Development:Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

This page details development materials of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

Oh dear, I do believe I have the vapors. This page contains content that is not safe for work or other locations with the potential for personal embarrassment. Such as: Early concept arts of Rawshocks (main game enemy) contains boobs

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is another game where its conception was so ambitious that it got rejected just to then get turned into a bleak version of what it could have been... GREAT.

Conceptions as Brahms PD and Silent Hill: Cold Heart

After the release of the PSP version of Silent Hill: Origins, Konami wanted a follow-up for Origins with another PSP title, however William Oertel (a producer on charge of the Silent Hill IP at that time) pushed Climax to pitch a new first-person shooter Silent Hill title for the Wii. The pitch became Brahms PD, a spin-off first-person shooter featuring a psychological profile system where we would have played as an amnesiac police detective from the Brahms Force Police looking for her missing partner. This pitch was rejected.

After the Bramns PD pitch was rejected, Climax reformulated their ideas to make another pitch which turned into Silent Hill: Cold Heart. This pitch implemented the idea of changing the traditional foggy and sometimes covered in rust town to a cold and sometimes covered in ice. The story would have followed a psychologically traumatised university student named Jessica Chambers who wanted to have a break of his life so she went to her parents house, however, on her way to her parents house, she ends trapped in Silent Hill. The game would have expanded the psychological features from Brahms PD pitch by adding a Wii's Connect24 based news and weather feature, the user's Mii profile would have modified Jessica's appearance and profile and we would be able to share our psychological profile with other players. The game would have been a traditional Third-Person game featuring meele combat, puzzles and many more survival based features as limited inventory, temperature feature and a basic food system. A brief part of the original story can be seen in the game pitch document. This pitch was also rejected.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

After the Cold Heart was rejected, William Oertel suggested to pitch the game as a remake just like how Silent Hill: Origins was initially pitched as a Silent Hill (1999) remake. They decided to pitch the game as a reimagination, because the idea of revisiting again the same Silent Hill was boring for the team, Sam Barlow (game writer) decided to make it a reimagination inspired by how the Battlestar Galactica 2000s reboot handled the original 80s story. It was green lighted and it ended as Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

The development of the game may have started among April to June 2008 implied by many job posting by Climax.

Interviews

The reinterpretation of Cheryl as a broken and traumatized adult, the idea of Harry being product of the imagination of Cheryl and the subplot where Cheryl attacks a security guard of the Toluca Mall were inspired by the bad ending+ of Silent Hill 1 and bad ending of Silent Hill 3.

Initally the game was pitched to have a combat feature, similar to the previously presented in Cold Heart pitch, however Sam Barlow insisted in completely remove combat and due a confusion moment caused by the change of producer as the previously mentioned William Oertel left the project they were able to remove it.

Despite of the "tipical" development cycle where the game is in preproduction and in production at the same time the game took over 6 months to get fully designed. Sam Barlow also mentions how this process was a bit of a fight against Konami as frequently wanted to implement or change certain ideas.

Sam Barlow wanted Rawshock to be quadrupeds unconsciously inspired by a traumatic experience which also lead in the addition of the pool in the first nightmare section. This was changed as this would have made Rawshocks harder to see them coming. This show off a bit in the final game as the first nightmare cutscene and some animations show them acting like if they where monkeys walking in four legs additionally some concept arts shows them in standing in four legs.

During an interview with Tomm Hulett and Mark Simmons by Game Informer the inteviewer asks "Is Dr. K Dr. Kaufmann?" which was answered by Mark who responded "We can't say. However, here is an excerpt from the design docs on Dr. K" and then the page shows a transcription of the game desing documment. Here it is extracted from the article:

Dr. K graduated from __________ Medical School in the early 70s and went straight into training as a psychoanalyst, eager to test out theories “in the wild.” After working for the New York psychoanalyst Charles __________ for several years, Dr. K branched out and opened his own practice. His bravado and self-perpetuated reputation for innovation saw him taken on by several high profile clients, and at the same time attracted some ire from the more conservative members of his profession. In the 80s there were rumors of an affair with his patient  __________ (the actress and daughter of  __________ ). The minor controversies only added to the doctor's rock and roll reputation amongst the rich set. In the background to this, Dr. K was developing a moderate  __________. Privately he subjected  __________ humiliating  __________ experiments,  __________ out on the 80s New York socialite scene and  __________ recount her  __________  afterwards. Dr. K often justified these elements of his life as being part of his need to explore the edges of mental experience in order to better understand the human mind.

During an interview with Tomm Hulett by Joystiq he mentions how the developers of the game got in contact with Team Silent members (developers of the franchise from Silent Hill [1999] to Silent Hill 4: The Room) asking them how they would modernize the game.

A last minute idea that weren't able to add was a reverse psychological profile feature where the player would have been able to play with a inverse version of their psycological profile of their first playthrough. This idea came after many journalist, who where able to get early copies of the game, tried to experience the different psycological profiles, but they ended making most of the same decisions or behaving the same as previous playthrough making their new playthrough almost identical to their previous one.

Aparently the nightmare sequences where intented to have more gameplay features that were cut due the limited amount of team available for the project.

In The Making Of article it is said that the game sold around 444k units through all releases and platforms. Sam Barlow pointed out that one of the main reasons was the fact of being a Silent Hill game, the Wii platform itself and marketing of the game labeling it as a "Core gamer" title.

Psychological Profile

Climax released a video covering on their Facebook covering a bit of how the Psychological Profile system works, using a debug Wii version, it shows the interface used to count the seven main values that attribute to the psychological profile.

The specific name of the values and two tables that explains in futher detail how the psychological profile works can be found within the files of the game.

Shane Bromham's Portfolio

Render of an early version of the lighthouse exterior

The Shane Bromham (One of the lead level designers) porfolio has some early renders of the resort town area, an early render of the lighthouse exterior, an early design for a puzzle at the Balkan and a document level design of the Green Lion Pawnshop dated from March 2009.

Green Lion Pawnshop's Design Document

Download Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Green Lion Pawnshop's Design Document File: SH1R_D_Pawnshop_Apartment.zip (1.89 MB) (info)

Interesting facts that can be noticed in the document are:

• The camera mode where the player interact with object for puzzles is internally named as "POV mode"
• The light in front of the door that lead to the apartments was supposed to flicker
• The "We, Ouroboros" memento was originally named "Double Ouroboros Ring" and is inspired by the "Ouroboros" line of rings by Badaly Jewelry
• The two of the three lighting variation of the Green Lion Pawnshop and the Apartment where changed. The "Punk" variation was intented to have green lighting instead of purple lighting and the "Stoner" variation was intented to have yellow lighting instead of green lighting.

Green Lion Pawnshop Puzzle Concept

• 
• 
• 

Resort Town Concepts

Resort Town layout

• 
• 
• 

"Your Diamond Heart" Memento Puzzle Concept

• 
• 
• 
• 

Finding Key Puzzle Inside a Cookie Jar Concept

This part of the puzzle appears when Harry searches the keys of the SUV at the Balkan. In the final game, this puzzle was simplified to just opening the cookie jar.

• 
• 
• 

Concept Arts

Characters Concept Arts

Climax and Massive Black (a defunct third party 2D and 3D art assets provider studio) released many concept arts through the years.

Harry's Concept Arts

• 
• 
• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Cherly's Concept Arts

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Dahlia's Concept Arts

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Lisa's Concept Arts

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Dr. Kaufmann's Concept Arts

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Cybil and Michelle Concept Arts

• 
• 

Early Rawshock Concept Arts

The Climax's Facebook page and The Making Of article, from the Edge Magazine, contains concept arts of the early desings of the Rawshocks.

• 
• 

  These represent a very early attempt to visualise some of the narrative themes and embody them through the enemy design. Unfortunately these portrayed a very literal translation of the opening car crash sequence as opposed to exploring the underlying themes that ran throughout the narrative. The direction was subsequently pivoted towards a concept with roots more familiar to what you see in game now.

• 

  A neutrally aligned Rorschach enemy was required as a starting point, the point of introduction, a point before enough personal psych’ data has been collated in order align the enemy to your play through.
  
  This image shows the neutral physique but with the first stages of bias, in this case disease.

• 

  Continuing the Disease and Tumour theme, these sketches form some of the early rounds of concepts. We moved away from some of the traditional staples of horror seen here, and focused more on an interpretation of the narrative thread.

• 

  “It is no ones fault. Harry and Dahlia have simply drifted apart.”
  
  They are now trapped in a dying relationship, but each unwilling to acknowledge it.

• 

  “It was Harry’s fault. Harry is a drunk/addict. Every aspect of his life is mired by his addiction”
  
  Rather than being a loving husband / father, he is a drunk. The schema of green wine bottles, absinthe and queasiness, yellow of whiskey, vomit and liver disease formed the back drop to your narrative, where as in the frozen nightmare you were harassed by a vision of Disease and Tumours

• 

  “It was Harry’s fault. Harry is a serial adulterer and is sexually immoral”
  
  The subtext of any relationship is his desire to hurt woman. His affairs are harmful to his family and to the woman he has them with. In turn the frozen nightmare manifests itself appropriately.

Dr. Kaufmann's Office

On Stephen Cooper portfolio's there are a few concept art of the game and most noticiably many versions of the the design of Kaufmann's office.

• 

  Concept 1

• 

  Concept 2

• 

  Concept 3

• 

  Concept 4

• 

  Concept 5

• 

  Concept 6

• 

  "Final version" this version still showing some of the differences seen in a preview image from April 2009.

Phone

On Marcus Bordan portfolio's there are a few concept art of the Harry's phone.

• 
• 
• 

Early Cutscenes

Satoshi Michael Nagasaka who worked as Cinematics Co-Director for the game shared an early version of the ending "Hero forever" and the extra scene where Cheryl closes the box with the mementos that the player grabbed through the game.

The model used for Harry resembles to an early model seen in some early screenshots PSP version.

Andrew Borman (better known as PToP Online) has published four videos early footage of some of the game cutscenes.

The early Red Dressed Michelle variation scene only changes that can be spotted are a few different camera angles in the part where Michelle shows Harry a picture of Cheryl and different photos.

The most interesting videos come here, the mocap video shows a unknown footage of a recording while having the Always In My Mind song in the background. Fortunately Sam Barlow clarified on Twitter that this mocap was made for a music video of the song which is unreleased, also mentioning the mocap recording of the scene where Harry falls from the stairs at the Hospital was the most fun and dangerous of recording.

This video is the first cutscene from the game, the video description says it is from November 14, 2009.

• The shots from 1:27 to 1:37 are completely different
  • Interestingly this shots can be briefly seen in the pre-E3 2009 teaser trailer named "Lost in Snow" from 0:35 to 0:43
• Objects in the table of Kaufmann are different, similar to the seen in a preview image from April 2009
• Early floor seen in many preview images, trailers and even present PSP and PS2 final releases is here
• Early Harry's model
• The receptionist voice is unedited
• Glasses in the mini-bar are not in the final
• Different bottle marks
• When the car is crashed the pilot window breaks and front wheels are slightly moved to the left while in final neither the window is breaks or the front wheels are moved

Joe Romersa's Behind Scenes Videos

Joe Romersa recorded a two part video of the recording process of two lyrical songs, those being "Acceptance" and briefly "When You're Gone".

Differences that can be listened are only from "Acceptance": it was going to use drums instead of a xylophone and the chorus could have featured a lyric which sounds to has been improvised.

Acceptance Lyrics
Final	BTS Video (take 1)	BTS Video (take 2)	BTS Video (take 3)
...And one more breath I take Sends me further back Ah ah ah ah Ah ah ah ah Over and over it calls to your soul...	...And one more breath I take Sends me further back (futher back) Ah (futher back) ah ah ah (closer and closer to you) Ah ah ah (closer, closer yes!) ah Over and over it calls to your soul...	...And one more breath I take Sends me further back (futher back) Ah ah ah ah (closer, closer) Ah ah ah (futher away!) ah Over and over it calls to your soul...	...And one more breath I take Sends me further back (clips resumes here) ah Oh Ah Oh ah ah (yeah! (x3)) ah Over and over it calls to your soul...

The PS2 and PSP ports

In The Making of article it is said that the PS2 version was ditched at some point of the development due money restraints, but it was put in development again as a quote says:

"Towards the end of development, just as were coming up to the end of production [in late 2009], it was decided Wii was not doing great. In order to make this project make [financial] sense, we needed a PS2 SKU, because in South America the PS2 was still huge and there was an audience for this kind of game out there and in a couple of other territories."

The PS2 version was never cancelled publicly, however some hints may suggest the irrelevancy of this port:

• The american PS2 and PSP releases where delayed by one month
• The almost null coverage of the PS2 version during the marketing campaing
• References of Climax working for a Konami Wii and PSP game.

The PSP port was originally a deribative of the Wii version rather than a direct port of the Wii version, aparently, it was intented to be a game surrounding Michelle and it would have feature some scenes from the Wii version. This version was scrapped as order of Konami as it was cheaper to directly port the main game rather than create another game.

Sam Barlow during the E3 conference and Tomm Hulett in an interview by Joystiq mentioned that Climax have a team dedicated to the PSP version.