Konami Covers for Silent Hill 2 Remake While Updated Until Dawn Has Troubled Release
A couple of horror video game remakes are having interesting releases. During the PlayStation State of Play in May, Sony debuted the trailer for the Silent Hill 2 remake. Fans of the game were incensed to learn that the characters had been redesigned to appeal to “modern audiences,” with a body-positive version of Angela and much less sexualized version of Maria. The chief marketing officer for Bloober, the developer behind the Silent Hill 2 remake, admitted that they were “modernizing” certain aspects of the game, which was necessary “due to the passage of time.” X user Learning the Law discovered that Bloober was using a woke consulting firm along the lines of Sweet Baby Inc. called Hit Detection, which tells you what they mean when they say they’re modernizing the game. At the time, Konami, the game’s publisher, made an X post saying Bloober “preserved authenticity” while making the Silent Hill 2 remake while adapting it for “modern audiences,” which are two contradictory actions. You can see it here, courtesy of Smash JT:
Why did I have to use a screenshot instead of embedding the actual post? Because today, That Park Place reported that Konami deleted it. That’s interesting; just over four months ago, they seemed so proud of Bloober and their obnoxious, woke updates that Silent Hill 2 fans didn’t want. So, why did Konami delete the post today, or at least recently? Probably because the Silent Hill 2 remake was released today, and given the implosion of Ubisoft and the disasters of Concord and Dustborn, plus the success of Stellar Blade and Black Myth: Wukong, they almost certainly wanted to hide any impression that the game was full of identity politics. It’ll be interesting to see how the Silent Hill 2 remake does in the coming weeks. So far, it seems to be doing pretty well; it has an all-time peak player count of 23,676 on Steam, and users have given it a score of 92.87%, so people seem to be enjoying it. Maybe the woke stuff isn’t so bad, or at least the game is good enough that it doesn’t matter as much.
Another remake of a horror game, Until Dawn, is already having a bad time. The original Until Dawn was a 2015 PlayStation 4 release; the remake launched on October 4 for the PS5 and PC, and according to SteamDB, its all-time peak player count is 2,607. IGN suggests that this is because there is no price discount for players who own the original Until Dawn, and that makes sense. I know the PS5 looks great, but is it enough of a leap forward from the PS4 to justify playing a new version of a game you already have and are perfectly happy with? That goes double for the PS5 because it’s backwards-compatible with PS4 games. I’m not even sure I want to upgrade many – or even any – of my movie collection from Blu-ray to 4K, despite the excellent picture quality. 4K discs cost around $30; imagine being asked to do that for a $70 video game.
Moreover, gamers who took a chance on the Until Dawn remake don’t seem overly thrilled with it. The user score on SteamDB is 65.61%, which is not great. IGN reports that the top complaints from the “most helpful” reviews are “poor optimisation, music changes from the original, bugs, and poor controls at times.” Gee, another buggy game released to the public before it’s ready; I can’t imagine why more people don’t want to play it. I think gamers are getting sick and tired of this nonsense, and they’re absolutely right, especially when they’re asked to pay $70 to play a new game. For that amount of money, you damn well better have that game running in pristine condition. And there’s one other problem IGN cited as being a big one with the Until Dawn remake: you need a PSN account to play it on Steam. Did Sony learn nothing from the Helldivers II debacle? Yeah, this one isn’t being sprung on people who were already playing the game like what happened with Helldivers II, but this practice is not popular with Steam players, and it limits how many gamers can play. That may be the difference between these two situations; Konami pulling that post indicates that they’re learning from recent failures, at least in terms of what they say, whereas Sony appears to have ignored the lessons of its own mistakes.
Let us know what you think of the Silent Hill 2 and Until Dawn remakes and their companies’ actions in the comments!
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