Within the period of remakes, builders have come beneath hearth repeatedly for rehashing traditional titles as an alternative of pioneering new concepts. Nevertheless, taking a beloved sport from a unique period and reimagining it for contemporary audiences isn’t any small enterprise. Devs must protect every part that was wonderful concerning the authentic story and gameplay, whereas sharpening areas that may have been held again by the know-how and capabilities of the time.
At GDC 2025, Anna Oporska-Szybisz, senior degree designer at Bloober Group, gave us the within take a look at what’s required to take an already beloved sport and catapult it to new heights, discussing the difficulties confronted when constructing ranges on Silent Hill 2 Remake. As a die-hard fan of the 2001 hit, the burden was heavy on her shoulders as she got down to rebuild a spot treasured by horror followers around the globe.
Managing fan expectations round traditional video games
Oporska-Szybisz began the breakdown with a shocking level: fan theories. One of many hardest issues builders face when remaking video games as common as Silent Hill 2 is the connection gamers have constructed with the story. She said that “remembering is caring,” admitting that builders do take a look at the theories gamers share on-line, taking these perceptions into consideration when restructuring the story.
This sensitivity to the participant isn’t a small enterprise, as everybody who performed the unique sport took one thing distinctive away from James’ story. When constructing a brand new title, devs don’t juggle as many preconceived notions of what the narrative or mechanics will ship. In a remake, nevertheless, each component is an equation, one half innovation, two components nostalgia. If not balanced accurately, the remake’s story is likely to be unrecognizable or fail to resonate with longtime followers of the collection.
Oporska-Szybisz particularly needed to deal with this when redesigning the Labyrinth degree of Silent Hill 2 Remake. The notoriously tough maze of puzzles and boss battles stumped many gamers in 2001, together with Oporska-Szybisz, and she or he needed to make it higher with out dropping the enduring and nostalgic parts of one of many sport’s closing challenges.
Don’t repair what isn’t damaged
Oporska-Szybisz broke down the method of reimagining the Labyrinth, and laid out the three guidelines she makes use of to strategy the rebuilding of a remake degree. “Good Sufficient” describes parts of a sport that don’t have points. If it’s not damaged, there isn’t any cause to scrap it and begin over. She defined that they “strive to not overdo issues that solely want small changes”.
The “nearly sufficient” bracket covers parts that just about hit the mark, however perhaps didn’t have the polish they wanted. Silent Hill 2 has a number of puzzles that had been aggressive and modern for the time, however lacked a number of the quality-of-life mechanics which can be obtainable right now. These puzzles, maps, views, and visuals are good candidates for a bit of transforming.
The “not sufficient” bracket encompasses mechanics that had been held again or poorly balanced within the authentic. On this class, Oporska-Szybisz particularly calls out the dice puzzles in Silent Hill 2 that manipulates the angle of a room with only a few clues to assist the participant by the puzzle’s necessities. The aim was to totally reimagine this puzzle to make it intuitive and approachable.
She talked about one of many greatest hurdles in remaking video games is that “it’s tempting to vary loads to make it ‘higher’ however it’s usually greatest to discover a center floor,” when transforming parts in remakes. The unique sport was cherished for a cause, and an excessive amount of of an overhaul can truly damage the sport, not bolster it.
An iconic degree remastered
Utilizing all the standards she had damaged down, Oporska-Szybisz then jumped into the painstaking means of what it takes to remake a widely known sport degree. The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 was an infuriating mixture of adverse puzzles and inconceivable navigation. After I first performed it, I turned so circled that I put the sport down for months. James’ hand-drawn map was early-00s fog-of-war within the worst method. All of the corridors seemed the identical, all of the rooms had been the identical shade, and it turned a hazy blur to navigate.
Oporska-Szybisz noticed these issues in her playthrough and determined to return to the foundations of what a Labyrinth will be. She seemed to the traditional Greek myths surrounding Theseus and his journey by the Labyrinth. She realized that the remake might rebuild this location with the identical hints, utilizing the setting to inform a narrative fairly than simply problem the participant.
The workforce break up the as soon as one-note degree into three areas: Rotten, Desolated, and Ruined. Every is distinctive in shade, provided completely different enemies, and required completely different methods to navigate. They had been additionally an outline of the phases of James’ grief, actually main him by the maze inside his personal head.
Oporska-Szybisz’s workforce took one thing that had as soon as left controllers thrown on a settee and turned it into a lovely piece of symbolic storytelling. In addition they took care to protect parts of nostalgia from the unique Labyrinth, like Pyramid Head’s cameo and a lot of the well-known puzzle rooms.
Remakes aren’t simple
Oporska-Szybisz’s breakdown of the level-rebuilding course of in Silent Hill 2 Remake provides a novel take a look at the complexities of respiration new life into traditional tales. If performed accurately, long-time followers can take pleasure in a world that they cherished with fashionable niceties, whereas new followers can take part on a world they won’t in any other case have the possibility to expertise.
Remakes are sometimes the important thing to accessing titles which were misplaced because of missing or poor-quality ports. Devs could must scrap and rebuild a remake idea a number of instances to stability that “adequate” area Oporska-Szybisz spoke of. “What’s the correct amount of symbolism with out throwing it in your face?”, she requested as she defined the tough means of injecting inspiration into degree parts, how do you retain the “glimpses of the previous” whereas providing one thing contemporary and thrilling?
It’s arduous work, however the artwork of it is important in preserving titles we love and passing them on to new generations of gamers.
