Pros:

- It now officially exists.
- Akira Yamaoka is confirmed to be doing the soundtrack.
- Style and direction is supposed to be very similar to Silent Hill 2.

Cons:

- Being developed by an American team known as "The Collective" whose previous titles include such gems* as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Da Vinci Code, Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, and Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure.

*Note: heavy sarcasm on the word "gems" there.

- The three screenshots are very bland and don't make me think of Silent Hill at all.

- The voice acting in the teaser trailer is complete ass.

- Not being developed by Team Silent.  Already covered, but it needs to be said again.  What the hell is Konami thinking and where the hell is Team Silent?  I heard rumors before that some of them left Konami and joined Sony or something, but surely some of them are still with Konami?  If not Origins or SH5, what are these guys working on?

Thoughts?

-Mike

It's interesting how those three screenshots look like a generic American-developed, third-person action game (gasp!). The big problem with those shots already are that: 1) they're not scary or even remotely Silent Hill-ish, and 2) there's too much damn light. One of SH's best assets is making you think that there are things just barely outside the cone of your flashlight beam, waiting to pounce on you...

Just give me the f'n soundtrack and save the series the embarassment of having the game published.

Well the fact that Origins looked like utter crap early on and then turned around to something that looks pretty good strikes me as being a positive sign - it's like someone is keeping an eye on how things are going.

As for farming out SH5 to a company that did a Buffy game and that Ecko travesty, well, that just seems like a bad move. And the screens seem less than impressive. Very little atmosphere and they don't even seem to have brought any advances that a new system can offer. It all looks very flat. I wouldn't mind that if they had style and atmosphere, but they don't.

Wow, you guys weren't joking or being particularly picky; those screenshots do have too much light.  Perhaps it is like that so as to show off the detail?

This kind of reminds me when they switched development teams for the Twisted Metal series... Twisted Metal III may have looked better than the previous games but it lacked any and all soul. Still, I can't fathom what Konami is thinking here... I mean I doubt they do this with a Castlevania game. I'm sure many will put off by this decision regardless of how the game turns out.

Thing is though, it doesn't look better. And the detail, compared with just about everything I've seen on 360 or PS3, really doesn't warrant showing - the floor textures and the wall textures are like an upscaled PS2 game. So it's not as if they're sacrificing artistry for technical advancements. Chuck some torchlight in there or one of their dirty noise filters and it would actually look much better.

I'm still holding out hope that whoever still cares about SH (Yamaoka is still there, isn't he?) won't let the series down.

Honestly, I think people are jumping the gun here. It's possible SHV will suck, but give it a chance. A few sceen shots do not make nor break a game. Personally I'm much more interested in the story and gameplay, and while I completely agree that atmosphere is VERY important, I personally am getting a little tired of the "fog and darkness everywhere" atmosphere. You can have plenty of light and yet be in terror... anyway, I'm hoping for the best

cheers,

-avatar!

The screenshots are clearly rough right now, and do not represent a finished product, so curb your bitching.  I'm just as worried about this game as the rest of you, but I'm holding onto the hope that this one will make up for the crapfest that was Silent Hill 4.

This looks like a  new trend in the J-Game Industry. Like what happened with Metroid (although that seemed to be a great success) many of the game series that Japanese gamers tend to ignore, but are wildly popular in other parts of the world, are being farmed out to other studios. "If the local market doesn't want it, why bother have our local teams work on it?" seems to be the prevailing attitude.

Silent Hill is extermely popular in Europe and the U.S. so it doesn't surprise me that an American dev team is churning out its code. Hell, even Contra 4 is being handled by an American company.

Team Silent is pretty much gone now. If I remember correctly they were pissed after the whole Silent Hill 4 incident.

So this may mean Nintendo will farm out a Wii Zelda to a US/EU developer.  Hm.

Why was Team Silent pissed about Silent Hill 4?

Originally Silent Hill 4 was supposed to be an entirely new horror game. It was in development for some time and for some reason (business risk? no-name association? we'll probably never know) Konami dropped it on the lap of Team Silent and told them to make it a Silent Hill game. I don't really think it was the kind of game they wanted to make (in terms of Silent Hill).

Still turned out good, just not great.

Seems like a great move in my opinion! One thing I noticed in Metroid Prime was how clean and well written the story was. Granted, the plot was the same as always (pirates bad, kill them after finding weapons!), but I did notice a difference between Prime and other Metroid games like Fusion. That is, I do believe something always gets lost in translation (no reference to the movie intended). It's like reading a translated novel, it can still be very good, but it's always best to read it in the original language (that way you also get all the little nuances).

cheers,

-avatar!

I have no real opinion on this other than to say that the teaser trailer has to be one of the worst teasers I've ever seen.

Yeah, but the plot being clean and well written in the first Metroid Prime just made it seem all the more like the previously Japanese-developed entries in the series.  The mess of Metroid Prime 2 showed that the American team just couldn't keep themselves from falling into cliches of American-developed FPS games.  And I'm worried from what I've heard of the third that it's moving even farther away from what Metroid should be and closer to what Halo is...

That of course, is a matter of opinion. Personally, I thought Super Metroid was the best game in the series (although I still think the story in MP was better, but SM was groundbreaking in many ways). So, just because you might not enjoy Halo-like games (at least if they're in Metroid form) doesn't mean that many others do not. I haven't played Metroid Prime 2, but I know that it got very good reviews. So I imagine that there are lots of people who would disagree with you about it being a "mess". Honestly, Nintendo is just giving people what they want... So anyway, I am looking forward to seeing what they can do with Metroid Prime 3! I also look forward to playing MP2, even if it's not as polished as the first.

cheers,

-avatar!

I actually can see that happen, western code monkey taking over the realistic Zelda while EAD continues the Celda line (Zelda: PH on DS with that style is surprisingly successful in Japan right now (it's already the best selling handheld Zelda there) while previously the realistic Zelda: TP even on Wii only continued the downward trend there).

But not as good as the first.  Also, my "mess" comment should definitely be taken from the perspective of comparing the second MP with the first.  And while I do occasionally feel that reviews for Nintendo-published games are often unfairly high even when they don't deserve it,  I find that most things they publish are still better than most of what else is out there.

Anyway, you really ought to try it and see for yourself.  The problems extend beyond the story; that's the least of my concerns, to be honest.  I think the best way to describe it is that the first Metroid Prime had a giant living, breathing world... despite the disparity of terrains, it still felt like it all fit together and made sense.  The second game feels kind of like a jumbled mish-mosh of everything they cut from the first game to make that comprehensive whole.  It's like they had a bunch of "this idea is cool!" moments and crammed them together with no overarching concept.

Of course that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of horrendously unbalanced difficulty, the annoyance of the dark world segments, or the lameness of the new weapon types.  That's another can of worms entirely, and to be honest I DID still enjoy the game quite a bit... it just fell far short of the level that the first acheived.

Baaaaaaaaaaaack to the topic at hand, though, I agree with Jay in regards to the Silent Hill Origins situation.  Early builds of that game got panned, but now it seems they've completely turned it around and made something quite good.  Perhaps Konami IS at least paying attention to what their hired labor is doing with their franchise.  Hopefully the same will be true with this one.  I'm also not going to judge the whole game by a few (what are probably very early) screenshots.  Let's see a bit further in the development process how the game is doing, and THEN we can start bitching. 

Avatar, Qui Gon is right on with his assessment of Metroid Prime 2.  Prime 2 is a very good game, no doubt about that.  It's just that it's a huge step down from the original MP which is amazing.  Nintendo knows it messed up with Prime 2 (sales results and user feedback) and they have continued to say that they were disappointed with how Prime 2 performed, and that they want Prime 3 to be the definitive Sci-Fi first-person game released this year.  In Nintendo's press conference, Bill Trinen even throws a little jab at Halo 3 when he says something to the effect that while MP3 may be the first big FPS title to be released this year, it should also be the best even if it's not the most hyped.