It’s very rare for someone who played Silent Hill back in the day to forget how the opening minutes of Konami’s classic survival horror game made them feel. The snowy whiteout, the confusion, the sirens, the monsters – escalating unease that becomes all encompassing as you watch Harry desperately try and find his missing daughter in the largely abandoned town of Silent Hill.
It’s hard to imagine how it could all get much more terrifying, but a huge project undertaken by Zero Trace Operative to remake and convert the original sequence into a first person demo has pretty much managed it.
“I had to do HOURS of info research and gameplay viewing (as well as playthroughs myself) in order to get EVERY detail about the original game as I could,” wrote ZTO about the undertaking (via PC Gamer).
“Luckily I ran into the English book translation and model extractions from the OG game. Of course I wasn’t going to use the actual assets, so I began tracing in 3D. This resulted in a 99% faithful rebuild of the world from scratch. It was a truly intimate experience with one of my favourite games of all time. Seeing the ins and outs of the world through Team Silents eyes, and even partly walking in their shoes in my own way. Breathtaking to be honest.”
ZTO did the best they could in the five months they worked on the Silent Hill Remake demo, but eventually they had to compromise their vision to get it done.
“I originally wanted to have an entire driving sequence matching the one shown in the OG game. With Cybil riding past Harry and everything, along with the Silent Hill theme playing from the radio as a weird immersive easter egg. I even got the motorcycle finished and hidden behind Harry’s jeep in the 3D scene, but it would’ve taken far too long.”
Take a look…
And play it here if you dare.
Wireframe #26 is out now
