The Return
E97: Konami confirms the development of several Silent Hill projects.
Good morning gamers! The return of Silent Hill is finally upon us. During last week’s Silent Hill Transmission, Konami confirmed that multiple Silent Hill projects are in development. Here’s everything that was announced,
Silent Hill Games
Silent Hill 2 Remake is being developed by Bloober Team with the help of original Team Silent artist Masahiro Ito and composer Akira Yamaoka. It’s set to release as a one-year PlayStation 5 console exclusive and on PC (via Steam). The remake is built with Unreal Engine 5 and features an overhauled combat system, drastically improved graphics and a new immersive over-the-shoulder camera perspective.
Silent Hill: Townfall is a series spinoff by No Code Studios and Annapurna Interactive. This project will be a unique take on the Silent Hill franchise.
Silent Hill F is a narrative-driven spinoff set in 1960s Japan. It will focus on the psychological and supernatural mysteries of Silent Hill, while featuring a “beautiful, yet horrifying world”. It’s written by the famous Japanese author Ryūkishi07.
Other Silent Hill Projects
Return to Silent Hill will be the next movie in the series and more details are coming in the near future. The movie will serve as a direct sequel to the original 2006 adaptation and is being directed by the same director, Christophe Gans. He said “the film tells the story of a young guy coming back to Silent Hill, where he has known a great love — and what he's going to find is a pure nightmare."
Silent Hill: Ascension is an interactive streaming series where the community takes control of the characters in a new Silent Hill story. It’s described as "a new form of entertainment that blends community, live storytelling and interactivity."
Bungie - Marathon IP
According to Tom Henderson, Bungie is reportedly bringing back their Marathon franchise as a 3-man squad extraction based shooter game. Marathon is a first person shooter developed and published by Bungie in 1994. The game had two sequels, Marathon 2: Durandal (1995) and Marathon Infinity (1996).
Henderson says that the game is currently in the pre-alpha stage and that an announcement could come at any time. Games in early development are usually announced early to increase public interest and to attract industry talent. Henderson says Marathon will be like other extraction-based shooters where players choose a mission, buy a loadout and then extract safely.
Bungie has been heavily invested in the Destiny series since its release in 2014, followed by the sequel in 2017. They will build on the success of the Destiny series by making their next game the “ultimate example of a living game”. Aspects from Destiny such as season rewards and progression will also be returning.
Henderson says that he contacted Bungie’s PR agency and they acknowledged the request for comment on this story, however they didn’t respond.
Esports Corner
🥇 Congratulations to OpTic Gaming for being crowned the 2022 Halo World Champions and to Version1 for winning the Rocket League Championship Series (RCLS) 2022-2023 Fall Cup North America.
OpTic Gaming founder Hector ‘H3CZ’ Rodriguez has officially returned to his role as CEO of the #GreenWall. The team's ownership has been passed through the hands of many different owners since they were acquired by Immortals Gaming Club in 2017. They’ve been sold to NRG and most recently merged with Envy Gaming but H3CZ remained a major part of the equation the entire time.
PlayStation and Epic Games have teamed up to host the Fortnite October PlayStation Cup. The PlayStation Cup takes place on October 27th and will feature a $230k prize pool. PlayStation players (PS4 and PS5) will get the chance to qualify through the online qualifier cups on October 20th and 25th, which will exclusively feature Battle Royale Solos. The top 50 players from each region (from each qualifier) will advance to the grand finals.
According to Esports Charts, the League of Legends World Championships have so far seen a 40% drop in peak viewers, average viewers and hours watched when compared to the group stages of last year's event. Most of this drop in viewership is largely attributed to an inconvenient time zone which makes viewing the games by European and Asian audiences much more difficult. To further emphasize that point, English broadcasts saw the smallest decrease in viewership falling by only 5% while Korean and Portuguese language broadcasts saw decreases of 42% and 63% respectively.
Gaming Roundup
Marvel’s Wolverine by Insomniac Games will reportedly be released for PS5 in 2023 according to a Microsoft regulatory filing.
Spider-Man 2, the PS5 exclusive by Insomniac Games, says they’re “making good progress” and that the game is still scheduled to release in 2023.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s campaign writers would like to do a spinoff story centered around Ghost and his origin story.
God of War Ragnarök is set to release for PS5 on November 9th and is confirmed to have a 120FPS mode alongside other FPS modes.
Star Wars Eclipse will reportedly introduce a new race to the Star Wars Universe. Reports suggest the estimated release date is in 2027/2028.
Final Fantasy XVI director Hiroshi Takai says the game “edges closer to completion”. The game's third trailer revealed some exciting new information.
The Callisto Protocol confirmed the game will be available in 60FPS and has gone gold with a December 2nd release date.
Mortal Kombat: Onslaught is a mobile RPG game being developed and co-published by NetherRealm Studios set to release in 2023.
Game Review - Gotham Knights
Gotham Knights is an action RPG game developed by WB Games Montreal and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Upon being announced, fans immediately marked their calendars for the highly anticipated return to Gotham City. Despite the talented cast and developers, the game has not lived up to expectations.
Let’s start with the bad news. Gotham Knights has optimization problems and it can only reach 30FPS on the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 consoles. The game will run best for players who have a good PC and are able to have a consistent 60FPS. The campaign was fun but it felt short as there were only eight story missions in total. The UI also seemed rushed where the crafting, loadouts and styles section felt poorly designed.
Now for the good. The combat system is enjoyable and felt like an improvement over Batman: Arkham Knight. The character swapping is very simple and each character has their own unique movement, which allows for a nice change of pace. The story is manageable as a solo player but is also fun to play co-op with a friend - we experienced no issues while using co-op. The lack of loot boxes and microtransactions was also refreshing.
Players should not purchase the game thinking it will be a sequel to the Batman: Arkham series as they will be disappointed. The story is definitely enjoyable, we give Gotham Knights a score of C.
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