Few games had the level of impact on the industry, the genre, and the pop culture landscape that the Silent Hill games have. Although opinions are mixed about many later installments, the first four Silent Hill titles are considered classic staples of survival horror gaming. The two of them being remastered for PS3 and Xbox 360 back in 2012 should have been a step in the right direction after several years of questionable releases. Instead, the Silent Hill HD Collection went down in history as another stain on the series' reputation. However, 10 years later, the Silent Hill HD Collection has come to represent something else: The lasting power of truly great games.
Most gamers, if questioned, could probably name Silent Hill 2 as one of the greatest survival horror games of all time. There are many reasons this title is so beloved, but the single most important one is its smothering atmosphere. The tangible fear and despair found in the game are so well-known that fans are still eager to play Silent Hill 2 over 20 years after its initial release. Unfortunately, uninformed fans have a tendency to pick up the Silent Hill HD Collection instead. As the Silent Hill HD Collection is notorious for the way it fumbled its porting of both Silent Hill 2 and its sequel, this is a problem.
Silent Hill HD: There Was a Great Game Here
The Silent Hill series saw greater criticism over a number of years. It can be difficult to put into words exactly what happened. Whatever the case, aside from a false start in the form of P.T. and the canceled Silent Hills, the last new mainline Silent Hill game was 2012's Silent Hill: Downpour. Although demand for new Silent Hill games has been present since the very first title took the world by storm, it appears that Konami has become less and less interested in fulfilling that demand.
Silent Hill HD Collection came out at the very end of the franchise's lifespan. This remaster could have been the thing to save the Silent Hill brand from lapsing into dormancy. Instead, it ended up serving as a death knell for a series whose fans could not revive it through willpower alone. A remake of Silent Hill 2 was considered long overdue at the time, and a remaster of both it and Silent Hill 3 should have been well received. Unfortunately, a number of factors combined to make the Silent Hill HD Collection a porting disaster.
The Day the Fog Went Away
Silent Hill's monsters were inspired by modern artists, but a key part of the early games' visual design was inspired by hardware limitations. Silent Hill 1 and 2 came out on the PS1 in 1999 and 2001; both titles' iconic thick fog was created to disguise the console's short draw distance. Silent Hill 3 came out for the PS2, but it continued to use thick fog to obscure the path ahead and shroud monsters in secrecy.
When the Silent Hill HD Collection came out, the fog transparency was turned down significantly, destroying much of the games' famous atmosphere in the process. This also impacted the transparency of glass and shadows. Furthermore, the remaster features a number of underwhelming new textures, and its versions of Silent Hill 2 and 3 shown are also much duller, darker, and less vivid as a whole.
If the visual issues weren't enough to discourage fans from playing the Silent Hill HD Collection, it's also plagued by technical problems. Apparently, the developers working on the remaster didn't have access to the original source code for Silent Hill 2 and 3. This means that the team had to work with an unfinished build of the original games and screen it for bugs that were caught before the original releases.
The result is a remaster that crashes often, has trouble with lag, and occasionally fails to load rooms, thus leaving the player trapped in an inescapable void, among other problems. With all of these bugs, it's no wonder that the Silent Hill HD Collection failed to turn things around for the franchise. What's more surprising is that Silent Hill's legacy is still alive and well long after the franchise itself went dormant.
The Hills are Silent, But the Love Lives On
Silent Hill was one of the games that helped lay down the foundations of what the survival horror genre would be. Like many other fellow horror classics from the 1990s and early 2000s, the series went dormant after a string of questionable management and creative decisions. The decline of Silent Hill may well be what led to the existence of the Silent Hill HD Collection, at least in the state it was released in.
However, gamers around the world have refused to let that be the end of things. Many dormant classic titles have their dedicated fans and concerted social media marketing efforts, but the Silent Hill fanbase stands out because it continues to grow long after the franchise went quiet.
New fans continue to be lured in by Silent Hill 2's reputation. Existing fans feel so strongly about the allure of the franchise's aesthetic that they create mods turning other games into Silent Hill-style survival horror titles. The themes, monster designs, and environments of the Silent Hill franchise have gone on to become staples of the genre. As disappointing as the Silent Hill HD Collection was for veteran fans, it ultimately didn't do anything to hinder the long-term popularity of Silent Hill as a whole. This kind of staying power is incredibly impressive in an industry that frequently demands creators flood the market with new games to stay afloat.
Recently, sharp-eyed fans noticed that Konami had renewed the Silent Hill trademark. While there have been numerous canceled Silent Hill games and other false starts, it's possible that the franchise is finally being revived 10 years after its untimely end. Now is a time of remakes, reboots, and remasters, which could make this the ideal environment to resurrect the horror of Silent Hill. With a bit of luck, the thick fog of the Otherworld will once again shroud this eerie resort town in fear and mystery.
