Forums > Submission Feedback > Masters's Silent Hill Origins review

I'm so used to any Silent Hill past 3 being rubbish, that I'm quite angry at you for gaining my interest in one again. Luckilly, this game is hard to discover this side of the pond, so your effective review may be for nothing!

For us. For them. For you.

If you continue to have problems tracking it down, lemme know and I'll score you a copy over here and send it your way.

The game isn't wonderful or perfect, but it feels right, and in a world of Silent Hill 4s and 5s, I'll take it.

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!

I never got this far in the series, but I did hear good things about this one. As far as I know, it was the last good entry in the Silent Hill series, not counting the spinoff Shattered Memories, which was off to the side and did its own thing.

It's a pity that I am less interested in horror than I used to be, or I might just pick this one up at some point.

Great review, by the way. :)

placid like acid

Thanks, Nightfire. I'd say this is probably the last good game in the series, Shattered Memories included. Crazy that yours and the comment before are nearly seven years apart! Time flies...

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!

plus the fact that the game was made by an upstart American developer

ACTUALLY…

You’re almost right. Origin started development at Climax L.A. which, it will not surprise you to learn, is in L.A. It started life as a hard reboot of sorts; it was soon after the release of Res 4, and the initial idea was that, now that Team Silent were a done thing, they would copy Capcom’s success wholesale but with the original Silent Hill’s story awkwardly stitched on top. An engine was built where Harry stomped around with an over-the-shoulder camera and a massively increased focus on combat and gunplay. You know, exactly like Res 4 and exactly unlike poor, petrified Harry Mason. That shifted a few times; the reboot with Harry was dropped and a spin off was pitched instead about a priest going ‘round Silent Hill purifying stuff with chants and holy water, but that never took off, either (even when they rebranded it as an original IP and offered it to producers. No one bit). After that, the bare bones of the Origin we know started to come together, still very much under the shadow of a Res 4 clone. There’s a few screenshot that still lurk around online I’ll try and ferret out, but Travis was only one of two things that survived this version of the game.

So the story goes, when they pitched the new direction to Climax Studios (right here in London) they described it as a dark comedy action game that had been inspired by the like of Scrubs. Daddy Climax went spare, rightfully predicting that taking a franchise such as Silent Hill with in such a direction would be suicide and would never be accepted by the existing fanbase. They went to Konami and told them they wanted to take the project off the L.A. branch and do it themselves. Konami agreed so long as there was no additional cost and no delays to the release date. Almost as if they didn’t really care, which would go on to be the Konami we know and openly despise today.

So Origins was actually developed in England. They scrapped everything the L.A. branch had made save Travis and the Butcher and remade the game you know today on about two thirds of the funds they should have had and in a constant rush. Yet the game turned out okay. Everyone was happy. And the Konami said “Hey, eveyone’s buying those Wii things. Nintendo have really tapped into the casual market there. You should do something with that. You should make a PG-13 Silent Hill game aimed squarely at the casual market”. And that’s how the same studio went from busting their arses in making the last good Silent Hill game in Origins then got stuck with Shattered Memories, a game no one asked for and no one really wanted to make. Aside from Konami, who thought it would be easy money off someone else’s sweat.

Dammit, I said I was done writing about this series!

For us. For them. For you.

Nice catch and history lesson, Emp. It only took you 8 years.

I'll look into making a change there.

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!