I advocate it’s important not to beat yourself up when you find yourself struggling, and to accept that sometimes, doing our best does not look all that great, but it is the best we’ve got at the moment.

Quality is all very relative, you see

I really gotta just start penning into my schedule: Saturday Night Sorrows, as feelings of melancholy washing over me like a great wave have now been a virtual guarantee for what seems like an eon. I was so torn about whether or not I should start the Silent Hill 2 Remake (SH2R) amidst a depleting work week, and one where I am beside myself with exhaustion and woe. I figured thrusting myself into more distraction would perhaps be for the best, as then I would have a more appropriate conduit with which to pour my better energies into. I’m still not sure if it was the right call or not, though I am fairly certain my articles detailing my time with SH2R are not quite on the right track of quality as a result of relentless uncertainty, which may yet have to stand as just another sterling example of that good old fashioned “C’est la vie” mentality that continues to haunt me in my day to day.

With the silver lining knock on effect of being delayed by a year in starting the SH2R, I have a bit of an added bonus of sorts, in seeing another Konami remake enter the fray in the same time frame, with the launch of MGS3 Delta not too far behind us at the current moment. While acknowledging both series trade in exceedingly different social currency, and most certainly not occupying the same head space for a myriad of reasons, I still find the expectations of what fans expected from both remakes an interesting contrast to help put things into perspective for us all, in what the gaming masses wanted from one, bur not necessarily the other.

To wit; I find it interesting that I feel as if, as far as I’ve noticed (it would seem), the majority of people were more surprised at the lack of “newness” or alteration packaged in with the MGS3 remake, as if to say gamers were more comfortable with the idea of MGS changing as opposed to Silent Hill staying the same, seemingly being “for the best” on some level. I’m also wondering if it is at all in a fairness to attribute this gulf of difference to the singular aspect that boils down to the “Kojima Factor” or not, and all of the baggage that comes with the notion itself. I also bring forth that notion full well knowing I could be referring to both series, as opposed to solely referencing MGS, with the relevant mention of P.T. being thrown into the mix, for the sake of (albeit relevantly) worthwhile argument, of course.

For those of you with short memory spans, “P.T.” was the short lived “playable teaser” (hence the name) that came out a decade ago on the PS4, and a demo that would eventually come to reveal itself as being in relation to the Silent Hill series, but one which was delisted shortly thereafter, making playing the thing pretty much impossible if you weren’t one of the ones who had already downloaded it. A rare and unique moment in the history of game preservation, and likely a scenario that is worthy of an article, possibly an entire mini-doc all on its own… that would be if gaming wasn’t so plagued with being NDA’d out the ass, making prying information out of anyone worth a damn not nigh impossible in this industry, but I digress, as my aim was not to dive too deeply into the individualistic history of P.T. itself, but the specific aside of its relevancy to the “Kojima Factor”, as the man technically had an influence on both series in some way, though significantly more on one than the other, to say the very least.

Though, the question remains on whether or not the “Kojima Factor” did have some kind of relevancy to the expectations involving what both remakes would offer. On the one hand, P.T. was essentially an experiment that was apart of a future for Silent Hill that essentially “never was”, with the abandonment of the shift in creative control only existing as a juicy “what if” scenario, with the pedigree of Silent Hill left intact, dormant as it was, with a muted, familiar past yet remaining pre-Kojima fumbling left to treasure, as opposed to the MGS fanbase, possibly still tending to the phantom pain involved with the dischargement of Kojima from their series, and not being able to cope with the fact of the matter that in spirit, the man remained apart of the legacy, but that time moved on without him, and with that truth, the lack of innovation that comes along with it, even in the distinct form of the “new oldness” a faithful remake would bring along with it, simultaneously with Kojima’s touch both inherent and yet missing at the same time.

There yet remains more on this thought that I want to articulate, and this contrast was not even my primary focus in what I wanted to write about today, with this point of interest in what each fandom wanted from either game in terms of how their respective remakes delivered merely a side-quest of sorts as we made our way along to the main objective, but I might have to set up camp here and save and quit for the night, as even formulating this cobbled together idea took a ridiculous amount of effort to get out of me. I still have work ahead of me for the night, so we will have to reconvene for tomorrow, where there remains a chance I will have recouped some well needed energy to continue formulating what we shall leave as an incomplete fathoming of a much more interesting concept involving the deep dive of what defines the relevant qualities of the SH2R.

~Pashford