ hours for my first playthrough. There are some cool goodies that have been unlocked, so I may go through it again. If nothing else, I found the the puzzle and the little snippet of information related the Flauros worth it for a Silent Hill fan like myself.

Score: +2

EA CH Follow up.

On Monday EA Chicago held a job fair for their recently released employees. Pretty cool of them, I must say. I don't know if that is a commonplace type of event; I have not heard of such an event in the past. There was quite an assembly of studios there: local outfits upstairs, remote locations downstairs. I had the opportunity to reconnect with a number of good devs I have worked with in the past. Again, I hope things work out for them.

I got to spend a little time with their cancelled Marvel Comics project. I'm not a huge comic fan these days, but it sure looked pretty cool. The world was detailed out well, and the textures and full screen filters lent everything a convincing comic-y look. I chose Captain America, (I believe he was the most complete character,) pitted against USAgent. On first blush the game looked like some sort of open world type experience like GTA, though the guys that had worked on it called it a fighting game.

There was a Chicago-esque looking level complete with L Tracks and a bunch of crowd AI milling about. The player character was capable of some pretty big double jumps and could also do some sort of dash type move by attacking when in air. A very large part of the environment appeared to be destructable, (precomputed I was told,) with the demolition of the L Tracks being particularly impressive. Transitions from indoor to outdoor areas through holes punched in buildings was well done, though I thought I caught a couple of split second glitches I assumed was an artifact of some sort of portaling system. I ran around destroying cars and buildings for a pretty decent amount of time while USAgent was off somewhere else. I'm not sure if it was driven by the amount of damage I had caused to the city, but I noticed that the AI had begun to throw rocks at me. Neat.

Based on my short experience, I would describe the game as Powerstone on steroids. I had heard that one of the reasons the it was cancelled was due to the fact that the whole comics thing is largely played out at this point. I can say for myself that I am personally over it, but I would have thought that with the recent success of the myriad of comic based films of late that there would have been some sort of market for it. It is a real shame the team and technology couldn't be put toward a similar type of game with a different theme.

One last comment: I did not come across too many of the "outside talent" types that the studio head supposedly was going to bring in when staffing the shop, as I mentioned in my previous EA post. As far as I could tell, most everyone there was a vet game developer. So perhaps that really wasn't the reason that particular studio went under, but I stand by my previous statements: this whole notion that "we" have been doing it wrong for so long and that somebody from a linear media background can waltz in make magic happen in games is really puzzling to me. To clarify: I have nothing against the linear media people themselves. I just don't understand the execs that lure these folks into what has largely proven to be a lose/lose situation.

EA CHI

The major gaming blogs are reporting that EA Chicago has just shut down. I received confirmation from a handful of other sources as well. While I did not care for the products they released, (I guess I wasn't alone,) it's a sad day when a local shop closes down. Not good for the Midwest sector of the gaming industry.

I have to say I do feel some amount of validation however, as this event confirms one of my firmly held beliefs: You just can't beat experience. You see, the studio head over there, Kudo Tsunoda, is a proponent of the whole "anyone can do our job better than we can" mentality that a number of these upper management and executive level people seem to subscribe to. I believe it was a local IGDA meeting he spoke at in which he said he was bringing in people from outside industries to revolutionize game development by approaching it from a new angle. "Fresh Eyes" as it were. Naturally, this sort of ridiculousness rubs me the wrong way immensely. As we've seen before, time and time again:

It. Does. Not. Work.

So perhaps this mindset was not the primary contributor to the poor performance of the studio, but I have to wonder how much of an impact it may have had. History clearly shows that overall, when these non game dev people that are brought in to show us the light, they fail miserably and cannot contribute in a meaningful way. In fact, a net negative impact is the far more likely result.

Game development is not easy. It is highly challenging on both the technical and creative fronts. It is an artform unlike any other to have come before it. So why do some people insist that the wholesale adoption of the practices and techniques of other (currently struggling!) industries is the right thing to do?

There really were some skilled and talented developers over there at EA. Those are the guys I feel for. I wish them the best of luck.