Foggy streets are seemingly out in Silent Hill: Downpour, replaced with sunshine, mountains and cable cars.
While Remedy is busy talking about a sequel to Alan Wake, Czech developer Vatra Games seems to be already working on one, or at the very least, a game that looks a great deal like it. Vatra has released a new batch of screenshots for Silent Hill: Downpour and they make Silent Hill look an awful lot like Bright Falls.
Unlike other games in the series, which have been set in the heart Silent Hill, Downpour is set on the outskirts, in the south eastern part of the town that appeared on the maps, but that the player never visited. Previous screenshots had already showed that corner of town to be a little on the rustic side, but this new batch shows that it also includes a mine, a cable car, and what could possibly be a lodge – although it could equally be part of the cable car station.
It’s probably a little unfair to make comparisons between Downpour and Alan Wake, even though the resemblance between the two is quite striking in these images. It seems likely that that similarities are literally just skin-deep, as Alan Wake was fairly action orientated for a survival horror game, whereas Downpour – with its breakable weapons and hard to kill enemies – goes to great lengths to make combat sound like a very bad idea.
Shinji Hirano, head of Konami Digital Entertainment, said that Downpour would honor the “rich history and strong following of Silent Hill,” and that Vatra and Konami were working hard to make a horror game that fans “truly deserved.” It seems like Vatra is deliberately trying to distance itself from the old Silent Hill games, and make something new. Whether it works of not remains to be seen, but it doesn’t seem like it will be a retread of familiar – and therefore unscary – ground.
Silent Hill: Downpour is scheduled for release on Xbox 360 and PS3 later this year.
Source: Evil Avatar
Published: Apr 18, 2011 04:12 pm