Interview with Tomm Hulett - Reconstucting Silent Hill (Gamer Grenade)

Date published: 2010.02.10
Source: Gamer Grenade

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii/PS2/PSP) from Konami and Climax Group is an odd duck. Most obviously, it’s a mature game on the Wii with an excellent story, great motion controls, and fantastic visuals. More than that, it’s a game that shirks expectations by tossing away a lot of the series calling cards that have developed over the years like rusted metal and monster combat. In such a risk-averse industry, a game as individualistic as this must have an interesting story behind its development, so I talked with Shattered Memories Producer Tomm Hulett to unravel a bit of the mystery behind the game.

Gamer Grenade: When Silent Hill started, it wasn’t so much about designing hallmarks. It was more like ‘Here’s a theme, and here are other games that fit that theme.’ It seems like that has changed with recent Silent Hill games, most specifically Homecoming. That game seemed to look at this bulleted list of what makes a Silent Hill game; rusted metal, Pyramid Head, things like that. How early on did you guys make the decision to do something different?

Tomm Hulett: I’ve been a silent hill fan for a very long time; I played the first game and have been a fan since then. I always followed the series before I worked at Konami, and I remember reading the interview when they were making Silent Hill 2. They said they thought an interesting thing to do would be to put the town as the main character throughout the series, and each game would be someone else’s story as they come in the town. I thought that was really neat.

Then I think the series – even in Japan – got passed between different teams of people, so some people that worked on the original games gone to different companies. Maybe the new teams weren’t as sure what the central elements of silent hill were, so you ended up getting repeating themes or storylines about the cult. They really tried to tie things together instead of keeping it ambiguous.

When it came here, we had the teams being told ‘Make a Silent Hill game,’ and all they have to go off of are the previous games in the series, so they draw on what seem to be repeating themes. But, the thing about Climax was, Origins actually started in the US with an American Climax team. That didn’t go anywhere, and the studio ended up shutting down. The property got passed to Climax UK, and they looked at what was there, being told to just finish it up, ship it out, and get it done. But, they had some real Silent Hill fans there, and they said ‘This game isn’t good enough to do that. It’s a Silent Hill game, and it has to be up to a certain standard.’ In a short period of time, they threw together Origins. It’s a solid Silent Hill title, though it doesn’t change the formula. It proved that they can make a formula Silent Hill.

When we were looking to move it on to the Wii, and we had a bunch of cool ideas, we went back to Climax and they had even more cool ideas. We all combined our efforts to make this new Silent Hill. Since we’d already made the formulaic Silent Hill, we could go back to that original idea of ‘each game is different, and works with these themes, but it should be unexpected and unique.’ Since we knew we had that solid team, we were actually able to do this.

Gamer Grenade: Was it a hard pitch to say ‘Here are the ways that it’s faithful to Silent Hill, but here are the ways it’s going to be different or updated?’

Hulett: Control elements were always the easy pitch because it was on the Wii. We could always say ‘Here are some cool Wii ideas we have, so that was always easy. Then, early on it was decided it should be somehow related to the original Silent Hill, so then we had to deal with the ‘Well, it’s a reimagining, so it’s kind of like the original Silent Hill, but it’s actually totally different, and here’s how it’s different.’ That kind of concerned some people.

Then you have ‘Oh, there’s no actual fighting.’ That really concerned some people. We had to keep explaining: to make a scary game, you have to have these things, and empowering the player isn’t one of them. Being predictable isn’t one of them. Here’s what we’re doing to make sure it’s scary. There were a lot of conversations like that.

Gamer Grenade: I always found combat in Survival Horror games to be the least enjoyable part, so I never understood why developers insisted on putting it in there. I assumed it would’ve been an easy sell to take out combat entirely, but apparently it wasn’t that easy? Did everyone just expect there to be combat?

Hulett: It’s one of those assumed things. The genre started and it had really weak combat across the board. People said ‘That’s why it’s scary; you can’t control your character.’ Last gen somewhere, people figured out that was a terrible idea, and instead of finding new ways to scare people, they just made the combat better. We had a lot of early tests with our current nightmare system where you’re fleeing from monsters and they’re fast and smart and trying to catch you. People would say ‘I was really frustrated that I couldn’t kill monsters and had to keep running from them.’ And we kept saying ‘Well, that’s the point.’

Gamer Grenade: [laughs]

Hulett: ‘If you’re comfortable, you’re probably not scared.’ But we did some other tests where people were very frightened, so that’s a good thing.

Gamer Grenade: I always assumed that was intentional in the earlier Silent Hill games. I always understood it to be – and maybe I’m giving too much credit to the original developers – that you were controlling a normal person. A normal person, even if you give them a bat, won’t be that effective at battling hellspawn. I always thought it was part of the immersion that you weren’t some elite military assassin.

Hulett: That was the original intent. I think the original team was very smart about taking gameplay limitations and making them fit. The fog was probably there to hide draw distance, but worked really well, and it limited your vision so it was scary.

Gamer Grenade: Speaking of the game being scary – one thing I found interesting… I’ve been a Silent Hill fan for a long time, and I was so happy with Shattered Memories that I tried to make all my friends play it. A lot of my friends that own Wiis but aren’t serious players, I’ll get them to play it, and before they even get to the first nightmare segment, it’s already too scary for them.

Hulett: [laughs]

Gamer Grenade: A lot of them just give up, which begs the question – did you guys do your job a little too well? Some of these new Wii players, I guess they’re not used to the intensity, or the foreboding atmosphere. Did you guys see that at all in testing?

Hulett: We did a couple of focus tests and I ran some in the office with employees, it’s really interesting to see the reactions in gamers and non-gamers. A lot of the non-gamers watch horror movies and tv shows, but then they’re playing this game and the controls are really natural, and we had the same reaction. People would get to the playground which is several scenes before the first nightmare transition, and they’d say ‘This is too scary. Do you have enough information because I want to stop playing.’

We’d say ‘Well, are you enjoying yourself?’ They’d say ‘Yeah yeah, it’s fun, but it’s really scary and I just can’t deal with it anymore.’ We kept saying ‘Well, it’s not even to the scary part yet.’

Gamer Grenade: [laughs] You can’t stop now!

Hulett: They did play it, and they were really scared. It helped us know we got the atmosphere right, to some degree. The other interesting thing in that dynamic is that the puzzles and interaction segments – non-gamers figure them out a lot faster than gamers. I think it’s because we tried to make them very intuitive to use, and when a gamer there, he usually tries to figure out ‘What’s that designer trying to make me do?’ A non-gamer says ‘Oh, it’s a lock,’ then they slide this thing out and open the door, and they’re done. That was also interesting to watch.

Gamer Grenade: And for the obligatory question – was there an amount of hand-wringing when it came down to producing a mature title on the Wii?

Hulett: There wasn’t much hand-wringing for me personally, because I’m a big fan of the Wii and mature games. A lot of adults own Wiis, so why wouldn’t they want to play games too? I really liked the old point-and-click adventure games, and ever since the Wii was announced, I wanted to bring those back since I thought they were a really good fit. Shattered Memories kind of fits in to that. For me, it was my vision of what the perfect Wii game could be.

On my end, the concern was making a true Silent Hill game, not saying ‘Oh it’s on Wii, and people think Wii is for kids, so we can’t have blood.’ It was more, make sure it’s an actual Silent Hill game – it’s just a Silent Hill game and that’s it.

Gamer Grenade: Was there ever a motion to give Shattered Memories a proper number, or is that gone?

Hulett: I think we’re over the number thing.

Gamer Grenade: I remember reading that a number can be a barrier to entry – if someone hasn’t played 4, they don’t want to play 5.

Hulett: I remember when I was working games retail when Final Fantasy VIII came out. I was telling a customer that liked RPGs to pre-order Final Fantasy VIII, and he said ‘Oh, I haven’t played the first seven, so I wouldn’t feel right playing this eight.’ Those stories had nothing to do with each other, and I tried to explain that, but he wouldn’t listen. There is that factor of ‘If you put a number on it, and they haven’t played all the other ones, they’re not going to play this new one.’ That was a factor in re-imagining the first game since this is on Wii and Nintendo hasn’t gotten a real Silent Hill game before. We didn’t want people who’ve never played Silent Hill to avoid it because they’ve never played Silent Hill before. In general, we’re avoiding the numbers with Silent Hill for that reason.

I remember that when Homecoming came out, a lot of people said ‘Well, it’s not called Silent Hill 5, so it’s not a real Silent Hill game because there’s a subtitle on it.’ It’s still a real Silent Hill game. Subtitles are there in place of numbers, they’re there so you can tell the games apart.

Gamer Grenade: You seem very tuned in to the Silent Hill fanbase, probably because you’re a member of it yourself.

Hulett: I’ve actually learned a lot about the series working on it rather than just playing it. When I first got put on Origins, I thought ‘I have all the answers, I’ve studied all the games, here’s what everything means, here’s all the canon endings.’ Working on it, I value the series’ ambiguity much more. It’s a lot more important for Silent Hill to never have hard answers than it is to define what the answers are.

For example, early on in Shattered Memories, I’d say ‘Oh it’s an alternate universe, don’t worry about it. It’s not replacing Silent Hill 1.’ A lot of fans were concerned it was. Then I realized that was a mistake, because I consider the game just as canon as any of the other games because it’s Silent Hill – who’s to say what reality is? I think fans should keep that in mind if they’re worried about the series being ruined. There are no hard answers. You have your theories of what Silent Hill is, and that’s great. But, that’s not what it is to your friend on the message board. They have their own views and theories. That’s the really important part to keep as the games move forward.

Gamer Grenade: A lot of that spirit comes through in Shattered Memories. The biggest reason I want more people to play it is so I can talk about it with them.

Hulett: [laughs]

Gamer Grenade: Can’t get anyone past the first nightmare segment as of yet, but I’ll keep at it.

Hulett: Yeah I’m trying to get my mom to play it, she won’t get past the first nightmare either.

Gamer Grenade: Oh wow. She doesn’t scold you for putting some of those themes in there?

Hulett: No, she’s realistic about it.

Gamer Grenade: I just imagine if my Mom saw something like that, she’d be like ‘Dear you made a very nice game, but I just don’t understand why he had to be drinking at the beginning like that.’

Hulett: [laughs]