It is a particularly good watch because I have referred to this game several times and is part of the reason why I chose the original Silent Hill to remaster.
The Youtube aither is somewhat unprofessional but his research and points are solid.
Website Rely on Horror had an interview with an anonymous Hijinx employee who worked on the HD Collection, and gives insights to the whole situation. He starts by stating: “It seemed like a no-brainer, since MG (Metal Gear Solid) and SH (Silent Hill) were popular franchises from the 32-bit era onward. Just preserve them for the next generation consoles.”.
Developer Hijinx Studios known for Karaoke Revolution by Konami. Were picked because of their previous work for them. During the time where remasters were exploding on to the scene “Konami wanted to join into the trend of HD Remasters that were occurring”. Although Hijinx had zero experience in remastering, the company was chosen presumably because of financing “I don’t know what BluePoint charged for other collections”, “So I have to imagine Hijinx made a lot more sense for Konami on this particular collection.”.
BluePoint is another studio that was commissioned by Konami, with the task of remastering numerous Metal Gear titles in a similar HD Collection. BluePoint was able to get assistance from Kojima Productions if required since the original team(s) were available “Kojima Productions still existed as an entity if they needed to ask questions or ran into any difficulties”. Hijinx wasn’t afforded the same luxury, due to the failure of Silent Hill 4; the team aka Team Silent that was responsible for the franchise were disbanded and the franchise left solely to Konami to deal with.
The source then goes on to talk about the project in more depth, the interviewer asked the following: What exactly did everyone have to work with in terms of source code and final assets?
“Once the project kicked off, Konami provided the source assets that had been archived after the original release on PlayStation 2. These were the only assets available, and as far as we knew going in, the completed final code. However after digging into the code and assets, it was obvious these were not final. Whoever archived it must have done it before final submission, or worked with incomplete data, nobody really knows by virtue of it being so long ago. Needless to say, there were many unfinished elements.”.
So developer Hijinx had been given assets to work on for the remaster and improve, yet the final source code for the game was incomplete and some assets were missing too “when a texture was found to be missing, it would need to be recreated by their artists.”.
Because of this and the extreme stringencies placed on them by Konami they were poised to fail from the start. Especially since the deadline for the entire project was a mere few months “The intended schedule was a few months, but by the end we spent more than a year on the project.”. “I imagine Konami management saw this as a very quick and painless way to make some money while HD Remasters were popular”.
Nearing the end of the interview, the ex-Hijinx employee was asked: In your opinion, what did the project need for it to have been a completely faithful and solid remaster of these two classic games?
“I think what most people expect of an HD Remaster – the games should play the same with the same content, but be prettier to look at and supported on modern platforms”. “I think as long as the experience itself is the same, and it doesn’t seem like a different level, or story, or gameplay, that’s a good target to aim for.”.
Which is exactly how I view remasters and how they should be approached in the industry.
From my understanding Hijinx have done an admirable job of the task they were given. If Konami hadn’t been so stringent with their targets the projects full potential could have been realised.
Given more ideal circumstances such as better final assets, source code, more experienced employees and a longer deadline, studio Hijinx could have made this remaster collection exactly what it should have been.
Hopefully, this is a hard lesson the industry can and should learn from…
Although it appears some studios since have indeed failed to adhere to these teachings.
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