Why did the American developers just not get Silent Hill? Was it laziness? Was it a cash grab?

Why did the American developers just not get Silent Hill? Was it laziness? Was it a cash grab?

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Laziness, lack of cultural knowledge (folklores, legends, myths) to utilize, poor artistic skills, western "just do good enough" working mentality, and pure misconceptions about Silent Hill and its lore as a whole. A lot of it can be blamed on the god-awful Movie, which clearly became the "design document" for almost all western SH devs, in all wrong ways.

That being said, Downpoor wasn't made in the US, but ye "walking, talking SH bible", mr. Tomm Hulett, did have his hands on it as well. Not to mention shit like Korn and Dexter's composer doing the OST, totally skipping Akira Yamaoka.

Well yeah but it amazes me how these games have been through numerous developers now and not a single one of these developers truly understood the concept. In most cases missing the mark by a very wide margin. It gives a good insight imo on how western developers aren't actually good at making games at all.

>Americans

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatra_Games

It should be a huge red flag when the main directors, producers and designers of the western SH games say out loud shit like "I didn't like Silent Hill 1, because I honestly didn't get it". Or, how they now like to mask it: "I hate THE CULT STUFF! It's sooo lazy!". So not only are they literally too dumb to even figure out what's going on, they then decide to ignore the series entire roots and main story elements.

As weeb as it might sound like, especially American devs really lack deeper understanding and knowledge about the world and its many lores to create truly deep and thought-provoking game experiences. It could be partly because they themselves practically lack a folklore of their own, which together with the total isolation from the "old world" (+ absolutely laughable schooling systems that love to skip through major historical events).
They simply lack cultural content to project into their works, which leads them to re-use some truly generic designs every twisted 15yo could come up with (seriously, I was working on my own SH fan-game in ~2003, and many of my enemy designs look exactly like some foes from Homecoming), and to even fall back to their only well known spook story: the Boogeyman.

Finally, fast forward to 2010s, and majority of western devs and publishers have turned into these riskless pricks who only rehash stuff that has been proven to sell quick, preferably while also being as easy and fast to develop as possible. Little by little the games have become more and more streamlined, more handholding, and all around more patronizing - which has started to affect an entire generation of gamers and devs alike. You know something's gone seriously wrong when young players these days cannot even find the very first item box in Resident Evil, or think that they need to "progress far enough in the story" to learn a manual aiming skill in SH2. I wish I was joking.

>"I hate THE CULT STUFF! It's sooo lazy!"
>includes cult stuff in homecoming
>justs take shit from the movie

>western "just do good enough" working mentality
hasn't this been konamis work ethic for about 15 years?

...

>"american folklore"

Yes, and not only theirs.
It was mostly their underling teams (TS, KojiPro....) doing all the best-seller stuff for years, often more or less against their bosses' wills even.

Because, Silent Hill was a very Japanese Horro game, just set in America.

All of its themes, symbolisms are from Japanese horror.

For example. the bathroom. For asian folks, the bathroom is usually the doorway to the otherworld. that's why most, if not all ( i dont remember 1 exactly). the rusty shit in Silent Hill start when you enter and get out of the bathroom. Silent Hill 3 you escape from the bathroom and enter, tadah.... shit is rusty. Silent Hill 4, the portal to the otherworld is in the bathroom. I remember in Silent Hill 2, you enter the bathroom in the Hospital, once you get out, shit is rusty

Silent Hill 1 was originally meant to be Konami's answer to Resident Evil 1. Konami basically wanted their very own RE clone. Eventually Team Silent just said fuck them lets create something different instead and the rest is history. Too bad you can't really get creativity like that these days. The publisher's watch over their teams like hawks now.

There's also the 4th floor button in the elevator from SH1. Still my favorite spook in the entire franchise.

You're remembering everything wrong.

Tomm Hulett ruined it

How I am remembering wrong.

you escape the investigator guy in 3 by going to the bathroom, then escaping through the window. when you get back in, shit gets real.

That is the only correct part.

Developers who adopt a franchise created by others almost never "get" it, on a whiteboard somewhere it gets boiled down to 4 basic elements.

Downpour wasn't that bad considering. The worst aspect was the enemy design.

Yeah, those Americans in the Czech Republic.

As far as the game itself goes it doesn't feel like they just shit it out and washed their hands. It feels like effort was put into the game and they wanted to make something great. The game isn't great. It's a buggy mess and reeks of access jank. But I don't think it was intentional. I would recommend you play this game.

the portal in 4 is in literally in your bathroom.

in Silent Hill 2, there real rusty shit happens when you enter and go back from the bathroom in the hospital

>But I don't think it was intentional.
The story at least was fucked up quite late on thanks to Tomm Hulett stepping into the studio, saying that the plot "makes too much sense", demanding them to scrap it and make it "harder to get". Which resulted a game with no single coherent story and ending, but dozens of them depending only on which ending you get.

I would however very much recommend AVOIDING this smelly piece of shit at all costs. No amount of good will justifies all the trash you need to expose yourself to.

>the portal in 4 is in literally in your bathroom.
the second correct part.

>in Silent Hill 2, there real rusty shit happens when you enter and go back from the bathroom in the hospital
wrong.

But see... it's a video game. And I really like video games, even the bad one's. It's not a good game, but I would argue it is worth experiencing, even if only to see what works and what doesn't. The combat is garbage, and if you are inclined you can just set that shit to easy.

It seems everybody on this board is so "hardcore about games" that they don't play any games at all because it won't live up to some imagined standard. Get out there and play some games, and stop looking for reason's not too. That goes for everybody.

there are two otherworlds in 2. the green grimy shit, then the rusty shit.

do educate me then when does the rusty shit happen in 2

Because the people behind them are dudebros that circlejerk over the smart story in 2 and at the same time hate everything else about the series, from combat to voice acting. Hulett literally wanted to rewrite the scripts of 2 and 3 for the remasters, and in small bits he actually did it. So long story short western SH means more action oriented (Homecoming, Origins) and nonsensical in a pathetic attempt to steal SH2's thunder (Downpour, Origins again)

Shattered Memories wasn't that great but it's the most respectable attempt for being actually original