PSB: What do you think is the single most unique aspect about Silent Hill: Book of Memories? If you’re a low-level guy in your friend’s game and he’s trying to level you up, you don’t wanna break off from him because you’re going to get trapped and you’re pretty much screwed at that point. Difficulty will scale up depending on the level of all the players. You can split up, you can all stay in one room. Things you find in your friend’s game will add to your collection, your database of stuff. Basically, one player is the host, everyone else joins their game. You can swap back and forth between them as much as you want. It’s important to note that when playing single player or multiplayer, you’re using the same character, so you’re not losing out by choosing one over the other. TH: It’s co-op by design, but people will find ways to compete and find all the items. PSB: How does the multiplayer work? Is it cooperative? I think the furthest our testers have gotten is zone 340, so that’s a challenge to any players out there. The levels will start to randomize and the game will become crazy, and the enemies will keep scaling. You’ll have a reason to keep playing: unlock everything, find every monster, and so on. You’re not going to have all the story elements just by beating the game once. So why should I have to re-roll the character when I beat the game, just to try something new? I should just be able to re-write this book. TH: The cool thing about our premise is that you have this book and you’re rewriting your life. PSB: If you get an ending after 21 stages, how does the endless part of the game work? It also ties into the story in specific ways. This kind of lets us bring them all back, so players can play it again without being stuck there for 100 hours. Silent Hill has had many different “other worlds” – it’s had the fiery, rusty one, it’s had water in Downpour. After that it’s endless, a mix and match of anything. Through the initial 21 stages of the game, at the end of which you’ll get an ending, they’re structured so that you’ll get three of each in a row. TH: We have seven different environments. PSB: Yeah, power can be the antithesis of horror. But at the same time you’re not gonna become this empowered demigod and the whole game is your oyster. So we’ve kind of – I hope – found the ideal way to balance building a character: they are getting stronger, getting more moves, more capable. So do you hold onto it for the bosses, or Pyramid Head if I walk into a room with him? Or do I just use it and have an easy three rooms and now it’s gone. You know that I have a sweet sword, but you know it’s going to break. So this isn’t like the “Gilded Dragon Sword” in Diablo that you want to hold onto. You can equip things and sort of create the ideal build for your character. With Silent Hill we thought – did we want to do that? Or do we wanna keep that fear of if you’re in this situation, you’re always screwed? So when you level up, you can add stat points and build your character however you want. If you can’t pass a thing, level up some more. TH: It was an odd tightrope to walk, because RPGs are entirely about leveling. What’s your philosophy with that in this game? PSB: An important part of Action-RPGs is leveling up and gaining new abilities. It’s not a totally different genre that doesn’t make any sense, it’s just sort of a new angle on Silent Hill. So then we can kind of mess with it if I’m with my friends and we get separated, that’s a classic horror trope right there. Phantasy Star Online does it, and Diablo of course. So we started to experiment with different gameplay styles, what was kind of compelling, and through a long random assortment of events and demos, we came across a dungeon crawler, action/RPG thing which is really compelling with multiple players. Survival horror is a very particular genre, but with PS Vita’s online capabilities, it just made sense to do multiplayer here. We really wanted to experiment with multiplayer. Tomm Hewlett, Game Producer: We heard about PS Vita, and we really wanted to make a Silent Hill that was specially suited for that.
#SILENT HILL ON VITA SERIES#
Jeff Rubenstein, PlayStation.Blog Social Media Manager: How do you adapt an incredibly scary survival horror series into this action/RPG format? Why did you choose this genre? After sampling the game at PAX Prime, I met up with the game’s producer, Tomm Hewlett, in San Francisco to find out how Konami plans to please fans of both genres.
Like chocolate and peanut butter, this is a mashup I can get into. Silent Hill: Book of Memories is a Survival Horror Action-RPG coming to PS Vita later this month. Never really had much of an interest in the series, even… until now.
I’ve got a gaming confession to make: I’ve never played a Silent Hill game.
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