#GAMESCOM2014: Kojima Wants You To Sh!t Your Pants With Silent Hills
Hideo took to the stage to answer fan questions
After this week’s amazing Silent Hill reveal at the Playstation conference, we got further details in regards to the new Silent Hill (or I should say Silent Hills). While major details were not revealed at the Q&A after the Metal Gear Solid event at Gamescom. Hideo Kojima did reveal that he didn’t want the new Silent Hill’s to make you piss your pants, but instead for you too shit your pants! He even joked about a Limited Edition coming with a spare pair of trousers.
However he did reveal that the ‘S’ at the end of Silent Hill’s is plural, so what does this mean for the game exactly? If I was going to make an educated guess, many are speculating that the game will be episodic, maybe it is, and maybe it’s not. But perhaps with it being called Silent Hill’s maybe it’s possible that the game will feature a variation of Silent Hill towns?
After all, even though some of the previous games in the series are located in the original town of Silent Hill, some games are located on the outskirts and some in different parts of the town. Also Silent Hill 4: The Room (which is on the outskirts of the town) features many portals, leading to various dimensions. During the room of Silent Hill 4, it is also in the 1st Person (like the P.T demo). So maybe the latest Silent Hill will draw many influences from Silent Hill 4. Who knows? Only time will tell.
Hideo Kojima did reveal however the P.T in the PS4 demo stands for Playable Teaser (very crafty); also the woodland image used for the demo on the PSN Store is a photo of a developer’s backyard. But there is also a meaning to the 7780s used in the image of the demo.
Right forgive me if I totally get this wrong as I am about to attempt to explain its meaning. The ‘S’ at the end of 7780 is some kind of reference to the Japanese word “Shizuoka”, this is what the ‘S’ stands for (I think). Apparently in Japan the word Shizuoka sounds like Silent Hill (I’m not Japanese or from Japan, so I don’t know how close this reference reads or sounds, so again forgive me). The 7780s Studio is named after a Shizuoka Prefecture and with that regions name loosely translating to mean Silent Hill, the region in question is roughly 7,780 in square kilometres. So ta-dah! We have 7780s!
I apologise if this all reads like gobbledygook, because it makes little sense to me, but hey I’ve tried (possibly very poorly mind). Trying to make any kind of sense to what I have poorly attempted to explain has really fried my brain, so thank you Hideo (I love you really). If you click on this LINK, you should find information of the word Shizuoka and how it refers to Silent Hill (thank you Silent Hill Historical Society).
The P.T image aka someone’s backyard
Hideo was also pleased at the gamer’s widespread response for the P.T demo and stated that it was his intention for gamers from around the world to help one another out with the puzzle solving via Twitch and YouTube, and so forth, and he was very pleased that this happened.
He also said that he wanted gamers to go into the demo with the fear of the unknown, by not knowing what the initial demo was or what their purpose was when playing the demo. With the demo not giving any hints of how to progress, this was also a deliberate act. To try and disguise the demo the best he could, Hideo Kojima attempted to give the game a more indie look and therefore attempted to lessen the quality of the demo, which proved to be a more difficult task then expected with the game running on the Fox Engine.
Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead will play the new lead character.
Hideo Kojima has made it no secret that he scares easily and he revealed so do certain members of his team working on P.T/Silent Hills. So he drafted in many of the developers of The Phantom Pain to test out the game in a booth, many of which walked out from fear. In fact it was also revealed that the new Silent Hill game is being developed alongside The Phantom Pain. He also spoke of how the final game will be in a third person viewpoint, just like the previous games. Personally I’m hoping to see a mixture of First Person and Third Person, as each come with their own benefits.
All we need now is Akira Yamaoka announced as the composer to Silent Hills. Hopefully in the coming months we’ll learn much more in terms of Silent Hill’s. Right I’m off to play the P.T demo myself now, wish me luck, because I also scare very easily.