Bloober Team Says Silent Hill 2 Remake Its 'Most Important Test'

My biggest problem with Bloober team is that they have the characters explain the story to the player instead of just letting you experience it. This is the opposite of how Silent Hill 2 tells its story and a huge part of the original experience is learning who James is through the environment and subtle clues. Given Bloober’s track record, I’m bracing myself for James and Maria to do everything short of a direct fourth wall break to explain the whole game to the player.

@UncleByron Nikkei managed to release a great AAA single player action game with stellar blade despite having a track record of mobile gotcha games only. I think bloober knows what they're working on.
I'd rather give bloober the benefit of the doubt and support them in their efforts. Only played observer so far and it wasn't on the nose.

Bloober is definition of mediocrity in gaming space.
I honestly have no faith in them.

@UncleByron
This makes me sad. I know nothing about Bloober, so them thinking they can meddle with a masterpiece is disappointing.
Especially by dumbing the game down which is just blasphemy lol

I know people don't have a lot of faith in Bloober, but atleast they are aware of how important this project is and seem to be taking it very seriously. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is their AAA breakout moment.

@Balie3000 I'm just keeping my expectations at 0 after their other projects. Especially the Medium and Blair Witch.

“We appreciate the confidence, but "loudest" might be a bit of a stretch.”

My thought exactly. Talk about big yourself up!

@tameshiyaku bloober has sited SH2 as a major inspiration for all of their works. They are excellent in creating atmosphere. They just don’t seem to trust the player to let moments speak for themselves without exposition. The original SH2 created space for you to sit with the atmosphere and your own reactions while pushing your understanding of what you were experiencing and providing subtle clues to add new context to keep you curious. Bloober team needs to trust the player and get out of their own way.

They say that they are trying to provide the best possible emotions. It signals to me they don’t understand their tendency to over explain at the cost of player connection.

SH2 works because it creates space to empathize without total context.

@Specky I’m sure they mean well, but their body of work demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what they are adapting.

I've never actually played this game so I do hope it turns out. You can do it Bloobies!

They should brace themselves for the downpour (no SH pun intended) of backlash and social media drama that's gonna happen after the game gets into gamers hands.
The purists will cry out that the devs didn't respect the original title enough. And many others won't be happy that the game sticks to much to the original, with very few improvements...
I don't see an outcome that won't rub many people the wrong way, no matter what path the devs took with this remake.

For myself, I'll get the game day one. I loved the OG game back in the day (was my first SH game) - and I've wanted to give it another go for a long time.
But some of it's mechanics are too old for me to enjoy now (tank controls most of all).
So this Remake is the best opportunity.
To quote a line from B5: "Whatever it is, it can't be THAT bad!"
So color me mildly hyped.

@Shinnok789 I consider myself more of an essentialist than a purist. That is to say, Bloober Team has yet to demonstrate an understanding of why the original worked. I’m good with an update. Imo the RE4 remake is better than the original. FF16 had a strong understanding of what made the franchise what it is despite the fact it’s an action game more than an RPG. And I believe that Silent Hill 2 could benefit from updating more than the original games that I’ve cited. It’s just that Bloober Team heavily relies on telling rather than showing. And to me, it misses the essence of the game they are adapting.

@Shinnok789
Literally nobody complained about the RE remakes, because they're faithful, so I think the "people will complain either way" is just plain nonsense.

It's a masterpiece and deviating from that means you get away from what made the game good.
They sound incompetent and full of themselves. This has potential for a disaster.

I wouldn't be surprised if they'd make the gameplay loose as well, so you're able to take on multiple enemies at once with easy and 360 noscoping them. Well the latter is exaggerated, but still

I’ve never played anything Silent Hill so I’m looking forward to jumping in with this. The only thing I know about Silent Hill is that it’s a horror game franchise.
I played RE:2 remake recently and I hope it’s at least as good as that.

You know what I think would make people less salty? If they included as an extra a simple remastered version of the original game. Its not gonna happen but I'd thought that might be a relatively easy win to cool people's anger if they did indeed feel disappointed by bloobers work.

@Swizzle Yeah that wouldn't be bad, take the PC port od SH2 with modded enhancements and it would be good

Putting some faith in Bloober here. Will the Silent Hill 2 Remake be perfect? Absolutely not. But my gut tells me that they’re going to nail it. They clearly realize that they can’t muck around with this property, and that this is a “make it or break it” moment for their careers. They got this!

It will be interesting to see how this game is received.word up son

@MrBook
Yeah, I didn't play it, back when it was new.
I took a break from gaming, during most of the PS2 generation. So last month I started to play a bunch of PS2 games, I never got the chance to play back in the day. Maybe I expected too much from the game, but I lost interest, after only 4 hours. It was too damn janky.
Especially the combat, was just frustratingly bad.
Probably would have enjoyed it more, 20 years ago, when we were used to crappy controls/camera.

As someone, that don't have nostalgia for the original, I'm looking forward to a new version.

@UncleByron still looking for ways to complain and whine wow

@Godot25 let's see you make a game

@ear_wig the original wasn't either and no game is perfect

@Undeadcop Lol. So, basically with that attitude every game is automatic 10/10 because you can't make better game?

Why are people so weird?

I think that if you put 40€ (or however much The Medium, Layers of Fear and Observer cost) for product they are offering, you have right to say if it was good or bad. Especially in sea of mediocrity that is Bloober Team.

@MrBook Purists tend to misunderstand how something works so any changes are a problem by default. You can deviate or even add to a remake or adaptation and still do very well. The new Dune movies are an example of this in my opinion. But that is because the creative team understood the source material. I really want Bloober Team to succeed here, it’s just not likely.

@Swizzle Yea or just have the Silent Hill HD collection available on modern consoles

@VatoLoco47
Maybe don't do that. The HD collection is controversial with SH fans due to the technical issues, bugs, and outright baffling changes to the art design.

@PegasusActual93 Oh really..Never got a chance to try it back then

Is a bit of a lose lose for them. Its so highly thought of by some that any major changes will be seen as sacrilege but they have to bring some of there own creativity to the project otherwise why bother with a remake-just update the technical aspects. I played Blair witch quite enjoyed it-one aspect they are strong on is atmosphere and silent hill has always been big on that too so I'm optimistic myself.

@Godot25 umm sweetheart did I say every game is perfect? No including yalls favorite game silent hill 2 2001