News Silent Hill remake coming to Wii

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2009/04/02/silent-hill-remake-coming-to-wii/1

Konami is, according to reports from Nintendo Power, making a remastered version of Silent Hill for the Wii.

 

Scat on a swizzle stick. Good news and bad:

Good, that Konami is at last making the first game available and system-forward (updated graphics, removed limitations and glitches). Good, that "the game will also be refocused on evading and fleeing enemies rather than fighting them," which might mean the American team won't be used this time and the feeling won't veer dangerously near that of Res Evil 4.

Bad, that the remake won't be available (so far as we know) for the PS3, 360 or PSP -- all havens for more somber gamers, and likelier places for fans of survival horror generally. Bad, that the game is being rethought, perhaps, by people other than the original creators.

Atmosphere is the sticking spot for Silent Hill denizens, and atmosphere is the most elusive and perishable thing to try to recreate. Who'd have thought the original Carnival of Souls would be prized for atmosphere as well as camp, and how likely is it that a remake would ever capture it? Look at The Haunting and The Uninvited -- the remakes we're stuck with shouldn't have been inflicted on audiences in the first place. Look at the 90s obsession with atmosphere as a substitute for violence in horror, and how what was thought to be atmosphere degenerated into sterile vagaries and a repertoire of mannerisms that made veterans beg for Dario Argento at his bloodiest. Let's hope whoever works on the remake of SH doesn't spoil, diminish or remove the atmosphere by accident. Let's hope there are no attempts to make the story and events clearer for Western gamers (read: numbingly obvious, corporeal and Green-Beret-formation-friendly).

After all, the evocative falling ash, which feels as chill and numbing to the user as a nuclear blizzard, was originally a way to give the PSOne time to redraw. Will that be one of the "limitations" we now forgo?

I've never wanted a Wii, but perhaps I'll have to buy one, if only for Silent Hill 1.2 well as Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. Time will show whether Europeans and Americans will ever see release dates for these games.

 

Hmmm... Silent Hill 1 again? Sounds more than just interesting. I'd really love to play it again although I share Prestiwaytoolongnick's fear that they might ruin the story line to make it easier accessable to the western markets.

By the way... Why is the picture for the article from SH4?

 

Can they include an insane amount of fogging in the Wii re-imaging? Part of what made the original Silent Hill so great was the horrendous amount of fog that the developers had to put in to allow the PS1 to handle the graphics. That eerie ringing of the radio when and enemy was nearby but you had no idea where it was coming from because you couldn't see 5m in front of you creeped the hell out of me, and there's not been a game that's managed that feeling quite as well since.

 

i wondered that too. although wasn't it from silent hill 2?

 

Nope, the hole was in the main character's bath room in Silent Hill 4: The Room. It was his only way to leave his flat or come back.

 

oh, i know -- but the screenshot in particular is from silent hill 2 -- i mean, it even has james in it.

 

Oh, you might be right. The picture misses the grain found in 4.