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Silent Hill: Ascension Announced (Real-time Interactive Series, developed by GENVID)
- Thread starter Empyrean Cocytus
- Start date
Thank you! I recognize the concept is confusing but that's because it has never been done before. We have one storyline that will be canon and the decisions made by the audience day by day, encounter by encounter, will define who lives and who dies. As I noted in the other thread there are a lot of ex-Telltale at our company who have been dreaming of these kind of designs for years because when we lock the story branch based on decisions, it is now canon. Which means your input actually matters. (If you watched Yahtzee's review of the Quarry a few weeks ago he was complaining that decisions never seem to matter in interactive narrative games because you can always reset. Here, you can't.)
Good luck on the launch, seems like nothing else out there at the very least, and for a property like Silent Hill seems like a great place to try it out.
This actually sounds really cool, so this will in a way be a one time event running for a number of days / weeks until the story is completed?
Thank you! The IP was a really good fit for what we want to work on, and next year we'll announce the people working on the soundtrack, the cinematics, and the story, and I think the fanbase will be excited.
Yes, we call it a "Massively Interactive Live Event" or MILE. In MILEs the story period is self contained. Our Walking Dead MILE, in Act 3 right now, is an 18 week event. More information next year including the platforms we'll be on.
Ohhhh, thank you for clearing up on this! This is sound very very interesting concept wise, definitely looking forward to hear more about it in the future
So this being a Live event, will this be a one and done thing then? As in no way to replay or own it after it ends?
Think of it like the audience is deciding the story. When it's done, you have the story. There are going to be a lot of alternate storylines and endings and next year we'll talk about how we unlock those.
Right, the concept is definitely interesting and thus being SH, I'm keeping an eye on it. I'll be looking forward to learning more about it. Just hoping it could be something we can revisit afterwards.
oh so you can still see the "non-canon" choices and endings? that's really neat :)!
In our Walking Dead project which is live right now, you can see the past decisions, you can play all the past activities/minigames, and you can see the results. But you can't change the canon outcome.
Yeah we're still debating how we want to surface it but for every 60 minutes of content we create, there are 15 minutes of alternative within that that won't be shown, but we want to let you unlock it somehow since we put the work into it. We are considering a "What If" arc in between seasons, but this is still TBD.
I think a "what if" arc would be really cool and would keep people invested between seasons if they were disappointed their favorite choices didn't win out.
Thank you, I'll give that as evidence to my team, we just had this discussion on Monday.
You're very welcome! Gonna keep a close eye on this game for sure!
Although not as offensive as the Bloober Team remake, this was the most baffling announcement for me in the stream.
- J.J. Abrams and BHVR (who already misinterpreted Silent Hill lore in the Dead by Daylight bios) working on a Silent Hill game? Really? That's like having Michael Bay involved with Twin Peaks.
- The Bad Robot developer called the Otherworld another dimension and said that the monsters are only "often" manifestations of a person's psyche.
- They're using Alessa's red rust Otherworld without Alessa again and copying the movie still. Alright.
- That is the most un-Silent Hill monster I have seen in a Silent Hill game.
This sounds really interesting and a good way to go about it. I'm mainly curious how someone will go about experiencing it though. Will they have to tune in live or will they then miss it? Can someone play(?) it on their own time? Is this something we can own after the fact? Obviously your team just announced this today so I don't expect answers immediately but these are the things I'm most curious about learning in the future.
So what does this actually run on? Is this a twitch stream? a game I can play on my console? Is it on a streaming service a-la BM: Bandersnatch?
We work very closely with the Konami team for lore, visuals, creatures, characters, even the words we use in the marketing materials.
Most decisions have 24-72 hours available prior to live on it so you can participate without needing to be there at that exact moment.
Multi-platform, we'll announce the platforms next year.
Sweet! Hey thanks for taking the time to answer. Best of luck with your work!
With all due respect, I wouldn't take everything Konami says about the lore religiously. They weren't really involved (creatively) with the originals aside from the KCET team, and they've gotten stuff wrong a lot since Team Silent was disbanded (in guidebooks, merchandise, the later games, and such).
I'm not disagreeing with you, but as a licensor of the IP, they have final say.
I feel like this is oversimplifying things, into "Konami" being one singular mind. The decisions you're talking about were almost certainly made by many people over the years, doing the best that they can, as the come and go from the company itself. The Konami from the Team Silent Era is a different group of people from the Shattered Memories/Downpour era, which is a different group of people from where we're at now.
Short-handing a business down into a monolith that functions autonomously from the people that work within it, especially over the span of 23 years, feels reductive even with examples from over the years. "Konami" has never said anything about the lore, just certain people working there at the time.
I'm moreso talking about the general media that's come out since 2004 overall (BradyGames guidebooks, inaccurate Pyramid Head designs that Masahiro Ito hasn't liked, some of the continuity in the later games, ETC).
So it's a game based on streaming and live chat and inetractions with viewers? Probably with chat commands? Daylight iirc was the first game to have twitch commands to tamper with the streamer's game but did not work that much and the idea was scrapped.
No chat-commands. You can actually change and effect the video with the others live. This article on our Walking Dead project does a good job of explaining some of what will be in Ascension, though Ascension is multiple generations beyond Walking Dead in terms of visuals, action, story, cinematics, etc. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/t...ns-change-the-franchise-forever/1100-6502416/
As for the example with Daylight, I think there will always be problems when the design is around enabling streamers to play with audiences. That's not what is what is happening here. It's not a game that you buy and you individually stream. It's a single experience shared by everyone, globally, concurrently. You are all watching at the same time- we're the dungeon master, and everyone is in the same story simultaneously rolling with us.
Thank you for explaining it. This looks interesting. Looking forward to see more of it. Good luck with it.
Forgive my understanding, is this 24-72 hours for the audience to make the decision or the time until it resumes with the decision and continue on?
Hmm. So going by this, it isn't something we can buy even after it's all said and done and when it's over, it's over with no way to revisit it on my own time. Definitely want to learn more about this, looking forward to next year's details.
OP
OP
The "Face your trauma together" literally reminded me of Downpour. From what you mentioned, it already gives me a bad feeling. I guess we'll go back to seeing Silent Hill as the purgatory that helps people overcome their traumas and inner demons, like a therapist.
When you login, you'll find different story moments, decisions, puzzles, available that day. This is the same as our walking dead project. Each decision impacts story coming up, and the ability to input into that decision may last a day or a couple days, and you have up until the moment the engine locks in the story thread to participate.
After story lock, you can watch the outcome live with the rest of the community, or if you're busy or asleep, it's available in the archive- you can watch the story moments any time after they have aired. We'll find ways to make the alternate content available for decisions that the audience did not choose.
This article does a great job of explaining the vision: https://gamerant.com/silent-hill-ascension-evolution-until-dawn-the-quarry-similar-style/
Think of this like a D&D campaign that you're watching with everyone else, single shard, that you hop in and out of, and is being streamed live. We're the dungeon master, we have our main cast and creatures, and you can play as substantial a role in the story as you choose to dedicate your time to the community.
The more you participate (solve puzzles, help characters in danger) the more you have influence to effect decisions. Those decisions will result in characters surviving or not surviving to the end, so while we're writing the campaign, we don't actually know how it will end because your participation is key. (This is conceptually the same as Walking Dead and Rival Peak, other projects we did, though Ascension is radically leveled up in visual fidelity, story, horror, etc. It just looks, sounds incredible.)
The Walking Dead: Last Mile Lets Fans Change The Franchise Forever
Last Mile is part game, part streaming series. We caught up with the team behind this new hybrid Walking Dead event and came away excited for the possibilities.
www.gamespot.com
The Walking Dead: Last Mile is the interactive story TWD fans need
This summer, zombie fans will be able to sink their teeth into an interactive story titled The Walking Dead: Last Mile on Facebook Gaming and Watch.
undeadwalking.com
The Walking Dead: Last Mile developer talks community, writing & more | Radio Times
Skybound Entertainment VP Shawn Kittelsen talks The Walking Dead: Last Mile, and what it's like to let the community take the wheel.
www.radiotimes.com
‘Rival Peak’ at Facebook Watch Ends With More Than 100 Million Minutes Watched
"Rival Peak," the first-ever interactive AI reality series, has ended on Facebook Watch with more than 100 million minutes watched
variety.com
Btw, if you prefer to chill, you can just lean back and watch the story, cheering and chatting with the community. How you choose to engage (as a viewer, as a player) is more about how you want to be part of the story.
FYI- things will happen when you're away from the show, because the world is live, but we'll have a guide for you to know what beats are happening when during the week.
You're helping to build the show- so you can revisit by seeing the outcome any time you want, at your leisure. We'll also catch you up if you have been away for a few days on what you may have missed that's important.
The Bad Robot Games team are in charge of art and sound direction. All the creatures, environments, all the audio is them. (Chris Amaral, in the video, was 15 years at Blizzard and art director on Diablo). They meet with JJ, and he feeds back to his team. They also have a narrative editor that works with us on the story who is super experienced in this world, we'll share more on who they are later. The composers for the music are also really going to excite the fans, we're keeping it a secret for a reason.
Thank you!
Funny story how we got that but I don't have permission to tell it yet. The nice thing is that it was a gift!
Well shoot that's a pretty awesome gift lol...would love to hear the full story someday.
So curious in how this project will play. Definitely gave me a vibe that it's going to involve some sort of communal voting system or something.
I just hope social media influencer types won't brigade / tank it if they didn't like something that happened in the story.
So it's basically a season-long version of The Quarry spread out over multiple weeks. Huh, I see. I do like the Supermassive Games conceit, so I don't mind the idea but it sounds SUPER difficult to do in practice based on what I've seen from Supermassive themselves.
Good luck Azabu and your team. I hope you guys are given the time and funding to pull it off well.
Good luck Azabu and your team. I hope you guys are given the time and funding to pull it off well.
Thank you! The fun part about the story is domain was owned by a game company who I know very well. The details of who and why they owned the domain in the first place are the real interesting part but I'll need to ask their CEO if he's comfortable with me sharing.
It's plausible the influencers are going to try to push in one direction or another, or like reddit and twitter then also try to push in one direction or another, but my experience running a few other projects is the community actually organizes and then pushes back well on that. If you think about how Twitch Plays Pokemon actually managed to cut through the noise and keep beating the games, it's pretty amazing how the community rallies.
Thanks! We've been at it for two years and the crew in place are top notch, this coming year is the home stretch.
If you think about the Quarry, but mashed with critical role, Westworld's reddit, and twitch plays, that's kind of where this goes. The product itself has multiple 24/7 channels that change every day.
I'm excited to see is what happens when we give the community a centralized, discord-like chat where they can organize, pick apart conspiracies, and hang out with like-minded people all day as they watch. I want it to be like being at a theater or ball game with friends.
My old favorite thing to do with Until Dawn was to play it hotseat style, where every player in my house got a different character to control and whatever happened to them, that was that. I was glad Supermassive finally added that into their games as a real feature eventually.
Let me just say I appreciate you taking the time to continue to talk more about this. As I said, the concept is interesting to me and this being related to Silent Hill is keeping my interest. For all the lows this franchise has seen, the highs matter very much to me. There are still questions I have that obviously can't be answered until later on so I'll still be interested in learning more when it can be shared. I get the idea here and I'm wishing you all the best in pulling it off.When you login, you'll find different story moments, decisions, puzzles, available that day. This is the same as our walking dead project. Each decision impacts story coming up, and the ability to input into that decision may last a day or a couple days, and you have up until the moment the engine locks in the story thread to participate.
After story lock, you can watch the outcome live with the rest of the community, or if you're busy or asleep, it's available in the archive- you can watch the story moments any time after they have aired. We'll find ways to make the alternate content available for decisions that the audience did not choose.
This article does a great job of explaining the vision: https://gamerant.com/silent-hill-ascension-evolution-until-dawn-the-quarry-similar-style/
Think of this like a D&D campaign that you're watching with everyone else, single shard, that you hop in and out of, and is being streamed live. We're the dungeon master, we have our main cast and creatures, and you can play as substantial a role in the story as you choose to dedicate your time to the community.
The more you participate (solve puzzles, help characters in danger) the more you have influence to effect decisions. Those decisions will result in characters surviving or not surviving to the end, so while we're writing the campaign, we don't actually know how it will end because your participation is key. (This is conceptually the same as Walking Dead and Rival Peak, other projects we did, though Ascension is radically leveled up in visual fidelity, story, horror, etc. It just looks, sounds incredible.)
The Walking Dead: Last Mile Lets Fans Change The Franchise Forever
Last Mile is part game, part streaming series. We caught up with the team behind this new hybrid Walking Dead event and came away excited for the possibilities.The Walking Dead: Last Mile is the interactive story TWD fans need
This summer, zombie fans will be able to sink their teeth into an interactive story titled The Walking Dead: Last Mile on Facebook Gaming and Watch.The Walking Dead: Last Mile developer talks community, writing & more | Radio Times
Skybound Entertainment VP Shawn Kittelsen talks The Walking Dead: Last Mile, and what it's like to let the community take the wheel.www.radiotimes.com‘Rival Peak’ at Facebook Watch Ends With More Than 100 Million Minutes Watched
"Rival Peak," the first-ever interactive AI reality series, has ended on Facebook Watch with more than 100 million minutes watched
Btw, if you prefer to chill, you can just lean back and watch the story, cheering and chatting with the community. How you choose to engage (as a viewer, as a player) is more about how you want to be part of the story.
FYI- things will happen when you're away from the show, because the world is live, but we'll have a guide for you to know what beats are happening when during the week.
You're helping to build the show- so you can revisit by seeing the outcome any time you want, at your leisure. We'll also catch you up if you have been away for a few days on what you may have missed that's important.