Konami Pre-E3 Round-Up Part 2

Even though E3 has started, I still need to finish up the pre-E3 stuff. So let’s get to it:

Silent Hill

Shot in my home country of Canada, a producer for some of the Silent Hill games, the writer and director of the upcoming Silent Hill: Revelation movie, and the star of said movie sat down to tell us some of the stuff we can expect for Silent Hill over the next year or so.

Silent Hill: Revelation, written and directed by Michael J. Bassett, is based on Silent Hill 3 and stars Adelaide Clemens (Who was in….. something) as Heather Mason. After talking for a minute about how Silent Hill revolutionized gaming and he is “a gamer, first and foremost,” (funny, I thought he would be a filmmaker first and foremost), he talks about how Konami let him go to the studio where they are developing the next Silent Hill game. He said he got to sit down with the team and the director of the game to see where they were taking the Silent Hill story line and world. He said that since there is such a huge mythology behind this world, that it is entirely possible to go in there, pick out certain parts and make a really great story out of it.

Silent Hill 3, according to Bassett, was the choice for the second movie. He said the story in the game “was a natural successor to the story of the little girl in the first Silent Hill movie.”

Adelaide Clemens, who states the obvious, says the psychological aspect of the games is what makes them so fucking creepy. She says that Bassett has taken that psychological aspect from the games to a whole new level with the new movie.

I kind of liked the first Silent Hill movie. It wasn’t the greatest movie and still had some issues, but it did manage to make really good looking locations for all the nastiness to take place in. The monsters were pretty good, too. Especially Pyramid Head. He rips a chicks skin off with one hand!

After all the talk of the movie the game producer, Tom Hulett, announced that Konami will be releasing Silent Hill Collection, which is an HD remastering of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. He also announced that a new game will be coming for the PS Vita (pretty sure that’s what they’re calling it now), Silent Hill: Book of Memories. But before all that we will get Silent Hill: Downpour, which will focus on convict Murphy Pendleton as he tries to escape from the town. Here’s the trailer:

A Whole Mess of Kojima Stuff

After a really bizarre intro with Hideo himself and Mark Macdonald, Hideo started to list off all the things Kojima Productions will be showing at the Expo.

First up, with the help of Mega64, Kojima revealed Transfarring (yes, that is what it’s called). It is a new feature in upcoming Kojima titles (probably other studios’ games as well) that let’s players transfer saves between your PS3 and your PSP. This means that you can move your save from the PS3 version of a game to your PSP and continue your progress from there. Then, when you get a chance to go back inside and play on your PS3, you can transfer the data from your PSP back to your PS3 and keep going. The first game to come with Transfarring is Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

The HD version of Peace Walker will be available in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection along with MGS2: Sons of Liberty and MGS3: Snake Eater. Also announced is the Zone of the Enders HD Collection, which has both Zone of the Enders games in full HD. Both HD collections will be available on PS3 and Xbox 360.

After the amazing Mega64 video (seriously, check that shit out), Hideo reiterating all the points of the video, and a demo of Transfarring in action, a feature list was given for the HD collections. Firstly, these collections are not emulators. They are both rebuilt and optimized for the 360 and PS3 with new interfaces, redrawn art, effects and fonts, new achievements and trophies and improved audio quality. They will also take advantage of the  systems’ right analog stick and force feedback. The PS3 will be the only version with the Transfarring system, seeing as how Microsoft doesn’t have a handheld system. The MGS HD Collection will be available in November this year, while Zone of the Enders HD Collection will not be available until 2012.

Hideo then talked about what he hopes to accomplish with the Transfarring system. The first step is what was mentioned a couple of paragraphs back. The second step is to take some of the games from the PS2, remaster them, and have them Transfarring enabled between the PS3 and the Vita. The third and final step is to develop new games for the PS3 and Vita and have them be Transfarring enabled.

For most of the video, there were pieces of concept art from Metal Gear Solid: Rising. When asked about Rising, Hideo said that they were not announcing anything at E3 this year but they are still shooting for a 2012 release as originally planned.

Finally from Kojima Productions, we have the announcement of their new engine, the Fox Engine. There was some footage on a monitor of the new engine in action, but it wasn’t from any game. It was just some testing they were doing with the new engine to make sure it works right.

Ok, I guess that does it. That is all the announcements from the Konami pre-E3 show. Sorry it took so long to get that up. Keep coming back for the rest of the week to see more news from E3…. Oh, there’s also gonna be a new Contra game.