With the release of Silent Hill: Downpour on the horizon, here are some early story details, which we can expect to see in the newest installment!
Developed by Vatra Games, Downpour’s release date has been delayed. We can expect to see the game hit shelves sometime in 2012!
Check out the trailer!
Murphy Pendleton has been incarcerated for several years, having had his sentence extended once already. Due to his history at Ryall State Prison, he is being transferred to nearby Wayside Maximum Security Penitentiary-but a freak accident cuts the journey short. Waking up in a forest next to the wrecked bus, Murphy has a clear shot at freedom. He makes his way into the sleepy town of Silent Hill where mysterious locals welcome him into a slowly developing personal hell.
Silent Hill Downpour is the latest Silent Hill game offering the familiar Survival Horror gameplay delivered in the most defined visual quality to date. The game also expands on the exploration theme of the franchise both design-wise and through psychological torture, ambient story, horrific enemies and self-evaluative questions of despair.
At this GDC Europe 2011 panel, Brian Gomez, design director for Silent Hill: Downpour developer Vatra Games, talked about the history of the horror genre and what the development team has learned from previous Silent Hill games.
He stated that the game’s protagonist, Murphy Pendleton, went through a lot of revisions. Early in development he was a tragic hero–a prisoner falsely incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit. However, after the team reevaluated what Silent Hill was, they decided that the location of Silent Hill was alive and that it could make your fears and sins manifest. Therefore, Murphy needed to be a little less innocent and was changed to a flawed but sympathetic protagonist. He’s now a man on the run from his captors, his past, and himself–and that path has led him to Silent Hill.
He also noted that the game will have multiple endings with multiple interpretations. There won’t be a nice, clean conclusion for what happens in Downpour.
Gomez also shared a little info on the game’s monsters. While past Silent Hill games have used rust, blood, and even ice as the central style of the Otherworld, Downpour is using rain. The rain will be highly symbolic of Murphy’s deteriorating sanity, said Gomez. As the water comes tumbling down, so too will his grip on reality.
Gomez detailed the three degrees of violation a monster can inflict, as put forth by horror master Clive Barker (Hellraiser). The first, infliction, is the most basic. It’s all about bodily harm at the hands of something that wants to kill and eat its victim. The second, infestation, is about something living and growing inside someone’s body–“the invasion of your sacred temple.” The third, possession, is by far the worst. It’s the loss of a person’s mind and body to another being that cannot be escaped from.
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Information via. Gamespot