“Silent Hill 2” Game Director Talks Remake

Konami
The remake of “Silent Hill 2” launched this week on both PS5 and PC to an excellent reception so far.

There’s highly positive reviews all around, and a lot of praise for developer Bloober Team for both faithfully recreating the original while also expanding on it.

Recently the director of the original “Silent Hill 2” has spoken about his excitement over the remake and some of the changes made – such as the shift from the fixed camera system of the 2001 original to a more familiar over-the-shoulder perspective seen in almost all third-person games.

Writing on X, Masashi Tsuboyama says that shift on perspective is one of the key reason he’s excited to play the game:

“Games and technology are constantly evolving, resulting in significant differences in constraints and levels of expression. This is a common issue with media arts in general, but it is not easy to maintain and appreciate the environment of the time.

I think the value of the remake is that a new generation can play it. As a creator, I’m very happy about it. It’s been 23 years! Even if you don’t know the original, you can just enjoy the remake as it is. Whether it’s good or bad doesn’t affect the original.

The thing to note is the change in camera (perspective). The change in playable camera has a significant impact on many aspects, combat, level design, art creation, etc. While the impact on the story may be relatively small, it brings a big change to the playfeel of the game.

To be honest, I’m not satisfied with the playable camera from 23 years ago. Depth and angle were limited by the processing load. It was a continuous process of hard work that was not rewarded. But that was the limit. The over-the-shoulder view definitely adds to the sense of realism. In other words, it makes me want to try playing the even more immersive remake of Silent Hill 2!!!”

The comments came as PS Lifestye reports that the game’s Wikipedia page was hijacked last weekend with trolls changing the game scores to not reflect the accurate results.

The group has subsequently moved onto Steam’s page for the game to express their complaints about the game going ‘woke’ for ‘censoring’ Maria and making Angela ‘ugly’.

Legendary artist Masahiro Ito got into an argument on social media with the trolls, effectively telling them to grow up in a post on X. “Silent Hill 2” remake is currently available everywhere.