Konami
Silent Hill 2 Remake reveals new details and clears doubts about James’ new look
The legendary horror game’s return will take place at some point during 2023. In the meantime, we’ve got new details about the project.
If you like horror, Silent Hill 2 Remake has to be one of your most anticipated releases in 2023, right? It’s the return of a classic among classics, since Konami’s second entry to the now legendary franchise is one of the highest praised titles of the horror genre ever. We still don’t have an exact release date, but little by little we’re finding out more details about the game. This time, it was Motoi Okamoto (producer), Akira Yamaoka (composer) and Masahiro Ito (designer) who went on an exclusive interview with IGN to talk about the game.
From what they said during the video, a few things have been cleared up: the remake will have a different combat system than the original, and current technology has allowed the team to bring back some ideas that were left in the cutting room floor back in its day, such as James Sunderland’s controversial new face, something that caused opposing opinions when the project was revealed.
In search of better combat: enemy AI is key
The original’s combat mechanics have always been a noticeable bump on the otherwise amazing game. While it wasn’t the main focus of the game, Ito has confirmed that they’ve “improved the design” of each fight, something that would have been very complicated to do without “changing the way in which monsters move and act”. In fact, the game designer explained that they’ve gone ahead and remade the Artificial Intelligence of every enemy, adding that they “think this remake has ended up being a more interesting experience than the original.”
James’ new face has a reason behind it
As soon as the first trailer for this remake was shown, Silent Hill fans focused on something that they felt was a big change: James Sudnerland’s new look. Okamoto’s answer when asked about this change has cleared up any doubts: “We want to depict a James who is more mature and has had to suffer through more in his life, and to do that we raised his age, though only by a bit. If he looks older to you, it's not your imagination.” Just as a fun fact, in the original game James was said to be only 29 years old.
But it also seems like they’ve always wanted to show a more mature protagonist. Due to hardware and available resources, recreating such a face was really difficult during the PS2 era. “You couldn't depict skin in a nuanced way during the PS2 era. Everyone ended up looking younger, or at least had smooth skin. Now that we're in the age of the PS4 and PS5, we're able to better show someone's exact age, whether that's someone elderly, someone middle-aged, someone in their thirties, and so on. That's why we decided to go with a more convincing sense of age.”
Silent Hill 2 Remake is set to arrive on PS5 in 2023. There’s also several other games from the Konami horror franchise in development: Silent Hill F and Silent Hill Townfall are some of them, but there’s plenty more. Find out all the details about it all through this link.
Source | IGN (exclusive)