“I guess I really don’t care if it’s dangerous or not. I’m going to town either way.”
Can we already reached the peak of the Silent Hill series after only two of our eight planned podcasts on the series? According to many we may well have done but do our panel of Leon, Josh and Sean agree? And how about our esteemed forum and Twitter contributors? This and other, much darker matters are discussed in our Silent Hill 2 issue.
Music used in this issue:
1: Theme of Laura by Akira Yamaoka
2: Promise (Reprise) by Akira Yamaoka
3: Promise by Akira Yamaoka
Cane and Rinse 155 was edited by Sean O’Brien
Do you have an opinion about this particular game or maybe about our podcast in general? Then why not venture into our forum and leave us your feedback. Whilst there you can also interact with our ever-growing and friendly community, discuss past, present and future video games (and lots of other stuff too!) and perhaps even arrange some games with like-minded individuals. Sound good? Come and say hello at The Official Cane and Rinse Forum.
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After giving it some thought, I decided not to register for the forums. I will only bring everyone down with my negativity. For it seems I have been disagreeing with you for the past 10 episodes or so.
Silent Hill 2 is a prime example. First of all, the voices. For this sequel, developers made the decision to go for extra immersion. Many measures were done to achieve that, including hiring actors who would sound like real, ordinary people (not Hollywood actors). The cast was specifically picked for the “natural” sound of their performances. Guy Cihi, for example, ended up with the role by accident, since the team liked his takes. Donna Burke was about 40 when she did the voice of Angela, and her age was important, since the cinematics’ director wanted an older voice to suggest the character’s strangeness. Same thing goes for Maria, and the other two. Every line of dialogue was chosen to be spoken in a specific way, by a specific voice actor, that the developers chose after hearing about 50 people. And you said the voices were off, wrong, and what have you. It seems to me you have not done all the research you could have.
Again, all this negativity. But I cannot help myself, and I am sorry. You clearly have passion for games, and you love your show. But when game after game is blamed for having a confusing or badly told story, when neither is the case, I guess this listener will choose to stop listening.
You could have at least watched the making of Silent Hill 2 special, which contains many insights from the developers. Or, maybe you could have watched the game-by-game coverage by Twin Perfect, which explains the story of every Silent Hill game, using only facts from games themselves as basis.
Again, you have a great show, but you also often tend to not understand the stories of the games you cover, or not knowing the production histories. And for some overly obsessed fans (that I sadly happen to be), that is hard to hear. I can only wonder what you will say about Silent Hill Origins, not knowing that the story was written by someone who only read a plot synopsis of the first game in a Konami strategy guide (which in turn was written by someone who never talked with the original writers).
Best of luck though. I hope you will do more research next time 🙂
Well, you seem to have missed that we all pretty much loved Silent Hill 2, with a few reservations (mostly mine rather than Josh and Sean’s) and see it as a classic, even with what we perceive to be its flaws.
Once again though, we give our opinions. Knowing how deliberately the director may have chosen the acting style would not change my opinion of the performances or my subjective response of the piece. Same with films and music – an artist may have perfectly achieved what they set out to achieve, but that doesn’t mean that I will necessarily enjoy it. Further to this, if a natural realism was the intention then as far as I’m concerned they failed spectacularly anyway. Virtually every reading sounds horribly stilted and entirely unnatural to me, which was entirely my problem with it. I’d be seriously worried if the people I know in everyday life spoke like anyone from Silent Hill 1 or 2. If it sounds good to your ears then that’s fine, but you have to accept that personal interpretation comes into play, regardless of artistic intent. By the by, I’m pretty sure we all understood, and very much appreciated the story. I’m sure there are greater depths to which people have gone into looking deeper and going further, extrapolating and interpreting, but that wasn’t our aim. We play the game through, sometimes more than once, and give our opinions. That’s all.
As regards to research, well, we pride ourselves on doing an awful lot more than the vast majority of games podcasts, but we cover a lot of games from a huge time frame and so are unlikely to know as much about any one particular title (or series) as a dyed-in-the-wool fan such as yourself. Also, we all have jobs and families and simply don’t have the time or resources to spend any more time on making the show than we do. We’d love to do this full time, believe me – and we’d try to make the show even better if we did – but there is absolutely no money in it. I’d say if that’s what you’re after then you’re almost certainly better off with specific texts or fan-sites rather than our podcast, which is more meant to be a ‘book club’ style situation than a detailed document of every intricate facet of a game’s development. We have neither the time nor the resources unfortunately.
Our opinions on every game remain true, individual, unbiased and without agenda. If you feel that your opinion is more valid because you know more about a game’s development history or narrative then that’s absolutely fine, but we represent a cross-section of the (“hardcore”) gaming community and therefore presumably a number of other people’s opinions about any particular game. Also, we are very particular about sharing a number of opinions from posts to our forum and emails in every show. If you wish to have your passion for and knowledge of a forthcoming topic aired then all you have to do is send it to us in advance of recording – share the wealth!
I stress again, I/we have no problem whatsoever with a listener such as yourself having different opinions on a game to one or several of us, but if you’re after an echo chamber that reflects your own position then Cane and Rinse will likely remain the wrong show. Similarly, as above, if you want the definitive discussion on a particular topic, you’re not going to find that here either. If you enjoy listening to some passionate gamers giving their own, personal reflections on a gaming experience then we try to do a decent job of that.
… I believe I made myself misunderstood… again. I do not think you are bad people for having opinions; I just started to disagree with them so often, the listening experience turned into “2 hours of disagreement” for me. And I sincerely (as opposed to insincerely) hope that for one listener lost, you gain 10 more.
And one last, positive thing to say to you. In this episode you (one of you, forgive me for not remembering the name) mentioned that it would be interesting to know the creators’ intents. Well, I know a few places where you can stick up on facts. You can watch the two “making of” videos of SH2 and SH3, that were made with Team Silent. You can also read the Book of Lost Memories, a series’ bible of sorts, that was made and released by the original developers to the public, shortly before disbanding. It contains a lot of background information, including the inner workings of Silent Hill the town, and the significance of SH1 monster designs. And if you can stand strong opinions that may very well differ from yours, you can subject yourselves to The Real Silent Hill Experience. The people who made it did a lot of homework, and dug up hundreds of interviews to back up their points. They actually pointed out the #1 reason why Laura is REAL: it is written in the game’s manual, right under our noses.
P.S. And about the giant moth boss in SH1. Why is it a moth? Well, if you pay attention to Alessa’s room in Nowhere, you will notice she has a large insect collection on her wall. She was fascinated with bugs.