Silent Hill

[crunchy bits are the best]

1 has the most unsettling soundtracks IMO. Nothing makes me shudder more than the last area's ambience with those weird distorted gongs.

This and "Further Down" make the last level unsettling.

And who can forget the ear-aching music of the last boss? Other people say it's the radio going apeshit but I do remember my first impression of the music is that the screeching sounds came from the boss itself.

 

[Nameless One]

The Pyramid Head chase or James running from his guilt.
Running The Gauntlet. Its a real shame 2 and 3's soundtracks gloss over the brilliant ambience.

Born From A Wish's extra OST has some of the best ambience SH2 has to offer. The music in the Ernest scenes is probably my favorite, not scary though.

Extremely missable SH3 track, Gloomy View. I consider it to be a track for Insane Cancer, since it's only heard if you return to one unremarkable room in the game with an insane cancer in it. I wish more games put in throwaway tracks, and SH4 especially could have utilized more of its OST in-game.

Neighborly Love (Unused results/credits music?)

Neighborly Loss (more alternate results?)

I consider 4 to be a good finale OST-wise. I really wish Akira Yamaoka remained weird for the Western games, his tracks were alright and the best part of that dogshit but you can tell he was holding back. Over time he mellowed out like Trent Reznor.

 

[X Prime]

Extremely missable SH3 track, Gloomy View. I consider it to be a track for Insane Cancer, since it's only heard if you return to one unremarkable room in the game with an insane cancer in it. I wish more games put in throwaway tracks, and SH4 especially could have utilized more of its OST in-game.

By any chance is it the diner where if you wear the Princess Heart costume, both Heather and the Insane Cancer suddenly start making Japanese noises?

 

[cactus]

The Pyramid Head chase or James running from his guilt.
Running The Gauntlet. Its a real shame 2 and 3's soundtracks gloss over the brilliant ambience.
View attachment 6460553

Born From A Wish's extra OST has some of the best ambience SH2 has to offer. The music in the Ernest scenes is probably my favorite, not scary though.

Extremely missable SH3 track, Gloomy View. I consider it to be a track for Insane Cancer, since it's only heard if you return to one unremarkable room in the game with an insane cancer in it. I wish more games put in throwaway tracks, and SH4 especially could have utilized more of its OST in-game.
View attachment 6460558
Neighborly Love (Unused results/credits music?)
View attachment 6460602
Neighborly Loss (more alternate results?)
View attachment 6460603
I consider 4 to be a good finale OST-wise. I really wish Akira Yamaoka remained weird for the Western games, his tracks were alright and the best part of that dogshit but you can tell he was holding back. Over time he mellowed out like Trent Reznor.

I would draw to the OSTs, they're like some of the best music you can have on in the background while doing something like that.

 

[Nameless One]

By any chance is it the diner where if you wear the Princess Heart costume, both Heather and the Insane Cancer suddenly start making Japanese noises?

I think it's a random bottom part of the subway. One where you have a fence with a corpse wrapped up with items or where theres a sleeping Insane Cancer.

 

[Carnavoyeur]

1 has the most unsettling soundtracks IMO. Nothing makes me shudder more than the last area's ambience with those weird distorted gongs.

This and "Further Down" make the last level unsettling.

And who can forget the ear-aching music of the last boss? Other people say it's the radio going apeshit but I do remember my first impression of the music is that the screeching sounds came from the boss itself.

The soundtrack for 1 is one of the reasons it's my favorite. It's the most disturbing out of the first four games. 2-4 are like, lo-fi beats to study to with a few creepy songs thrown in, while 1 is anywhere from the most disconcerting, droning ambience to something out of your worst nightmare. That's not to say 2-4 are bad, it's just that 1 is almost entirely horrific. It made the game so much scarier than the others for me.

 

[Pepe Cortisona]

I consider 4 to be a good finale OST-wise. I really wish Akira Yamaoka remained weird for the Western games, his tracks were alright and the best part of that dogshit but you can tell he was holding back. Over time he mellowed out like Trent Reznor.

Listening to him live was an incredible experience, he seemed like a cool guy on stage.

 

[NoMoreMisterNiceDoc]

I consider 4 to be a good finale OST-wise. I really wish Akira Yamaoka remained weird for the Western games, his tracks were alright and the best part of that dogshit but you can tell he was holding back. Over time he mellowed out like Trent Reznor.

For me it's definitely Yamaoka hitting the Theme of Laura lick throughout 3 and 4's ost, easily one of the finest Leitmotifs in vidya

 

[Marc]

Oh, cool - The page turned into a Yamaoka circlejerk I'm happy to add to:

Though I prefer the industrial tracks, and wish they'd been given even more emphasis throughout the series, it was memorably enjoyable to play each game upon release and note how much Yamaoka had improved at his craft of ambient sound design and score (the footsteps are such a delicacy of the good Silent Hill games that I doubt many are even aware of how much entertainment they derive from hearing them while their senses are heightened). The different percussion samples emphasized between 2 and 3 contributed as much to each game's aesthetic vibe as anything else, and the out-of-tune acoustic guitar strums on 4's main menu (especially following the blocks of ambient noise used for 3's) reassured me that at least the sound design would be SH-worthy. Though I only played it the once, I remember the water prison's sound design being especially effective (especially with DeSalvo repeating that Walter was going to kill him, and the jumpscare of the twins running at you once you had acclimated to the environment's ambience enough for the creepiness to subside just enough). What could have been!

The music is the only reason I remember portions of Homecoming, even though I would normally insist I have no fond memories of the game.

 

[Nameless One]

RIP Daniel Licht. He may have not had the same spirit and was shat on but he made some of my favorite western tracks. I love the way he did the strings.

And then this guitar riff. Easily the best two tracks that flow into each other.

I wish Downpour wasn't so shit that the PC port and Anne's story DLC that should have been in the game was canned.
But the comic is the best part of the story unironically. The story would have been much better if they included this.


Btw a new screencap pulled from the new TGS, I always prefer original poses to new ones in remakes. It looks like Mandarins now walk above ground similar to the closers from SH3 which were essentially giant Mandarins with spikes in their arms.


It's too bad none of the game will be like this and just remake the story 1:1 but with more exploration.
You now see more of Eddie's otherworld bleed into the cutscenes which I find to be a huge mistake because we the player only see it in the characters final parts, James is heavily implied to not be able to see the flames that is in Angela's stairway, he only feels them or the heat from them. And James never comments on the meat locker or it being cold when he kills Eddie, he focuses instead that he just killed someone for the "first" time. At least they kept the model mostly the same but I doubt they'll keep the painting in the back of the room that shows the same room but with James as the corpse Eddie shot.

Anyways here's some final Sovl before we see how bad they butchered this. A project made with love versus a corporate remake that understands none of the emotions.

 

[eDove]

RIP Daniel Licht. He may have not had the same spirit and was shat on but he made some of my favorite western tracks. I love the way he did the strings.

And then this guitar riff. Easily the best two tracks that flow into each other.

I didn't realize Licht died. That's sad. People were super antagonistic toward him simply because he wasn't Yamaoka (I understand whole-heartedly why they would be) but some of his music was genuinely good and became mainstays in my library.

 

[Nameless One]

What burns me out the most about the Western entries is how strong the concepts could be with better developers like Team Silent or even other konami devs back then like Kojima productions. The idea of Silent Hill games with protagonists like Truckers with severe family issues, War Veterans (ik it was in his head but the military aspect is more interesting than the retarded bait and switch) who were affected by the cult as children, and prisoners with various pasts who escape into the town, THAT COULD HAVE BEEN the closest to Crime & Punishment Silent Hill got since 2. Homecoming could have been so much better since I do like the idea of fighting these manifestations that are the dead kids that the shitty cult members killed. All the games could have been amazing followups without having to strictly be within the vision of Team Silent. Sadly it was handed to inexperienced developers.

 

[Brain Problems]

Extremely missable SH3 track, Gloomy View. I consider it to be a track for Insane Cancer, since it's only heard if you return to one unremarkable room in the game with an insane cancer in it. I wish more games put in throwaway tracks, and SH4 especially could have utilized more of its OST in-game.

This is a really good track, thanks.

What burns me out the most about the Western entries is how strong the concepts could be with better developers like Team Silent or even other konami devs back then like Kojima productions. The idea of Silent Hill games with protagonists like Truckers with severe family issues, War Veterans (ik it was in his head but the military aspect is more interesting than the retarded bait and switch) who were affected by the cult as children, and prisoners with various pasts who escape into the town, THAT COULD HAVE BEEN the closest to Crime & Punishment Silent Hill got since 2. Homecoming could have been so much better since I do like the idea of fighting these manifestations that are the dead kids that the shitty cult members killed. All the games could have been amazing followups without having to strictly be within the vision of Team Silent. Sadly it was handed to inexperienced developers.

I still think SH4 went in the right direction broadly as far as a sequel went. For better or worse it's its own thing while staying close enough in general feeling and aesthetics to the previous entries. You could try and pull a Resident Evil and have mainline entries that vary in their dedication to mechanics and gameplay compared to their predecessors or relegate those to spin-offs and see what sticks but the problem is that SH is stuck in this weird middle-ground where everyone expects 2Deep4U psychological horror and navel-gazing examinations of trauma and guilt, and to really pull that off multiple times you have to have great writing and story-telling, something we have not have any evidence of since (I would argue) 4.

it's really fucking difficult to write effective psychological horror, let alone in the context of vidya. I think the other aspect is that vague uncanny experience you get from seeing the Japanese interpret western movies, music, and locations through their cultural lens, leading to the first 4 games being as unique as they are in a lot of ways and why the western ones dropped the ball so hard because they're stuck copying (badly) what's essentially already a weird fuckin' copy.

Maybe the Poles will get lucky in the same way but A) Poland isn't as far away and alien as Japan and B) we've seen what they're capable of and what they're doing right now, and it ain't lookin good. I want to believe but so far I've been given nothing to make me hope for a brighter future.

 

[Nameless One]

I think when approached right, psychological horror can be one of the easiest horrors to write and translate to vidya. It all depends on how well you understand psychology and philosophy. You can do what Team Silent did and study books and analysts like Carl Jung, we live in an era where an entire kino psych horror catalogue exists across various media which can be used as great influence but no one really uses it, and developers aren't allowed to unless they have great directors and chill companies. Bloober Team do not understand any horror besides cheap trashy B-movie horror, they wrote the Medium in which a tormented woman chooses to kill herself as a final solution and then they used real world events to paint her horrible rapist in a more conflicting light where he helped jews hide from nazis in ww2. It was written in a way where it was tone deaf and baffling, there was a youtube video where a guy shat all over bloober for it and examined the future of SH2 by them but it got purged. That's so terrible on so many levels I can't even begin to tell you how retarded they were. Lets also not forget the way they fucked up Blair Witch where they only gave you a 10 minutes of an actually interesting house to explore that was like the film, but then they ruined the story and undid everything it was going for. The visual with falling soldiers was also as retarded as the little girl bumping into the wall in layers of fear. Psychological Horror should be handled with care but isn't. Whenever it is its an exception to the mundane norm. The reason you may be convinced its so hard to write is precisely because so many retarded faggot writers don't understand it at all and then complain about the genre because they're so terrible at it like why a lot of modern writing is so stale and dogshit. They'll never admit its their problem and a lack of inspirations because they want to convince you writing is such a hardcore job and when they fuck up miserably they'll hide behind the excuse of difficulty so you end up believing that it IS hard and its why we lack more great stories when in reality it's almost always the writer's and their supervisor's fault. They aren't scorned enough for how shit they are and companies pick the lowest common denominators who'll settle for the cheapest paycheck while also propping up hack writers who get rich. Go read developer interviews on the Western Silent Hill games, it was such a mess that Origins had its script rewritten in like a week. Another reason why people think psych horror is so hard to write is because writers are NEVER given enough time to bake their ideas in the oven. These days they lack direction, you don't usually have the development cycles Team Silent had anymore where people would almost live in their offices until the games were finished to immediately write another. When you have no direction on what works/doesn't most dev teams and companies will essentially go "yeah good enough". Because there isn't as much worry for having a bad story nowadays, the goal for most modern vidya is merely being RELEASED, not even in a functional state, just good enough to the managers. And thats how we get more dogshit horror stories. Remember that we are in an industry where THE LAST OF US is seen as one of the best horror-ish game stories out there and also where shitty mascot horror has outsold survival horror as a genre. Most developers and corpos don't care about making good stories anymore letalone good games, it's sad but true. We live in a time where no one is allowed to hurt the writer's feelings and where writers can essentially go crazy and off the hooks or on the other hand be forced into writing shit they don't want to because their managers or shareholders, fellow writers and whoever thinks it would sell better much like the second half of this series. A mundane and directionless time for storytelling in video gaming, especially horror. All we even get in horror are rehashes and its been this way since the 2000s I'd say, the shit we love are exceptions to the norm.

 

[Mega Negroid Gyroid]

Was browsing the Silent Hill subreddit and stumbled upon someone who unknowingly posted a troon jak lol. The sub is "pozzed vibes" exclusively and of course eating up a game that hasn't been released yet.

 

[X Prime]

Okay yeah I'll admit the Silent Hill 4 escort quest is questionable, but really not that terrible.

The real issue I think is that the game is obviously incomplete. There's bits of weird lore that isn't in the actual game like in Victim Files, really only a chunk of it is used. I suspect they ran out of money or time and really we only have about half the game.

I think Eileen being a reasonably effective combatant on Normal is kind of nifty.

 

[Quijibo69]

Was browsing the Silent Hill subreddit and stumbled upon someone who unknowingly posted a troon jak lol. The sub is "pozzed vibes" exclusively and of course eating up a game that hasn't been released yet.

View attachment 6473923

Or the game is really that bad not to bother making gameplay videos.

 

[Metatron]

So the preview for the soundtrack has been released and gotta admit, this is pretty good.

Yamaoka still got it, and the soundtrack was the only thing I was looking forward to. Hope to get the songs in FLAC format soon.

 

[Fart Muncher]

So the preview for the soundtrack has been released and gotta admit, this is pretty good.

Only thing i was hoping for too. I liked it as well.

 

[Cherry Eyed Hamster]

Silent Hill: Townfall Is Still Alive Despite Walkout At Annapurna Interactive​

Announced in 2022, fans worried Silent Hill: Townfall would face a similar fate to PT considering the staff walkout of Annapurna Interactive, but they insist it’s still in the works.

In September, the entire staff of Annapurna Interactive resigned from the studio, citing a major dispute with the owner. This left the future of the in-development projects under the Annapurna Interactive umbrella, including Silent Hill: Townfall, uncertain. Today, Annapurna Interactive posted on the X (formerly Twitter) platform, confirming that the upcoming collaboration with No Code Studios is still in the works — on the eve of the Silent Hill 2 remake release — despite the mass resignation of staff. The post can be seen below.

The Silent Hill: Townfall project was announced back in October 2022 as a co-production between Annapurna Interactive and developer No Code Studios (known for Observation and Stories Untold), featuring the same unsettling atmosphere that every Silent Hill game is known for. The teaser trailer, also introduced in 2022, showcased imagery consistent with the eerie, on-edge feeling of being a resident in the horrific town, complete with the haunting notion: “we are stuck here in this place…”

The announcement from Annapurna Interactive comes just one week before the release of the Silent Hill 2 remake on October 8, perfectly timed for spooky season and to remind die-hard fans that Silent Hill: Townfallis still in development. So far, all that has been shown of Townfall is the teaser trailer mentioned above and confirmation that the project is moving forward, with Annapurna Interactive as the publisher and No Code Studios as the developer.

Seeing how Annapurna’s entire staff resigned, and although they announced the title is still being developed by KONAMI, Annapurna, and No Code, they still have yet to offer any new information regarding Townfall. Fans can head to the official game portal for everything public knowledge so far on the iconic horror series.

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