Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and the SH fandom

I'm a huge Silent Hill fan, in the sense that I love the Silent Hill games to bits. However, I also love Silent Hill Homecoming to bits, and that statement probably disqualifies me from being a True Fan in the eyes of many.

A little background information may be needed here for those of you not versed in the lore of survival horror fandom: Silent Hill fans are totally batshit insane.

Okay, that's not fair. Allow me to explain. Silent Hill is a long running series of games with a relatively small but extremely devoted fan following. I'm sure everyone has encountered this sort of insular community before- most people will be part of one- and you'll know that it tends to be a breeding ground for nit-picking and snobbery. Case in point: way back when, it was announced that Silent Hill Homecoming, the fifth entry in the series, would be developed by an American company, Double Helix, rather than Konami (or more specifically "Team Silent", a largely notional group of developers within Konami).

Immediately there was a massive fan backlash predicting that the series was Ruined Forever. Some people decried the fact that the game was in the hands of a relatively unknown studio, some resented the fact that an American company was making it, and pretty much everyone hated the idea of a Silent Hill game being made by anyone other than Team Silent (Origins, being a prequel and initially handheld-only, was seen at the time as a side project and didn't really count as the true "next" Silent Hill game after The Room).

As more details about the project came to light the fans picked over and complained about every little detail, from the over the shoulder camera to the fact that the game had an energy bar. As it turned out the consenus on Homecoming from the media and the fans was that the game was mediocre at best. Personally I loved it, but I can see why, after playing it, most people didn't. But most people also didn't wait to play it before deciding they didn't like it.

I'm trying to make the point here that a large portion of Silent Hill fans are extremely clingy and resistant to change, with the result that the series has stagnated over the years, with sequels that were pretty much the same as their predecessors. Homecoming was an attempt to breathe some much needed life back into the series and met with fierce fan backlash for doing so.

Seeing all of this Climax, the developers of Silent Hill Origins and apparent possesors of balls of steel, decided that Homecoming didn't go nearly far enough. Which is why in a few scant weeks we're getting a remake of the first game that's totally and completely different in almost every way from any of the previous Silent Hill titles, and I for one can't wait.

I don't quite agree with Yahtzee that sequels should be made by people who didn't like the original game, but I support the idea that simply churning out the same thing over and over again is never a good thing. Let's take Mario games as an example. Now the Mario series has spun off into a multitude of different franchises, most of which are composed of lazy cookie-cutter sequels (I'm looking at you, Mario Kart Wii), but the "main" franchise of platformers has always shown an admirable willingness to try new things. After Mario 64 came out and promptly became one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, Nintendo could have just made an identical sequel and watched the cash come rolling in. God knows the fans wanted them to, and still do to this day. Instead they made Mario Sunshine, which..... was quite good, but not nearly as good as it's predecessor. After that the temptation to go back to what worked must have been matched only by the number of people urging them to do so.

Instead they produced Super Mario Galaxy, which came out in 2007 to universal critical acclaim and which I personally consider to be the best game ever made. Trust me when I say that there were a lot people who held Mario 64 on a pedestal and resented every facet of Galaxy that was different from their 64-bit idol. The Mario franchise is one case where the developers in charge of a series have refused to bow to this sort of video game ancestor worship, and it resulted in a modern masterpiece (and never mind that there's a sequel coming out next year that's pretty much identical to the first one- I'll let that one slide since Mario Galaxy was so good and New Super Mario Bros is coming out as well. Just don't make a habit of it, Nintendo).

The Silent Hill series is one case where the opposite holds true, and it's resulted in Silent Hill going from being the undisputed king of the horror genre to a largely sidelined and margianlized franchise only appreciated by die-hard fans. Sticking to what worked before doesn't always run a series into the ground- the Zelda games started to get stale years ago, but they're still as good as they've always been. However, it's never done what fans want it to do- create the sort of beloved masterpiece that represents the series at it's percieved peak, whether it's Mario 64 or Silent Hill 2.

To get back to the supposed point of this post: Shattered Memories. Climax is really going out on a limb by throwing out almost all of the traditional Silent Hill tropes and replacing them with something that most fans wouldn't even recognize as a Silent Hill game if you didn't tell them it was one beforehand. Will Shattered Memories be the Mario Galaxy of the Silent Hill series? It's too early to tell, but I do know that we'll never reach that point if no one has the balls to try, fans be damned.