Konami Gamers Night 09: Interview with Sam Barlow, Mark Simmons and Tomm Hulett (IGN)

Date published: 2009.04.09
Source: IGN

Third-party publisher Konami recently made it official: a new Silent Hill game made from the ground-up for Wii. The title, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, is a full-blown re-imagining (don't call it a remake!) of the original PlayStation project that started the craze. About a month ago, we had the chance to see a 15-minute demo of the Climax-developed game in motion. Be sure to read our eyes-on impressions before continuing with this interview. We'll tell you now: throw away any doubts you might've had because Shattered Memories is shaping up to be one of the best games we've seen on Nintendo's console, period. To learn much more about the hyper-ambitious title, we caught up lead designer Sam Barlow, director Mark Simmons and Konami producer Tomm Hulett.

IGN: First of all, how big is the team working on Silent Hill: Shattered Dreams and how long has the game been in development?

Mark Simmons: The development team has 55+ key team members working at Climax Solent studio, the majority of which created 'Silent Hill Origins.' This team is supported by an extended network of 90+ artists helping to produce the vast amount of character, environment, and story content for this game. The introduction of a game mechanic where the game changes constantly based on the users personality profile has brought on some significant content challenges which explains the necessity for the relatively large numbers of people for a Wii game. Akira's also a key part of the team as well and we're working closely with him on the development of the atmosphere and music for this game.

IGN: Why did you want to bring Silent Hill to Wii?

Tomm Hulett: In moving to Wii, we had a chance to revitalize Silent Hill as a series, and do new things that weren't possible before, both for the series and the genre. This move made sense for two reasons. The first, well it's a no brainer if you look at the Wii remote. The flashlight and the radio static -- two trademark features of the series -- are right there on the controller. It's too perfect.

Sam Barlow: The second reason, the Wii as a platform gives developers the leeway to think outside the box and to be creative -- we can take risks that we couldn't on the more traditional "hardcore" platforms. That's due to the costs of 360/PS3 development and also the mindset of the user base. Some people on Wii have never played a horror game -- so they don't know what to expect, they don't know to expect the tired genre staples. Some people on Wii are lapsed gamers, returning to the medium -- so they want something fresh, they want to see things moved on. And then there's the gamers (still the majority of Wii owners) -- they know that the Wii has the ability to shake up established genres and franchises in the same way that the DS has done, so they're excited to try new things on Wii.

Mark Simmons: With 'Origins' we aimed to bring an experience to a handheld that people weren't getting with other titles. We dared people to play Origins on their own in a graveyard. We aimed to create a classic Silent Hill game with all the bells and whistles but on a handheld. With that game I feel we earned our wings. Now, we're pushing the series where it has never gone before. Our aim is to bring back the true psychological survival horror experience, but in a way that resonates with the modern audience. To the fans I say as a truly dedicated Silent Hill developer, and as loyal fans ourselves, "we care." We want more than anything to put SH back on the map as the only game that delivers the kind of story-telling that a Silent Hill game can. We want to show to a new audience who knows of Silent Hill but has never felt 'that SH2 feeling' how much a computer game can mess with your mind.

IGN: Some people will call the game a remake of the first. Is that accurate? Tell us why not.

Tomm Hulett: It's definitely not a remake.

Sam Barlow: A remake would mean literally re-crafting the same content, the same gameplay, with some tweaks. That isn't this game. This shares the same starting point as SH1, but then uses it as a springboard to go to new interesting places. It's a bit like how Zelda titles start from the same premise--hero finds sword, saves world--but always reinvent themselves. Well, maybe it's more extreme than Zelda.

Tomm Hulett: We keep beating this example to death, but it's like Battlestar Galactica, the movie vs. the series. They start with the same premise, but none of the details are sacred, and you don't know where things are going to go because it really is a brand new story. If you want a different example, look at Nolan's Dark Knight and Burton's Batman. Both feature the caped crusader we all know fighting his greatest nemesis, the Joker. Both have a love interest. Both have Harvey Dent and Commissioner Gordon. But how similar are the two movies?

Sam Barlow: My personal examples are Cronenberg's The Fly or Schrader's Cat People. Those horror movies took source material that worked already but created bold new movies that are their own entities. No one would reject Cronenberg's The Fly as just a "remake." We take the idea and reinvent it, come at it from an entirely new angle. If this was a Wiimake, we wouldn't be as excited by it.

IGN: Sounds fair. So who do you play as and how do you start the game?

Sam Barlow: You play as Harry Mason. The game starts with a therapy session and a car crash.

Mark Simmons: That's pretty much it for the start. It wouldn't be right to give anything else away would it?

IGN: In one scene, Harry seems confused when he goes into a bar and notices that his ID says he's from the town. That's definitely different from the original game. What's that about?

Sam Barlow: Well, he's just had a car crash -- maybe he's a little confused?

Mark Simmons: Ditto.

IGN: Uh-huh. Shattered Memories features a unique character profiling mechanic. How does this start and how does it affect the game as you play?

Tomm Hulett: We're not ready to show the man behind the curtain on this feature just yet. For now, suffice to say that Silent Hill is watching you.

Sam Barlow: The cool thing about this mechanic is that it's behind the player's back, so to speak, it's looking over their shoulder and it's working under the radar. Big things change, small things change. A lot of things change!

Mark Simmons: The ultimate aim is to create the perfect game experience. A game that tunes itself at every turn to your own personality. Imagine a film that has a personal director sitting behind you with an in depth knowledge of you as a person and a huge control panel to change everything in the film - the lighting, the sets, the characters clothes, their performances, the camera angles, even their personalities - to create the exact experience he wanted you to receive. Our aim is to do that in this game.

IGN: Sounds great. Does profiling continue throughout the game? What happens if you make a bunch of mean-spirited decisions?

Tomm Hulett: Again, without going into too much detail -- this is not like the "good path" vs "bad path" games that you've played for a couple years now. There are not "morality tracks" that you fall into as you play. You're inside Silent Hill, and the town is inside your mind. Things might get a little strange.

IGN: Tell us about the 3D engine you've created for Wii. It's really impressive.

Mark Simmons: One key new feature we've added is the streaming world. Our Silent Hill is now one large joined up town. There's no loading screens or long fades to black screens while the disc is accessed anymore. The creatures in the nightmares can now follow you across the entire location, the doors are no longer barriers for them. Our snow is amazing. Every snow flake is illuminated by the flashlight and casts a shadow onto the environment. It feels amazing just to point your flashlight into the sky and watch the snow falling down through the flashlights' beam. Our dynamic ice effects are amazing too, we can freeze up an entire street with lamp posts twisting over, park benches buckling in two, and whole buildings getting encased in amazing refractive glacial ice forms.

Sam Barlow: It's a great engine. It's been worked up in house and has a lot of great render features thanks to James Sharman, one of our elite programming brains. We have a ton of effects which I haven't seen elsewhere, or done quite as well. The lighting is an obvious hook -- full shadowing off everything, self shadowing on characters. Even the snowflakes cast shadows. Then there's the suite of ice shaders that are better than anything else I've seen on Wii. This should look like a 360/PS3 game running in SD. That's the idea.

IGN: We were blown away by what we saw. The main character holds a flashlight and the lighting is amazing. Tell us what you're doing to achieve this look.

Sam Barlow: The flashlight is amazing for two reasons. One, the tech is very clever. Two, the controls -- having the Wiimote become your flashlight -- just push it to the fore. You can play a PS3/360 game with cool lighting, but that lighting is mapped to static lights in the world or to a strafing character. You ever noticed how 360/PS3 games often go out of their way to show you how good their lighting is? The classic example is a light behind a wall fan, that kind of thing. We don't have to do that because the light is in your hand. It's awesome.

Mark Simmons: The flashlight is the Wiimote in your hand and it's also where you're looking at within the game world, because of this you get an amazing one-to-one feeling with the game. It's very immersing. It's also extremely accessible. The camera, characters facing, and where he's looking are all driven off of where the torch is pointing, which is driven simply by where you point your Wiimote. It's amazingly simple, but amazingly effective.

IGN: In one sequence, the world literally transforms before your eyes. What's happening here and how is this different from the original Silent Hill?

Sam Barlow: It is what it is. Play the game to understand it fully! It's different from SH1 because it's real-time and it happens in more dynamic situations -- the level structure isn't so rigid, you're not going to know when this is going to happen like you often did in the original.

Tomm Hulett: The transition is more chilling than ever before.

Mark Simmons: As a player you are always on edge. In this game you never know when the whole world is going to completely transform, it's a lot less predictable than in previous titles, and when it does happen it's normally a sign that you're in deep trouble. The world always transforms around you and whilst you still have control off the character and the flashlight.

IGN: The game takes place in third-person. Is there a first-person view? Why or why not?

Sam Barlow: You can "zoom" your view, kind of like Iron Sights in an FPS. Harry is still just in frame. You get a similar view when you pull your phone out. There's no true first person though. Reasons for that are: one, we want to keep that connection to the character Harry Mason, he's a character not a camera operator, two, flashlight effects don't look as cool when you're staring down the flashlight beam -- the third person offset ensures you really nice shadows and the flashlight arm has a level of disconnect with the camera -- so it's smooth to control.

Mark Simmons: A key innovation in the core game mechanics of Silent Hill in this game is the detail within the environment. We've done away with the strange written notes you found everywhere in the world and replaced them with an amazing new level of detail within the environment. This is where the zoom look comes in. There is a ton of interesting content everywhere you look in the game, from the text on the posters on the wall, the phone numbers on the billboards in the street, the strange writing on the floor, or the hidden clues to a puzzle within the room you're in. It's a natural extension of the one-to-one Wiimote flashlight controls.

Tomm Hulett: That said, there are some sequences -- like Dr. K's therapy sessions -- which will take place in first person, so the player can move around "his head" to examine the environment like he's really sitting on a therapist's couch. You even get to "nod" with the remote.

IGN: Harry can interact with environments, pick locks, etc. This is done using the Wii remote. Are you using Wii MotionPlus for this?

Sam Barlow: No MotionPlus. All our interactions are driven with the cursor on screen, so we have no need -- we're just as accurate. The game has tons of grabbing, pulling, pushing, rotating, prodding and other stuff. Some of these are physics driven, some animation driven. It's important to give the player plenty of opportunities to 'touch' the world, to keep that connection.

Tomm Hulett: Traditionally you play games holding a controller which is strapped (literally or figuratively) to a console, which is cabled to a television monitor. Pretty detached from the horror. With Silent Hill, we want the player to know they are reaching directly into this world; they are moving about in Silent Hill itself.

Mark Simmons: We want everyone who has a Wii to be able to enjoy this game to the full, which is why we chose not to support the MotionPlus. Our key aim is to make sure every interaction with the world feels perfect with the out-of-the-box Wii console. Imagine Warioware interactions but in the context of a creepy Silent Hill world. Quite often its not how you are interacting with it, but what you are interacting with that's really creepy.

IGN: You guys love the iPhone. Admit it! The main character more or less carries one around. What purpose does the phone serve? Please define all the actions possible with it and how this ties into gameplay. Also, can he whip out his phone at any time?

Sam Barlow: Some team members have iPhones. I don't -- but am willing to be gifted one, if Apple are impressed by our integration of such a device into the game.

The phone does everything that is done out-of-game in other horror games. You make calls, receive calls, get texts, voicemails, use sat-nav, annotate your sat-nav, take photos, receive photos, save your game. It also does things that real world phones don't do -- it acts as a motion detector/metal detector hybrid for spookier stuff. We never want you to see a user interface screen in this game, never want to pull you out of the game, so this is all in real time, all in game.

You can pull your phone out in 99% of the game, but you're not always guaranteed a signal -- Harry's going some places where good coverage isn't always guaranteed!

Mark Simmons: The sat-nav map can be drawn on using the wiimote cursor as a stylus. Unlike in previous titles where the map filled in itself, in this game the player can make their own notes on the sat-nav. The player can call any phone number they find in the world and the main characters within the story as they meet them.

Tomm Hulett: For our less cultured friends, "sat-nav" is the fancy British way of saying "GPS", and it's every bit as accurate (save for a Google Street View of Silent Hill, which would be nifty). I want to emphasize that this is not a fancy menu, where the game pauses while you tap through your options. Just because Harry pulls out the phone doesn't mean that creature stops barreling down on top of him.

IGN: Distortion is a big part of the game. Are you using the Wii remote speaker for this? How's it work?

Mark Simmons: The radio static that warned you when enemies are near now comes through the speaker of your phone, i.e. the wiimote speaker, and has a sense of direction to so you can use the phone to warn you when there's something bad behind the door you're about to go through and use it to run the other way. A little like the motion detector that appeared in the film Aliens.

Sam Barlow: Yes. I guess it works as you'd expect, but we do a bunch of different things with this gameplay across the game -- it's not just for detecting enemies

IGN: What does photographing ghosts do for you?

Sam Barlow: You don't photograph ghosts --- that's Fatal Frame! You can however take photos of anything in the world that interests you. And there are some spots that are marked by strong emotions or events. Taking photos of these places might reveal what those emotions or events were.

Tomm Hulett: Like Mark said earlier, we've removed the random notes scattered about every other survival horror game in existence. Photographs are just one way that we've replaced them to tell little mini-stories in the environments Harry travels through.

Mark Simmons: Some things in the world are only revealed in the photographs you take of them. Not everything in the world is as it appears when viewed through the viewfinder of the camera.

IGN: Tell us about the enemies in the game.

Sam Barlow: They're relentless, intelligent creatures that outnumber Harry. Like everything in the game, this enemy is part of the dynamic psychology content.

Mark Simmons: They are very intelligent and extremely dynamic. They will hunt you down, co-ordinate with each other, flank you, cut you off, herd you, and stop you. You're in a nightmare and all you can do is hope to escape. As you can climb over walls, fences, through windows, up ladders, jump gaps, up stairs, through doors, so can they. They can go everywhere you can go and more. The enemy will evolve as the game goes on into your perfect nightmare creature based on your psychological profile.

IGN: Harry doesn't have any offensive weapons. He has to run. Why's that?

Sam Barlow: Because if he doesn't he's toast. You're alone in a nightmare, there are several freaky creatures coming for you -- what would you do? Hitchcock said that all horror goes back to childhood, that's why it's a universal thing -- it's a fundamental. How many children wake up screaming because they had a dream where they beat up a zombie with a baseball bat? You wake up screaming because you ran and you got caught. So don't get caught -- run.

Mark Simmons: This is a totally new nightmare experience. It's tense, quite often very fast paced, and always crap your pants scary. We didn't want to follow the same route that other horror games have pushed in and improve combat by making the player character adept with guns and melee weapons. We wanted this game to feel like a real horror movie. Where the antagonist is powerful and the protagonist just a normal guy like you or me. He's in a horrifying situation and he is desperate to get out of it.

Tomm Hulett: This is an exciting feature of our game that has a lot of people interesting – and a lot of people concerned. Worry not. We did not create a cookie cutter survival horror game and then tear combat out of it for kicks. The horror experience in Silent Hill is built from the ground up around the concept of escaping – running for your life. It's about the chase. It's about outthinking the monsters with split-second decisions. It's about surviving.

IGN: Will he ever gain any weapons to use against enemies?

Tomm Hulett: Harry's only weapons are his cellphone and his wits. With these, he can detect and attempt to outsmart the creatures as they chase after him, flank him, and try to outsmart him (by which I mean you). In a pinch, Harry can nab flares which will be a temporary delay on the inevitable. Beyond that, you'll have to wait to hear more details later.

IGN: The world is big and detailed. Any load times?

Sam Barlow: No. The entire game streams off disc. Open a door and the world is behind it. Open another, keep going. We really, really don't want to knock players out of the experience here.

IGN: One thing we didn't see in our demo was a lot of blood. Does the game become violent?

Sam Barlow: It's freaky and it's terrifying. But no real gore to speak of. Was Dead Rising scary? Gory, yes, but scary, no. We're trying to upset people, to give them a psychological scare -- so gore is not necessary. There is lots of violence, emotional, psychological and physical. But it's the kind of violence that is more upsetting that seeing a polygon zombie's head explode.

Mark Simmons: It's a psychological horror. It will mess with your mind in many ways. You will be scared, you will be freaked out, and you will feel very disturbed at times by what you see. There is some blood in the game, but it's for realism, and not used as a cheap way of grossing the player out

IGN: What rating are you aiming for with the title? Will there be profanity, sexual content, violence?

Tomm Hulett: It's a Silent Hill title, so it will be rated Mature. This is not a watered-down version of the series.

Sam Barlow: As for your examples, all of the above. The psychological basis of the title means we can't avoid these things, in fact they're kind of the point to some situations.

Mark Simmons: We're not in any way holding back on this game. It's not going to be suitable for children who own Wiis at all. We're pulling out all the stops to make this a proper mature game for the Wii platform. As disturbing as any Silent Hill game before it.

IGN: Does the title run in 480p and 16:9 widescreen modes?

Mark Simmons: Of course, we will be supporting both progressive mode and widescreen.

IGN: Tell us about the audio side of Shattered Dreams. Who's composing the music? There seems to be a lot of voice work, too.

Tomm Hulett: It's a Silent Hill title -- so of course Akira Yamaoka will be returning, and providing an all-new score.

Mark Simmons: We're doing new things in the music department for this game to. Akira's still composing for us, but this time the music is totally dynamic. As you play instruments are introduced or taken away dynamically based on your gradual progression of suddenly as things change. Each major area has a new dynamic piece that ebbs and flows as you play and based on what you do in the game. There is a broad range of pieces in development across the whole range of Akira's style. From his melancholy undertones to his kick ass rock stuff.

Sam Barlow: We're just wrapping up the final motion capture and cut-scene sessions in L.A. and we're continuing to jet back and forth to record the huge amounts of audio work for the rest of the game. As you can imagine, if everything can change, there's a lot of ground to cover! We've got several movies worth of story content and enough audio for a whole season of radio plays.

IGN: One thing we noticed is that you aren't offering any on-screen text for players. Everything comes by way of audio cues or simply through the game world itself. What prompted this design choice?

Sam Barlow: There's no need. The old games had to subtitle because the camera meant you couldn't see what was in front of your (or the character's) face. With the Wii controls and camera you can. We don't need to tell you what to think, we show you. You want to read a poster -- just walk up to it. You want to know what to think of the random crap on a shop shelf, just look at it, react to it -- it's up close and detailed.

As far as the old text story stuff goes... Well, the genre staple of diary pages left lying around makes no sense in the modern world. How do people communicate in the modern world? Their cell phones. They leave voicemails. They send texts. They forward photos to friends, etc. Does the mad guy leave his diary on a desk? No, he scrawls all over the walls of his local mall. We want this world to come off as authentic, not as a Lovecraftian template forced onto the modern world. A lot of the story elements are about a kind of voyeurism, about vicariously looking on the emotional detritus and struggles of people in the world -- we literally let you "listen in" on their lives, not read about them in text. You're in the world, walking around, staring at the world and hearing people in it. It's an contiguous, seamless experience, it's not like someone has dumped a chopped up short story into your videogame.

Mark Simmons: There is a subtitle option that you can switch on. Cut-scenes, phone calls, voicemails, and anything Harry says is subtitled when this option is active. Its off by default though.

IGN: Finally, Wii fans have been burned before. Why should they be excited about this new Silent Hill?

Tomm Hulett: When the Wii was announced, we all heard about the great new things it could do for the core gamer. We were told it wouldn't be all music sims and exercise tutorials -- there were real games on the way too. It took a few years, but Silent Hill is here. This is the game you've been waiting years for. It's mature, it's tense, and it has everything you're looking for in a "real" survival horror game, because it is one. Oh, and it's not a rail shooter.

Sam Barlow: Come on -- everyone has imagined this game. Maybe not the particulars, but all Wii fans have wanted this game -- the flashlight horror game -- since they first got their console. This is the flashlight you've dreamed about. And then there's the story and the psychological stuff. This is amazing stuff and its right here on Wii. This is not breaking on PS3 and then being down-ported with waggle. This game was conceived as a Wii title. We're making this game because we want to play it, because we want to do things with story, with atmosphere that we can only do with this game. This one will be interesting, it will have the best flashlight ever seen and there are aspects of this game that will blow your mind.