Silent Hill: Downpour is Official

[SPRINGS02]

Yeah heather looked good but i don't think her outfit was designed with sex appeal in mind. Looked like a normal thing to wear to me. She is by far the most well designed protagonist.

[jdnation]

Women always dress to be sexually appealing. Thankfully, Heather isn't the sort to take it too far... She's more subtle, and I guess I'm more into that...

Heather is attractively designed, thats for sure, but not in a way that says, "HEY! LOOK AT ME! I'M OBVIOUSLY DESIGNED TO BE ATTRACTIVE" that 99% of women in video games are designed to be...

There are very few female characters in gaming that I can point to whose appeal isn't obnoxiously over sexualized yet they manage to still be attractive enough to be appealing... Heather is a perfect example of one.

[Vixx]

Women always dress to be sexually appealing.

Uh, no we don't. Sometimes we just want to be warm / dry / comfortable.

[Tillerman]

Actually, the most appealing thing about Heather to me is her face.

[Doctor Eggnog]

Women always dress to be sexually appealing.

Uh, no we don't. Sometimes we just want to be warm / dry / comfortable.

I personally find warm/ dry/ comfortable to be sexually appealing in a lot of ways. If a girl doesn't look comfortable, how am I supposed to feel comfortable around her? I really hate it when I girls clothing looks too uncomfortable. Heathers clothing isn't too bad I suppose, maybe slightly uncomfortable but not too bad, lots of people say boots are actually very comfortable. So anyway, just be careful when using the word always, dat leads to gettin bitchslapped.

Edit: Whoa, this is a Dounpour thead!?

[clips]

^^Yeah some women can look appealing without even knowing it...i luv when the wifey just lounges around in some fitted sweats and a tank-top.....sometimes the nightstick will just grow out of nowhere just because of how casually sexy she looks....

[CondescendingMan]

I will be honest I am kinda dating a girl that looks like heather and I love it. Of course our relationship is not based around her looking like Heather. Heather is a bit more real than most other females in gaming. She is still beautifull.
Can we get back on SHD?

[SPRINGS02]

^I would say heather's a bit more real than most protagonist in gaming IMO. But yeah let's get back on topic.

Like i said earlier i think heather is the best designed protagonist(appearance-wise) because she looks REALISTIC, keep in mind bland does not equal realistic(how the hell do you make the does not equal sign?). For the most part i've been trying to steer clear of big details about SHD(so i can play the game fresh with no assumptions or influences.), but i guess discussing the looks of the protagonist isn't a big deal. Now while i said that i would enjoy a more realistic looking protagonist(versus a bland person or exaggerated attractive person) it's definitely not gonna play a big part in how much i enjoy the game or not. I mean SH4's protagonist was bland as hell and i consider that my 3rd favorite, barely behind 2.

The main thing i want is the disturbing, tense abstract atmosphere that SH1-4 had. More focus needs to go into making the game actually scary or tense. I could care less about an emotional sob story.

[Soulless-Shadow]

(how the hell do you make the does not equal sign?)

Equal sign, forward slash, equal sign. No spaces. =/=

Now, to be on topic, I agree that Murphy looks a little "douchey" and bland, but it doesn't really bother me. I think the journey through the otherworld is far more important. After all, it allows us to learn more about the character than how they act in a few cut scenes. But, now that I think about it, all the SH protagonists (apart from Heather) look like they could easily fade away into a crowd, whereas the NPCs stand out a lot more.

[KiramidHead]

Maybe it's just me, but I thought that Murphy looked a bit different in the screen shots in the game informer article than he did in the E3 trailer. The basics are still the same, but his face seems to have a slightly different shape to it.

[lain of the wired]

(how the hell do you make the does not equal sign?).

Please- allow me. Copy and paste from there.

Women always dress to be sexually appealing.

I personally find warm/ dry/ comfortable to be sexually appealing in a lot of ways.

I am officially never going to feel comfortable in anything I wear ever again. Can women do anything to just be seen as people? Can we just, like, not be sexy without physically disfiguring ourselves or getting morbidly obese?


But anyway.
I don't like fixed camera angles. Never have. I get that it's an attempt to make the game more cinematic, but they always fuck you up- suddenly you're going right when you just wanted to go straight. It gets you killed. Plus, it lowers the immersion factor. If I'm "following" this guy in front of me through the whole game, it just feels more like when things are coming at him, they're also coming at me, whereas flipping from angle to angle removes me from the game completely, making me a third person spectator. I'm really hoping they decide against that.

QTEs can be done in an immersive way, but it's difficult. Heavy Rain did a great job of using them, having them get all shaky when characters were scared, or when Jayden was using ARI. No matter how they're done, they will always pull you a little out of the game. On the other hand, QTEs also make the game flow smoothly. Think- how difficult must it be to program a dodge that interacts realistically with the thing being dodged? There's so much involved: the angle of the monster's attack, the height of it's swing, the direction of the dodge, the way the dodge is enacted, whether there's something in the way of the dodge... it goes on and on! QTEs provide a fantastic and realistic way for the protagonist to physically interact with the monsters in a pre-programmable way that doesn't feel pre-programmed. It feels organic and natural when the camera zooms in on the protagonist in the monster's grasp, pushing their jaws away from his/her face, while the player desperately interacts with the game in a frantic burst of energy to free the character.

I do like the idea of the protagonist's hydrophobia, and spontaneous flooding in the otherside. That could really lead to moments of sheer panic in the player, like in SH:SM when the car went over the side of the bridge. That was such a scary fucking sequence. Something like that where you can't escape, and the whole time you really get to watch your time slip away as the water rises, it's very anxiety inducing, and adds a great level of stress to what might otherwise be simple puzzles. Props to the designers: that's brilliant.

Disintegrating weapons... meh. Some things break when you hit people with them. On the other hand, crowbars and 2x4’s generally do not. I’d prefer non-breakable weapons, but I’ll accept breakable, too.

As for the name: I absolutely love it. Think of the connotations of a downpour vs. mere rain (or even heavy rain). A downpour is rain that doesn't just fall, but beats incessantly; covers everything, washes clean but can also drown if you don't move to higher ground. If you've ever been to a place that has a legitimate "rainy season," where rain doesn't just make you wet but actually fucking hurts when it hits you, you'd have an understanding as to why "downpour" is way different than just rain. If Silent Hill is a place of purgatory before redemption, as I believe it to be, then this title is really quite wonderful. If people can just stop making fucking ridiculous comparisons to Heavy Rain based solely on the titles for just a fucking minute, maybe they could see that.

Why not create "heros" who are a little feminine (or let's say less masculine) or who are a little overweight? Why not going for a hysteric artist or a hallucinating drug addict or a gloomy jazz player? A psychologist, who definitely sees and struggles with Silent Hill on a completely different level?

HAHAHAHA!!!! Make the patients' transference the monsters!!! The protagonist finally sees the monsters as exactly what the other characters see and ends the debates once and for all, or sees whatever they really look like, and not what people project on to them!! I fucking love this idea!!!

[LuLu]

As for the name: I absolutely love it. Think of the connotations of a downpour vs. mere rain (or even heavy rain). A downpour is rain that doesn't just fall, but beats incessantly; covers everything, washes clean but can also drown if you don't move to higher ground. If you've ever been to a place that has a legitimate "rainy season," where rain doesn't just make you wet but actually fucking hurts when it hits you, you'd have an understanding as to why "downpour" is way different than just rain. If Silent Hill is a place of purgatory before redemption, as I believe it to be, then this title is really quite wonderful. If people can just stop making fucking ridiculous comparisons to Heavy Rain based solely on the titles for just a fucking minute, maybe they could see that.

I agree with this completely.

[RinoTheBouncer]

I prefer Downfall over Downpour, the latter is a bit unlikely to pronounce (note that I'm a fluent american english speaker) but Downfall feels more like a Silent Hill game xD and it's more than just about Rain, it's about falling. falling into whatever he'll fall into.

[KiramidHead]

^Now that would be an interesting way to enter Silent Hill: A man jumps from a crashing plane and passes out on the way down. He wakes up, totally unharmed, in the foggy township. Holy crap, I may just write a fan fic based on that idea.

[RinoTheBouncer]

^Now that would be an interesting way to enter Silent Hill: A man jumps from a crashing plane and passes out on the way down. He wakes up, totally unharmed, in the foggy township. Holy crap, I may just write a fan fic based on that idea.

It sounds beautiful and totally uncommon !
but wouldn't one immediately conclude that the man just, died ?

[KiramidHead]

Nah, I wouldn't cheap out like that. The fall would just be a jumping off point. But let's get back on topic.

[angelofROOM302]

Downpour... inneresting.
I kinda like it! It's got a nice ring to it!

[Kenji]

Okay, this is gonna sound kinda weird, but I really like how it has "w" and "u" in it. Like, I get this feeling that there aren't that many subtitles with those end-of-alphabet letters... and I know that can't be right.

Ah well...

[KiramidHead]

I thought of a few with "u": Crimson Butterfly, Guns of the Patriots, Substance, Subsistence (if you count special edition subtitles).

[Typographenia]

Okay, this is gonna sound kinda weird, but I really like how it has "w" and "u" in it. Like, I get this feeling that there aren't that many subtitles with those end-of-alphabet letters... and I know that can't be right.

You're right, that does sound kinda weird, hahaha!

I'm really hoping we get some good preorder bonus with the game. I was thrilled to get a soundtrack with shattered memories, and I would love to see that repeated with this title. Well, even more than that, I would really enjoy getting an art book. I'm a sucker for giving in to the more expensive preorders if it means nabbing an art book.

If we don't get any kind of preorder bonus, oh well. It's not the end of the world, but it sure would be nice.
Of course, if it only turns out to be a "preorder at gamestop for your game-breaking weapon, armor, or dlc thingy!" I'll probably pass...