Few games are as anticipated and feared as Silent Hill 2 Remake. Partly because it’s a cult game, highly beloved both within and outside the horror gaming community, partly because what the ads have portrayed thus far doesn’t seem exactly the same as the original. That’s something that the makers of the original Silent Hill, Team Silent, have something to say about.
In a recent interview with Famitsu, Japan’s longest-running video game magazine, Silent Hill 2 Remake producer Motoi Okamoto made some surprising statements. When asked if it was difficult to strike a balance between introducing new elements and maintaining what made the original so memorable, Okamoto responded affirmatively. But he didn’t stop there. He stated that, in fact, the original developers wanted even more changes to be made.
According to Okamoto himself, “the Japanese team, including Masahiro Ito, the original designer, and Akira Yamaoka, the sound designer, would say ‘we want to change this part!’, and Bloober Team would often contend, ‘no, we don’t want to change this!'” The reason for this, Okamoto says, is that Bloober Team are big fans of the original game. That’s why they didn’t want to make big changes to the original Silent Hill 2.
Okamoto clarified that Japan’s perspective was to do something different. He explained that “(the creators) don’t want people to play the same thing. That’s why there were a lot of things they wanted to completely change in the remake,” and pointed out that “the remake ended up being extremely respectful to the original game. If we had formed a development team entirely in Japan, it would have been a completely different remake.”
This is a bit surprising because it clashes with many fans’ impressions. Insisting that the changes have been for the worst, that Bloober Team was not the right team to tackle this remake, and that it doesn’t reflect the spirit of the game at all, there seems to be a clear difference of opinion between the creators and the players. But we’ll still have to wait for our chance to play it ourselves and see firsthand which of the two sides is right.
