Silent Hill HD Collection

Silent Hill HD Collection is a port of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 with 720p resolution (1280 x 720) at 30 FPS, originally developed by Team Silent, ported by Hijinx Studios, and published by Konami. It includes the Born from a Wish scenario from Silent Hill 2.

It features an alternate voice dub, as well as PlayStation Network Trophies and Xbox 360 Achievements. Players have the option to switch between the original voice acting and the alternate voice acting for Silent Hill 2, while the re-dub is mandatory for Silent Hill 3 because it lacks the original voice acting.

The Xbox 360 version is also available as a digital download while the PlayStation 3 version is not.

In October 2016, Silent Hill HD Collection was made available on PlayStation Now, meaning the game can be streamed to PlayStation 4 and PC. This also includes the latest patch.

Development
The collection was directed by Tomm Hulett. Silent Hill HD Collection was first announced in Konami's 2011 Pre-E3 show. It was revealed that both games would be given new voice-overs. The collection was originally supposed to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive, but an Xbox 360 release was eventually announced.

Due to the age of both games involved, the only code available to be given to Hijinx Studios by Konami was an unfinished incomplete beta build of the final version because Konami lost the source code. This resulted in both versions of the HD Collection being hampered by severe technical issues.

Mary Elizabeth McGlynn was approached by Konami to direct the re-dub. The reason for the re-dub was due to Guy Cihi requesting residuals for the multiple ports and re-releases of Silent Hill 2 as he claimed that he owned the rights to James's voice and motion capture. McGlynn, Troy Baker and Thessaly Lerner refuted this, stating that Guy did not own James's voice and motion capture and that his performance was always owned by Konami; this was the reason Konami never paid Guy for residuals. No written contract between Guy and Konami was available.

In a letter to Konami, Guy stated that it was not about the money but rather "the thoughtless way that those involved in the production have been treated" such as not notifying him of any re-releases and hiding his contributions in "The Making of Silent Hill 2" video. Guy also called for Konami to allow the original voices and give fans the option to choose between the original dub and the re-dub. Guy's close connection with fans of the series played a strong part in his decisions regarding these issues. Monica Taylor Horgan supported giving fans an option as well.

Guy Cihi (James Sunderland), David Schaufele (Eddie Dombrowski), Monica Taylor Horgan (Maria/Mary) and Donna Burke (Angela Orosco, Claudia Wolf) eventually signed a waiver, allowing Konami to re-use their voices in the HD Collection.

In a post-release interview, Tomm Hulett reflected on the issues with the HD Collection, as well as preserving video games. Due to the development being different for every game in regards to coding and overall engine development, this can cause issues when remastering the game for next generation consoles.

Artistic changes




Silent Hill 2

 * Characters tend to use new words when starting sentences. This occurs most often with Laura.


 * During the opening monologue theme, the guitar has been changed from acoustic to electric.


 * The distances on the sign at the beginning have been altered. In the original version, Paleville is 10 miles, Old Silent Hill is 50 miles and Brahms is 265 miles. In the HD Collection, Paleville is 9 miles, Old Silent Hill is 6 miles and Brahms is 16 miles.


 * The Silent Hill Ranch sign's font is changed to Comic Sans.


 * The textures on the first aid kits and the medical cross posters have been changed, owing to the Red Cross being trademarked.


 * The street and sidewalks textures have been changed to look much cleaner.


 * During Eddie's rant in the Labyrinth, when he says, "It doesn't matter if you're smart, dumb, ugly, pretty...", the subtitles say "your" instead of "you're".
 * The FMV cutscenes are stretched horizontally to appear as widescreen, which is more problematic than Silent Hill 3 because Silent Hill 2 is more FMV-heavy. The incorrect aspect ratio results in a slight "stretched" or "fat character" look.
 * The Sunderlands' video tape FMV is now bordered on all sides by a TV set rather than being presented in full-screen. This obscures the image on all four sides, and can make it even more difficult to realize that James smothers Mary with a pillow.
 * Although it is completely random, the Ranking Screen may appear white.

Silent Hill 3

 * Saving the game at a Halo of the Sun is fade-to-white instead of fade-to-red.


 * All music has been reworked or changed entirely. It is most noted in the Otherworld mall; the ambient music has been changed to a punk rock type of beat.


 * When Heather first meets Claudia, a baby's cry can be heard. Also the Game Over sound can be heard in this cutscene.


 * In the intro, a 3-second clip of Valtiel bending over to drag Heather Mason's corpse in Lakeside Amusement Park is changed to a 3-second clip of Heather turning on her flashlight in Lakeside Amusement Park. This was likely done because the original scene wasn't in HD.


 * There are some script changes. Despite these changes, the subtitles still read from the original script.
 * Claudia says, "They've come to witness the Beginning. The rebirth of Paradise, unspoiled by mankind." She previously said "despoiled".
 * The sewer fairy says, "I have finally found a truly honest person" in reference to Heather's gender, rather than, "I have finally found a truly honest man." (Original localizer Jeremy Blaustein has approved of this change.)
 * Vincent tells Heather Mason (the reincarnation of Alessa) about Dahlia and that "she is your mother". This is corrected to as "she "was" your mother".
 * After Heather finds her father murdered, she finds Claudia and says, "I'll kill you, you bitch!'" rather than "I'll get you for this!".
 * Near the end, Vincent says God has "terrible" taste instead of "lousy" taste.




 * The scene in which Heather returns to her apartment to find her father dead has been changed so that Harry Mason's face is seen.
 * This is likely unintentional and simply a result of both games lacking proper cutscene letterboxing, as some of the cutscenes of Silent Hill 2 show letterboxing appearing, disappearing and reappearing in some scenes whenever the camera angle changes. Most notable of this is the introduction of the Lying Figure monster.
 * Because of the lack of letterboxing, there is a quick one-second shot up Heather's skirt, which her vest is seen through.


 * In the original PS2 release, Cheryl Mason, Harry Mason and Lisa Garland's voices were extracted from the first game, with subsequent ports omitting them altogether. These voices have been re-dubbed for the HD Collection.


 * During the Leonard Wolf boss fight, both Heather and Leonard are able to sprint full speed in the water as if the water doesn't exist.


 * During Claudia's final speech, Innocent Moon is replaced with Maternal Heart, which is redundant since it already played when Heather spoke to Vincent in the library.


 * When Heather pukes God, a massive puddle of blood forms.


 * In the Xbox 360 version, Memory of The Waters may be removed entirely when Heather cries after killing God.


 * When Heather returns to Douglas Cartland after the final boss, his coat is noticeably much bloodier than in the original for unknown reasons. This makes no sense because it is implied that Claudia injured Douglas' leg using telekinesis.


 * 14 of Heather's unlockable costumes that were present in the PS2 version were removed, presumably because they contain copyrighted and licensed gaming magazine logos.

Technical issues


Many problems of the technical issues reported included:


 * The entire game crashing and freezing, sometimes when entering new areas, picking up items, and using items. This seems more common in Silent Hill 3.
 * Entire rooms (such as the Lyne house) not loading, leaving the player trapped in an inescapable void. This differs from the above glitch because the player can still move around and hear footsteps. It seems exclusive to Silent Hill 2, and is known to occur in the apartment complexes and Brookhaven Hospital.
 * Lag and frame-rate drops.
 * Lag upon receiving Trophies/Achievements.
 * Graphical glitches, such as lighting errors.
 * Sound loops.
 * Audio glitches, even to the extent of seconds of audio missing. Sometimes, the background audio may stop entirely and there will be a few seconds of silence. The submachine gun was also glitched.
 * Missing sound effects.
 * Cyan blue fog.
 * Reduced transparencies of fog, glass, shadows, etc.
 * Fog appearing where there should be no fog.
 * Missing shadows, especially on characters.
 * The game being too dark, even with the in-game brightness maxed, resulting in a dull "washed out" look.
 * Glitchy depth of field.
 * Blurry scenes where there should be no blur.
 * Non-blurry scenes where there should be blur.
 * Extremely pixelated shadows.
 * Inaccurate textures. (The elevator has the floor texture - known to occur in the Xbox 360 version)
 * A serious glitch in the Xbox 360 version which makes it so that when any achievement is unlocked in both Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, the entire game freezes. This is triggered by unlocking all achievements. The only way to circumvent this is by creating a new gamer profile and playing from there.
 * Maria's jail cell cutscene can be completely glitched if the player picks up the Great Knife.

Some issues specific to the PlayStation 3 version upon launch were:


 * Erratic walking speed, at worst rendering the game virtually unplayable.
 * Game running before loading screens cleared (potentially causing players to take unavoidable damage or miss the first bits of many cutscenes).

PlayStation 3 patch
A day one patch (1.01) was released for the PlayStation 3 version. Many players claimed that the patch made no difference.

Another PlayStation 3 patch (1.02) was released. It fixed a number of problems such as the frame rate and lip sync which were greatly improved. Missing sounds and music had also been fixed along with the fog density issues. Other minor visual/audio problems were also improved.

Cancelled Xbox 360 patch
The Xbox 360 patch was canceled due to "technical issues and resources" which made any attempts at resolving the problems ineffective.

Reception
Both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game have received mixed reviews on Metacritic. The Xbox 360 version holds a 69 on Metacritic, and the PlayStation 3 version holds a 70. IGN rated the collection 9/10. GameTrailers rated it 6/10.

As time went on, it was discovered that there were a plethora of artistic changes, many of which were unexplained, as well as glitches and technical issues. This resulted in the HD Collection receiving strong criticism. Konami allowing the HD Collection to be developed by Hijinx Studios was questioned, as the company's only console games were Frogger Returns and Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment.

Because the Xbox 360 version patch was cancelled, Konami offered compensation for owners of the Xbox 360 version by offering many other games including the same game for the PlayStation 3 if they sent their copy and receipt for proof of purchase to Konami. This offer, however, is only valid for purchases made in North and South America.

Voice acting
The re-dubbed voice acting received a divisive reaction from fans as a group and has retained a mixed reception since. Fans of the re-dub cited that the original voice acting felt unprofessional, and that the re-dub aimed to "fix" this.

Fans of the original voice acting often cite that the voice acting was meant to be realistic and that the characters sounded natural and human, rather than like dramatic actors, explaining that the awkward and stilted manner characters spoke in helped add to the surreal and dream-like atmosphere, and also helped portray the cast of Silent Hill 2 as mentally or emotionally damaged. They also tend to feel that some characters in the re-dub are too melodramatic and miss key inflections and tones throughout both games. For example, the original voice of Angela speaks awkwardly, stutters, and has a childish tone due to being a victim of child abuse; in the re-dub, Angela speaks more typically for a person her age.

Of all the character redubs, the performance by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn as Mary Sunderland received the most backlash. McGlynn's voice is widely considered too deep to accurately portray the "soft, gentle Mary." McGlynn herself felt her voice was too deep to play Mary, but producers cast her regardless.

Cast
Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 3

Trivia

 * When the original Xbox version is played on an Xbox 360, there are also glitches:
 * Lighthouse James
 * Eddie's creepy face


 * Many of the re-dubbed voice actors are from the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series. These include:
 * James (Troy Baker) — Kanji Tatsumi / Eikichi Mishina
 * Mary / Maria (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn) — Noriko Kashiwagi / Naoto Shirogane (anime)
 * Ernest (Travis Willingham) — Theodore
 * Eddie (Liam O'Brien) — Akihiko Sanada
 * Heather (Amanda Winn-Lee) — Yukiko Amagi / Ulala Serizawa
 * Douglas (Kirk Thornton) — Kinshiro Morooka
 * Vincent (Yuri Lowenthal) — Yosuke Hanamura / Protagonist (P3) / Ryoji Mochizuki
 * Angela / Claudia (Laura Bailey) — Rise Kujikawa / Female Protagonist (P3P)


 * Kirk Thornton, Laura Bailey and Yuri Lowenthal previously voiced Harry Mason, Dahlia Mason and John from Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.


 * Despite all original voices being replaced in Silent Hill 3, when Heather is hit by the rollercoaster, her original scream can be heard, probably due to developer oversight.


 * The texture of the water in Silent Hill 2, despite appearing with really bad textures, is the same texture that was used in the PlayStation 2 and PC version. But in the HD Collection, there is a layer of fog which is missing to conceal the textures.


 * The "If Looks Could Kill" achievement/trophy (received for obtaining Heather Beam) icon is an image of Heather in her Princess Heart costume. This image is actually unofficial and created by a DeviantArt user.