Return to Silent Hill
Silent Hill soft reboot on the way?
Horror gaming website Rely on Horror claims there are two new Silent Hill games in development.
Their report states that one of the new games is a collaboration with Sony’s Japan Studio, while the second one is an attempt to resurrect Kojima Productions’ cancelled Silent Hills.
Sony supposedly pitched the project to Konami, but it’s unclear if Konami is involved in the actual development. Art director and creature designer Masahiro Ito is also apparently involved.
- The P.T. demo, also known as Silent Hills, generated a lot of buzz after appearing and then disappearing from PlayStation Store
- Art director Masahiro Ito, composer Akira Yamaoka and writer Keiichiro Toyama are said to be involved with the reboot
Sony tries to patch things up: Sony is allegedly trying to help reconcile Kojima Productions and Konami after Hideo Kojima’s less-than-amicable departure. Maybe they’re hungry for more Metal Gear Solid? In any case, let’s hope the Silent Hill reboot is actually happening!
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
Which Remedy protagonist was portrayed by Matthew Porretta?
- Max Payne
- Alan Wake
- Jack Joyce
- Paul Serene
The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today’s issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.
Daily Fact
Remedy’s Humble Beginnings
Remedy might be a household name now, but their success didn’t exactly come out of nowhere.
The Finnish studio is best-known for their action games, strong characters and cinematic storytelling, but their very first game was a top-down vehicular combat game.
Death Rally was published by Apogee Software for MS-DOS in 1996 and was developed in a basement. Apogee supported Remedy as they started work on their second game, which ended up being called Max Payne – and the rest, as they say, is history.
It’s quite interesting that a company most famous for telling stories with their games started out making a game about cars shooting at each other.
Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today’s fact.
Naughty Crunch Culture
Former Naughty Dog developer comments on studio’s crunch culture
Kotaku recently published an exposé detailing the gruelling crunch Naughty Dog has sustained to launch The Last Of Us 2 in time and talked to former Naughty Dog animator Jonathan Cooper about crunch.
Cooper said he doesn’t have any awful crunch tales of his own but that he’s aware of how some Naughty Dog employees have struggled. For example, one gameplay animator ended up hospitalised due to overwork to get the September demo ready in time.
- Cooper worked at Naughty Dog for five years and contributed to Uncharted 4, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and The Last of Us Part II
- Naughty Dog withheld Cooper’s final paycheck until he signed an NDA preventing him from talking about the company’s production practices
Cooper’s cutting comments: “ND’s linear games have a formula and they focus-test the shit out of them. While talented, their success is due in large part to Sony’s deep pockets funding delays rather than skill alone. A more senior team would have shipped TLOU2 a year ago.”
