The way I heard it was:

Kojima told Konami that he wanted to end MGS (the company's biggest franchise) with 5. Konami, being a corporation, naturally told him to get to work on MGS 6. In response, Kojima quit his job. Konami retaliated by taking his name and team logo off of everything.

Of course this could be wrong, but this is my understanding of what happened.

Google turned up this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMK-kajdgMA

Sailor Star Dust wrote:What exactly are the details with all this silliness, anyway? Did Kojima piss off the company or did the company piss off Kojima...? Wouldn't be surprised if we won't know the full story for awhile, if ever.

Rumor around the net says that something happened between Kojima and a Konami executive.

IronEvangelion wrote:Kojima told Konami that he wanted to end MGS (the company's biggest franchise) with 5.

As it should, regardless of what the company ( = $$$ ) wants. I hate series of any kind (film, book, games, etc) that don't know when to properly quit and the series is essentially ruined because of this (RE, though RE Revelations 2 was incredible/THE perfect modern Resident Evil, imo).

Plenty of new projects Konami can work on or get creative with I'm sure. Or revive things that fans want reviving, whatever.

^

Just pointing out that Kojima never said this and this rumor is not true. It's true that in the past Kojima wanted to stop making Metal Gear games and move on with other games. Silent Hills was one of these games.

Konami respected that and after MGS4 they started the development of the next Metal Gear without Kojima. But the team had problems because MGS it a big franchise and there wasn't a guy with a clear vision around who could drive them. So Kojima took the helm. Same thing happened with Metal Gear Rising. New team without Kojima developing it in Konami. Team couldn't get around it, Kojima couldn't help them since he was busy with TPP and asked Platinum to come in otherwise the game would be canceled.

Oh and also Kojima said numerous times that after TPP his next Metal Gear would be a prequel with The Boss as the main character.

Guys, if you had to point a beginner to the Silent Hill series; would you suggest SH1 or Shattered Memories?

That's a tough call, but I'd go with Shattered Memories. It's much newer so it should be easier to get into.

Blue Monday wrote:Guys, if you had to point a beginner to the Silent Hill series; would you suggest SH1 or Shattered Memories?

Silent hill 2, no really 1 doesn't have to be played to get the story of the much better 3 and 2 is an amazing game.

I'd just play Silent Hill 2 and 3 and skip the rest. The first Silent Hill might haven't aged too well, while all the other spin-offs they produced just aren't that scary albeit working hard to provide a horrifying gameplay experience.

Silent hill 4 is good, has a great story but the gameplay lets it down a bit.

Unfortunately the only way I can play SH2 and/or 3 is if I go and order the HD Collection, and everyone knows what the deal is there.

Bit of backstory; I've been a long-time distant admirer of Silent Hill. Growing up, I remember always reading about the games in gaming magazines (man, the 90s ruled), and my friends telling me of their experiences. I played a lot of Resident Evil, so I imagined the same thing except more spooky and cerebral as opposed to gory and action-oriented. It kind of took on this mythic stature in my mind, but the way things panned out I never got around to playing them. A friend once promised to lend me his copies but I ended up moving and changing schools before then. Years later I got to play a bit of 3 and 0. However, they were brief rentals and I didn't get very far at all. Since then, I have (much to my shame) long gone on to pretty much read everything about the series. I know what happens in each of the games, their differing endings, and have a vague knowledge of the lore. So on, so forth. Wikipedia is a hell of a drug.

Recently, with my renewed vigour in Metal Gear due to The Phantom Pain, my attentions were turned to PT via association with Hideo Kojima. Not having a PS4, I watched a play-through on YouTube late the other night, and my God...

child of Lilith wrote:That's a tough call, but I'd go with Shattered Memories. It's much newer so it should be easier to get into.

Damn, I thought Shattered Memories was up on PSN but apparently not on the Australian site. Bugger. The only ones there are 1 and 0 AKA Origins. I was really hoping to play Shattered Memories, 2 and 4, but it looks like I may have to settle for 1 until MGSV drops September first.

I recently played through the first game and found it to be an enjoyable experience. Nothing to be disappointed about, unless you hate 1999 graphics.

The second and third games are both great. Those are must-plays for anyone looking to get into the SH franchise. If you have no other options, just go for the HD collections. Don't know much about the other games, but I'm not really interested either.

I was lucky enough to get my PS4 before Silent Hills was cancelled and P.T. pulled from the PSN store. I've played through that demo about a dozen times now. I enjoy getting my friends to play it.

Also, watch the Silent Hill movie.

No, no matter what avoid the HD collections, it ruins 2 and 3 but slightly less (because the voice acting in 3 works a lot more than people give it credit for and replacing it with anything else is just........no)

HD Collection is fine if that's the only way you can play Silent Hill 2 and 3. PS3 version got a patch that fixed some of the issues. Personally i didn't find any problem and i enjoyed them both equally (always technically speaking).

Dima wrote:HD Collection is fine if that's the only way you can play Silent Hill 2 and 3. PS3 version got a patch that fixed some of the issues. Personally i didn't find any problem and i enjoyed them both equally (always technically speaking).

Graphically, the HD Collection is pretty terrible, mainly due to the reduction of fog and grime which reveals a lot of PS2-era graphical flaws and makes everything look a lot less ruined and forboding. The new dubs for SH2 and 3 are pretty mediocre, too. Both games look much better running on my PC or PS2.

If you don't have a PS2 I would seriously recommend trying to get your hands on the PC versions (if you must know, there are torrents of them out there).

Shinoyami65 wrote:Graphically, the HD Collection is pretty terrible, mainly due to the reduction of fog and grime which reveals a lot of PS2-era graphical flaws and makes everything look a lot less ruined and forboding. The new dubs for SH2 and 3 are pretty mediocre, too. Both games look much better running on my PC or PS2.

You either never played the HD versions or don't remember very well how these games looked running on PS2. Yes there is a reduction of fog but the character models and enviroments are sharper.

PS2 vs PS3

Dima wrote:You either never played the HD versions or don't remember very well how these games looked running on PS2. Yes there is a reduction of fog but the character models and enviroments are sharper.

Thats actually what ruins it, i dont know if you realize this but the kinda low res graphics in several places adds the the atmosphere more than you would think and helps the sense of being trapped in a nightmare silent hill 3 is going for.

Rosenakahara wrote:Thats actually what ruins it, i dont know if you realize this but the kinda low res graphics in several places adds the the atmosphere more than you would think and helps the sense of being trapped in a nightmare silent hill 3 is going for.

And that's the beauty of the old Silent Hills, really. They are one of those games that are only possible in a specific era of gaming.

Dima wrote:You either never played the HD versions or don't remember very well how these games looked running on PS2. Yes there is a reduction of fog but the character models and enviroments are sharper.

PS2 vs PS3

I own both versions (HD on PS3, the PC versions and the PS2 discs) and played the games pretty recently on PC and PS2.

As Rose said, the added lighting and bloom is what makes the HD Collection somewhat inferior. Sure, some textures like the cathedral glass are cleaner but in other areas it's been badly degraded.

Case in point, the weird water textures in the HD version of the boat scene:



In this image of James and Maria, note how in the HD version on the left, fog reduction has revealed a weird unfinished 'dry beach' which the fog in the PS2 version thankfully covers:



Bloom also makes everything look sterile and washed-out, although that might be subjective(PS3 version is on the right-hand side):



It seems that a lot of the sharper or improved screenshots are those from SH3, rather than SH2 (since SH3 uses darkness much more than fog) but I wouldn't say that the collection is worth it on that basis alone.

Check this out, from Tomm Hulett (the guy who was in charge of the HD ports):

"We got all the source code that Konami had on file -- which it turns out wasn't the final release version of the games! D'oh!" says Huelett, "So during debug we didn't just have to deal with the expected 'porting' bugs, but also had to squash some bugs that the original team obviously removed prior to release, but we'd never seen before. A lot of assets such as textures and sound had to be taken out of the compiled game, and that brings with it a host of unique issues, especially taken on top of the tricky coding workarounds at play in the original games. We certainly had our hands full. I think at one point [Silent Hill 3 protagonist] Heather was blue."

source: [url]http://www.1up.com/features/the-problem-with-preservation?pager.offset=1[/url]

I'm not entirely sure about the implications of this. So we could have gotten HD graphics AND good textures, audio, etc? Was the fog removed due to this? It sounds like, had they done a better job of this porting thing, the HD collection actually could have been great.