Early on, and I mean the first time that thing appeared || I was theorizing it was Junko ||
#Silent Hill
spark kraken
I didn't put together that it was || actually Hinako until she became the fog monster ||
torpid forge
e.g. I'm still not sure how to explain the ||missing persons' posters|| but we're well past the point where they represent the critical evidence I was treating them as
torpid forge
Early on, and I mean the first time that thing appeared || I was theorizing it w...
oh yeah I can definitely see that
speaking of details that are still vague, I still want to know what ||her mask is. If all the Tree magic and Fox magic is real, wtf did Junko marry? 
||
spark kraken
I wonder about that too, I bet the actual animal has some significance of some sort
|| I guess she married a bird man instead 
||
torpid forge
||but that's clearly not a tengu mask||
spark kraken
Ohhh now that I think about it.... it would fit in with || some notes you find about the union of gods and mortals... maybe it was referring to both Hinako and Junko ||
Someone mentioned that in the stream I was in, but I || looked up a tengu mask and it looked different from a bird ||
torpid forge
I think that's unlikely because they also said that's a once in a generation kind of rarity. ||Mayumi's also relevant here but for the same reason probably not her either.||
spark kraken
|| maybe that's only for the fox entity and not other possible supernatural gods in the area ||
it's not like || japan's religions are like western ones where there's only the one god similar to Silent Hill's (town) religion ||
but maybe that's a stretch, it's just a theory
torpid forge
Someone mentioned that in the stream I was in, but I || looked up a tengu mask a...
yeah this is one of those places where modern anime trends have sanded off certain aspects of the original myths:
I think they all collectively decided that enormous red noses just aren't kawaii enough
spark kraken
Weird, the one I've always known was the big nose red one 
huh
apparently those other ones are called karasu tengu
I didn't know there were different tengu classes
that looks about right
Of course Shin Megami also has an example of this
torpid forge
actually... the wiki article also has this image
which seems like a good fit for the mask in question
torpid forge
looks like the depiction I'm familiar with is the daitengu and not the karasu tengu, whoops
spark kraken
Yeah I'm not super caught up with the significance of the different tengu classes
torpid forge
probably the serious answer is just that ||all the fox masked people are part of the Tsuneki household (family, servants, etc) in one way or another, and Junko wearing a different mask shows that she's a guest from some other household who's just visiting because of the family connection||
spark kraken
Probably, especially since || we confirmed that she wasn't actually dead and that was just how Hinako felt about her after she 'gave up' her freedom ||
torpid forge
||it's still fun to imagine that they both share the special hierogamy bloodline and Junko simply married a karasu-tengu instead||
spark kraken
I choose to believe that just for the fun of it
maybe || she went on her own silent hill esque adventure and got a cool bird wing too ||
torpid forge
speaking of which
I'm with you that the ||three ceremonies|| can't be completely literal. There's just too many scenes where a normal person would have a, uh, normal reaction to that if it were literal.
but
||given all the supernatural stuff that is real, I do think Bride!Hinako was genuinely given some kitsune magic powers, and that's why she can fight off Tsukumogami in Endings 2 and 4 without the aid of any supernatural plot coupon (yes in 4 her other half has the sword but still)||
spark kraken
|| I mean, yeah why not, I kept thinking that none of it was actually real and that it was all a red herring but I'm not opposed to it, maybe the possession transfers over to the spouse too ||
|| it's also funny to imagine Hinako getting furry wolf arms but otherwise still looking relatively normal ||
torpid forge
||I currently believe the werewolf arm is either not real / an exaggeration of whatever magic she was given, or one of those "only magic people can see it" deals. Otherwise we're just clearly missing a scene where one of the normal people like Shuu goes "wtf happened to your arm!?"||
||Shuu also doesn't comment on Kotoyuki turning into a giant talking fox right in front of him in Ending 3, so it's probably safe to say that appearance is also metaphorical or an "only magic people can see it" thing or whatever||
spark kraken
|| or maybe ryukishi just forgot about that completely and it was a massive oversight ||
could be
I kinda thought about it as a situation where || Shu already saw all this crazy shit happen so he didn't think twice about fox man being an actual fox at this point so he didn't bother to mention it||
torpid forge
nah don't start with that 
remember this is also the same ending with ||the necktie line that we're both taking as proof they were not in their school uniforms during those events||
spark kraken
yeah maybe the ''real'' magic is manifesting itself differently in the real world
torpid forge
oh I finally remembered a question I had for you
||you said there's a note somewhere implying the drug in this game is linked to White Claudia, but I don't recall ever finding such a note; where did you see that?||
spark kraken
Funny you mention that
I have not only the answer but also another video essay recommendation, I haven't checked this guy's channel in years but I remember seeing a couple of his videos before and them being pretty good
torpid forge
lol
oooh, he used a clip from Nine Sols
unfortunately the bit about kunyomi/onyomi is kinda wrong but not in a way that matters to the theory
ok so it sounds like we don't know if it's the same substance, but there's a handful of similarities that make it plausible, and nothing really against it
spark kraken
Well they can't really namedrop it because || White Claudia doesn't exist by this point because this takes place like a good 2 decades before SH1 at least ||
torpid forge
yeah
spark kraken
Oh boy these are the kinds of opinions I'm gonna be seeing a lot of on the internet whenever this game is discussed....
I never thought I of all people would be on the other side of this argument defending the new Silent Hill game from people saying ''it's not a true real silent hill gaem!!111''
the one sensible comment sandwiched in the middle of the most outrageously insane statements
versed raft
"it's not Silent Hill cuz it's not in America" might be the stupidest thing I've heard today😭
How is it "woke"? I'm so confused
torpid forge
"devil may cry clone" 
the Dark Souls comparison is right there, you could've shit it on for a semi-valid reason!
versed raft
Yeah the DMC clone comment makes no sense
From what I've seen, it's more souls like than anything
torpid forge
How is it "woke"? I'm so confused
I can only assume this is the standard right-wing nonsense use of the word. It's a female protagonist, it's clearly about gender issues. Conveniently ignoring that SH3 exists. And even SH2 had a lot of gender issues if you understood any of it.
versed raft
I see
spark kraken
Oh people are going insane at the fact that this is a videogame about a female protagonist trying to break away from gender roles and stereotypes and refusing marriage and giving birth
versed raft
I was gonna say "makes sense", but it literally doesnt😭
torpid forge
(as in, to the extent that SHf actually "is woke", that is clearly a good thing and in line with previous SH games)
spark kraken
I'm not even making it up I've already seen videos saying it's some anti-natal propaganda
torpid forge
yeah you posted one of those earlier
that particular one is an obvious overextrapolation since it's so obviously about being forced into these roles
the anti-natal one is extra weird since SH3 is the game fixated on giving birth, SHf is so much more about the initial marraige
spark kraken
It's gonna be real annoying being a Silent Hill fan for the foreseeable future considering this is the caliber of things being said about an actually good Silent Hill game that we got after over a decade
torpid forge
just another example of why it's important to pick and choose where you spend your time reading comments, as merely gravitating toward the source with the lowest effort to discover and access gets, well, low-effort comments
versed raft
Hearing people call games "woke" just makes me want to play the game even more
spark kraken
that particular one is an obvious overextrapolation since it's so obviously abou...
It's so funny because you can just fully figure out these people don't actually play the games, Hinako isn't even against marriage at all! || She even fully considers who she's gonna stay with, if she's gonna stay with any of her two choices at all in the true end ||
Oh my god the entire game hammers the point of ''I hate choice being taken away from me'' the whole time and people still don't get it
torpid forge
indeed, if you watch all the endings it's really obvious she's not against the concept
but I prefer to jump to the counterarguments that don't leave us open for the "oh but it seemed like X after 1 or 2 endings, that's the game's fault for not making it clear until ending 4"
which is why- yeah, that persistent emphasis on self-determination is the better counterpoint; if you're paying attention to that then it's obvious from the start that she's got nothing against truly consensual marriages, even her skepticism of Junko's is more skepticism that Junko is truly consenting to this
torpid forge
Oh my god the entire game hammers the point of ''I hate choice being taken away ...
given all the tribal signaling going on with "woke" and other words, I think we can safely assume bigotry-motivated willful ignorance, where they have to mis-frame the narrative to be negative about it in a way that sounds plausible to the uninformed, because if they talked directly about how they feel about the actual narrative it would be impossible for anyone to miss the sexism
torpid forge
honestly it's almost funny that they're doing this on a game where more than one of the monsters just straight-up represents aspects of misogyny
spark kraken
Even with all the weird people that clearly just have an ideological problem that has nothing to do with the game itself aside, it's also just the comments of the average person saying things like ''it's not even a reel silent hill gaem it doesn't take place in the town!111'' ''it's a devil may cry clone!!!'' ''silent hill isn't about trauma it's about cults and monsters!!111''
It's just wild to me because I was usually the guy on the other side of this conversation pointing the finger at things like Homecoming and Downpour and all those Silent Hill adjacent new projects that completely missed the point, and now everyone else is doing it but with the actually good new Silent Hill game?
torpid forge
strangely, all three of those examples are not just wrong but at least partially self-defeating:
- most of it does take place in a town, which you have to admit is a very Silent Hill-like town; SH3 probably spent less time in Silent Hill than SHf did in its SH-like town
- not only is the combat obviously more Soulslike than DMC-like, DMC is the one which started out as an RE clone (aka the main SH competitor) with an identity crisis
- this ignores SH2's existence and the fact that SHf is about cults and monsters too (granted it's initially unclear/debateable how real they are, but that was also true in 1-3)
notice how collectively you have to ignore both SH2 and SH3 for even a significant fraction of these complaints about series identity to hold up
that's not a lot of SH left
spark kraken
Even Silent Hill 3 and 4 have the elements from SH2's more psychological ideas
Silent Hill One has them too, where do people think the monsters from that game came from? It's Alessa!
torpid forge
which you'll notice is also about a cult mistreating a young woman
spark kraken
But people see || the wolf arm || and immediately seem to think that this is just too much and it's too un-silent hill like and identical to devil may cry I guess
Now granted I also thought this game had too much combat focus, but there's a thematic aspect to it that I at least understand why it's there especially at the end portion, but even then it's just insane to imagine a person that would be so put off by that to completely ignore all the things the game does excellently
torpid forge
mm-hmm, the place of combat in a psychological horror game is a very interesting game design topic, and for me this style works
spark kraken
which you'll notice is also about a cult mistreating a young woman
and taking away her agency from the situation and treating her like a baby factory for their own purposes.... Silent Hill 1 has gone woke!
torpid forge
but these "comments" are clearly not engaging in that real debate
ultimately we shouldn't even be dignifying these comments with a word like "opinions"; they are at best thoughtless reactions, and in some cases more likely deliberate misinformation
spark kraken
I know, I agree, it just gets really annoying whenever I see these types of sentiments become so common and widespread, not just because it's a thing I like but also a thing that is just really good fortunately I experienced this game with a fully open mind on a chatroom of like minded people and nerding about it even more here, and it ended up surprising me more than it disappointed me
Unfortunate that I don't think I ever wanna look up any video essays about this game or go into any forums discussing it unless I want to give myself an aneurysm though
Or, well, I guess I could watch videos about it, just avoid the comment section entirely
The comment section I shared there is actually from Max Derrat's channel he just posted that video about f
torpid forge
I'll probably look up video essays for it later, after it's not only had time to settle and move out of the news cycle, but also time for actually thoughtful creators to develop more substantial videos
in the short-term I feel like all my burning questions have been partially or wholly answered
it's easy to think of stuff we haven't discussed in detail, but not much I feel like we need to, e.g. I'm not sure either of us want to stare at the monster designs enough to enumerate every detail behind why we interpret them the way we did
||so this is the Objectification Monster and this is the Sexual Assault Monster and this is the Internalized Misogyny Monster and...||
spark kraken
That's why I just looked at the comments and I didn't comment on the video itself, I'm also not really aching to look up anything about this game because I feel like we just fully dissected all there was to say about it at least anything that isn't completely obscure super subtle details like ''did you know the kanji on this one item means bla bla bla''
who knows maybe someone will make a video about || Junko's mask and fully answer the question of whether she also married a tengu demon ||
torpid forge
it would not surprise me if the name I caught showed up in a note somewhere I don't remember
mellow terrace
im watching jacksepticeye play the Silent Hill 2 remake and i feel kind of bad for these armless fellas
mellow terrace
i kind of remember the plot ? i watched that Liam Triforce vid he made on Silent Hill and i think i remember the broad strokes
torpid forge
yeah, I believe I gave you a full spoiler summary a long time ago
mellow terrace
i don't remember like any of the symbolism though
i don't like how this hole makes squelching noises when James reaches in
i like James' jacket
torpid forge
the holes do a good job of squicking you out
would be an absolutely deranged sentence in any other thread
mellow terrace
this is a very moist town
and it's raining where i am rn so this is very immersive
mellow terrace
man what the fuck is this
mellow terrace
omg pyramid head
mellow terrace
alright that's part 1 done
the pyramid head scene where James hides in the closet was so well done
mellow terrace
so is there a lore reason why Silent Hill is like this ? like, why does this random town in Maine create monsters that are manifestations of people who go there's guilt and stuff
spark kraken
Yeah in Silent Hill 1
mellow terrace
ah ok
versed raft
Markiplier is playing Silent Hill F
https://youtu.be/yFmizY7pe7U
mellow terrace
the aesthetic in this game is really nice
with all the rust
what a good game
this song is great too, though i think i prefer the original version
https://youtu.be/Q47veZhrMW8?si=iY-03mqZao_YNvE5
mellow terrace
Originally planned to be a rail shooter, as a result of the initially slow sales of Silent Hill 2 in Japan, Silent Hill 3 was developed almost simultaneously alongside another installment in the series, Silent Hill 4: The Room (2004).
huh
also yes im watching a Silent Hill 3 playthrough now lol
torpid forge
a few miscellaneous Silent Hill f lore details I caught watching someone else play it:
- ||1st ending said the wedding was at "Tsuneyoshi Shrine". I think there was a note about a name taking one character from each side of the family, but I forget which note exactly.||
- ||Fujitori Kotoyuki was his name in the Old Medical Record, before the Tsuneki lineage was revealed. I'm not sure if "Fujitori" connects to anything else.||
- ||Sachie was the common woman a Tsuneki had an affair with then disowned. This is implied to be why the Tsunekis need to marry "common" women from Ebisugaoka to regain the lost portion of their power. The name Sachie later appears on the Fox's Sacrifice whiteboard, with the same "Cancer" fate as Kimie.||
- ||In Corridors, the room with the Inari statue has four paintings. Presumably we all noticed the leftmost one is Hinako. What I missed before is that the 2nd-to-left painting is Mayumi, since it fits her missing persons poster description. I'm presuming one of the other two is Sachie but I don't know how to confirm that.||
- ||In the secret part of Shimizu Residence where you find the Cuckoo omamori, that version of Hinako's room has a fox mask and letters on the desk, in addition to the obvious excessive blood. I'm guessing this all represents bride!Hinako cuckooing/replacing Shimizu Hinako.||
versed raft
Should I play Silent Hill 1 before 2?
torpid forge
for the most part, it doesn't matter; almost no information is shared between 1 and 2 besides the town being a place that exists
Silent Hill 3 is the one that would suffer from not knowing what happens in 1
mellow terrace
i have a rough idea of SH1
versed raft
Thanks, thats good to know
torpid forge
have you already decided which ones to play and this is just order, or are you trying to figure out which one to try out, etc
spark kraken
Should I play Silent Hill 1 before 2?
Yes, but only because it's also a great game that you should get around to playing if you like the franchise, but it's not a requirement
If and or when you do Duckstation is probably the best way to do it, I just finished a 5 hour run of the game the other day and it runs and looks incredible
torpid forge
true fans will play Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark before Silent Hill 1
spark kraken
This was me testing a specific setting on Duckstation to remove the polygon worbliness effect, I didn't mind it, but it does significantly improve the look and feel of the game
versed raft
have you already decided which ones to play and this is just order, or are you t...
Well, I have Silent Hill 2 downloaded on Pcsx2 currently, so I was just wondering if I should play the first one before it
I do already have Duckstation set up, cuz I was going to play MGS1 on it
torpid forge
fair enough
1-3 are definitely all worth playing but yeah "1 before 3" is the only strong recommendation from me
spark kraken
With SH2 specifically there's no benefit to playing it after 1 other than just seeing the jump in tech that happened just 2 years later, they both pretty much control the exact same so there's no major gameplay improvements there other than maybe strafing being a little better but people rarely use that anyways
and it's disconnected from 1 so asides from benefitting from knowing the goings-on with the town if you play SH2 after 1, there's no real main plot connection outside of that
versed raft
I'll probably just play 2 first then, since its already downloaded
torpid forge
we could have a whole conversation about what kinds of horror you prefer or which content warnings matter to you and how 2 differs from 1 and 3 in ways that might affect which game is optimal to play first for you in particular buuuuuuut it probably doesn't matter
spark kraken
Oh yeah I rarely see people mention this detail because SH2 has become so popular it's the default choice for a lot of people but in case you were looking for a horror experience I think SH1 is much scarier than 2
versed raft
Interesting
torpid forge
yeah that goes straight into "what does the word 'horror' mean to you"
spark kraken
2 kind of traded the horror for a more in-depth narrative, it doesn't really ever get as scary as SH1, and definitely not SH3 which I think is the scariest one by far (and SH4 which is pretty spooky as well)
torpid forge
(the way I use the word applies more to SH2)
mellow terrace
true fans will play Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark before Silent Hill 1
Alone in the Dark is such a cool game for 1992
not that i'd ever want to play it
torpid forge
yeah, video game history is interesting, but for most of us there is a point where a game is "too old" for playing it directly to be enjoyable or interesting
survival horror is one of those genres that achieved "timeless classic" status in the PS1 era (and it's dubious whether it really was a genre before that)
torpid forge
I feel like the NeverKnowsBest horror video mentioned this
mellow terrace
this one ?
mellow terrace
well time for another video essay i suppose
torpid forge
[Rex Has Seen You]
spark kraken
Bluesky
torpid forge
huh
I was hoping for details on what makes casual even easier and which forced combat was reduced, but the full post did clarify exactly which section is now skippable to speed up NG+ runs; definitely a win for encouraging players to get all the endings
spark kraken
Surely feeding the ancient gods a bunch of drugs will not have catastrophic results
torpid forge
but the drugs aren't a valid offering
I like how seemingly every content creator picks the bunny outfit when doing their non-serious content for this game
spark kraken
spark kraken
Interesting 
respect for playing the original and not the remake, not that I would blame her for playing the game she stars in but hey that's cool
torpid forge
one wonders what the pros and cons are of not knowing the original when doing a remake
though VA is probably one of the positions where that is at worst harmless, esp since this remake was clearly not trying to reproduce the OG """bad""" performances
spark kraken
I'll watch it fully later but I definitely expect her to leave with a strong appreciation for the original performances after finishing it, for as much as SH always got shit for ''haha bad voice acting'', it was leagues ahead of Resident Evil's voice acting and Mary especially in SH2 og was actually really good
you don't get people literally crying at how you read a letter if your voice acting is just okay
having replayed SH1 very recently I was surprised at how fine the VA work was
torpid forge
yeah that letter should be audition material at this point
but you know we're on the same page here, I did triple scare quotes for a reason
spark kraken
I know, I'm just adding onto the original thought
I do think for this type of game specifically, I would hope at least, the VAs are given some direction based on the original knowing how important the nuances of characters are, but for other games I do see it being less important, not unimportant, just less important
like how 4 Remake Leon isn't action hero og 4 Leon
torpid forge
yeah, my earlier comment was assuming they got proper direction and character descriptions and such
things like "and this is the exact moment Eddie decided James was just like all the others" 
spark kraken
this particular scene stuck on my mind all this time after seeing it for the first time
I know the way I am about remakes and original games and all, I do still largely think SH2R was surprisingly decent and I'm fine with people playing it over the original, at this point it's kinda the only way to play it anyways
but this one scene made me think ''do we wanna re-do that one guys?'' because the original is just so much better at that raw feeling of ''what the hell is going on, she's giving me so many mixed signals, I'm scared, Pyramid Head please help me''
torpid forge
yeah, for a modern first-time player I do think the remake would be a significantly better overall experience, they nailed everything important and expanded on many things that benefit from expansion
did I ever tell you the one small thing that bugged me about the remake? it's not this line reading
spark kraken
I don't think so, I have more things that bugged me like the visuals generally lacking that hard shadow contrast that the original FMVs had, but I was trying to think of specifically VA-related things
torpid forge
it's near the end of the game, when Angela goes up the burning staircase
the original leaves you at the foot of the stairs, letting you decide when to turn around and go through the door
the remake does the turning around and going through the door in the cutscene
which bugged me because I still remember lingering in that room after the cutscene
spark kraken
Yeah that's a fair complaint
torpid forge
probably also says a lot about me
but literally everything else was as good or better and even this is maybe better for modern audiences since the old way kinda made it really obvious the fire was a simple invisible wall BUT STILL MY CHILDHOOD
spark kraken
Nah I get it, it may seem like one of those quirks of an unpolished old game but even if it is it adds a lot to the experience and in a game like this where vibes are really important that kind of detail can really matter
especially it's really cool for the player to get to actually ''play'' in someone else's view of SH, even if it's just that one little room where you can't go anywhere but through the door, it's still cool that you're actually there
and it doesn't force you to immediately do anything if you don't want to, you can just take a breather
torpid forge
tbc at the time I was having a genuine moment of uncertainty whether she was right that I couldn't do anything
livid dirge
Playing silent hill the short message and ive neverr EVER been jumpscared so bad all my organs jumped but i stayed still
spark kraken
.....huh
for once a random post on twitter was right
and yeah, it actually super looks like Silent Hill 2 areas lol
spark kraken
Just played the first ''level'' of SH: Origins, or I guess they can be compared more to Zelda dungeons than entire levels, just because I got my PSP laying around and I thought it'd be fun to revisit the game, I used to play it a lot back when I was a kid and my PSP was brand new to me, and now after so many years and so many replays of the original games I gotta say.... it's.... fine
I remember people really tearing this game apart before as one of those awful american Silent Hill games, but it's... okay, I might keep playing it in little bite sized portions just casually which is kind of the PSP's strength as a lot of games are designed to be played that way, and I guess in that regard it's more than a fine game
really the biggest downside of this game is that the story is just kind of nothing, and it tends to have that late 2000s-early 2010s focus on combat rather than horror, Travis has an outrageously big inventory and he even picks up TVs, typewriters and an entire IV stand as weapons he can even fight with his bare fists which sure it's always technically an option IRL but in a horror game... eh, the puzzle for the initial hospital area was pretty okay it wasn't Silent Hill 1 piano levels of scratching my head but I think it was at least cool that it utilized the entire map available to you by scattering the clues around which is fine because there's really only about like 8 rooms available at all, and speaking of Silent Hill 1 wow this game re-creates the map pretty faithfully, having played SH1 very recently I really appreciate just how much it looks like SH1 down to the grimey details, which makes me even more mad SH1 never got a proper remasterization
and hey it has a surprisingly cinematic and really neat opening sequence too, complete with Elizabeth's vocals, very cool tone-setter, can't go wrong with Akira Yamaoka no matter which game it's in, regardless of the overall quality of this game it's kind of the most Silent Hill feeling of the western Silent Hill games
I wish I hadn't misplaced my PSP's USB cable all those years back, I could be recording my own footage with it if I had it
and hey not a bad silent hill sign, better than the HD Collection's
I also appreciate they keep a lot of fixed cameras but.... man there's a reason tank controls are a thing for these games guys, at least a toggleable option would've been real nice but it was the modern thing to do to not have them in the game and people hated them so I guess we're stuck with even more awkward controls... at least if you don't move the stick around too much it's relatively fine
the nurses are also in the game because of course they are, this was a year after the SH movie came out I'm sure Konami wanted that movie synergy, especially considering the Silent Hill movie had actually come out as a UMD for the PSP
torpid forge
Just played the first ''level'' of SH: Origins, or I guess they can be compared ...
Sounds about right. I've never played the American SH games, but my impression was always that they're okay rather than outright bad. It ends up sounding that way I think because for this particular kind of cerebral horror that I know Silent Hill and Signalis for, merely having adequate gameplay and a forgettable story is... not really enough to be worth playing? It's not like action or puzzle games where you only need to get the action or puzzles good, everything else can be unremarkable, and that's a package worth buying.
spark kraken
Ehh it's a little more true for games like Homecoming and Downpour, those games are actually pretty bad, I think they're very forgettable
Silent Hill Shattered Memories is another one I actually played on the PSP at the time as well, and that one at least has the excuse of actively trying to be a completely different thing as well, so it gets a pass, and it's also not a bad game I actually think it's perfectly... adequate too. it was trying something wacky and just experimenting and it was also initially supposed to be a completely different thing (an actual survival horror game, surviving a snow blizzard in Silent Hill, keeping warm, finding food and shelter, not a reimagination of SH1 and actually having a new character etc)
The thing that makes Origins a little better is that it actually resembles your Silent Hill experience a little bit, it feels a lot like you're playing Silent Hill 4 which would've come out like a couple years before this game, so it doesn't end up feeling like too much of a departure at all
The vibes are pretty good as well, visuals are neat and on point for the franchise, it's trying to be a Silent Hill 1 prequel so it retains a lot of those aesthetics and really that's kind of the biggest weakness is that if it tried to do its own story it probably would've been better, nothing in Origins really adds a whole lot that you don't already get from Silent Hill 1 anyways so it ends up feeling like a very forgettable mid entry, which is not surprising that it never comes up in a discussion of the franchise
Homecoming at least is brought up for being bad but Origins may get you a ''what game is that?'' reaction instead
The PS2 version does make the graphics prettier but it's still a PSP game underneath, and I don't think they really added a whole lot besides that, definitely no tank controls which are very needed for this game.
but it's actually a pretty nice Silent Hill 1-lite sort of experience and it's a pretty fine addition to a PSP library, although you can also play the RE trilogy... and Dino Crisis.... and the original Silent Hill on your PSP instead.... but hey
I am actually playing it in the way you described it right now though, since i actually enjoy the gameplay loop of survival horror I'm just gonna go through the game purely for the gameplay, without even caring about the story because I already know it but also just to see if I actually enjoy the game itself, because if I do then that's a win for me, I know in the visuals and sound department it's pretty impressive that it feels so complete and polished, I'll go through it very casually just sort of completing the areas in little sessions and see what's up with it
torpid forge
The vibes are pretty good as well, visuals are neat and on point for the franchi...
kinda funny how Resident Evil's prequel was also a mixed bag people rarely talk about any more
spark kraken
That reminds me, in this first area there's really like, only two hallways, this gets a little weirder later on because this game's gimmick is that you manually change between the normal and the otherworld, so a lot of areas that get pretty big get twice as big, and that can be a drag later on I remember, but I did come across a little bit of that survival horror decision making in this where I completely avoided all fights and saved up my outrageous amounts of weapons I don't even know how I'm carrying (and my typewriter), and I actually ended up using a good amount of them for the final boss fight, so the game still sort of has a little bit of that decision making despite being much simpler and a little more combat focused, it even threw an extra nurse in those hallways when I got a key puzzle piece just to throw me off, which I think is a little antithetical to the overall game philosophy of survival horror but if it's just one little extra enemy it's fine, as a treat
They even put her right on the door so she grabs you as you exit, but you can mash to push her off, it's a late 2000s game of course there's QTEs, Silent Hill had to go modern!
spark kraken
kinda funny how Resident Evil's prequel was also a mixed bag people rarely talk ...
well they're gonna remake it apparently so I guess they'll talk about it more now, it's kinda disappointing in a way because if I ever heard someone talk about how much they liked Rebecca and RE0 I knew they were a hardcore RE fan
torpid forge
I liked the train part
spark kraken
I played a bit of 0 when I was testing it while modding my nephew's Wii recently, I played a good bit up until the very first section where you have to separate to opposite ends of the train but I got stuck on what I needed to do for the little elevator thing so I just stopped playing there, I was just testing to see if it worked anyway
...the game looks nice at least, the model of Rebecca is very impressive and good looking
but REmake already looked really good too, even on Gamecube/Wii
I dunno, it kind of tempted me to actually play that game but I don't know if it's worth the hassle
torpid forge
for someone as invested as you, IMO it is worth playing once, as long as you have someone around to warn you about the worst aspects of the two-character thing
particularly the parts where you lose a character and all of their inventory without warning, with no real safeguard against softlocks
spark kraken
eeeeuuuughhh..... 
that's exactly the type of situation that I encountered with Code Veronica, only escaped it thanks to savestates....
torpid forge
yeah CV I never finished beacuse of its own flavor of softlock
spark kraken
I could play it on an emulator to avoid that but the HD remaster of that game does look pretty shiny....
it makes Rebecca sure look pretty, but that yassification has the adverse side effect of getting rid of all her facial capture lol
spark kraken
yeah CV I never finished beacuse of its own flavor of softlock
I tested if I could get completely softlocked if I just dumped all my items off at the chest before the mansion staircase fight with Chris and sure enough I did, I think I even talked about it on the RE thread when I was talking about the ending
I didn't experience the softlock with the tyrant fight on the plane thankfully, I think I probably just had more than enough ammo but I remember that fight being a pain and horribly unclear on what to do
spark kraken
lol I knew your phone listened to your conversations but I didn't know it also read your discord ones too
people always say that about RE0, but I feel like it's always aptly rated
it's not terribly awful, but also not particularly great either
torpid forge
tbh I don't hear enough about it to judge it's rated-ness
which, considering how many of the other RE games are just better, seems fair
spark kraken
jesus christ what the hell is this map
this is a PSP game why is this bigger than most areas in the home console games
why
and this has an otherworld version too...
spark kraken
the otherworld is so..... green
I'm a little upset at how good some of the enviroments actually look and how cool some of these camera angles are
It's actually not that bad, I'd say it feels very Silent Hill 4 ish but I kinda feel like it plays a lot more like Obscure oddly enough, which is another survival horror game i played a ton in the PS2 and also has PSP ports
Some areas have a wider camera angle but it's mostly a pseudo-third person camera that you can re-center and it goes into fully fixed camera for specific rooms or objects of interest, which is perfectly fine with me, despite how much I go on about fixed cameras I do think classic RE's fixed cameras are very limiting
the re-centering doesn't work that well though, most of the time it's better to just walk forward and let the camera automatically re-center, but it's better than SH4 where you can't even do that
this is really the biggest problem so far is with these sudden camera changes, but we know this already and this is why this game should still have tank controls as an option but alas
Uuuhhh oh, right, enemies are like completely a non threat
I don't think I have even fought a single enemy so far, they're incredibly easy to avoid
Despite the fact that there's a lot more enemies in every area compared to the main home console games
also Travis has an invisible stamina system that makes him get tired after running for a bit which I completely understand as a little detail to add but in practice is incredibly annoying
torpid forge
to be fair, it's not quite as simple as "fixed angles = tank controls good, and vice versa" since tank controls also imply extremely slow turning, which can completely change how players approach encounters in a game like this
even if it was an option it'd likely become one of those "it exists but I can't actually use it because the game wasn't designed for it" options, like turning off waypoints in an ubislop open world
torpid forge
also Travis has an invisible stamina system that makes him get tired after runni...
yeah, I remember this being annoying in several games, and I think devs just stopped doing it at some point (even games with actual stamina management mechanics typically remove the limit outside of combat now)
spark kraken
You're right, but this game and SH4 aren't that dissimilar from SH1-2-3 to the point that tank controls would completely change the experience, and I would still appreciate it as an option, I think a better compromise is to not do sudden camera changes and instead do cameras like Dino Crisis did where you actually pan the camera over to a new position, just to give the player a second to adapt
Generally I've become good enough with tank controls to still manage to find ways to avoid encounters in games like RE1, but in some games like Signalis where camera changes aren't really a problem at all I imagine 2D controls are probably the better way to play, though I still played that game with tank controls just because it's what I'm used to, Crow Country too, I think 2D is probably better for those games, just having the option is nice
torpid forge
yep, those are also games where we can confidently state raw turning speed is never a serious issue
especially with Crow Country, tank controls might be preferable for precise aiming
(I can't actually remember which way I played CC; Signalis obv 2D wins because it's a single isomorphic(???) angle)
spark kraken
yeah, I remember this being annoying in several games, and I think devs just sto...
the other SH games had this too but it was either very subtle to the point it was unnoticeable or it didn't actually slow you down at all, the character would just start breathing heavily after running for a while even in 1 which was a really cute detail, but in this game Travis slows down a lot after running across a single hallway, it's way too often and I thought maybe not having weapons on me would maybe make me go a little further but it doesn't seem to actually change at all
torpid forge
agree it's nice when it's just an extra breathing sound
spark kraken
I definitely did Crow Country with tank controls, but it has the same overhead view as Signalis so I imagine it's perfectly fine to play that with 2D controls for modern players, but maybe the whole camera rotation thing makes tank controls preferable
torpid forge
right, that's why I specified single angle
IIRC in Crow Country you always move and shoot in the same direction as the camera (or is that just the controls I played on?), so it's rotating constantly, but Signalis' never rotates (ignoring those brief first person segments)
oh well the whole tank controls thing is interesting but we know all this
anything to say about the story yet, or is it like most SH games where there's no point talking about that until you've seen all of it?
spark kraken
So far nothing of note really, the whole plot so far is that you play as Travis a trucker that stumbles upon Alessa's house burning while they're performing the ritual, you save her and wake up in a bench in Silent Hill, you go to the hospital to look for her but nobody's there, Silent Hill shenanigans ensue, you kill a boss, you encounter Alessa who gives you a red triangle and then wake up and talk briefly with Lisa for like a second, she mentions meeting with Kaufmann at the Sanitarium, when you get there you actually meet with Dahlia and she says a whole bunch of nothing and now I've just been running around mostly grabbing keys and solving puzzles, there was one very short little flashback sequence that was just some dialogue while the game went black and white which I assume is about Travis' past because the names are none of the names from the SH1 characters
and that's really about it so far, like I said before this game is in a weird place because it doesn't really do a whole lot with the actual main character since it's focused on being a prequel to SH1, which wasn't really needed and doesn't even add that much, and as a result both concepts are underbaked
Oh yeah I should mention, they literally re-did the entire game in like a week because the original concept that was an RE4 clone got fully scrapped
So that probably didn't help
Issues with the game's engine and "a confused high-level vision for the game" led to Climax shutting down their Los Angeles studio, and transferring the game's team to the Climax Action studio in the United Kingdom, to ensure the final product would be "a tighter, more focused game that will provide fans with the experience they want... a Silent Hill experience"; the release date was also pushed forward from winter 2006 to Q3/Q4 2007. The version of Origins that the United Kingdom development team received was intended to be a dark comedy inspired by the American television series Scrubs. Konami allowed the team to change the game, provided that the changes were done within the same budget and time frame; Origins's script, level design, and monsters were redone within a week by Sam Barlow.
torpid forge
I wonder how many of the western SHs were like this
torpid forge
So far nothing of note really, the whole plot so far is that you play as Travis ...
"Silent Hill shenanigans ensue" made me imagine a scooby doo hallway chase with SH characters 
wouldn't surprise me if Ascension had one of those almost literally
spark kraken
I actually completely forgot that thing existed and I wouldn't be surprised if everybody else also did
spark kraken
I wonder how many of the western SHs were like this
Well, Shattered Memories surprisingly wasn't like this, that game was just weird conceptually
Sam Barlow actually worked on that game as well
Game designer Sam Barlow explained in November 2022 that he was not a fan of Silent Hill 3 as he disliked the continuation of Harry and Cheryl Mason's adventures as well as the bad endings in Silent Hill. He felt he could redeem the series by reimagining the first game through Shattered Memories.
always a good sign when a director dislikes the source material and thinks their vision is better and can elevate it and create a richer experience 
torpid forge
I actually completely forgot that thing existed and I wouldn't be surprised if e...
I had to look up its name
spark kraken
Still no sign of Townfall anywhere
and honestly with Konami saying they want to make Silent Hill yearly releases....
we might get to see more Ascensions
Konami getting too greedy too quickly yet again, they just can't help themselves
spark kraken
I know yearly releases doesn't mean the games are literally made in a year, but nothing good comes from making so many projects so quickly like that, no way to keep track of the quality of each and you get similar situations to what happened with the western SHs that all came out so close to each other
f was revealed in like 2022-23
so probably at least since 2021
october 2022 was the announcement I'm gonna guess development started in 2020 ish maybe late 2020
Oh wow finally I got a firearm, like an hour into the game
Oh cool I can even equip and reload stuff in the inventory RE style even though the game also lets you do weapons in-game on the fly, I like that
torpid forge
you mean only an hour
spark kraken
the funny thing is I've been getting handgun and shotgun ammo for like 20 minutes too
an entire room had nothing in it except a filing cabinet on top of a table that Travis just puts in his pocket for later use
very nice, I can see this game was re-designed in a week
there's also so many rooms that aren't even used, which was a thing in the other games too but at least the areas weren't so big, the entire west wing of this place isn't accessible at all in either world
wow this screen looks so crunchy in a picture
it looks much more bearable in person
ahhh okay that's the story then, I was gonna say earlier I was finding a lot of notes about this crazy woman whos name was redacted that didn't seem to tie in to the rest of what was going on, but I see where it's going now
Not entirely sure why there's a note detailing the attempted murder-suicide of a woman and her child in the laundry room but sure
I actually can't remember if SH2 had any weird stuff like that where you find a big important clue in a totally random room
torpid forge
I'm sure a lot of them seem random on a first playthrough
spark kraken
I'm sorry I picked up a katana????
the sheer amount of weapons I have on myself at this time is absurd
I have no less than 33 weapons on me right now
torpid forge
are you fighting anyone yet
spark kraken
including but not limited to: a hammer, a scalpel, an alcohol bottle, a toaster, a typewriter, a meat hook, a tire iron, an entire IV stand, a table lamp, a filing cabinet and an entire portable TV
spark kraken
are you fighting anyone yet
nnnnope, I'm not engaging in combat at all until absolutely necessary, I did get hit once because the enemies are piling up so much they're blocking my path
versed raft
I have no less than **33** weapons on me right now <:ppenk:681838745611141137>
I thought Silent Hill was a survival horror game, not an action game😭
spark kraken
and one hit was enough to put me down from green to caution
torpid forge
have you at least tried the toaster
spark kraken
but what if I need it later 
I guess I could try it
yep.... that's a toaster
wow that absolutely sucked
he didn't even throw it that far at all
Oh good, now we're in the west wing of this area
which means this area is gonna now be twice as big
Okay thank goodness an entire section of this is completely blocked off as in it literally has no floor and it goes straight into darkness, good
also I picked up a toolbox and I thought it'd be like the RE health kits that you inspect to open but no, it's another weapon type, it's just a toolbox full of heavy tools
Mmmmm, the floor is making squishy sounds now
that's... cool...
spark kraken
hmmmm okay, okay, this entire section in this floor was basically just this puzzle and nothing else, and it was actually pretty alright, basically having to memorize the rooms and correctly pair them with a note describing the medication for each patient, the camera angles and enviroments are again pretty good looking and very in line with the aesthetic of the original Silent Hill games
you win this time Origins, that was an okay section...
Okay I was gonna stop here but it seems like I'm almost done with this entire area
so let's push through
OPh my god
the pistol was right there I missed it all along
heh, okay, picked up an important lore item and we get a little bit of that music coming in and the enemies seem to have disappeared
very nice, kind of like the SH2 moment after you see the tape where the music also comes in and you get a nice little backtracking vibes section
oh hi Lisa
....okay, bye Lisa
oh that's nightmare fuel
also a pretty easy boss fight but then again I've been hoarding all this ammo all this time
aaaand area reset, back to the beginning, everything's locked now... was any of that even reeaaaal? 
Oh thanks game, it actually didn't let me get out of here until I picked up the item in the table that I totally missed
oh wow a running car, see I always assumed during the Silent Hill games things like cars and electronics just straight up would not work, guess I'm wrong
this is so strange, for a game that began as an RE4 clone, released in 2007, this feels remarkably like a higher resolution Silent Hill 1
torpid forge
cars seem to consistently work for getting to Silent Hill
actually wait SH1 started with the car crashing didn't it
maybe it's still a bad idea
spark kraken
well even if you don't crash your car coming into the town probably still a bad idea to go anyways
even without all the supernatural shenanigans, everybody describes silent hill as that town that used to be really cool to go vacation in but then suddenly it started getting weird and shitty and people just started leaving
torpid forge
I'm not even sure how to classify SH2 here since ||"crashing" your car is the """"""canon"""""" ending||
spark kraken
I guess you could say even in that ending the car only works after all the Silent Hill stuff already happened
as in, in the 'real world'
whatever that even means anymore
spark kraken
I mostly say it because it's still relatively unclear whether the silent hill stuff has any tangible effect on the 'real world', whether it's some sort of interlap with a hellish dimension full of very real demons or a full mental projection, so I still don't know whether it's technically correct to call all the otherworld stuff ''real'' because they technically are, but just for the sake of discussion and simplicity I call the 'real' world anything that doesn't have fog or the creatures
torpid forge
I'm probably forgetting some key lore from 1 and 3 but I feel like the situation with Maria shows they at least can be real
it's true there's a lot of wiggle room to argue about either way
spark kraken
well in Silent Hill 3 they show up even outside of that whole fog world since they follow Heather into the real world and we even see real people getting killed by the monsters too but it's just too complicated to explain all that during a conversation so 'real world' usually gets the idea across well enough
also man that session burned through most of my battery, that area was that long, but then again this battery is quite old already
they usually last like 4 hours or so
luckily this battery isn't getting all nice and pillowy like so many PSP or 3DS batteries have gotten all these years later so I don't have to worry about it suddenly cracking open and starting a cool lithium fire inside my house
seriously the amount of posts about people taking pictures of their batteries expanding so much they're popping out of the 3DS/PSP case in the last 4 ish years or so is pretty nuts
spark kraken
TIL something a little crazy
the voice for the MGSV iDroid is the same as Angela and Claudia from SH2 and SH3
It's Donna Burke!
that's nuts that I've heard this woman sing for all those MGS songs and I never recognized her as Angela
spark kraken
Unsurprisingly the Silent Hill movie is not doing so hot in terms of reviews
Which is weird actually, because I was incredibly certain that audiences would just love it but any hardcore fan of the games would hate it about as much as the other two, but no, people in general seem to not be feeling this movie apparently
torpid forge
I forgot there even was a movie
spark kraken
Probably for the best
Ohh....
ohhh it's really bad....
oh no....
So you know how || Pyramid Head is never ever ever ever shown to be James at all even well after you know it's supposed to be James and a personification of his own guilt and desire for punishment for what he did? ....what if we just actually show PH with James' face? ||
and you know how || SH2 is one of the most begginer-friendly entries precisely because it largely is self contained and contains very little, mostly background elements that add to the story, about Silent Hill and the cult and the religion and history of the area? well.... what if we just made Mary's dad a cult leader? ||
also also you know how || one of the core aspects of SH is the incredibly trippy vibe of the games and how it starts making you doubt whether or not you're experiencing reality or not? what if we just actually exactly tell you what is real and what isn't?? ||
are some of the things I'm getting
torpid forge
soooooo I could certainly defend 1 and maybe a mild form of 3 considering how different the story has to be to work in the span of a single non-interactive movie
but
we literally had Silent Hill-like movies before they made Silent Hill
there's no excuse for getting this wrong lol
(have you ever seen Jacob's Ladder?)
spark kraken
The excuse is that it's the same director who back in 2006 for the first SH movie decided that Harry worrying so much for his daughter was ''too femenine'' which is why he changed Harry to a woman in the first movie... I'm not surprised this is happening again
torpid forge
wtf
spark kraken
I have not, but it's on my actual bookmark list of movies to watch later alongside some others I've heard were inspiration for SH but mainly Jacob's Ladder is one I wanna watch for sure
That's an actual quote by the way he said that in an interview
torpid forge
ftr I have seen JL and I can attest it is a fascinating watch for an SH fan
spark kraken
I can't remember right now the name of the movie, or which post it was, but I remember this particular moment in SH3 I think it was in the Subway station area, you find a large glass window with a wheelchair wayyyyy further in the back on a long hallway and a door with a light shining on it, and I could never decipher the meaning of it and other people would sometimes argue about it in forums and whatnot, only very recently I found out it's actually a 1:1 reference to another horror movie, but it wasn't Jacob's Ladder from what I remember, it was a different movie
torpid forge
I think Lynch's films were the other main inspiration? and also the obvious ones to point at as far as "I'm not sure how much of this is really happening" storytelling in a film
spark kraken
They put another JL reference in the Subway with the chained up doors I think that's also just a straight up reference to a scene in the movie
Angel Heart!
torpid forge
the biggest JL reference I remember is the SH2 hospital sequence where you're lying on the stretcher face-up
spark kraken
this one
might be worth a watch in case you haven't seen it, it's the other one I have listed with JL
torpid forge
never heard of this one
but I don't think I've seen a bad movie with DeNiro
so I can't help notice the poster says the guy's name is "Harry"; was SH1 referencing this?
spark kraken
Actually no Harry's name was picked because it sounded more natural from what the japanese devs had initially thought of, ''Humbert Mason'', I don't imagine many elements were super directly inspiration for SH as much as something like Jacob's Ladder but what I have seen of this movie was directly referenced in SH3 so it definitely at least was enough of an inspiration for the franchise to have some scenes referenced and nodded at
torpid forge
cool
spark kraken
There's a bunch of Lynch movies I should probably also watch, this Halloween might be packed
last Halloween it was slashers, maybe this halloween will be super trippy weird psychological horror
torpid forge
oh, ping Cap if you do that
spark kraken
Oh my god they made Mary's || full name be Mary Angela Laura Crane and both Angela and Laura are manifestations of Mary's mind and Angela is played by Mary's actress ||
also || Eddie barely even shows up in the entire movie ||
Mary's sickness || wasn't just a thing that happened it was because she was part of the cult and she inflicted it onto herself for some type of cult scheme ||
At this point, it would've been better to look up ''Silent Hill 2 full movie'' on youtube and just screen all the cutscenes in the game and call it a day
spark kraken
Well well well
You can barely see it in this angle but there's a surprisingly gory scene back in the bedroom, at least about as gory as they can get in this hardware with the relatively lower poly and chunkier res
The music in this little apartment area is actually quite nice, but then again it's Yamaoka so of course it's gonna be good
Walking through the streets in this game is, again, a huge pain
Monsters absolutely everywhere and this guy can barely run a block without losing his breath
I can't seem to find the actual track that plays in the apartments, but it's this one without the funky beats, basically all the nice ambient synths only
spark kraken
the fact that Konami seriously actually was banking on this movie being successful to continue financing the franchise and yearly releases is insane, the only reason we had all those Silent Hill projects was purely because of this movie because they planned for it to be the big center piece and that's absolute insanity
torpid forge
why are all the big game companies so incompetent now
they weren’t always like this
vagrant spire
spark kraken
okay but seriously how the fuck did someone park this shit so perfectly to block the way in this alley
what kind of sociopath does this
versed raft
bold torrent