This has now been released. I finished it, and will compile the running commentary below, because it touches on most things that I found noteworthy. Open discussion, particularly in the case of a game like this where observed elements of it can track pretty granular. See you below.
I did not care for this game very much, but it's earned acclaim on a general basis, so I'd be interested if it ends up working for others. It also wasn't very surprising to see unfold, because what it ended up as fell in line with the expectations I held for it, and how many of my issues with it stem from an overarching "modernized" direction that's really all-encompassing and which renders the game presentationally and design-wise flatly unremarkable and entirely stretched out for what's done with the material. If there's a word for it, "conventional" might be the one.
they gave james a dodge dash in sh2r lol
time to lab
--
weird as hell to try the door to a storefront you've virtually walked past for twenty years and find out there's a new interior there now
the expanded environment definitely the best part of this so far. stuff like breaking store windows and clambering inside. sh1 was always the king of town exploration in the series and each subsequent entry always de-emphasized it more and more, so it's nice to have a take on it here. stuff like downpour did try to do stuff with it but it didn't really take because it was... downpour
--
corny thing the game does is that because it shuffles the existing sequences and details, when you find some place where in the original there was something significant, a jingle plays and the screen shows static for a bit. like it's constantly nudging you about acknowledging that they moved some event a few blocks over or something
like mashing x in every mgs4 cutscene featuring Old Thing to trigger flashback imagery
--
the constant winking self-referentiality in sh2 remake is exhausting
walk up to the alley where the back entrance to heaven's night used to be (it's been relocated in this), and you get the the now-recurring flashback ping that you visited an old spot... but also maria goes "huh.... deja vu............." as you examine the door
you walk into a motel room at jacks inn, and maria's original clothes are on a hanger in the closet. at first i thought it was just background detail--spot it or not, continue on--but it's scripted so maria will pick them out and comment on them and literally present them next to her, asking james if he thinks she'd look good in them
it's just so on the nose and does nothing but highlight that yes, changes were made... but the old clothes were still modeled into the game, were presented like this. you could've just had her wear them at that point
you go to pete's bowl-o-rama and maria follows you inside, which she in the original doesn't. she waves it off with a "i hate bowling" excuse, which is likely meant to sound weird and off--the actual reason she doesn't follow james in is because eddie and laura are inside, and maria is james's personal tormentor; she doesn't interact with others or demonstrably even exist for them
in the remake, eddie and laura aren't there, so they do this nudge-nudge line where james is like "i uh thought you wouldn't want to go in here" and she rebukes him for it. just calling attention again to how Things Are Different
then you go examine the leftovers of eddie's pizza, and because james can't deliver the line to the man in person, he just triple-a mumbles to himself the meme line of "this town is full of monsters. who could just sit here and eat pizza" close to verbatim
i guess the thing is that these things aren't "self"-referential--they're references made by fans, something unchecked fandom produces as its signifiers and stamps of legitimacy
it grates when those changes result in something less effective, too. you pass through the room where you originally fight pyramid head for the first time; it's just this nondescript stairway access which he departs from by unsettlingly wandering into a flooded stairwell. now that's just reduced to flashback residue, and the fight is moved to a brand new dumbass huge outdoor arena in the middle of the apartment complex, full of destructible objects and where it starts pouring rain. it's so overdone
--
the otherworld visual design is also way less what sh2 was, which notably diverged from what sh1, and eventually sh3 did, because they tied the imagery to a character's psyche, and for those games it was primarily alessa/heather's brainscape informing the scenery. that's where the rusted grating, barbed wire and whatever plays in--things that are iconic of the series, but also highly character-specific. james's silent hill is more subtly decayed, but they've already broken out those cliches in dressing it up for this version
--
also uh i don't know how much a game like this needed or benefits from making the combat more "demanding", when the end result is that every enemy type has counters, evasive bop-and-weaves, grabs, and just tons more aggression in general, and you having to respond in kind. why am i playing footsies here as a baseline of interaction
it's really not very different from homecoming, which was notably blasted for going hard on optimized knife combo strings for how it played
--
they moved the eddie and laura hanging out and eating pizza scene from one location to another but it's basically the same... except that the pizza got left behind for that aforementioned aside, and now instead he's... clawing melted strawberry ice cream out from a bucket and licking it off his fingers. somehow a more fatphobic change
--
more town interiors is a cool aspect of the remake but it also turned out less cool than i initially assumed, which was that they were optional spaces you could find and go in for supplies if you wanted to--sh1 has the most of these in particular. but it turned out they're mostly used in service of the remake's greatly lengthened playtime, where the initial sequence of "find a key on the street to go into the apartments, either by stumbling onto it or following assorted clues" is expanded to a multi-location, multi-step process with its own puzzle(s) to get that same key. so that really recontextualized those interior spaces as less interesting than they could've been
--
not sure what's going on with the resource economy in this game. walking around mid-ish game (or earlier) with 30 health items and 200 handgun bullets. i've taken a lot of hits, whiffed shots, use the gun whenever it feels necessary... still this ridiculous-feeling surplus. silent hill has never been known for frugal play but even so
--
man, they kept the "pyramid head throws you off the hospital roof" scene... but they removed the aspect where it leaves you in critical health after the fall, an event in cutscene being reflected in game mechanics. this despite there being a new note that telegraphs the entire thing through "u will get where you need to go, but probably not the way you'd like. there'll be some pain involved"
they also rewrote the last few lines of the rooftop diary (well-liked written note, plays into the ending determination if you read it) despite keeping it otherwise verbatim. it's just phrased worse now
--
james slumps on park bench, exasperatingly grumbling "i don't even remember this place..." because it's a location new to the remake
new scene with angela in the same new park the earlier bit was, and she goes "this place is different from what i remember... i guess things really don't stay the same"
why do they keep talking about this. it's like if every new section of the ff7 remakes someone in the party stopped to outstretch their arms gesturing at the scenery like "we certainly didn't have this in 1997"
you can go to the motel room heather and douglas end up staying at in sh3 (it reuses part of the sh2 map) and find the latter's hat there, as well as the cult's symbol peeking out from under peeling-off wallpaper. that's a series reference that's throwaway and kinda cheap (same as, say, finding the the sh4 Room in downpour), but it doesn't strike as this weird protracted remake navel-gazing simply because it references another game than is being adapted
both of those are definitely very strictly in the "fans would do this" range of nods though
--
i think the act of playing the game has completely died on the vine at this point. it's this horrifically samey, bloated monster that looks to doom or the like for encounter design cues, and not in the good way but the parodic, tired ways. enemies are highly scripted to blast out of nowhere when you do a thing or pick up something, when you cross thresholds for them to trigger, and they often get spawned in behind corners or even literally burst through scenery. in the original, the mannequin enemy type is kind of rare, but here it's been elevated to practically the backbone of the enemy roster, and they use its inactive-until-disturbed (and giving off no radio static) nature as a gotcha generator: they're always placed behind corners, under tables, crumpled out of sight until they leap out at you. this happens dozens and dozens of times, exacerbated by there being so much more combat and enemies. it's a mind-numbing process--like the worst match of punch-out ever where you fight the opponent who has four legs and no arms a hundred times in a row
level design has these designated "battle areas" littered with obstructions and waist-high cover to vault over, where you're supposed to navigate multiple enemies at once. a couple of sections in the hospital after i was done with such segments and returned to the hub space, they literally cordoned off that entire wing with blockage because the game determined it was cleared and there was no reason to go back. it's really uninterestingly choreographed for "gameyness"; all layouts corral you through the floorplan in these very overdesigned loops meant to mitigate backtracking, which feels really artificial and constructed for convenience, and is an especially strange dichotomy in a genre like this that's supposed to be environmentally laborious as a draw of play
--
they do a boring creative decision with the hospital basement pyramid head chase. in the original you're in a long, twisting hallway, and after a bit once you've entered and continue along, ph appears behind you, having spawned offscreen. there's no break in the action or player control, so suddenly you're scrambling to escape. in this, he enters during a cutscene you watch, and then the game resets into Chase Mode divorced from the usual mode of movement. it's just limp in comparison
friend: what do you mean by that? there's two different styles of movement?
it controls the same but it's a heavily scripted segment. maria runs ahead of you at a pre-determined distance, debris falls as very platformer-esque obstacles to avoid, they make ph bust through a wall at one point for a set startle. it's just this very produced few seconds unlike the original which was just a high-tension scene that had no other theatrics except a persistent pursuer
friend: lol. sounds like it practically turns into uncharted
it's very much like those games yeah
it's something the game does more than once. before the apartments there's a chase scene where you pick up the key and the entire town suddenly crawls with enemies while the fog thickens into a storm. after meeting maria, you get chased by a similar enemy horde through the backyards of a suburban residence block. they apparently thought the game needed these kinds of high-octane intermissions
--
prison in sh2 original is this brief, highly memorable pitstop consisting of a single floor map. in the remake, they evidently thought it was too little of a good thing--it's now six maps large
--
finally found without question the most valuable original contribution by bloober to this game... REAP WHAT YOU SOW graffiti on the wall
--
they thought a good way to expand the labyrinth was to have three deathmatch rooms in a row where you get locked inside with enemies and have to survive until a timer ticks down
--
the new combat mechanics reach a new level of nonsense when you fight eddie and are literally dodging bullets on reaction
--
they bungled yet another memorable bit. in the original, the prison has a couple of invisible enemies in the cell block; they just chant "ritual" in a deep and distorted voice, and have very heavy footsteps. they're in locked cells and james reacts to them by tracking them with his gaze, and you can even shoot and kill them, but they never hurt you. the remake keeps the voice clip, but just has it play in a cell full of occult apparel (taken from the original, but that's not where the invisible prisoners were). there's no associated mysterious creature with the sound, so it just has the same impact as any other myriad unsettling sfx the game is blasting literally all the time, amidst a sound design approach that's much more unwilling to rely on silence than the original
why bother making a non-violent enemy that you can't even i-frame dash through its attacks
--
god this mannequin a.i is so comical. the original idea for them was that they didn't trigger radio static when inactive, so yes you could be surprised by them in a game that had a camera system that's not over the shoulder, but also that them being frozen in place is just an unsettling visual. in this they have them actively seek out spaces to hide in so they can proactively ambush you. just had one huddled up behind a potted plant for cover
when you imbue strange, distinctly non-human nightmare creatures with this much tactical presence of mind, they really stop being very scary and just turn into combat obstacles
--
they added an entirely original boss to the hotel in sh2r. i don't think this is a game carried on the back of its... boss fights
--
in the original the third floor of the hotel is locked with a grate, so you can't enter it straight away, while knowing that's where james and mary's old room is. when you turn away from the grate to walk back down the stairs, there's a barely audible, distant cry of "james" by mary's voice, right before you're about to hit the loading screen transition. in this, you walk up to the equivalent grate, and it's this very clear and loud cry, that happens the instant you approach, and (you could turn these things off, but we're talking default settings here) it's actually subbed, with the speaker identified as mary in the captions. it's uh... a pretty different effect
--
more bloober erudition: "there is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous" graffiti on the wall
--
following a pattern again: they made the angela staircase scene completely non-interactive. in the original, after she's finished talking and starts ascending the stairs, you get control back and can watch her slowly disappear into the flames. you can try to follow her in vain, and importantly you can linger in the scene as long as you want to. this just makes it all cutscene, and james immediately bolts as soon as she's said her piece
--
finished sh2r. 20 hours and 40 minutes. 400 enemies killed. so stupid
friend: what was your maximum boat speed
it doesn't track it, which is insulting
friend: unbelievable
--
they implemented one of the worse longstanding fan theories that goes "what if james like, had mary's body in his car trunk the whole time, dude." in this version of the ending where he drives off into the lake, he clearly glances at his backseat while addressing mary and it's shot to suggest there's something there. then you can just start a new game, look closer, and yeah there's a blanket covering the whole backseat
--
it's just the same story but with a bizarre insistence on reminding you that it's a remake, while not doing anything else with it
so many of the scenes follow the original script verbatim and that feels like a huge mistake because there's no way a lot of the retakes can compare. not qualitatively always (though that's the case for mary's letter read) but just because you're taking almost 25 years old writing sensibility and filtering it through actors who are professionally and stylistically very different from the people who originally delivered those lines. it doesn't cohere well when sometimes they literally adapt, and sometimes there's an entirely new scene with new writing, or sometimes it's almost the same but there's a slight rewording for whatever reason, to usually less memorable effect
cinematography suffers too. maybe they were afraid of reproducing the same shots... so oftentimes it's just framed boringly
time to lab
--
weird as hell to try the door to a storefront you've virtually walked past for twenty years and find out there's a new interior there now
the expanded environment definitely the best part of this so far. stuff like breaking store windows and clambering inside. sh1 was always the king of town exploration in the series and each subsequent entry always de-emphasized it more and more, so it's nice to have a take on it here. stuff like downpour did try to do stuff with it but it didn't really take because it was... downpour
--
corny thing the game does is that because it shuffles the existing sequences and details, when you find some place where in the original there was something significant, a jingle plays and the screen shows static for a bit. like it's constantly nudging you about acknowledging that they moved some event a few blocks over or something
like mashing x in every mgs4 cutscene featuring Old Thing to trigger flashback imagery
--
the constant winking self-referentiality in sh2 remake is exhausting
walk up to the alley where the back entrance to heaven's night used to be (it's been relocated in this), and you get the the now-recurring flashback ping that you visited an old spot... but also maria goes "huh.... deja vu............." as you examine the door
you walk into a motel room at jacks inn, and maria's original clothes are on a hanger in the closet. at first i thought it was just background detail--spot it or not, continue on--but it's scripted so maria will pick them out and comment on them and literally present them next to her, asking james if he thinks she'd look good in them
it's just so on the nose and does nothing but highlight that yes, changes were made... but the old clothes were still modeled into the game, were presented like this. you could've just had her wear them at that point
you go to pete's bowl-o-rama and maria follows you inside, which she in the original doesn't. she waves it off with a "i hate bowling" excuse, which is likely meant to sound weird and off--the actual reason she doesn't follow james in is because eddie and laura are inside, and maria is james's personal tormentor; she doesn't interact with others or demonstrably even exist for them
in the remake, eddie and laura aren't there, so they do this nudge-nudge line where james is like "i uh thought you wouldn't want to go in here" and she rebukes him for it. just calling attention again to how Things Are Different
then you go examine the leftovers of eddie's pizza, and because james can't deliver the line to the man in person, he just triple-a mumbles to himself the meme line of "this town is full of monsters. who could just sit here and eat pizza" close to verbatim
i guess the thing is that these things aren't "self"-referential--they're references made by fans, something unchecked fandom produces as its signifiers and stamps of legitimacy
it grates when those changes result in something less effective, too. you pass through the room where you originally fight pyramid head for the first time; it's just this nondescript stairway access which he departs from by unsettlingly wandering into a flooded stairwell. now that's just reduced to flashback residue, and the fight is moved to a brand new dumbass huge outdoor arena in the middle of the apartment complex, full of destructible objects and where it starts pouring rain. it's so overdone
--
the otherworld visual design is also way less what sh2 was, which notably diverged from what sh1, and eventually sh3 did, because they tied the imagery to a character's psyche, and for those games it was primarily alessa/heather's brainscape informing the scenery. that's where the rusted grating, barbed wire and whatever plays in--things that are iconic of the series, but also highly character-specific. james's silent hill is more subtly decayed, but they've already broken out those cliches in dressing it up for this version
--
also uh i don't know how much a game like this needed or benefits from making the combat more "demanding", when the end result is that every enemy type has counters, evasive bop-and-weaves, grabs, and just tons more aggression in general, and you having to respond in kind. why am i playing footsies here as a baseline of interaction
it's really not very different from homecoming, which was notably blasted for going hard on optimized knife combo strings for how it played
--
they moved the eddie and laura hanging out and eating pizza scene from one location to another but it's basically the same... except that the pizza got left behind for that aforementioned aside, and now instead he's... clawing melted strawberry ice cream out from a bucket and licking it off his fingers. somehow a more fatphobic change
--
more town interiors is a cool aspect of the remake but it also turned out less cool than i initially assumed, which was that they were optional spaces you could find and go in for supplies if you wanted to--sh1 has the most of these in particular. but it turned out they're mostly used in service of the remake's greatly lengthened playtime, where the initial sequence of "find a key on the street to go into the apartments, either by stumbling onto it or following assorted clues" is expanded to a multi-location, multi-step process with its own puzzle(s) to get that same key. so that really recontextualized those interior spaces as less interesting than they could've been
--
not sure what's going on with the resource economy in this game. walking around mid-ish game (or earlier) with 30 health items and 200 handgun bullets. i've taken a lot of hits, whiffed shots, use the gun whenever it feels necessary... still this ridiculous-feeling surplus. silent hill has never been known for frugal play but even so
--
man, they kept the "pyramid head throws you off the hospital roof" scene... but they removed the aspect where it leaves you in critical health after the fall, an event in cutscene being reflected in game mechanics. this despite there being a new note that telegraphs the entire thing through "u will get where you need to go, but probably not the way you'd like. there'll be some pain involved"
they also rewrote the last few lines of the rooftop diary (well-liked written note, plays into the ending determination if you read it) despite keeping it otherwise verbatim. it's just phrased worse now
--
james slumps on park bench, exasperatingly grumbling "i don't even remember this place..." because it's a location new to the remake
new scene with angela in the same new park the earlier bit was, and she goes "this place is different from what i remember... i guess things really don't stay the same"
why do they keep talking about this. it's like if every new section of the ff7 remakes someone in the party stopped to outstretch their arms gesturing at the scenery like "we certainly didn't have this in 1997"
you can go to the motel room heather and douglas end up staying at in sh3 (it reuses part of the sh2 map) and find the latter's hat there, as well as the cult's symbol peeking out from under peeling-off wallpaper. that's a series reference that's throwaway and kinda cheap (same as, say, finding the the sh4 Room in downpour), but it doesn't strike as this weird protracted remake navel-gazing simply because it references another game than is being adapted
both of those are definitely very strictly in the "fans would do this" range of nods though
--
i think the act of playing the game has completely died on the vine at this point. it's this horrifically samey, bloated monster that looks to doom or the like for encounter design cues, and not in the good way but the parodic, tired ways. enemies are highly scripted to blast out of nowhere when you do a thing or pick up something, when you cross thresholds for them to trigger, and they often get spawned in behind corners or even literally burst through scenery. in the original, the mannequin enemy type is kind of rare, but here it's been elevated to practically the backbone of the enemy roster, and they use its inactive-until-disturbed (and giving off no radio static) nature as a gotcha generator: they're always placed behind corners, under tables, crumpled out of sight until they leap out at you. this happens dozens and dozens of times, exacerbated by there being so much more combat and enemies. it's a mind-numbing process--like the worst match of punch-out ever where you fight the opponent who has four legs and no arms a hundred times in a row
level design has these designated "battle areas" littered with obstructions and waist-high cover to vault over, where you're supposed to navigate multiple enemies at once. a couple of sections in the hospital after i was done with such segments and returned to the hub space, they literally cordoned off that entire wing with blockage because the game determined it was cleared and there was no reason to go back. it's really uninterestingly choreographed for "gameyness"; all layouts corral you through the floorplan in these very overdesigned loops meant to mitigate backtracking, which feels really artificial and constructed for convenience, and is an especially strange dichotomy in a genre like this that's supposed to be environmentally laborious as a draw of play
--
they do a boring creative decision with the hospital basement pyramid head chase. in the original you're in a long, twisting hallway, and after a bit once you've entered and continue along, ph appears behind you, having spawned offscreen. there's no break in the action or player control, so suddenly you're scrambling to escape. in this, he enters during a cutscene you watch, and then the game resets into Chase Mode divorced from the usual mode of movement. it's just limp in comparison
friend: what do you mean by that? there's two different styles of movement?
it controls the same but it's a heavily scripted segment. maria runs ahead of you at a pre-determined distance, debris falls as very platformer-esque obstacles to avoid, they make ph bust through a wall at one point for a set startle. it's just this very produced few seconds unlike the original which was just a high-tension scene that had no other theatrics except a persistent pursuer
friend: lol. sounds like it practically turns into uncharted
it's very much like those games yeah
it's something the game does more than once. before the apartments there's a chase scene where you pick up the key and the entire town suddenly crawls with enemies while the fog thickens into a storm. after meeting maria, you get chased by a similar enemy horde through the backyards of a suburban residence block. they apparently thought the game needed these kinds of high-octane intermissions
--
prison in sh2 original is this brief, highly memorable pitstop consisting of a single floor map. in the remake, they evidently thought it was too little of a good thing--it's now six maps large
--
finally found without question the most valuable original contribution by bloober to this game... REAP WHAT YOU SOW graffiti on the wall
--
they thought a good way to expand the labyrinth was to have three deathmatch rooms in a row where you get locked inside with enemies and have to survive until a timer ticks down
--
the new combat mechanics reach a new level of nonsense when you fight eddie and are literally dodging bullets on reaction
--
they bungled yet another memorable bit. in the original, the prison has a couple of invisible enemies in the cell block; they just chant "ritual" in a deep and distorted voice, and have very heavy footsteps. they're in locked cells and james reacts to them by tracking them with his gaze, and you can even shoot and kill them, but they never hurt you. the remake keeps the voice clip, but just has it play in a cell full of occult apparel (taken from the original, but that's not where the invisible prisoners were). there's no associated mysterious creature with the sound, so it just has the same impact as any other myriad unsettling sfx the game is blasting literally all the time, amidst a sound design approach that's much more unwilling to rely on silence than the original
why bother making a non-violent enemy that you can't even i-frame dash through its attacks
--
god this mannequin a.i is so comical. the original idea for them was that they didn't trigger radio static when inactive, so yes you could be surprised by them in a game that had a camera system that's not over the shoulder, but also that them being frozen in place is just an unsettling visual. in this they have them actively seek out spaces to hide in so they can proactively ambush you. just had one huddled up behind a potted plant for cover
when you imbue strange, distinctly non-human nightmare creatures with this much tactical presence of mind, they really stop being very scary and just turn into combat obstacles
--
they added an entirely original boss to the hotel in sh2r. i don't think this is a game carried on the back of its... boss fights
--
in the original the third floor of the hotel is locked with a grate, so you can't enter it straight away, while knowing that's where james and mary's old room is. when you turn away from the grate to walk back down the stairs, there's a barely audible, distant cry of "james" by mary's voice, right before you're about to hit the loading screen transition. in this, you walk up to the equivalent grate, and it's this very clear and loud cry, that happens the instant you approach, and (you could turn these things off, but we're talking default settings here) it's actually subbed, with the speaker identified as mary in the captions. it's uh... a pretty different effect
--
more bloober erudition: "there is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous" graffiti on the wall
--
following a pattern again: they made the angela staircase scene completely non-interactive. in the original, after she's finished talking and starts ascending the stairs, you get control back and can watch her slowly disappear into the flames. you can try to follow her in vain, and importantly you can linger in the scene as long as you want to. this just makes it all cutscene, and james immediately bolts as soon as she's said her piece
--
finished sh2r. 20 hours and 40 minutes. 400 enemies killed. so stupid
friend: what was your maximum boat speed
it doesn't track it, which is insulting
friend: unbelievable
--
they implemented one of the worse longstanding fan theories that goes "what if james like, had mary's body in his car trunk the whole time, dude." in this version of the ending where he drives off into the lake, he clearly glances at his backseat while addressing mary and it's shot to suggest there's something there. then you can just start a new game, look closer, and yeah there's a blanket covering the whole backseat
--
it's just the same story but with a bizarre insistence on reminding you that it's a remake, while not doing anything else with it
so many of the scenes follow the original script verbatim and that feels like a huge mistake because there's no way a lot of the retakes can compare. not qualitatively always (though that's the case for mary's letter read) but just because you're taking almost 25 years old writing sensibility and filtering it through actors who are professionally and stylistically very different from the people who originally delivered those lines. it doesn't cohere well when sometimes they literally adapt, and sometimes there's an entirely new scene with new writing, or sometimes it's almost the same but there's a slight rewording for whatever reason, to usually less memorable effect
cinematography suffers too. maybe they were afraid of reproducing the same shots... so oftentimes it's just framed boringly
I did not care for this game very much, but it's earned acclaim on a general basis, so I'd be interested if it ends up working for others. It also wasn't very surprising to see unfold, because what it ended up as fell in line with the expectations I held for it, and how many of my issues with it stem from an overarching "modernized" direction that's really all-encompassing and which renders the game presentationally and design-wise flatly unremarkable and entirely stretched out for what's done with the material. If there's a word for it, "conventional" might be the one.
