Earlier this year Konami announced a prequel to its popular Silent Hill horror franchise, Silent Hill Origins for PSP. The game is due for winter 2007. Shacknews earlier this month did an interview with Konami producer William Oertel about the Climax-developed game. The in-depth unveilings follow.
Shack: Can you give us an overview of the game?
William Oertel: So, Silent Hill Origins. It’s a prequel to Silent Hill 1. The main character’s name is Travis O’Grady. He is a truck driver running his regular route, and eventually he gets trapped in Silent Hill. Because of what he’s experienced in his own life–well, Silent Hill is all about character development, and what characters have to go through–so at this time, the town is ready for this guy, or he is ready for the town, so to speak.
He finds himself in Silent Hill, and he will have to get out, so the player will explore the town, find different areas, and eventually escape. At the time time, they’re also putting events in motion that tie in with Silent Hill 1. There are some characters that cross over: Alessa, Dahlia, Dr. Kaufmann are the primary ones. In that respect it’s still pretty much a separate game, separate story, but it does reference the key events in Silent Hill 1, so it’ll slot right in there.
Shack: So while this leads up to Silent Hill 1, fans who played all four games going to get more out of it than those who are coming in fresh.
William Oertel: People that have played the first one will definitely get more out of it than somebody who’s coming in for the first time. The fact that people played one through four, they know what Silent Hill is, that makes it harder to surprise them. They already know it’s a scary town, you already know Alessa, you already know Dahlia, you know these characters, so how do you create a story that’s going to surprise them on new levels that they don’t expect? So in that sense, I think that people who have played all the games will appreciate it because we’re playing with that idea that they already know what it is and they have that built up perception. Playing it for the first time, it’s all brand new anyway.
Whenever we get a chance, we always try to infuse some level of paying homage to the past games, or trying to connect some dots. Origins doesn’t go through and explain everything in Silent Hill, but we at least try to make connections where we can, or at least suggest. Fans have played prior games can look at it and say, “I wonder if that’s what it is, if that’s what they intend.” Maybe we’re a little too subtle sometimes in making those connections, but I’d rather err on the side of subtlety and have people that have people that really know the franchise look at it and say, after they’ve played through it a couple times, “Oh wait, I didn’t notice that the first time around, maybe that’s this, or maybe that’s from 3, or 2,” or whatever. So that’s always overall in all our thoughts.
Shack: Why did Konami target PSP for the game? Were there any particular elements about the system that made you gravitate towards it? Obviously all the other games have been home console titles.
William Oertel: Right, right. I think it was desired to basically do something different. From a business decision, the PSP, there aren’t any horror games on there. So, there’s an opportunity. There’s also an opportunity for us to be creative with it; there are some different things we want to do with Silent Hill. The limitations of the controller, the limitations of the screen size, those are all things that kind of point us to reimagine the best way to do this. That’s why you see a dynamic camera that’s closer to the character, in third person over the shoulder. But it doesn’t mean the whole game is like that, we also have a cinematic camera in certain places that really shows the environment.
We also have what you call a “cineractive” system. When the player comes to certain points in the game, high impact moments, the controls will change and they’ll have to control the character in a different way, but it’ll highlight different actions. So, for example, when you come to a boss, the boss comes at you and you have to press a button that rolls you off to the side, for example. Or it’ll attack you, and you have to press some sort of command in order to avoid that. If you don’t, you could die, or take a step back, or whatever.
Shack: Is this a full length Silent Hill game in terms of content?
William Oertel: It’s big, it’s a big game. In terms of how it compares with, say, a Silent Hill 4, the media is already smaller as it is, so there’s that aspect of it. But I think people will be surprised at how you really have some walking room around here.
Shack: So the game has high production values and it’s a pretty meaty game; have you done anything to play into the portability of the system? That is, do you expect people to always sit down and play a couple hours’ worth at one time?
William Oertel: Yeah, this is the tough part to think about. There are probably some areas of the game that are much pick up and play. There are other parts of the game that, you know, ten minutes may not be long enough to get the full experience. We keep in mind that we want to make it so that it works as a pick up and play game, but not to the point where it’s going to sacrifice the quality. There are going to be some elements that are drawn out, and you’ll have to spend some time. But it doesn’t mean the game will crash if you turn it off, we’ll have suspend mode, and you can save at various spots, so we’re definitely keeping that in mind. We’re trying to design as much as we can for pick up and play, but not at the expense of Silent Hill playability.