You Promised Youd Take Me There Again Someday

Essays 05 April 2022, 13:26

author: Brucevsky

Studios Slaughtered past Silent Hill

Konami'south ambitious plan to revive the Silent Hill make with iii loftier-contour launches in 1 month ended in complete disaster and cost the industry two of the three studios involved in the projects.

You promised you'd take me there once more anytime... but you never did

The calendar month of madness became a symbol of madness of Konami itself, whose plan to publish iii games from a unmarried series withing such a narrow time frame would seem like a marketing suicide. Ultimately, there'southward nothing left of the slap-up ambitions. It turns out that small studios located on other continents, devoid of directly support of the Japanese publisher, are unable to conduct the brunt of projects complicated beyond whatsoever reasonable limits.

Book of Memories turns out to exist an interesting item in the PlayStation Vita library, although the fans of the franchise can certainly say little expert about it. For them, WayForward Technologies has taken too many steps abroad from the original mechanics and style that have characterized the unabridged cycle.

And so, who became the scapegoat? The publisher, who took terrible decisions? Nope. The the ii studios that found themselves with their backs against a wall, forced to released unfinished games in March 2012. Less than six months later, the commencement reports of the closure of Vatra Games surfaced. The Kuju company, which was its owner, published the following statement for Eurogamer:

The new management team at Kuju have been conducting a strategic review of all aspects of the business organisation. As function of this procedure, the on-going business organization activities of the Vatra studio are currently under review. However, at this stage, no decisions have yet been made.

The laconic bulletin turns out a smokescreen that's supposed to encompass the inevitable facts. In September, the studio becomes history. A similar fate befell Hijinx Studios, which disappears from the industry before long later on the release of a collection that, in theory, was supposed to be a reason for pride and a significant achievement in the portfolio. But WayForward Technologies returns from Silent Gables with the shield, equally they were able to negotiate enough time and sufficient freedom to avert being buried in the foggy boondocks.

The two closed studios are certainly not the only victims in this story. We can likewise include all the fans of the brand and lovers of good horror, who in 2012 received something completely incongruous with their needs and expectations. Instead of a great return to a dearest series, they got a nail into that series' bury; a set of games that hibernated the franchise until this very day.

Peradventure the saddest thing in all of this is the fact that Konami did not ain the failures of these Silent Colina games, but rather pushed the arraign on the shoulders of the players. In this context, the words of the producer Devin Shatsky, responsible for Shattered Memories and Downpour , spoken in 2011 in an interview with the VG247 portal are especially significant:

Nosotros're fighting a flake of an uphill battle with Silent Colina, which leans more toward psychological exploration and atmosphere to create it'due south tension. It volition be interesting to meet how things go in the side by side few years, but it'south obvious the trend has been standing toward more action, more combat.

According to the creator, horror games such as Resident Evil or Dead Space, aimed at the mainstream audition, were bringing the greater profits and fitted the market place all-time.

The Silent Hill is obviously simply too silent to be of interest to united states of america right now. There'south only the hope that ane mean solar day, someone else will determine to visit this town and think its legends. Or maybe Team Silent could return, the fathers of the series, to accept u.s. on a journeying that would change the face of horror games? Unfortunately, the chances of this are rather slim, if y'all're to believe Devin Shatsky:

Team Silent will make a SH game when Sasquatch returns to Bluff Creek, or Plesiosaurs once over again inhabits Loch Ness.

On the other hand, that doesn't sound besides far off what we've seen so far in Silent Loma, no?

Brucevsky | Gamepressure.com

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Source: https://www.gamepressure.com/editorials/studios-slaughtered-by-silent-hill/z4569-4