Interview with Tomm Hulett (Silent Hill Historical Society)

Date published: 2012.01.04
Source: Silent Hill Historical Society

I unfortunately didn’t get very far into the game before I had to hand it off to the person who had just interviewed Tomm, but I had a lot of fun playing and I was definitely intrigued by the story I saw so far.

Since my time with the title was so short and I ran through it blind Tomm was nice enough to answer some of my questions via email after the event:

Silent Hill Historical Society: Daniel Licht returns to do the score and Mary Elizabeth sings the theme isn’t that correct?

Tomm Hulett: Yes, Dan Licht created most of the music in BoM, and Mary sings vocals on 2 songs. For any details beyond that you’ll need to wait and play the game

SHHS: I picked a card(?) with a heart in the very beginning before I created my character. You mentioned this particular feature wasn’t currently working in this build and I was wondering if you could go into how it contributes to the creation of the character? Is it similar to Kingdom Hearts in which up front you are asked which you prefer a Keyblade, Shield or Magic Rod and depending on what you choose it determines Sora’s strength and weakness in combat (physical, magical and defense)? Will what shape you choose will determine a strength in a certain stat?

Tomm Hulett: There are a number of “charms”, and you pick one at the start of the game. They appear as silhouettes, so it’s not exactly clear to the player what she is selecting, exactly. We wanted it to be subconscious, like a Rorschach test, rather than something like Kingdom Hearts where you are clearly deciding “I want to play a melee attack game”. These charms provide a small permanent stat boost to your character.

SHHS: Speaking of character creations/stats, you mentioned that certain character types carry different sort of stats, like the jocks are stronger physically, the nerd has higher Karma? Is that correct?

Tomm Hulett: Our stat system in general is similar to games like Shin MegaTen, where you receive “points” at level up, and you can assign them however you want. So regardless of the charm and character class selected, players have plenty of room to craft the exact character that fits their play style. Where the classes differ is their equipment slots.

Obviously as you level up, you get more slots to equip artifacts that will have an effect on your stats. Now, each equipment slot has a specific stat alignment–these differ per class. So my Jock might have two “STRENGTH” slots. If I equip an “Agility” artifact in those slots, it has its normal effect on my agility. But, if I assign a Strength artifact, its effect will be boosted.

SHHS: I overheard in your interview with Games Radar during the event that you guys are exploring the theme of dreams with Book of Memories. Since dreams are random you guys had the idea to implement random generated dungeons. Does this mean every time you play you’ll experience a randomized dungeon level or are the map layouts just randomized? I saw that the guy who played after me had a different looking level and I thought he restarted from the beginning. Was this just because the levels are randomized or did this have if have to do somehow with his character choice?

Tomm Hulett:Yes, the gameplay portions of BoM take place in your character’s Nightmares. We thought a lot about what dreams are like when creating our gameplay, storyline, and visuals. One aspect is the randomness of dreams. The layout of each “Zone” will be different every time you play, creating a sort of random dungeon crawler feeling. (Though our initial Zone is always the same, so we can tutorialize things properly).

Naturally this is Silent Hill, so when we say “Nightmares” we really mean a kind of transportation to the Otherworld. We have a variety of different Otherworlds for the player to explore, and in the “Story” portion of the game, these occur in a set order. You always begin in the “Fire” world, and then go in order. However, once players complete the Story they will be thrust into an endless Nightmare, where the Otherworlds you encounter are chosen at random.

SHHS: You can hold a melee and and firearm at the same time but is it possible to stockpile weapons? As I recall I had bought the pipe from Howard and was rewarded with a knife from Valtiel for finding two childhood items (I was still looking for chess pieces) but when I taped on the knife my character dropped the pipe she was holding and equipped the knife but I’m not certain if that was because I can only hold onto one melee weapon at a time or just me just not knowing the Vita controls.

Tomm Hulett: Initially, the size of your character’s backpack is limited. It basically only holds a few health packs, a toolkit, and limited ammo. Your weapon inventory as such is identical to Downpour: what you hold in your hands. However, Howard sells Backpack upgrades, which will increase the number of items you can hold, and also allow for a weapon or two. Players can then hold on to key weapons for big encounters, and cycle through what’s available while exploring.

SHHS: We talked briefly about the the Karma (magic) powers at the event, though I never really used them at the time, called Light (healing) and Blood (attack). If you kill Blood enemies it will increase your Light Karma and the opposite is true to increase the Blood Karma. Could you expand on this?

Tomm Hulett: Your character has a meter at the top of the screen keeping track of their Karma. The two possible Karmas are “Light” and “Blood” – the same holding true for enemies. As you kill enemies of one alignment, your karma grows toward the opposite alignment. Once it’s far enough to one side, you can perform a “Karma Ability” – which are the huge flashy techniques some have been referring to as “Magic”. This will be a key strategic component in multiplayer, as you don’t want to work against your allies – you’ll want to divy up the Light/Blood karma assignments to ensure you have a broad spectrum of options available.

The creatures you encounter have a third karmic alignment: Steel. Steel enemies are larger, tougher, and don’t have an obvious weakness.

SHHS: When I played Valtiel appeared and gave the level objectives he seemed to me to play the role of guide in this game. Would that be an accurate description of his role in this game?

Tomm Hulett: Valtiel is a very elusive character in general, and we wanted to keep that quality in Book of Memories. He does appear at the beginning of each Zone to issue an optional Mission to the player(s). If the player chooses to complete this, he’ll be waiting near the exit to reward them. Obviously some of these Missions will be incredibly hard, so they are not required in any way. However, players will get pretty sweet loot if they’re able to satisfy Valtiel’s request.

I’m not sure I’d classify him as a “guide” though, seeing as he doesn’t speak. Howard has a lot more to say on the subject of what exactly is going on.

SHHS: I overheard you mention that the backstory of the characters are only told through televisions and notes in game is this correct? I wasn’t sure if I just misheard but I remember while playing I had turned on a static tv and heard past conversation with a coworker at my character’s new job.

Tomm Hulett: There are cutscenes near the start of the game to set everything up, and of course there are several different endings, but the bulk of the story is told in-game via notes that you find and television broadcasts you overhear. This, again, is part of our “dreams” theme – where you’ll get snippets of information that don’t necessarily mean anything unless you stop to think about them and how they all fit together.

Since the Book of Memories allows you to alter your life, the way you play the game will also change the notes you receive (and ones you’ve already received). Players who want to achieve specific endings will need to study these notes and figure out how to manipulate the book for their ideal result. In a way, the story itself is one giant puzzle.

I wanted to create a story like this because one thing fans have been asking for in Silent Hill for years now are the mind-bending puzzles of the first few games, which relied on obscure knowledge or really careful attention (or hours of running them back and forth in your mind) to solve. At the same time, our gameplay needs to be fast to support multi-player–so the literal puzzles you encounter in each Zone can’t be TOO complex. By building a complex puzzle into the story, I hope to provide hardcore fans with a mystery to solve, that they can be puzzling over while they play.

SHHS: Can you explain the decision behind using enemies from past Silent Hill games (Groaners, Insane Cancers, Needlers, etc) instead of new creatures special to BoM?

Tomm Hulett: Silent Hill has a long and creepy list of baddies we’ve faced over the years. Unlike a Zelda or Mario, where you can trot the best ones back out year after year to excite players, SH’s creatures are locked in to the narrative where they appeared. Which is a shame, because it’s always nice to get to face down with an old enemy every so often. Since BoM deals with multiple Otherworlds, it made sense to make it a sort of “best of” experience and bring back the more memorable creatures from past Silent Hills.

SHHS: A lot of fans are worried that BoM will be a Silent Hill title in name only (kind of like those cell phone games) given it’s radical change in game play, the isometric view and the multi player element. Should it be considered a core game within the series canon or is it just another side game like Silent Hill: The Arcade?

Tomm Hulett: This is a tricky subject because the SH community has its own custom definition of what canon actually means, and this even varies by person or forum or whatnot. Yes, BoM fits into the canon: it follows rules and chronology established in the past games. We don’t alter existing character details (Play Novel, mobile games), we don’t violate the fundamental universe rules (some American comics), and we don’t give anybody enormous boobs (Japanese comics).

That said, BoM isn’t required reading in order to understand the next core installment. Nor is top-down action RPG gameplay the new direction of the series. Resident Evil does this sort of thing all the time and nobody bats an eye, but it seems a difficult concept for people to process when it says “Silent Hill” on the box. If it helps, try this: BoM is a spinoff title that takes place in the canon Silent Hill universe.