Look no further than the way Konami treated Hideo Kojima and his team during Metal Gear V's development. Going so far as to pull the plug on the final mission, the one that would tie the whole game together. Not to mention the culture of surveillance and humiliation at their studios. Working for them is no picnic.
I'm surprised there's people out there that don't blame Konami automatically whenever they are involved. Give them any franchise with potential and they will kill it as soon as they can.
#FuckKonami originated sometime after MGSV: The Phantom Pain was released once the fans found out how Konami treated Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions. I believe the hashtag was started by YongYea.
Tomm Hulett, Guy Cihi... The only monster here is KONAMI for how poor it handled its games. Now that REmake2 is out, i think it's sad that we'll never have such a treatment for this franchise
That doesn't mean he did a good job on directing the games...the fact he had Pyramid Head in Homecoming shows he didn't understand what Silent Hill is.
@@redzeroo6068 I kinda made the comment before watching the video...my bad. Though it was still a bad decision by Konami to give the game to a western developer company that knew nothing about the lore either way.
Tom put himself in that position by the things he said. Sure he wasn't completely responsible for what happened but he could have not insulted the original creaters and fans.
@@dontcare3460 and he still won’t acknowledge this. Everybody knows Konami is the one to blame overall, but Tomm absolutely put himself in the crosshairs of fan-ire with the comments he made.
talking about silent hill 's 'bad voice acting' in 2019? The games voice acting will have AGED by now, but for the time the Voice acting is some of the best of the ps2 era, and still holds up well enough this day.
not only that but theres strong evidence they were mostly directed that way at least in james sunderland's case because it was supposed to give off unease
PS2 had lots of games with great voice acting.... One could argue it's better than it is now because they didn't have gameplay or graphics to fall back on.
it blows my mind that Konami got rid of the original Team Silent in the first place. can you imagine the stories and games they would have thought of? we'll never have that and we'll never see it again.
its sad how much you guys have to keep reiterating to the audience not to harass anyone mentioned in the video. angry mobs on the internet are far too common and people are so quick to anger and jump on people for almost anything.
Yeah. It is sad that they have to tell people explicitly not to harass someone. It’s like some people are ready with a pitchfork when they get a chance to blame an issue on someone.
Master Dog> its sad how much you guys have to keep reiterating to the audience not to harass anyone mentioned in the video Judging by the quotes of people spewing hatred and threats towards Tomm, it's unfortunately justified. 🤦
You cut out a good portion of that quote from Guy Cihi’s open letter to Konami on his facebook page, this was obviously done on purpose to make it look like he contradicted himself. But if you read that entire paragraph it paints a different picture. The full quote is..”Let me be clear about something: my problem with Konami has never been about money. It’s always been about the thoughtless way that those involved in the production have been treated. The reuse of my material without asking me and without having a written agreement that provides for it is one example. Another example is how my contributions to the game, and my face, were purposefully erased from the ‘making of’ video. Why was that done? These are some of the issues I asked Konami to settle with me on before making any new agreements. To this day Konami has never offered any explanation.”
The video is pretty good, but this part was a mistake, blaming Cihi without use the full quote make them doing exactly what Twin Perfect made it with Tomm Hulett, and not only Cihi but also Dave Schaufele (Eddie) and Monica Taylor Horgan (Mary/Maria) had the same problems with Konami, they don't want to give the credits to all original actors.
@@kevinak3944 Yea they come off as having double standards. It's not a mistake if it was done on purpose, they gave us a link to the quote, they obviously read it but whatever reason only gave us one sentence from that open letter.
In their defense, when you at first literally say "They owe me money and I can't comment further" then later come out and say "It was never about the money, it was about _____" no more needs to be said. You clearly contradicted yourself and no amount of fluff said to make yourself not look bad is going to save you from what you previously said. With that in mind though, he clearly could have just stated he changed his viewpoint, but by saying "my problem has never been about money" when you clearly were stating it was in the past, of course people are going to call you out on that because it makes you look like an asshole who is trying to save face.
@@OneWingedAngel2x I see you're point. It's possible though his view point was always the same and that he just didn't want to go into detail at the time other then "They owe me money" Will probably never know but my issue is that this video comes off as being bias when it should be neutral.
I loved the original game's voice acting. It did add character and awkward David Lynch-like charm to the games. Anime voice acting was never going to be an improvement.
So true. I believe Twin Peaks was actually an influence for SH1. What's with this notion that unnatural or unrealistic voice acting can't be good? It's doing its job perfectly in SH.
I haven't actually played a Silent Hill game but I've been obsessed with the lore for years and watched most of the cut-scenes and I agree, the voice acting was very nice for these games, it felt realistic and I'm glad hey went this route instead of the over the top anime voice acting you'd expect to get a game. Could you imagine Mary's farewell note if it was read by someone like Tara Strong? I mean I love her but the actress they went with made it sound beautiful.
@@KaiDecadence Um, that's exactly what wound up happening. They redid the voices for the hd collection with anime voice actors. It was pretty lacklustre.
I think Guy Cihi was expressing his fear of adding more fuel to the fire and putting his career at risk when he said "I can only speak about uncontroversial things", to the point of getting angry towards Michael Arnold when he put Guy's name on a "special thanks" list, just after they had "defeated" Konami on a single, minor but controversial battle. Not the best way to react towards someone who admires you, but I think it's understandable due to his position.
That annoyed me to no end not only on the basis of it being stupid, childish, and insufferable, but also because I got disoriented from trying to read it while hearing mumbles and obnoxious VA.
The Twin Perfect guys have this weird thing about reading quotes in an impression of the original speaker. (Which didn't get grating at all when they'd do a David Lynch imitation for the Twin Peaks videos. Or when they'd read quotes from Japanese developers, producers, etc in a really cringy "me speekee Engrish" fake accent.)
If there's one thing about your video I disagree with, it's when you string together a bunch of examples of apparently "bad" voice work and maybe only the first couple of them hit that mark out of context, but the rest of them I'm just sat there thinking "what the hell's supposed to be bad about that?"
15:01 The voice acting in the original Silent Hill games isn't bad. It only seems that way out of context. The acting is perfect for those specific situations. It's like if someone watched a David Lynch film and claimed the acting and characters are bad because they're not acting like ordinary people would act. The old cast is better than the new cast because the new actors didn't really fit the situation. That's not to say the new actors did a bad job but their performances paled in comparison to the original and not because we had just gotten used to the originals.
New voices didn't act normal either lol, james sounds like he smoked 20 packs of cigs before heading to silent hill and claudia has the same tone of voice for every word
That's true. The original VAs also did the motion capture and acted out the scenes as directed by Jeremy Blaustein and Japanese counterpart. So when they go back to the recording studio, they were able pick up how the scene was acted. Which was wonderful.
Damn it tells you a lot about gaming culture when you have to emphasize so much not to harass someone because they may have affected the development of a game...
Fully agreed. Although I agree that fanaticism and overzealous fandom is not at all exclusive to the gaming world, the toxicity contained in it (especially when amplified and concentrated by the interney) is rabid.
@@clatterbones321 Nah, witch hunting/mob mentality in the gaming community feels like a cool summer breeze compared to the shitshow that is every idol group fandom that ever existed.
Thank you for calling out Twin Perfect's bullshit, I get that Tomm put his face out there because Konami didn't enough so he willingly was ready for backlash. But so much of the criticism that TP threw at Tomm felt so...Personal and vicious, I stopped watching them years ago because I got sick of their smug aura. Really great video by the way! Looking forward to part 2
Yeah, it’s infuriating to hear these guys talk about a series that’s at least in part beloved because if it’s inherent ambiguity, and talk down to everyone that THIS is what’s going on and anybody who thinks differently are idiots. I swear, I don’t know if it’s an intentional caricature of snobby nerd culture that one guy puts on or not but if it is, it’s incredibly abrasive. Sadly I don’t think it’s a caricature.
"personal and vicious" Not saying TwinPerfect didn't act like condecending assholes, pretty sure that's intended, but they are just some guys on the internet. Remember how Tomm put an easteregg into book of souls directly makign fun of those random internet guys and then proceded to tweet at them to check it out?
21:00 If you finish Guy's quote, he says "it's never been about the money, it's been about the thoughtless way Konami treats people" or something to that effect. It's no secret that Konami treats its employees terribly. This video is pretty dishonest, and the fact that you guys think the original voice actors were bad makes the video unreliable as a source of information.
That's unfortunate. I wanted to see an honest objective viewpoint on this. I already watched trshe multiple times and this is just as biased but from the other side.
Also nope, Guy may have been a handful to deal with but pretend it was you. And Konami said hey we want you sign this contract that says we can use your voice all over again for this new game. Except this time, you won't be paid. Granted Guy didn't owe anymore work. They wanted old recordings of his voice. But still, if it was you and you were a voice actor for video games who don't make a lot of money. Wouldn't you want at least a little compensation for that? I sure know I would. And I sure know a lot of others would agree whether they admit it or not. Konami didn't even have to ask? Then why did they? And then why when Guy said no it screwed everything up? Because Konami didn't own the voices. They just wanted to act like they did to avoid paying old, already recorded voice actors. Screw Konami I would want my money too.
I really have to thank you guys. I never hated Tomm Hulett or thought that he was a bad person, but I did put a lot of the blame for what happened to the Silent Hill series on him. Now, I feel that the fall of the series isn't really his fault, so thanks.
Twin Perfect broke up pretty hard. But yeah, TP is undeniably the primary vehicle for the vitriol towards Tomm (love him or hate him). Having known one of the 3 member of TP personally (before the massive falling out in the group) and rewatching the Real Silent Hill Experience, the whole thing was incredibly douchy in delivery, and incredibly disingenuous and bad faith. Jesus wow. And TP never gave the franchise another fair chance, even with PT, which arguably was the first time in a long time that Silent Hill felt just right in a while. But yeah, TRSHE did very little to have a good faith conversation about the franchise, but was more a few fanboys throwing a goddamn fit.
Yeah, its fair to criticise creative choices that were definitely his, but they railed on Tomm way too hard. TP are just so smug tbh, it felt like they were really grasping at straws to shit on PT, like there was no passion behind it.
@@mikutai6395 I don't know the full story, but I think (emphasis on THINK) that Fungo said something about the others apparantly taking credit for a lot of the work he did.
@@mikutai6395 Disputes over pay, disputes over who owned what work and material, Rosseter tried to steal Fungo's girlfriend and tried pulling shady shit to do so (up to and including trying to gaslight her into believing Fungo was abusive)
I remember when I used to argue with Tomm on a message board like ten years ago. Never got into Silent Hill though, but I think this was before he got involved with that.
"Verbal agreements" is no proof of what anyone agreed to, and at the time the voice actors had no idea there was a possibility the game would be re-released multiple times on different platforms with their work in it. I'm still sympathetic to their side of that.
Sure, but this video was not trying to defend either side. It was attempting to illustrate that Tomm in the end did care about resolution for the fans.
It's really unnecessary to talk that bad about Guy Cihi. After all, he was the one being the bigger man and instead of insisting ont he money he felt was rightfully his he gave up and contacted the rest of the cast he's still friends with to do the same. He made the use of those voices valid, instead of a flimsy grey zone where nobody can proove anything. Even if he wasn't in the right by law you can't deny it's really fishy for a big company like konami to make verbal contracts, especially from the view of an American, because even if they told him he would get money from future use of his voice he can't proove it now, so imagine seeing your voice in a game without beign asked, remembering they promised not to do that without giving you money and suddenly you are the bad guy because they don't remember. i mean the fact that they would have published the game withotu the old voices makes it obvious they didn't feel safe in their law situation, or do you guys think a big company liek Konami is afraid of some random jobber that wants money he doesn't have the right to? As for the money, this might be where you guys were the most insulting with this "it is about the money but it's not about the money" joke. If i owe you 10 bucks, then act like i don't need to pay anything you'd have the absolute right to be pissed, not only because i took money from you, but because i broke a verbal agreement making an ass of myself. Yes money was involved, but that doesn't mean Guy Cihi is a gready asshole that only wanted the money, i mean look at his facebook he looks filthy rich anyways. Again, even if you obviosuly didn't wanted to focus on that fact, Guy Cihi gave up every right he had on his performance for free so Konami could put the voices in after all and to show it wasn't about the money in the first place, still you imply he's greedy, badmouthign him to fit yur narrative. I get that you guys want to paint a view where Tomm Hullett looks better in comparison to further your argument, but this doesn't have much to do with him. Yes he pushed for the old voices obviously, since everyone and their grandmother knew fans would hate it otherwise, he just did his job decently there, but he got nothing to do with the actual solution of the conflict. So far your Arguments are not convincing, you make points to say his bad work happaned because he didn't have full control, but when he got control it's still very obvious he isn't on a level of understanding the games where he could something similar, instead he basically writes SH2 fanfiction. Doing a decent job sometimes and not being allowed to do a good job doesn't mean all the criticism is voided, your arguments mostly work against imagenary misinformed strawmen TwinPerfect fans that want to claim Tomm as to only reason for everything bad ever, but i, as someone who doesn't even dislike that guy but just think he isn't nearly as talented enough to make something worthy of the franchise name am not really convinced he did anything better then i thought before.
It reeeeeally shows that you listened and actually paid attention to what was said in the video. Good job. 👍 ... That was sarcasm, in case you didn't realize it.
Levii Bottom line, it was him who broke his contract, verbal or written, there was an agreement, that years later he broke and took advantage of that fact it wasn’t written. Idk how you can talk about it in a “good” way.
This is the first time I've actually seen Twin Perfect and uh, wow. Ethan and Lucas escaped Ctrl-Alt-Del to inanely rant about games in our world, huh?
"My name is Tim Buckley. I'm a twenty-four-year-old gamer. I've played every violent video game in existence, and I have never killed anyone. There are millions of gamers just like me, and we're getting sick of people like you blaming your problems on us. Ignorance causes violence, not video games. Man up and take responsibility. We outnumber you, and the people that think like you. Don't fuck with us"
@Clazam They are nowhere near as bad and unfunny as NC, comign from someone who watched every video twin perfect and NC made at least twice (well the old NC stuff at least) it's actually pretty insulting. On top of that they have insane production value, i mean NC videos still look like shit in comparison and while i know why most people are turned of about their "this is the only right way" attitude you can't deny their knowledge about every game, they are probably the best resource for a lot of the SH games, specially the bad ones. Lastly, i know humor is very subjective, but i laughed regulary about some dry humor and some of the comedic writing is actually pretty clever, like having one of them talk only in quotes from PMs they got. Compared to that i laughed 1 time in all of the NC episodes up to like 2016
TheMightyNovac Good luck pleasing fans. We are literally the worst. this is why so many movie adaptations from games fly so far from the source material. Directors and Producers know they won’t please anybody. Only the marketing teams think it’s a good idea to advertise to fans that they are “holding true to the vision.”
@@pogo575 I don't know about you, but most people I know who are fans of Silent Hill just want something that doesn't actively go against the source material. The idea that it's "impossible" to please fans is ridiculous considering fans are the exact type of people to autistically list every single detail of a work they care about. And with the case of Silent Hill's western games, reviews and fans actively and consistently voiced their issues with the new games at every turn, and repeatedly those concerns and criticisms weren't answered. If there was an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that cut out story critical scenes, completely changed characterization, and slapped on a happy ending it'd be laughed at by critics, and in my books there's no reason the same argument doesn't hold for Silent Hill.
@@Neoguest What you said was moronic. Sonic 4 wasn't a "sprite" (is that what you meant to type?) based game. It was a poorly developed 3D rendered Sonic game presented in 2D. That's not what the fans asked for.
The only thing he did wrong was make games that weren't as good as their predecessors. Harassing him and his wife by sending death threats is absolutely terrible and why fandoms have such a bad reputation
I actually dislike Twin Perfect. They act immature in their SH videos that I can't stand them. I get they're trying to be informative (and play "characters") but they drag on way too much it gets boring. Those HD Collection videos shouldn't have been that long to begin with. A lot of their videos should have been edited down a bit.
@@CabezasDePescado They shouldn't have used patronising tones and called him out by his first name the way they did in their videos. That was childish. "Neither is amnesia TOOOO---mmm!" is pretty poor.
I don't hate Tomm Hulett, but when he said the combat in the original games was bad, I couldn't take him seriously as a fan anymore. It is the same argument people make about turn based combat systems. They make all sorts of red herrings like how they only did turn based combat on older RPGs because of technical limitations when actually the entire time in which turn based RPGs existed, Action RPGs also existed, and I would argue that action RPGs are older than eletronic turn based ones. It is Okay to not like something, but it is not to say that they are wrong for liking that thing.
I like how you defended Tomm, and, really, everyone deserves defense sometimes. However, you are not entirely right on some things. First, Mr Hulett was in fact in charge of the creative decisions in several SH projects, just not ALL of them. Second, the games' original vices are perfectly fine, sounding like average people off the street, which is what Team Silent were going for. Third, there is no law that states there cannot be residuals for games, it's just an unspoken standard. The "Twin Perfect bullies" were right on that.
Oh please, I recall Tom Hulett saying that the team silent titles were only scary through quirky camera angles and essentially by accident due to limitations of game dev technology at the time, then goes on to say that Downpour will be superior as a result of intelligent game design. I don't believe Hulett is solely responsible for the decay of Silent Hill but to say he didn't deserve any pushback is just not true. I can't think of a better way to connect with Silent Hill fans than to bash team silent lol.
Konami already Killed The Series by disbanded the Team Silent (true Developers Behind Silent hill series) the Room was final Real Silent Hill. #RIPSILENTHILL.
@@AccursedGuardian I really want that too. The implictions to a darker, more psychological story are there (Heather being pursued by a guy, being alone at night in normally heavily crowded public areas, very rape-y penis boss etc.) but it turns into the cult story again midway through. :/
That's just straight misleading, how you showed Cihi's quotes. If you have a contract with someone for a dollar, and they don't give you the dollar, and you raise this point...are you really caring about the dollar, or are you caring about the principle? Cihi clearly said, in that same quote you conveniently cut off, that he was concerned about the principle of it, not the actual money. Which is pretty obvious considering he did sign over his rights. And if he didn't have any actual claim, why would Konami need to wait for him to sign over rights? And why would Konami need to redo all of the voices instead of just his? You blame TP for being disingenuous but I'm seeing the same thing here. Plus, Tomm was definitely off on the series lore. That's really clear. That doesn't justify the hate he got, but for someone who claimed to be such a fan he really was off on quite a lot.
Absolutely agree. As much as people hate Twin Perfect, they were on the right on this one. They're not even mentioning the most offensive things Tomm did.
@@Maxim0M1 "they're not even mentioning the most offensive things Tomm did." what exactly would that be? you guys still hating on this poor man after all is said and done?
@@Shad0wmoses It's been a while, but where do I start? This dude has been consistently an arrogant douche towards the original works, fans and even voice actors. He even participated in the unethical (and known to be proven wrong in the future) cover up of Konami's fuck up of royalties owed to voice actors, and went as far as to put his own personal grudges towards certain groups of people (TwinPerfect guys) in a Silent Hill game (Book of Memories) just to appease his childish sense of ego, with complete disregard of artistry (and speaking of artistry, did you know he wanted to rewrite the script of SH2 for the remaster?) or ethics. "Poor guy" my ass. And I don't see how "after all is said is done" is justification for anything. The fact that it's been a long time doesn't magically erase what someone did. If you don't like people talking about past events, don't read conversations about them in the first place.
I would suggest that Tom Hulett took great pains to make himself the face of Silent Hill...while death threats and general idiocy is uncalled for and completely inexcusable, he didn't exactly market himself as part of a bigger whole...
Did you guys watch every twin perfect episode? Because Tom Hullet admitted at another time that every decision made goes through him first. In fact they showed that quote or ones like it 2 or 3 times. Yes Tom was in charge. He just acted like he wasn't when people got mad. Or lied about being the boss. But, if he did that then who ran everything? You can't say Konami. There was a person. That's like saying the dollar store treated you bad with customer service when it was a manager who was a person and has a name. She treated you bad. Not the Dollar Store.
A quote from Twin Perfect in the Book of memories review: "We've never endorced ANYONE to harass Tomm Hulett, in fact, we endorce you NOT to harass Tomm Hulett, please do not harass Tomm Hulett!" so pretty much just like you did in this very video with Guy Cihi so if someone harasses Tomm it's as much their fault as it would be yours if someone starts herassing Guy Cihi after this video. Also interesting how you cut them up at 13:09 just before he was going to explain WHY Tom Hulett is wrong and Shattered Memories is NOT a reimagening by the definition of the word, just like you cut up Guy Cihis letter to Konami. Also at 13:35 Tomm was not JUST "one of them" because as a video game designer he had more responsibility to act as a professional and clearly didn't know enough about the series to do so, that was the problem and not him being "just another fan". Tomm may not have been in charge of the entire company (not that anyone ever said that) but in the case of the HD Collection for example, he hat total control over every creative desicion as he stated HIMSELF (they quoted him). All they ever wanted was for him to take responsibility for the things he is proven responsible for which he refuses to do even to dis day, and now with your help.
@No Name Everything you said is inaccurate. You're actually full of shit. The problems with the HD collection had absolutely nothing to do with the engine, and everything to do with utter incompetence on the part of everyone in charge of the project.
For anyone reading this years later. There was a commenter named "No name" and he typed inaccurate bullshit, I called him out on it (as you can see in my above comment), and he deleted his entire comment.
Personally I think fans were more to blame of taking TRSHE as a reason to attack Tomm and blame him for everything (remember, they themselves said they've never said Tomm was entirely to blame and even actively discouraged the abuse fans sent to Tomm) and taking the personalities in the video at face value. To me the series felt like they were playing characters so on purpose they're acting snobbish, know it all, "holier then thou", superior and assumed that was all genuine, therefore thinking actively attacking Tomm was okay. Granted I think Twin Perfect using Tomm as the butt of jokes painted the wrong picture of him and should have been handled better. Also I have to say, the examples used for "bad voice acting" in Silent Hill 2-3 while having genuinely bad deliveries, also had some examples that were exactly in line with that character's personality and intended speech pattern (Like the Vincent, the "Happy Birthday" caller and Angela lines). Lastly on the voice acting thing, when guy said "this isn't about money" didn't literally mean "I didn't ask for money" and comes off that way when you don't take the full quote into account. He was saying it was a matter of principal and Konami had to give some dues for reusing the voice/performance capture. Konami is entirely to blame for not having actual written contracts that would have given them the legal rights to use the voices (otherwise they'd have had no reason to contact them in the first place) and in fact, the original voice actress for Lisa in SH1 won a settlement because they had reused her voice in SH3, so Konami had admitted they were in the wrong for having reused performances in the past. If anyone was blaming Tomm for the legal issues with the voices that's just dumb, though a lot of quotes from Tomm from that time were conflicting or wrong about the order of events such as "old voices was always planned along side new 5.1 surround performances" but I'm not going to speculate my he changed the order of events or insisted Konami had full rights despite the fact the original voice actors had to sign their rights away retroactively.But konami is entirely to blame on that front, the fact they were willing to spend the money to hire a voice director, cast actors and rent a studio and (poorly) master and mix them for the HD collection which is more expense and effort if they had just brought out the rights to the original's actor's performances shows how stubborn they were to admit fault. Now I don't know if this is addressed in part 2, but there is that quote from the new voice director and new voice of Mary/Maria in SH2HD, Mary Elizabeth Mcglynn, that "Tomm had wrote this new script" that was going to gel better and fix everything but was shot down because of the production work it would have taken to reanimate the characters and scenes to fit new scripts. Maybe this was a lie or mistake on her part but it does cast doubt on some of Tomm's words regarding the HD collection, along with all the issues the new voices had not adapting the character's personalities, speech patterns or meanings behind them.
"Konami is to blame for not having written contracts" is more than addressed in the videos, as well as the extended interview with Jeremy Blaustein. It was a precedent caused by a cultural difference: Japanese society did not treat contracts the same way that America does. We didn't bring up Thessaly Lerner's (Lisa's) lawsuit because it is an unrelated affair that only seems related because TwinPerfect (and others) acted like it was. She actually WAS legally right, because her voice from Silent Hill 1 was reused in Silent Hill 3. Not a remake or a remaster, a completely new and different game for which she was not compensated. This is why the PC versions of Silent Hill 3 don't have her audio, nor Michael Guinn's line "It's being invaded by the otherworld..." Konami was actually in the wrong there, hence why Lerner got a settlement. And I feel like people don't understand the gravity of the VO situation. Guy was asking for residuals, which are not a thing in gaming. Folks bring up "Sheesh, why not just write these actors a check and get it over with? That's gotta be the cheaper route than hiring all these new VOs" But, okay, how many checks? For how much? For how many years? For how many actors? For how many games? The Greatest Hits? Xbox versions vs PS2 versions? There are residuals and royalties for movies/tv but not for games, and there is no legal precedent for it. Konami would have to like, create a whole new genre of rules for this scenario because the scenario of being paid residuals for every version of a game is nonexistent. It does not exist. Should it? Probably, actually, yes. But from the perspective of Konami, this thing had a massive potential snowball effect. Would OTHER voice actors from OTHER Konami games come out of the woodwork wanting money for different releases of the same game? How many MILLIONS of dollars would that be if that happened? And how would this effect the entire industry? tl;dr: Yes, it WAS cheaper to hire new voice talent than to open this legal can of worms! And in regards to the last point about McGlynn's comments about "a whole new script", we've been told she misspoke. It was a slightly altered script with new line timings that was intended to match the lip-flap of the characters better, but it got mostly scrapped, except for the two line changes in SH3.
Okay thanks for clarifying the McGlynn comments, to be fair I always had some doubts about a lot of what she said regarding SHHDC because she had put conflicting information out there regarding her knowledge of the series, the legal disputes and to me, did a poor job directing the new voices. Regarding the voice acting contracts, when I say "blame" I probably should say "responsibility" because even if it was a mistake on their part because of the culture at the time, it's still on their heads. It didn't help at the time many of the new voice actors for the HD Collection at one time had claimed "no Konami owns the voices out right they have contracts" instead of Konami just addressing the issue head on. I don't agree a remake/remaster/port is different from a new game regarding reuse of assets in legal terms. Even with the norms about residuals or royalties and Work-For-Hire contracts, none of that means much when Konami didn't have written legal agreements for that. It has less to do with the medium and more to do with copyright law which doesn't change because of the medium. Should Guy Cihi and the other actors have spoken up sooner regarding the reuse of their performances? Sure but Hindsight is 20-20 and I'm not going to assume to know why they didn't. But I still attest Konami had no intention of righting their wrongs regarding this issue and Tomm's quote about how it went down shows Konami didn't seem to want to negotiate or address the issue. Remember even if the voice actors hadn't signed their rights away, Konami would still would have reused unauthorised performances in the past ports and been liable for that and could have lead to a lawsuit regarding those and still have cost them money in legal battles. I should clarify I'm not saying Konami should have known to have had contracts this entire time, more so just admit to the mistake and have worked to fix it. Thanks for replying though, I appreciate you following up on my comment.
"I don't agree a remake/remaster/port is different from a new game regarding reuse of assets in legal terms" I don't agree either, I think there ought to be some sort of compensation similar to movie actors, but that's the situation :( Videogame laws are different, and it's all made more difficult by the fact that this is spanning across the globe, and Japan/America have different laws as well. Reusing Lisa's lines in SH3 is similar to being paid once for an art commission for a shirt (for example), then seeing the design on a poster for a movie. That wasn't what the commission was for, you can't just use that, you need a specific contract that says "We own this design and can use it in perpetuity, forever." Lisa's VO, like Guy's, was a one-time buyout for the game it was deigned originally for, and any ports of the game (Greatest Hits, PC versions, and this extended to the HD Collection) because that was standard practice. If Guy's VO showed up in the Silent Hill movie, you bet he'd be justified to raise hell over it. "Konami would still would have reused unauthorised performances in the past ports" Legally speaking, they were not unauthorized. If so, every single remaster and remake of every game that used the same VO/mo-cap as the originals would be sued into oblivion. But basically, it was all a huge unfortunate clusterfuck caused by multiple things, and yeah, Konami didn't know how to handle it cuz they never expected this to happen. And how can they be honest and admit to mistakes when the situation is so hard-to-explain AND they're a proud company that doesn't have a tendency to admit to mistakes anyway? haha
Actually no because typically, as you've said, Companies have buy out contracts or "work for hire" contracts stating the ownership of the work after completion, but for whatever reason, Konami and some other Japanese companies at the time were not in the habit of getting contracts (I believe something like is what lead to the remaster of Onimusha Warlords having a new dub and new cast members in Japanese) and if there isn't a written contract or proof of said contract, the rights always fall to the original creator. The ports of SH2/3 reused of the actor's performances would only be authorised if there was an original contract either stating Konami owned full rights to the performances in perpetuity, within context of "Silent Hill Games" or even "Versions of Silent Hill 2" to cover ports. But without legal written agreements none of that applies. There's actually probably a large amount of ports of games from the 90s and early 00s that reused actor's performances without contracts allowing them to do so we don't know about that actors never spoke up about maybe for fear of losing a lawsuit trying to fight a massive company or hurt the releases of the games they worked on. Though many factors probably contributed to this, Guy Cihi making noise about the lack of contracts and issues of residuals/royalties I believe helped lead to the 2016-2017 SAG-AFTRA strike where one of the demands was royalties for performances they unfortunately were unable to get in the end (interestingly, both Troy Baker and Mary Elizabeth Mcglynn were a part of despite putting the blame on and attacking Guy for his demands purely on the basis "residuals don't exist" while ignoring the rights issues). I got pretty in-depth into learning about this subject matter a few years ago when a spat between the devs of Starr Mazer and a composer went public when the composer was claiming they had reused her work without permission because it was used in another release called "Starr Mazer DSP" but in that case, legal written contracts did exist and showed she worked under a "work for hire" contract allowing the dev (Imagos) to use the music in any release as they saw fit. This became a whole thing because she started DMCAing youtube videos and LPs with the OST in to try and blackmail the dev into giving in to her demands and a copyright lawyer had to intervene and get a court order stopping her it was a whole mess, but point is I learnt a lot about copyright laws and contracts, especially in videogames from a Lawyer/TH-camr Leonard French and to my best understanding based on my research into his videos on the topic, without a legal written agreement copyright always defaults to the original author/artist/performer.
15:04 Man these are, for the most part (child actors aside), incredibly well done deliveries. Not everything is meant to sound like a sterile Hollywood performance, or (as we've sadly discovered through Silent Hill HD) an English anime dub.
I don't care for the vitriol thrown at Tomm Hulett, but I also don't care for the way he blatantly lied about the quality of the HD Collection - particularly in SH3 wherein during the developer walkthrough he was saying how it was somehow, ambiguously, "better" despite being able to clearly hear and see how false that was. I understand you want to do your job and not get fired, but there comes a time where there is a line. Lying about the product is one of mine. EDIT: I can provide citations for his distortion of the truth if you'd really, really like.
Versingetrix> I don't care for the way he blatantly lied about the quality of the HD Collection It was literally his job, he was contractually obligated to promote the game, he _couldn't_ be honest. Look at how some of the _Game of Thrones_ cast tried to defend the last season and got hatred for it (and how some tried to be honest and looked like they were afraid of getting in trouble or cringed when they said it was good).
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z Who cares about what he was "contractually obligated" to do. He lied. That's a scum bag move. He's untrustworthy. There's no excuse to that. Quit making excuses for Tomm.
If you've never had to lie in order to make your boss look better than they are, you've clearly never had a job that paid well enough you needed it. Lol you've all recently lied to a family member, spouse, or your children to make something shitty sound better than it is. Guess we're all scumbags lol
What? He said he was in charge though he had a statement where he said that as a producer meant he was in charge and nothing went into the game without his final approval. He was even on a podcast where he said that he went into the offices mid production oh homecoming and single handedly changed the course of production. Don’t fall for that back peddle shit
That's the director's job not the producer you ignorant, the producer obeys the director's vision by making it possible but has almost no say in the direction of the project.
Grate video! Thanks for doing all the legwork to sort this out. BTW, at about 17:30 when you talk about the interview with Micheal G. your on screen graphic credits "Michael Gough" with the quote, not "Micheal Guinn." Wanted to point that out in case it was a mistake.
TP had outright stated that their issues with Tomm was about his work. If anything I'd more blame fans for blowing it out of proportion. They also outright stated they didn't consider Tomm *the* reason SH went downhill. And the way some of these clips are shown seems to remove some context, like when you said Guy contradicted himself and didn't show him saying what he said after "it wasn't about the money". As for that clip of TP's SHSM video, would you consider Ross wrong? If they took Silent Hill and changed everything, how is it still SH? It wasn't "They changed it now it sucks", but as an imagining it's devoid of any real connections to the original game outside a few character names.
As much a Tomm says he loved Silent Hill 2, he wanted to REWRITE the SCRIPT for the HD collection of Silent Hill 2. Throughout this Tomm wants to throw blame off himself. He needs to share in the travesty he and Konami helped bring about.
Before I saw this video, I had no idea who Tom was. Even though I've followed the Silent Hill series in interest for years, I've only gotten to start playing them recently. In the meantime, all the problems with the later entries in the series described by people seemed to me to just be classic issues with Konami as a whole. I'm sad to see people bandwagoned together to take the easy route and blame a single person, though I'm not surprised it happened. Groupthink is, as always, alive and well on the 'net.
Kurt Yarish Agreed, Games are made by many, many, many people. At the end of the day it’s the publisher that says “ship it!” Even when teams know it’s not ready and wont be.
I was actually scared to watch this video and put it off for a bit because I like and respect Tomm, and worried this was just more vitriol bring directed toward him all over again. But you guys are better than that. I knew this, and I'm sorry. You are no Twin Perfect.
So you use some minor comments by Guy, but completely ignore the fact that actors from SH1 settled out of court for the same shit, got paid and that Konami did not use the original SH3 voices because they could not contact the original voice actor for Heather. Konami fucked up big, Guy did nothing wrong. Hell, you completely failed to mention that Tomm wanted to rewrite the entire script of the re-release. This was confirmed by the NEW actors.
КРАТКОЕ СОДЕРЖАНИЕ: SH Origins - Хуллет невиновен! Игра была сделана совсем без его участия! SH Homecoming - Хуллет невиновен! Он был за всё хорошее и против всего плохого, но его мнение никто не слушал! Он сам так сказал! SH SM - Хуллет невиновен! Просто там кто-то хотел сделать хоррор-игру "Winter", а кто-то хотел сделать спин-офф Сайлента, а руководство Konami хотело сделать ремейк SH1, а кто-то потом смешал это всё в одну причудливую кучу, а продюсер Хуллет просто в сторонке стоял и ничего не мог сделать. SH Downpour - об этой игре мы тактично умолчим и не расскажем вам о том, как Хуллет и Шацки вдруг решили стать чудо-сценаристами и немножко подзасрали Даунпур своим чудо-сценарием. SH Collection - Хуллет невиновен! Он хотел исправить все 75 багов в игре, но его никто не послушал! Он сам так сказал! А про озвучку - это вообще всё актёр Гай Сихи виноват! Но ладно уж, не травите там этого Гая слишком сильно... SH Book of Memories - Хуллет невиновен! Он просто исполнял приказ!! Из ролика, правда, так и осталось непонятным - а что святой и неуиновный Хуллет сделал хорошего для своей любимой СХ-серии за все эти годы?
@@Turtleproof Yeah exactly! The originals just fit so perfectly for the characters they're playing. Hell when I play the originals, I don't even have a "this character is being voice acted" moment.
@@OverlordRollo Also, big shout out to Jacquelyn Breckenridge, who voiced Laura when she was only 8 years old. It's hard to find good child actors and who else could pull off calling James a fart face then break our hearts in the hotel scene.
@@Turtleproof Yeah she did an impeccable job as Laura and I'm glad they had the gall to actually have a child portrayed by a child back then. Idk why they did what they did to her in the HD Collection because it wasn't just hilariously bad but it was obvious it wasn't a child. So much for realism.
This video purposefully misses out and doesnt aknowledge that IN HIS OWN WORDS tomm hulett said HE WAS responsible for everything happening to SH. Not a single decision passes without his approval. HE SAID THAT.
He said that because he was THE SPOKESPERSON. He was just doing his job. All of those decisions were made by Konami. OF COURSE HE WAS THE PR WTF IS HE GONNA DO????
Don't shoot the messenger applies here quite strongly. Regardless of what he did and didn't, it was the company that made the calls in the end since they're sitting on the money. Hope the pachinkos are doing well.
Tomm Hullet doesn't squarely deserve the blame and never has deserved to squarely receive the blame but he still should take responsibility for his part in it.
um.. if tom wanted the old voices from the beggining.. WHY THE HELL HE WROTE A NEW SCRIPT?! in an interview with mary elizabeth she said that tom made a whole new script but KONAMI said no, and tom said that the old voices were weird and bad and with the new voices his halo friends will play SH, and why sh3 has only new voices?
It is bad, it is objectively bad, if you were to make someone who has never heard of silent hill before listen to those voice lines, they would tell you that it is bad voice acting. What you seem to have forgotten is that the reason you like the voice acting is because it's bad, which adds to the weird other-worldly feel of the games, if the games had good voice acting then they would not feel as eerie, get off your high horse, being able to criticize something you enjoy is what makes you a fan, blindly thinking everything is perfect is what makes you a fanboy
My goodness, Twin Perfect pricks are really more annoying than Konami. They seriously need to apologize to Tomm Hulett. He tried to bring Silent Hill to a newer audience, but was dealt a miserable hand to work with, and the Twin Perfect pricks did the work for Konami in making Hulett the scapegoat. Way to go, Twin Perfect, you're the reason why I find most Silent Hill fans so annoying and insufferable.
I agree. I watched their stuff ages ago, thinknig they were scarily close to the basement nerd stereotypes with their nasty snark but with some good points in their arguments. After I listened to an interview with Tom I feel like even their good arguments are not worth it, they really did give Silent Hill a bad rap. It was that Cane and Rinse interview that was done after PT was out (but before Silent Hills was cancelled I think), and he seemed to be a genuine fan. He was excited to have Kojima do a Silent Hill but was like "oh no, now my games will definately be seen as the worst in the series, there is no way a Kojima game could be worse than us!" I thought that was funny and I totally would have felt the same way. He was honest about his feelings towards Pyramid head (he said his advice was no pyramid head in Homecoming but he was overruled), and about Silent hill games he pitched, the ones Konami liked, and the trouble with the HD release - how one of the other staff worked hard to get the original VO actors to sign off on SH2 VO being ingame - since a poorly worded letter from Konami had them all say *nope* originally. It was sad to hear they couldn't track down the Voice Actor for Heather for SH3 VO stuff.
The problem with the HD Collection wasn't the voices, it did slightly suck though about that, but instead the crappy older version they used for it since, apparently, Konami couldn't find the released version on their end.
I understand Tomm got put into a bad situation,b ut look at the MGS remasters. Those were apparently done well, not a MGS guy so I can't say for sure. But Tom decided to rewrite the script to SH2 because he thinks he knows how that game should go. He is also the guy who boasted that he's the walking talking SH bible. Based on the games we got he proved he didn't understand the series, nor did anyone else post SH3.
I used to like Twin Perfect's videos (wouldn't call myself a fan, but I enjoyed some of their videos) but even then I thought their Tomm-bashing was over the top. I agreed some of the creative decisions going on with SH weren't my cup of tea but I didn't think that was any reason to attack Tomm as a person. After more things with TP started coming out (shady behind the scenes stuff, all the stuff with Fungo's girlfriend, etc) I started seeing them for what was really going on. The SH fandom is very toxic at times and they sadly exemplified much of that.
@@BugVlogs Long story short, Rosseter fell for Fungo's girlfriend, and tried several shady tactics to try to convince her to leave Fungo and be with him.
@@Kintsugi23 LMAO that toxic rumor of Fungo's girlfriend, one more misconception on the table, what's next? that the circumsicion theory of sh wikia was true and that is what SH4 is about?
While I think this is a pretty good video and adds much needed nuance and rightly calls out the inexcusable harassment and unfair treatment of Tomm Hulett, I really can't agree with your assessment of the voice acting situation, for several reasons: 1. The quotes by Jeremy Blaustein you yourself showed in this video prove that Guy Cihi did indeed 100% have a legal right to additional compensation. You can argue all you want about how "residuals aren't a thing in video games" or "voice acting contracts simply aren't made that way," but all this shows is that you don't understand how copyright law works in the vast majority of countries all around the world. Blaustein literally said they did not have written agreements of any kind. It is a very basic principle of copyright law in essentially every country that unless you *explicitly* sign away your rights to your intellectual property, you fully retain those rights. If Konami didn't make Cihi sign a contract that explicitly said he renounced ownership of the voice work, then Konami had no right to use those voices in any way, shape or form without asking for Cihi's explicit approval each and every time. This is how copyright law works. Ask a lawyer. 2. You are taking many of Cihi's words out of context, which is ironic considering the purpose of this video. If you read the full open letter Cihi posted to Facebook, as well as interviews with other voice actors working on Silent Hill, you'll notice that many of these actors were not at all satisfied with how Konami treated them, did not feel they were compensated fairly and one voice actress even felt downright exploited. This should not be hard to believe: we have multiple statements made by the actual people involved in the games confirming their poor relationship with Konami and their sense of being exploited or underpaid, and we also know Konami is an all-round shitty company to work for. I think it's totally plausible that Konami essentially ripped the voice actors off, using the lack of any written agreement to their advantage to drive down wages. Voice actors are, labor-wise, already in an incredibly precarious position generally even when they do have contracts, so this really isn't all that far-fetched to me. All video game companies probably do this sort of thing on a daily basis. So what I think happened is that Guy Cihi just had enough of Konami's bullshit and finally wanted to see some real money for the real work that he did and that Konami continued to profit off of. I really can't blame Cihi for that at all. In fact, I admire and respect him for it, and I think it's in poor taste to criticize Cihi on that basis. People deserve to get paid for the work that they do, and Konami (all companies in fact) must respect the legal rights of the people that work for them, even if that means your precious video game might get delayed or canceled. Labor rights are infinitely more important than some shitty HD remaster.
An additional piece of evidence that Cihi was in the (legal) right here: the fact that this dispute happened at all. If Cihi had no legal basis for what he was doing, Konami could (and absolutely would) have ignored him and just used his voice without asking for permission. But they didn't, because they couldn't. Because Cihi was right.
@@malkutahk Thank you for this comment, it's baffling to me to act like or imply Guy Cihi was in the wrong or misguided because the treatment of him and other SH voice actors is very clearly unethical. If you're going to continually make money off of the use of someone's work, then they deserve to be compensated. But you're right that it's also worth saying that Guy was right from a legal perspective as well, not just a moral one. You can't just go "it was understood that it was a buyout" - that's not how employment works. If there isn't a written contract, something being "understood" is legally meaningless.
I'm midway through your video, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly, but I think it's very unfair how you characterize the voice acting in the original games. I'm a big fan of the games and media and in general, and for what my opinion is worth (which is *very* little), I think the voice acting is excellent. A lot of the examples you use (and I realize you're trying to inject some levity) are taken completely out of context and the performances that the original actors gave are very much justified by that context. If this video is about being fair to the creators, I don't think that depiction was
Yeah Tomm loved SH so much he hated all story lines with cults, aka all but 2, and wanted to REWRITE the script of SH2. It's like adopting a child and forcing it into getting several cosmetic surgeries an changing their behavior. True love. TP's painting analogy is perfect. No one can improve the Mona Lisa. That;s inherently impossible. No on can improve SH2. It was made by a specific group of people at a specific time. And its a product of that circumstance. All changes would be a farce.
@@Feasco Since TP quoted and referenced the sources for all that stuff it will be easy to give you the exact source. Which one do you need? Wanting to rewrite the script for the rerecording or that he dislikes all cult plot lines in SH?
Who ruined Silent Hill? I thought everyone agreed Konami did.
Look no further than the way Konami treated Hideo Kojima and his team during Metal Gear V's development. Going so far as to pull the plug on the final mission, the one that would tie the whole game together. Not to mention the culture of surveillance and humiliation at their studios. Working for them is no picnic.
I'm surprised there's people out there that don't blame Konami automatically whenever they are involved.
Give them any franchise with potential and they will kill it as soon as they can.
#FuckKonami originated sometime after MGSV: The Phantom Pain was released once the fans found out how Konami treated Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions. I believe the hashtag was started by YongYea.
Same. I consider myself a Silent Hill fan, and I've never heard of Tomm Hullet before.
@@pll9000 There's a lot more going on between Vice President Kojima and Konami.
Tomm Hulett, Guy Cihi... The only monster here is KONAMI for how poor it handled its games. Now that REmake2 is out, i think it's sad that we'll never have such a treatment for this franchise
@@CabezasDePescado you didn't watch the video then?
Answers: 1] the voice acting dispute
2] nobody's excusing that or even really talking about that
To quote Richter: "Die, monster! You don't belong in this world!"
It took time to grow on me, but honestly homecoming really came to be one of my favorite silent hills.
Sad Trophy Wife I thought the plug got pulled on that a long time ago.
Whelp... now it is with the SH2 remake announced. Hopefully it'll be good.
Konami killed Silent Hill, Metal Gear, Castlevania and every other video game they own. The people at the top don't care about video games.
they don't even know what videogames are, all they know are money
Konami killed Silent Hill. Tom was the scapegoat. It's simple as that. #FucKonami
He still handled things very poorly.
That doesn't mean he did a good job on directing the games...the fact he had Pyramid Head in Homecoming shows he didn't understand what Silent Hill is.
Miyakolover if you watched the 1st part of the video he wanted to take pyramid head out but higher ups told him not to...
@@redzeroo6068 I kinda made the comment before watching the video...my bad.
Though it was still a bad decision by Konami to give the game to a western developer company that knew nothing about the lore either way.
@@redzeroo6068 Yes he did understan Sh2 game but that's it. He did not understand the world then he did not want to expand on the Cult and God.
What people don't understand when something goes wrong in a business/company, theres always someone that has to be the fall guy and shift the blame
Tom put himself in that position by the things he said. Sure he wasn't completely responsible for what happened but he could have not insulted the original creaters and fans.
@@dontcare3460 and he still won’t acknowledge this. Everybody knows Konami is the one to blame overall, but Tomm absolutely put himself in the crosshairs of fan-ire with the comments he made.
Yeah. Konami and other game devs has all business and companies. Like can The Silent Hill community has to understand.
talking about silent hill 's 'bad voice acting' in 2019?
The games voice acting will have AGED by now, but for the time the Voice acting is some of the best of the ps2 era, and still holds up well enough this day.
not only that but theres strong evidence they were mostly directed that way at least in james sunderland's case because it was supposed to give off unease
@@SuperCancer6 also, Angela was supposed to sound older than she was, and supposed to sound nervous and jittery.
PS2 had lots of games with great voice acting.... One could argue it's better than it is now because they didn't have gameplay or graphics to fall back on.
Kept us waiting, huh?
But well worth it!
LIQUID!
Wrong game man... hahaha...
it blows my mind that Konami got rid of the original Team Silent in the first place. can you imagine the stories and games they would have thought of? we'll never have that and we'll never see it again.
There's Siren for the PS2 by Keiichiro Toyama, the guy that worked on SH1 but then left.
its sad how much you guys have to keep reiterating to the audience not to harass anyone mentioned in the video. angry mobs on the internet are far too common and people are so quick to anger and jump on people for almost anything.
won't stop them from harassing Konami social profiles and lower level employees
Yeah. It is sad that they have to tell people explicitly not to harass someone. It’s like some people are ready with a pitchfork when they get a chance to blame an issue on someone.
Master Dog> its sad how much you guys have to keep reiterating to the audience not to harass anyone mentioned in the video
Judging by the quotes of people spewing hatred and threats towards Tomm, it's unfortunately justified. 🤦
“we repeat DO NOT HARRAS GUY CIHI”..
like bruh if we wanted to we’d do it just shut the fuck up lol
**The Watchers harrass Every Human Being on the planet.* the war is real.
You cut out a good portion of that quote from Guy Cihi’s open letter to Konami on his facebook page, this was obviously done on purpose to make it look like he contradicted himself. But if you read that entire paragraph it paints a different picture. The full quote is..”Let me be clear about something: my problem with Konami has never been about money. It’s always been about the thoughtless way that those involved in the production have been treated. The reuse of my material without asking me and without having a written agreement that provides for it is one example. Another example is how my contributions to the game, and my face, were purposefully erased from the ‘making of’ video. Why was that done? These are some of the issues I asked Konami to settle with me on before making any new agreements. To this day Konami has never offered any explanation.”
Yeah, these idiots want us to blame Guy. They whined on how TP mistreated Tom but they are doing the same with Guy.....really hypocritical there.
The video is pretty good, but this part was a mistake, blaming Cihi without use the full quote make them doing exactly what Twin Perfect made it with Tomm Hulett, and not only Cihi but also Dave Schaufele (Eddie) and Monica Taylor Horgan (Mary/Maria) had the same problems with Konami, they don't want to give the credits to all original actors.
@@kevinak3944 Yea they come off as having double standards. It's not a mistake if it was done on purpose, they gave us a link to the quote, they obviously read it but whatever reason only gave us one sentence from that open letter.
In their defense, when you at first literally say "They owe me money and I can't comment further" then later come out and say "It was never about the money, it was about _____" no more needs to be said. You clearly contradicted yourself and no amount of fluff said to make yourself not look bad is going to save you from what you previously said. With that in mind though, he clearly could have just stated he changed his viewpoint, but by saying "my problem has never been about money" when you clearly were stating it was in the past, of course people are going to call you out on that because it makes you look like an asshole who is trying to save face.
@@OneWingedAngel2x I see you're point. It's possible though his view point was always the same and that he just didn't want to go into detail at the time other then "They owe me money" Will probably never know but my issue is that this video comes off as being bias when it should be neutral.
I think it's pretty well accepted at this point that Konami destroyed Silent Hill. Tom was just a tool used in the process.
He’s a tool, alright
I loved the original game's voice acting. It did add character and awkward David Lynch-like charm to the games. Anime voice acting was never going to be an improvement.
So true. I believe Twin Peaks was actually an influence for SH1. What's with this notion that unnatural or unrealistic voice acting can't be good? It's doing its job perfectly in SH.
anime? what?
Yeah, I can't believe this video hated on the acting!
I haven't actually played a Silent Hill game but I've been obsessed with the lore for years and watched most of the cut-scenes and I agree, the voice acting was very nice for these games, it felt realistic and I'm glad hey went this route instead of the over the top anime voice acting you'd expect to get a game. Could you imagine Mary's farewell note if it was read by someone like Tara Strong? I mean I love her but the actress they went with made it sound beautiful.
@@KaiDecadence Um, that's exactly what wound up happening. They redid the voices for the hd collection with anime voice actors. It was pretty lacklustre.
I think Guy Cihi was expressing his fear of adding more fuel to the fire and putting his career at risk when he said "I can only speak about uncontroversial things", to the point of getting angry towards Michael Arnold when he put Guy's name on a "special thanks" list, just after they had "defeated" Konami on a single, minor but controversial battle. Not the best way to react towards someone who admires you, but I think it's understandable due to his position.
Alkaid the. He should of just said that, instead he threatened dude...
Just love the part where the dude at Twin Perfect just literally mumbled Tom Hullet's quote
That annoyed me to no end not only on the basis of it being stupid, childish, and insufferable, but also because I got disoriented from trying to read it while hearing mumbles and obnoxious VA.
they nailed it
The Twin Perfect guys have this weird thing about reading quotes in an impression of the original speaker. (Which didn't get grating at all when they'd do a David Lynch imitation for the Twin Peaks videos. Or when they'd read quotes from Japanese developers, producers, etc in a really cringy "me speekee Engrish" fake accent.)
when he says "tomm hullet!" i cant help but picture spax3 yelling about jason griffith
@@Kintsugi23
The Japanese quotes are hilarious. Seethe.
If there's one thing about your video I disagree with, it's when you string together a bunch of examples of apparently "bad" voice work and maybe only the first couple of them hit that mark out of context, but the rest of them I'm just sat there thinking "what the hell's supposed to be bad about that?"
Same!
Exactly my thoughts: there's a campy tone to the voice acting (also reflected in the facial/body motion capture) that is just the way it should be.
There's no reason to blame a single person for what happened to Silent Hill.
That being said, what's broken can ALWAYS be fixed.
Maybe but it's unlikely to happen.
15:01 The voice acting in the original Silent Hill games isn't bad. It only seems that way out of context. The acting is perfect for those specific situations. It's like if someone watched a David Lynch film and claimed the acting and characters are bad because they're not acting like ordinary people would act. The old cast is better than the new cast because the new actors didn't really fit the situation. That's not to say the new actors did a bad job but their performances paled in comparison to the original and not because we had just gotten used to the originals.
New voices didn't act normal either lol, james sounds like he smoked 20 packs of cigs before heading to silent hill and claudia has the same tone of voice for every word
And the japanese isn't hammed though. So it's just poor 2000's VA at work.
I always felt like the voice acting in the old SH games actually added to the uncanny valley vibe the entire series had
@@jauhgnaw they were supposed to, idk about silent hill 1 but silent hill 2 definitley, it's supposed to have that dream like vibe
That's true. The original VAs also did the motion capture and acted out the scenes as directed by Jeremy Blaustein and Japanese counterpart. So when they go back to the recording studio, they were able pick up how the scene was acted. Which was wonderful.
Damn it tells you a lot about gaming culture when you have to emphasize so much not to harass someone because they may have affected the development of a game...
It tells you something about fanatism, in every aspect of life. Ironic, because that's what Silent Hill is all about essentially. A cult.
@Heavy Metal Collector It still seems markedly worse in gamer, or at least geek, culture.
Fully agreed. Although I agree that fanaticism and overzealous fandom is not at all exclusive to the gaming world, the toxicity contained in it (especially when amplified and concentrated by the interney) is rabid.
It's not gaming culture as much as it is internet uninhibition affect.
@@clatterbones321
Nah, witch hunting/mob mentality in the gaming community feels like a cool summer breeze compared to the shitshow that is every idol group fandom that ever existed.
Thank you for calling out Twin Perfect's bullshit, I get that Tomm put his face out there because Konami didn't enough so he willingly was ready for backlash. But so much of the criticism that TP threw at Tomm felt so...Personal and vicious, I stopped watching them years ago because I got sick of their smug aura.
Really great video by the way! Looking forward to part 2
Yeah, it’s infuriating to hear these guys talk about a series that’s at least in part beloved because if it’s inherent ambiguity, and talk down to everyone that THIS is what’s going on and anybody who thinks differently are idiots.
I swear, I don’t know if it’s an intentional caricature of snobby nerd culture that one guy puts on or not but if it is, it’s incredibly abrasive. Sadly I don’t think it’s a caricature.
Black lagoon though..
Et Cogito Ergo Sum ...Rosseter is that you?
"personal and vicious" Not saying TwinPerfect didn't act like condecending assholes, pretty sure that's intended, but they are just some guys on the internet.
Remember how Tomm put an easteregg into book of souls directly makign fun of those random internet guys and then proceded to tweet at them to check it out?
Accostrophe Many of us already had lmao
21:00 If you finish Guy's quote, he says "it's never been about the money, it's been about the thoughtless way Konami treats people" or something to that effect. It's no secret that Konami treats its employees terribly.
This video is pretty dishonest, and the fact that you guys think the original voice actors were bad makes the video unreliable as a source of information.
It's definitely not as unbiased as I initially thought. Glad I watched TRSHE to get both sides.
Now idk what to think...
That's unfortunate. I wanted to see an honest objective viewpoint on this. I already watched trshe multiple times and this is just as biased but from the other side.
Also nope, Guy may have been a handful to deal with but pretend it was you. And Konami said hey we want you sign this contract that says we can use your voice all over again for this new game. Except this time, you won't be paid. Granted Guy didn't owe anymore work. They wanted old recordings of his voice. But still, if it was you and you were a voice actor for video games who don't make a lot of money. Wouldn't you want at least a little compensation for that? I sure know I would. And I sure know a lot of others would agree whether they admit it or not. Konami didn't even have to ask? Then why did they? And then why when Guy said no it screwed everything up? Because Konami didn't own the voices. They just wanted to act like they did to avoid paying old, already recorded voice actors. Screw Konami I would want my money too.
I really have to thank you guys. I never hated Tomm Hulett or thought that he was a bad person, but I did put a lot of the blame for what happened to the Silent Hill series on him. Now, I feel that the fall of the series isn't really his fault, so thanks.
Did anyone ever tell you the tragedy of Tomm Hulett the hated? Of course not...its not a story the Twins would tell you.
Twin Perfect broke up pretty hard. But yeah, TP is undeniably the primary vehicle for the vitriol towards Tomm (love him or hate him). Having known one of the 3 member of TP personally (before the massive falling out in the group) and rewatching the Real Silent Hill Experience, the whole thing was incredibly douchy in delivery, and incredibly disingenuous and bad faith. Jesus wow. And TP never gave the franchise another fair chance, even with PT, which arguably was the first time in a long time that Silent Hill felt just right in a while. But yeah, TRSHE did very little to have a good faith conversation about the franchise, but was more a few fanboys throwing a goddamn fit.
Why did they break up?
Yeah, its fair to criticise creative choices that were definitely his, but they railed on Tomm way too hard. TP are just so smug tbh, it felt like they were really grasping at straws to shit on PT, like there was no passion behind it.
@@mikutai6395 I don't know the full story, but I think (emphasis on THINK) that Fungo said something about the others apparantly taking credit for a lot of the work he did.
@@mikutai6395 Disputes over pay, disputes over who owned what work and material, Rosseter tried to steal Fungo's girlfriend and tried pulling shady shit to do so (up to and including trying to gaslight her into believing Fungo was abusive)
@@Kintsugi23 Douches being douches to one another, huh?. Not really a surprise, but it's nice to know. Thank you.
Cold heart would have been an amazing story, but the “re-imagination” was like when they made the home alone 4 movie
I remember when I used to argue with Tomm on a message board like ten years ago. Never got into Silent Hill though, but I think this was before he got involved with that.
i was very surprised by SGF's voice in the very beginning,,,
A lot of let's played seem to be in that group plus hbomberguy.
Deaththreats to entertainment creators is massive cringe. Save it for shitty politicians and CEOs, people that can actually ruin your life.
"Verbal agreements" is no proof of what anyone agreed to, and at the time the voice actors had no idea there was a possibility the game would be re-released multiple times on different platforms with their work in it. I'm still sympathetic to their side of that.
Sure, but this video was not trying to defend either side. It was attempting to illustrate that Tomm in the end did care about resolution for the fans.
I will never love any thing as much as people love any game that came out on the PlayStation 1.
It's really unnecessary to talk that bad about Guy Cihi.
After all, he was the one being the bigger man and instead of insisting ont he money he felt was rightfully his he gave up and contacted the rest of the cast he's still friends with to do the same. He made the use of those voices valid, instead of a flimsy grey zone where nobody can proove anything.
Even if he wasn't in the right by law you can't deny it's really fishy for a big company like konami to make verbal contracts, especially from the view of an American, because even if they told him he would get money from future use of his voice he can't proove it now, so imagine seeing your voice in a game without beign asked, remembering they promised not to do that without giving you money and suddenly you are the bad guy because they don't remember. i mean the fact that they would have published the game withotu the old voices makes it obvious they didn't feel safe in their law situation, or do you guys think a big company liek Konami is afraid of some random jobber that wants money he doesn't have the right to?
As for the money, this might be where you guys were the most insulting with this "it is about the money but it's not about the money" joke. If i owe you 10 bucks, then act like i don't need to pay anything you'd have the absolute right to be pissed, not only because i took money from you, but because i broke a verbal agreement making an ass of myself.
Yes money was involved, but that doesn't mean Guy Cihi is a gready asshole that only wanted the money, i mean look at his facebook he looks filthy rich anyways.
Again, even if you obviosuly didn't wanted to focus on that fact, Guy Cihi gave up every right he had on his performance for free so Konami could put the voices in after all and to show it wasn't about the money in the first place, still you imply he's greedy, badmouthign him to fit yur narrative.
I get that you guys want to paint a view where Tomm Hullett looks better in comparison to further your argument, but this doesn't have much to do with him. Yes he pushed for the old voices obviously, since everyone and their grandmother knew fans would hate it otherwise, he just did his job decently there, but he got nothing to do with the actual solution of the conflict.
So far your Arguments are not convincing, you make points to say his bad work happaned because he didn't have full control, but when he got control it's still very obvious he isn't on a level of understanding the games where he could something similar, instead he basically writes SH2 fanfiction.
Doing a decent job sometimes and not being allowed to do a good job doesn't mean all the criticism is voided, your arguments mostly work against imagenary misinformed strawmen TwinPerfect fans that want to claim Tomm as to only reason for everything bad ever, but i, as someone who doesn't even dislike that guy but just think he isn't nearly as talented enough to make something worthy of the franchise name am not really convinced he did anything better then i thought before.
It reeeeeally shows that you listened and actually paid attention to what was said in the video. Good job. 👍
... That was sarcasm, in case you didn't realize it.
Levii Bottom line, it was him who broke his contract, verbal or written, there was an agreement, that years later he broke and took advantage of that fact it wasn’t written. Idk how you can talk about it in a “good” way.
@@EsjM49
Jeez all of you are like this. Why?
This is the first time I've actually seen Twin Perfect and uh, wow. Ethan and Lucas escaped Ctrl-Alt-Del to inanely rant about games in our world, huh?
Plus, their acting needed a lot of work... Yeesh, that was a bit cringy.
"My name is Tim Buckley. I'm a twenty-four-year-old gamer. I've played every violent video game in existence, and I have never killed anyone. There are millions of gamers just like me, and we're getting sick of people like you blaming your problems on us. Ignorance causes violence, not video games. Man up and take responsibility. We outnumber you, and the people that think like you. Don't fuck with us"
B^U
They have some genuinelly fantastic videos, some of their critique is questionable. But their possitive videos on silent hill are delightful.
@Clazam They are nowhere near as bad and unfunny as NC, comign from someone who watched every video twin perfect and NC made at least twice (well the old NC stuff at least) it's actually pretty insulting.
On top of that they have insane production value, i mean NC videos still look like shit in comparison and while i know why most people are turned of about their "this is the only right way" attitude you can't deny their knowledge about every game, they are probably the best resource for a lot of the SH games, specially the bad ones.
Lastly, i know humor is very subjective, but i laughed regulary about some dry humor and some of the comedic writing is actually pretty clever, like having one of them talk only in quotes from PMs they got. Compared to that i laughed 1 time in all of the NC episodes up to like 2016
Y'know last I checked Twin Perfect never said Tom Hulett *wasn't* trying to please fans, just that he was doing a terrible job of it.
TheMightyNovac Good luck pleasing fans. We are literally the worst. this is why so many movie adaptations from games fly so far from the source material. Directors and Producers know they won’t please anybody. Only the marketing teams think it’s a good idea to advertise to fans that they are “holding true to the vision.”
@@pogo575 I don't know about you, but most people I know who are fans of Silent Hill just want something that doesn't actively go against the source material.
The idea that it's "impossible" to please fans is ridiculous considering fans are the exact type of people to autistically list every single detail of a work they care about. And with the case of Silent Hill's western games, reviews and fans actively and consistently voiced their issues with the new games at every turn, and repeatedly those concerns and criticisms weren't answered.
If there was an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that cut out story critical scenes, completely changed characterization, and slapped on a happy ending it'd be laughed at by critics, and in my books there's no reason the same argument doesn't hold for Silent Hill.
@@TheMightyNovac Sonic the Hedgehog 4 fan complain about not being a sprite game despite it going back to 2D.
@@Neoguest What you said was moronic. Sonic 4 wasn't a "sprite" (is that what you meant to type?) based game. It was a poorly developed 3D rendered Sonic game presented in 2D. That's not what the fans asked for.
@@shinbakihanma2749 no need to do rude.
It’s been 2 years. I’m glad you guys are back!
'I'm not going to speak for them; I can only speak about uncontroversial things' said Guy, before tuning in to InfoWars for the evening.
The only thing he did wrong was make games that weren't as good as their predecessors. Harassing him and his wife by sending death threats is absolutely terrible and why fandoms have such a bad reputation
Damn. starting to feel really bad for Tomm... I knew Twin Perfect demonized him more than probably deserved but I didn't know it was to this extent.
I actually dislike Twin Perfect. They act immature in their SH videos that I can't stand them. I get they're trying to be informative (and play "characters") but they drag on way too much it gets boring. Those HD Collection videos shouldn't have been that long to begin with. A lot of their videos should have been edited down a bit.
their videos are pretty cringe despite being a little entertaining
Nah, fuck twin perfect and tomm equally, just joking, but seriously fuckonami
@Praise the Sun did you not watch the video?
@@CabezasDePescado They shouldn't have used patronising tones and called him out by his first name the way they did in their videos. That was childish. "Neither is amnesia TOOOO---mmm!" is pretty poor.
I don't hate Tomm Hulett, but when he said the combat in the original games was bad, I couldn't take him seriously as a fan anymore. It is the same argument people make about turn based combat systems. They make all sorts of red herrings like how they only did turn based combat on older RPGs because of technical limitations when actually the entire time in which turn based RPGs existed, Action RPGs also existed, and I would argue that action RPGs are older than eletronic turn based ones. It is Okay to not like something, but it is not to say that they are wrong for liking that thing.
I like how you defended Tomm, and, really, everyone deserves defense sometimes. However, you are not entirely right on some things. First, Mr Hulett was in fact in charge of the creative decisions in several SH projects, just not ALL of them. Second, the games' original vices are perfectly fine, sounding like average people off the street, which is what Team Silent were going for. Third, there is no law that states there cannot be residuals for games, it's just an unspoken standard. The "Twin Perfect bullies" were right on that.
@farenheit041 The real tragedy, is people making decisions with zero actual evidence.
I think they did mention he had creative control on some projects
Actual gaming journalism. A unicorn.
Cherish it as one.
Check out Yong Yea's Channel if you haven't. He's legitimate and punctual.
@@kevinmcdonough6515 Yong is a good dude but He is a bit too in love with Kojima to be objective about him.
WATCH OUT BEHIND YOU BRO! THERE'S A WOMAN ACTING LIKE A LIVING, BREATHING HUMAN BEING WITH IT'S OWN INDEPENDENT CONSCIOUSNESS AND WILL!!
This channel is not an example of proper gaming journalism. It's actually quite the POOR example😆🤣😂
Oh please, I recall Tom Hulett saying that the team silent titles were only scary through quirky camera angles and essentially by accident due to limitations of game dev technology at the time, then goes on to say that Downpour will be superior as a result of intelligent game design. I don't believe Hulett is solely responsible for the decay of Silent Hill but to say he didn't deserve any pushback is just not true. I can't think of a better way to connect with Silent Hill fans than to bash team silent lol.
Well the fog in the first game was for the ps1 limitations
Konami already Killed The Series by disbanded the Team Silent (true Developers Behind Silent hill series) the Room was final Real Silent Hill. #RIPSILENTHILL.
noshit
Really wish they could come back and make SH 5 or one based on the cut story for SH 3
@@AccursedGuardian I really want that too. The implictions to a darker, more psychological story are there (Heather being pursued by a guy, being alone at night in normally heavily crowded public areas, very rape-y penis boss etc.) but it turns into the cult story again midway through. :/
I was NOT expecting Hbomberguy to be the first voice I heard when I hit play on this video.
The old voices didn't suck... the reasons cited in this video are inaccurate... and the new voices are terrible.
That's just straight misleading, how you showed Cihi's quotes. If you have a contract with someone for a dollar, and they don't give you the dollar, and you raise this point...are you really caring about the dollar, or are you caring about the principle? Cihi clearly said, in that same quote you conveniently cut off, that he was concerned about the principle of it, not the actual money. Which is pretty obvious considering he did sign over his rights. And if he didn't have any actual claim, why would Konami need to wait for him to sign over rights? And why would Konami need to redo all of the voices instead of just his?
You blame TP for being disingenuous but I'm seeing the same thing here.
Plus, Tomm was definitely off on the series lore. That's really clear. That doesn't justify the hate he got, but for someone who claimed to be such a fan he really was off on quite a lot.
Absolutely agree. As much as people hate Twin Perfect, they were on the right on this one. They're not even mentioning the most offensive things Tomm did.
@@Maxim0M1 "they're not even mentioning the most offensive things Tomm did." what exactly would that be? you guys still hating on this poor man after all is said and done?
@@Shad0wmoses It's been a while, but where do I start? This dude has been consistently an arrogant douche towards the original works, fans and even voice actors. He even participated in the unethical (and known to be proven wrong in the future) cover up of Konami's fuck up of royalties owed to voice actors, and went as far as to put his own personal grudges towards certain groups of people (TwinPerfect guys) in a Silent Hill game (Book of Memories) just to appease his childish sense of ego, with complete disregard of artistry (and speaking of artistry, did you know he wanted to rewrite the script of SH2 for the remaster?) or ethics. "Poor guy" my ass.
And I don't see how "after all is said is done" is justification for anything. The fact that it's been a long time doesn't magically erase what someone did. If you don't like people talking about past events, don't read conversations about them in the first place.
@@Shad0wmoses
Are you his wife?
I would suggest that Tom Hulett took great pains to make himself the face of Silent Hill...while death threats and general idiocy is uncalled for and completely inexcusable, he didn't exactly market himself as part of a bigger whole...
Brings a lot of context. It's been 3 years, thanks for the video!
15:00 “The voice acting wasn’t perfect”
*proceeds to show a montage of Perfect voice acting*
THIS
Did you guys watch every twin perfect episode? Because Tom Hullet admitted at another time that every decision made goes through him first. In fact they showed that quote or ones like it 2 or 3 times. Yes Tom was in charge. He just acted like he wasn't when people got mad. Or lied about being the boss. But, if he did that then who ran everything? You can't say Konami. There was a person. That's like saying the dollar store treated you bad with customer service when it was a manager who was a person and has a name. She treated you bad. Not the Dollar Store.
A quote from Twin Perfect in the Book of memories review:
"We've never endorced ANYONE to harass Tomm Hulett, in fact, we endorce you NOT to harass Tomm Hulett, please do not harass Tomm Hulett!" so pretty much just like you did in this very video with Guy Cihi so if someone harasses Tomm it's as much their fault as it would be yours if someone starts herassing Guy Cihi after this video.
Also interesting how you cut them up at 13:09 just before he was going to explain WHY Tom Hulett is wrong and Shattered Memories is NOT a reimagening by the definition of the word, just like you cut up Guy Cihis letter to Konami.
Also at 13:35 Tomm was not JUST "one of them" because as a video game designer he had more responsibility to act as a professional and clearly didn't know enough about the series to do so, that was the problem and not him being "just another fan".
Tomm may not have been in charge of the entire company (not that anyone ever said that) but in the case of the HD Collection for example, he hat total control over every creative desicion as he stated HIMSELF (they quoted him).
All they ever wanted was for him to take responsibility for the things he is proven responsible for which he refuses to do even to dis day, and now with your help.
@No Name Everything you said is inaccurate. You're actually full of shit. The problems with the HD collection had absolutely nothing to do with the engine, and everything to do with utter incompetence on the part of everyone in charge of the project.
For anyone reading this years later. There was a commenter named "No name" and he typed inaccurate bullshit, I called him out on it (as you can see in my above comment), and he deleted his entire comment.
Death threats after 5 years? I'm not surprised. Some SH hardcore fans are elitist spergs, I just can't word it any other way.
Why did you guys disappear for YEARS?
Then suddenly come back
Personally I think fans were more to blame of taking TRSHE as a reason to attack Tomm and blame him for everything (remember, they themselves said they've never said Tomm was entirely to blame and even actively discouraged the abuse fans sent to Tomm) and taking the personalities in the video at face value. To me the series felt like they were playing characters so on purpose they're acting snobbish, know it all, "holier then thou", superior and assumed that was all genuine, therefore thinking actively attacking Tomm was okay. Granted I think Twin Perfect using Tomm as the butt of jokes painted the wrong picture of him and should have been handled better.
Also I have to say, the examples used for "bad voice acting" in Silent Hill 2-3 while having genuinely bad deliveries, also had some examples that were exactly in line with that character's personality and intended speech pattern (Like the Vincent, the "Happy Birthday" caller and Angela lines).
Lastly on the voice acting thing, when guy said "this isn't about money" didn't literally mean "I didn't ask for money" and comes off that way when you don't take the full quote into account. He was saying it was a matter of principal and Konami had to give some dues for reusing the voice/performance capture. Konami is entirely to blame for not having actual written contracts that would have given them the legal rights to use the voices (otherwise they'd have had no reason to contact them in the first place) and in fact, the original voice actress for Lisa in SH1 won a settlement because they had reused her voice in SH3, so Konami had admitted they were in the wrong for having reused performances in the past. If anyone was blaming Tomm for the legal issues with the voices that's just dumb, though a lot of quotes from Tomm from that time were conflicting or wrong about the order of events such as "old voices was always planned along side new 5.1 surround performances" but I'm not going to speculate my he changed the order of events or insisted Konami had full rights despite the fact the original voice actors had to sign their rights away retroactively.But konami is entirely to blame on that front, the fact they were willing to spend the money to hire a voice director, cast actors and rent a studio and (poorly) master and mix them for the HD collection which is more expense and effort if they had just brought out the rights to the original's actor's performances shows how stubborn they were to admit fault.
Now I don't know if this is addressed in part 2, but there is that quote from the new voice director and new voice of Mary/Maria in SH2HD, Mary Elizabeth Mcglynn, that "Tomm had wrote this new script" that was going to gel better and fix everything but was shot down because of the production work it would have taken to reanimate the characters and scenes to fit new scripts. Maybe this was a lie or mistake on her part but it does cast doubt on some of Tomm's words regarding the HD collection, along with all the issues the new voices had not adapting the character's personalities, speech patterns or meanings behind them.
"Konami is to blame for not having written contracts" is more than addressed in the videos, as well as the extended interview with Jeremy Blaustein. It was a precedent caused by a cultural difference: Japanese society did not treat contracts the same way that America does.
We didn't bring up Thessaly Lerner's (Lisa's) lawsuit because it is an unrelated affair that only seems related because TwinPerfect (and others) acted like it was. She actually WAS legally right, because her voice from Silent Hill 1 was reused in Silent Hill 3. Not a remake or a remaster, a completely new and different game for which she was not compensated. This is why the PC versions of Silent Hill 3 don't have her audio, nor Michael Guinn's line "It's being invaded by the otherworld..." Konami was actually in the wrong there, hence why Lerner got a settlement.
And I feel like people don't understand the gravity of the VO situation. Guy was asking for residuals, which are not a thing in gaming. Folks bring up "Sheesh, why not just write these actors a check and get it over with? That's gotta be the cheaper route than hiring all these new VOs" But, okay, how many checks? For how much? For how many years? For how many actors? For how many games? The Greatest Hits? Xbox versions vs PS2 versions? There are residuals and royalties for movies/tv but not for games, and there is no legal precedent for it. Konami would have to like, create a whole new genre of rules for this scenario because the scenario of being paid residuals for every version of a game is nonexistent. It does not exist. Should it? Probably, actually, yes. But from the perspective of Konami, this thing had a massive potential snowball effect. Would OTHER voice actors from OTHER Konami games come out of the woodwork wanting money for different releases of the same game? How many MILLIONS of dollars would that be if that happened? And how would this effect the entire industry?
tl;dr: Yes, it WAS cheaper to hire new voice talent than to open this legal can of worms!
And in regards to the last point about McGlynn's comments about "a whole new script", we've been told she misspoke. It was a slightly altered script with new line timings that was intended to match the lip-flap of the characters better, but it got mostly scrapped, except for the two line changes in SH3.
Okay thanks for clarifying the McGlynn comments, to be fair I always had some doubts about a lot of what she said regarding SHHDC because she had put conflicting information out there regarding her knowledge of the series, the legal disputes and to me, did a poor job directing the new voices.
Regarding the voice acting contracts, when I say "blame" I probably should say "responsibility" because even if it was a mistake on their part because of the culture at the time, it's still on their heads. It didn't help at the time many of the new voice actors for the HD Collection at one time had claimed "no Konami owns the voices out right they have contracts" instead of Konami just addressing the issue head on.
I don't agree a remake/remaster/port is different from a new game regarding reuse of assets in legal terms. Even with the norms about residuals or royalties and Work-For-Hire contracts, none of that means much when Konami didn't have written legal agreements for that. It has less to do with the medium and more to do with copyright law which doesn't change because of the medium. Should Guy Cihi and the other actors have spoken up sooner regarding the reuse of their performances? Sure but Hindsight is 20-20 and I'm not going to assume to know why they didn't. But I still attest Konami had no intention of righting their wrongs regarding this issue and Tomm's quote about how it went down shows Konami didn't seem to want to negotiate or address the issue. Remember even if the voice actors hadn't signed their rights away, Konami would still would have reused unauthorised performances in the past ports and been liable for that and could have lead to a lawsuit regarding those and still have cost them money in legal battles.
I should clarify I'm not saying Konami should have known to have had contracts this entire time, more so just admit to the mistake and have worked to fix it.
Thanks for replying though, I appreciate you following up on my comment.
"I don't agree a remake/remaster/port is different from a new game regarding reuse of assets in legal terms" I don't agree either, I think there ought to be some sort of compensation similar to movie actors, but that's the situation :( Videogame laws are different, and it's all made more difficult by the fact that this is spanning across the globe, and Japan/America have different laws as well. Reusing Lisa's lines in SH3 is similar to being paid once for an art commission for a shirt (for example), then seeing the design on a poster for a movie. That wasn't what the commission was for, you can't just use that, you need a specific contract that says "We own this design and can use it in perpetuity, forever." Lisa's VO, like Guy's, was a one-time buyout for the game it was deigned originally for, and any ports of the game (Greatest Hits, PC versions, and this extended to the HD Collection) because that was standard practice. If Guy's VO showed up in the Silent Hill movie, you bet he'd be justified to raise hell over it.
"Konami would still would have reused unauthorised performances in the past ports" Legally speaking, they were not unauthorized. If so, every single remaster and remake of every game that used the same VO/mo-cap as the originals would be sued into oblivion.
But basically, it was all a huge unfortunate clusterfuck caused by multiple things, and yeah, Konami didn't know how to handle it cuz they never expected this to happen. And how can they be honest and admit to mistakes when the situation is so hard-to-explain AND they're a proud company that doesn't have a tendency to admit to mistakes anyway? haha
Actually no because typically, as you've said, Companies have buy out contracts or "work for hire" contracts stating the ownership of the work after completion, but for whatever reason, Konami and some other Japanese companies at the time were not in the habit of getting contracts (I believe something like is what lead to the remaster of Onimusha Warlords having a new dub and new cast members in Japanese) and if there isn't a written contract or proof of said contract, the rights always fall to the original creator.
The ports of SH2/3 reused of the actor's performances would only be authorised if there was an original contract either stating Konami owned full rights to the performances in perpetuity, within context of "Silent Hill Games" or even "Versions of Silent Hill 2" to cover ports. But without legal written agreements none of that applies. There's actually probably a large amount of ports of games from the 90s and early 00s that reused actor's performances without contracts allowing them to do so we don't know about that actors never spoke up about maybe for fear of losing a lawsuit trying to fight a massive company or hurt the releases of the games they worked on. Though many factors probably contributed to this, Guy Cihi making noise about the lack of contracts and issues of residuals/royalties I believe helped lead to the 2016-2017 SAG-AFTRA strike where one of the demands was royalties for performances they unfortunately were unable to get in the end (interestingly, both Troy Baker and Mary Elizabeth Mcglynn were a part of despite putting the blame on and attacking Guy for his demands purely on the basis "residuals don't exist" while ignoring the rights issues).
I got pretty in-depth into learning about this subject matter a few years ago when a spat between the devs of Starr Mazer and a composer went public when the composer was claiming they had reused her work without permission because it was used in another release called "Starr Mazer DSP" but in that case, legal written contracts did exist and showed she worked under a "work for hire" contract allowing the dev (Imagos) to use the music in any release as they saw fit. This became a whole thing because she started DMCAing youtube videos and LPs with the OST in to try and blackmail the dev into giving in to her demands and a copyright lawyer had to intervene and get a court order stopping her it was a whole mess, but point is I learnt a lot about copyright laws and contracts, especially in videogames from a Lawyer/TH-camr Leonard French and to my best understanding based on my research into his videos on the topic, without a legal written agreement copyright always defaults to the original author/artist/performer.
Love this so much. Great job!
Ok... Who should I harass then? TELL ME!
#FucKonami
@@damiank9443 #FUCKKONAMI*
@@v1rgnkvlt Ok #FuckServoracc
@@v1rgnkvlt Wait....WAIT NO
@@v1rgnkvlt Lol
Did they really try to convince us that SH had bad voice acting using Vincent and the Happy Birthday Caller as examples? Yikes.
Vincet’s voice acting was bad though....also....yikes???
pbs.twimg.com/media/D0SaS4nX4AA4BUz.jpg
You mean Stanley? 😋
"The goal of this video isn't to reopen old drama, but Guy Cihi is Satan and Tom Huellette is an Angel, too good for this nasty world"
Just realized this response is also many years too late.
The tragedy is that this channel stop uploading, great videos about SH.
15:04
Man these are, for the most part (child actors aside), incredibly well done deliveries. Not everything is meant to sound like a sterile Hollywood performance, or (as we've sadly discovered through Silent Hill HD) an English anime dub.
I don't care for the vitriol thrown at Tomm Hulett, but I also don't care for the way he blatantly lied about the quality of the HD Collection - particularly in SH3 wherein during the developer walkthrough he was saying how it was somehow, ambiguously, "better" despite being able to clearly hear and see how false that was.
I understand you want to do your job and not get fired, but there comes a time where there is a line.
Lying about the product is one of mine.
EDIT: I can provide citations for his distortion of the truth if you'd really, really like.
Versingetrix> I don't care for the way he blatantly lied about the quality of the HD Collection
It was literally his job, he was contractually obligated to promote the game, he _couldn't_ be honest. Look at how some of the _Game of Thrones_ cast tried to defend the last season and got hatred for it (and how some tried to be honest and looked like they were afraid of getting in trouble or cringed when they said it was good).
@@user-vn7ce5ig1z Who cares about what he was "contractually obligated" to do. He lied. That's a scum bag move. He's untrustworthy. There's no excuse to that. Quit making excuses for Tomm.
@@shinbakihanma2749 Well clearly you haven't worked for a big, major company then, bud. It's also how politics work. 👌
If you've never had to lie in order to make your boss look better than they are, you've clearly never had a job that paid well enough you needed it. Lol you've all recently lied to a family member, spouse, or your children to make something shitty sound better than it is. Guess we're all scumbags lol
@@EsjM49 Clearly you've had to work at wherever a bottomfeeder like you could get. Good luck walking around life with shit on your nose😂🤣😆
What? He said he was in charge though he had a statement where he said that as a producer meant he was in charge and nothing went into the game without his final approval. He was even on a podcast where he said that he went into the offices mid production oh homecoming and single handedly changed the course of production. Don’t fall for that back peddle shit
Exactly. Thank you😃
That's the director's job not the producer you ignorant, the producer obeys the director's vision by making it possible but has almost no say in the direction of the project.
Jeremy is a smug company apologist and what they did to the voice actors was predatory
Grate video! Thanks for doing all the legwork to sort this out. BTW, at about 17:30 when you talk about the interview with Micheal G. your on screen graphic credits "Michael Gough" with the quote, not "Micheal Guinn." Wanted to point that out in case it was a mistake.
It definitely is a goof up, whoops! :( Good eye!
TP had outright stated that their issues with Tomm was about his work. If anything I'd more blame fans for blowing it out of proportion. They also outright stated they didn't consider Tomm *the* reason SH went downhill. And the way some of these clips are shown seems to remove some context, like when you said Guy contradicted himself and didn't show him saying what he said after "it wasn't about the money".
As for that clip of TP's SHSM video, would you consider Ross wrong? If they took Silent Hill and changed everything, how is it still SH? It wasn't "They changed it now it sucks", but as an imagining it's devoid of any real connections to the original game outside a few character names.
I have no idea who Tomm Hulett is, but I heard that SGF cameo and was like "Oplood Vidoos!"
This was so damn interesting. Good job you all.
As much a Tomm says he loved Silent Hill 2, he wanted to REWRITE the SCRIPT for the HD collection of Silent Hill 2. Throughout this Tomm wants to throw blame off himself. He needs to share in the travesty he and Konami helped bring about.
Before I saw this video, I had no idea who Tom was. Even though I've followed the Silent Hill series in interest for years, I've only gotten to start playing them recently. In the meantime, all the problems with the later entries in the series described by people seemed to me to just be classic issues with Konami as a whole. I'm sad to see people bandwagoned together to take the easy route and blame a single person, though I'm not surprised it happened. Groupthink is, as always, alive and well on the 'net.
Kurt Yarish Agreed, Games are made by many, many, many people. At the end of the day it’s the publisher that says “ship it!” Even when teams know it’s not ready and wont be.
I was actually scared to watch this video and put it off for a bit because I like and respect Tomm, and worried this was just more vitriol bring directed toward him all over again.
But you guys are better than that. I knew this, and I'm sorry. You are no Twin Perfect.
I agree. They need to work hard to get to TP's level
I wonder how much money Konami has actually LOST on the HD Collection in the end. a true disaster project
So you use some minor comments by Guy, but completely ignore the fact that actors from SH1 settled out of court for the same shit, got paid and that Konami did not use the original SH3 voices because they could not contact the original voice actor for Heather. Konami fucked up big, Guy did nothing wrong.
Hell, you completely failed to mention that Tomm wanted to rewrite the entire script of the re-release. This was confirmed by the NEW actors.
КРАТКОЕ СОДЕРЖАНИЕ:
SH Origins - Хуллет невиновен! Игра была сделана совсем без его участия!
SH Homecoming - Хуллет невиновен! Он был за всё хорошее и против всего плохого, но его мнение никто не слушал! Он сам так сказал!
SH SM - Хуллет невиновен! Просто там кто-то хотел сделать хоррор-игру "Winter", а кто-то хотел сделать спин-офф Сайлента, а руководство Konami хотело сделать ремейк SH1, а кто-то потом смешал это всё в одну причудливую кучу, а продюсер Хуллет просто в сторонке стоял и ничего не мог сделать.
SH Downpour - об этой игре мы тактично умолчим и не расскажем вам о том, как Хуллет и Шацки вдруг решили стать чудо-сценаристами и немножко подзасрали Даунпур своим чудо-сценарием.
SH Collection - Хуллет невиновен! Он хотел исправить все 75 багов в игре, но его никто не послушал! Он сам так сказал! А про озвучку - это вообще всё актёр Гай Сихи виноват! Но ладно уж, не травите там этого Гая слишком сильно...
SH Book of Memories - Хуллет невиновен! Он просто исполнял приказ!!
Из ролика, правда, так и осталось непонятным - а что святой и неуиновный Хуллет сделал хорошего для своей любимой СХ-серии за все эти годы?
Guy is a chill dude, we all have our bad days. I will always be grateful for his acting work and the interviews he did.
Yeah I've finally got around to playing the original and I gotta say, hes definitely my preferred James.
@@OverlordRollo Good lord, yeah. Angela is a teenager but her acting is just bad, James is supposed to be a bit awkward and bashful, Guy nailed it.
@@Turtleproof Yeah exactly! The originals just fit so perfectly for the characters they're playing. Hell when I play the originals, I don't even have a "this character is being voice acted" moment.
@@OverlordRollo Also, big shout out to Jacquelyn Breckenridge, who voiced Laura when she was only 8 years old. It's hard to find good child actors and who else could pull off calling James a fart face then break our hearts in the hotel scene.
@@Turtleproof Yeah she did an impeccable job as Laura and I'm glad they had the gall to actually have a child portrayed by a child back then. Idk why they did what they did to her in the HD Collection because it wasn't just hilariously bad but it was obvious it wasn't a child. So much for realism.
i think TP's criticisms towards the post-4 games were mostly valid but they definitely went too hard meme-bullying tomm.
This video purposefully misses out and doesnt aknowledge that IN HIS OWN WORDS tomm hulett said HE WAS responsible for everything happening to SH. Not a single decision passes without his approval. HE SAID THAT.
He said that because he was THE SPOKESPERSON. He was just doing his job. All of those decisions were made by Konami. OF COURSE HE WAS THE PR WTF IS HE GONNA DO????
@@mikehasabike
He still said it you moron
@@deeta000 He's doing his job you dipshit. If you want to throw insults then I'm fine with it.
@UC2Z6LjPygKV17B8Z8CI7Kjg You are a moron for trying to defend Tomm for his obvious lies, though🤣
Waney! A silent hill related series in 2019! I love this community.
Don't shoot the messenger applies here quite strongly. Regardless of what he did and didn't, it was the company that made the calls in the end since they're sitting on the money. Hope the pachinkos are doing well.
I compliment the effort in making this video..as well as part 2. You didn`t have to, but you did it anyway...so....Well done.
Tomm Hullet doesn't squarely deserve the blame and never has deserved to squarely receive the blame but he still should take responsibility for his part in it.
is that hbomberguy i hear
um.. if tom wanted the old voices from the beggining.. WHY THE HELL HE WROTE A NEW SCRIPT?! in an interview with mary elizabeth she said that tom made a whole new script but KONAMI said no, and tom said that the old voices were weird and bad and with the new voices his halo friends will play SH, and why sh3 has only new voices?
It all started with Silent Hill Origins. Tom was the one who finished it
How someone that thinks the original voice acting from games that are almost 20 years old is bad can call themselfs fans of the series?
It is bad, it is objectively bad, if you were to make someone who has never heard of silent hill before listen to those voice lines, they would tell you that it is bad voice acting. What you seem to have forgotten is that the reason you like the voice acting is because it's bad, which adds to the weird other-worldly feel of the games, if the games had good voice acting then they would not feel as eerie, get off your high horse, being able to criticize something you enjoy is what makes you a fan, blindly thinking everything is perfect is what makes you a fanboy
apparently to be a fan is to not bad-mouth anything about the game, even if it's objectively bad.
It’s intentionally supposed to be bad...but it is still bad...but it shouldn’t be changed either as it fits aesthetically with the game.
_I hear you, hbomb._
I thought I was watching a Twin Perfect video from the introduction haha!
As far as I'm concerned, Tomm Hulett is a god damn hero for keeping Konami's bad ideas on a leash
My goodness, Twin Perfect pricks are really more annoying than Konami. They seriously need to apologize to Tomm Hulett. He tried to bring Silent Hill to a newer audience, but was dealt a miserable hand to work with, and the Twin Perfect pricks did the work for Konami in making Hulett the scapegoat. Way to go, Twin Perfect, you're the reason why I find most Silent Hill fans so annoying and insufferable.
I agree. I watched their stuff ages ago, thinknig they were scarily close to the basement nerd stereotypes with their nasty snark but with some good points in their arguments. After I listened to an interview with Tom I feel like even their good arguments are not worth it, they really did give Silent Hill a bad rap.
It was that Cane and Rinse interview that was done after PT was out (but before Silent Hills was cancelled I think), and he seemed to be a genuine fan. He was excited to have Kojima do a Silent Hill but was like "oh no, now my games will definately be seen as the worst in the series, there is no way a Kojima game could be worse than us!" I thought that was funny and I totally would have felt the same way.
He was honest about his feelings towards Pyramid head (he said his advice was no pyramid head in Homecoming but he was overruled), and about Silent hill games he pitched, the ones Konami liked, and the trouble with the HD release - how one of the other staff worked hard to get the original VO actors to sign off on SH2 VO being ingame - since a poorly worded letter from Konami had them all say *nope* originally. It was sad to hear they couldn't track down the Voice Actor for Heather for SH3 VO stuff.
Tom should sue for libel
The problem with the HD Collection wasn't the voices, it did slightly suck though about that, but instead the crappy older version they used for it since, apparently, Konami couldn't find the released version on their end.
About time
I understand Tomm got put into a bad situation,b ut look at the MGS remasters. Those were apparently done well, not a MGS guy so I can't say for sure. But Tom decided to rewrite the script to SH2 because he thinks he knows how that game should go. He is also the guy who boasted that he's the walking talking SH bible. Based on the games we got he proved he didn't understand the series, nor did anyone else post SH3.
I used to like Twin Perfect's videos (wouldn't call myself a fan, but I enjoyed some of their videos) but even then I thought their Tomm-bashing was over the top. I agreed some of the creative decisions going on with SH weren't my cup of tea but I didn't think that was any reason to attack Tomm as a person. After more things with TP started coming out (shady behind the scenes stuff, all the stuff with Fungo's girlfriend, etc) I started seeing them for what was really going on. The SH fandom is very toxic at times and they sadly exemplified much of that.
Wait, what happened with Fungo’s girlfriend?
@@BugVlogs Long story short, Rosseter fell for Fungo's girlfriend, and tried several shady tactics to try to convince her to leave Fungo and be with him.
@@Kintsugi23 Yikes
@@Kintsugi23 LMAO that toxic rumor of Fungo's girlfriend, one more misconception on the table, what's next? that the circumsicion theory of sh wikia was true and that is what SH4 is about?
@@AvithOrtega Enlighten us.
I didn't even know blaming this guy was a thing, I always blamed Konami... Huh.
While I think this is a pretty good video and adds much needed nuance and rightly calls out the inexcusable harassment and unfair treatment of Tomm Hulett, I really can't agree with your assessment of the voice acting situation, for several reasons:
1. The quotes by Jeremy Blaustein you yourself showed in this video prove that Guy Cihi did indeed 100% have a legal right to additional compensation. You can argue all you want about how "residuals aren't a thing in video games" or "voice acting contracts simply aren't made that way," but all this shows is that you don't understand how copyright law works in the vast majority of countries all around the world. Blaustein literally said they did not have written agreements of any kind. It is a very basic principle of copyright law in essentially every country that unless you *explicitly* sign away your rights to your intellectual property, you fully retain those rights. If Konami didn't make Cihi sign a contract that explicitly said he renounced ownership of the voice work, then Konami had no right to use those voices in any way, shape or form without asking for Cihi's explicit approval each and every time. This is how copyright law works. Ask a lawyer.
2. You are taking many of Cihi's words out of context, which is ironic considering the purpose of this video. If you read the full open letter Cihi posted to Facebook, as well as interviews with other voice actors working on Silent Hill, you'll notice that many of these actors were not at all satisfied with how Konami treated them, did not feel they were compensated fairly and one voice actress even felt downright exploited. This should not be hard to believe: we have multiple statements made by the actual people involved in the games confirming their poor relationship with Konami and their sense of being exploited or underpaid, and we also know Konami is an all-round shitty company to work for.
I think it's totally plausible that Konami essentially ripped the voice actors off, using the lack of any written agreement to their advantage to drive down wages. Voice actors are, labor-wise, already in an incredibly precarious position generally even when they do have contracts, so this really isn't all that far-fetched to me. All video game companies probably do this sort of thing on a daily basis. So what I think happened is that Guy Cihi just had enough of Konami's bullshit and finally wanted to see some real money for the real work that he did and that Konami continued to profit off of. I really can't blame Cihi for that at all. In fact, I admire and respect him for it, and I think it's in poor taste to criticize Cihi on that basis. People deserve to get paid for the work that they do, and Konami (all companies in fact) must respect the legal rights of the people that work for them, even if that means your precious video game might get delayed or canceled. Labor rights are infinitely more important than some shitty HD remaster.
An additional piece of evidence that Cihi was in the (legal) right here: the fact that this dispute happened at all. If Cihi had no legal basis for what he was doing, Konami could (and absolutely would) have ignored him and just used his voice without asking for permission. But they didn't, because they couldn't. Because Cihi was right.
@@malkutahk Thank you for this comment, it's baffling to me to act like or imply Guy Cihi was in the wrong or misguided because the treatment of him and other SH voice actors is very clearly unethical. If you're going to continually make money off of the use of someone's work, then they deserve to be compensated.
But you're right that it's also worth saying that Guy was right from a legal perspective as well, not just a moral one. You can't just go "it was understood that it was a buyout" - that's not how employment works. If there isn't a written contract, something being "understood" is legally meaningless.
best comment here. The video stupefies a complicated issue into a very one-sided and manipulative direction.
Ahh this channel had so much potential along with silent hills....
I'm midway through your video, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly, but I think it's very unfair how you characterize the voice acting in the original games. I'm a big fan of the games and media and in general, and for what my opinion is worth (which is *very* little), I think the voice acting is excellent. A lot of the examples you use (and I realize you're trying to inject some levity) are taken completely out of context and the performances that the original actors gave are very much justified by that context. If this video is about being fair to the creators, I don't think that depiction was
I'm glad my homeboy aneternalenigma made it to this video.
Oh my god. You took the scenes out of context to make the original voice acting seem bad. Wow.
Tomm should have quit and let the frashice die at the hands of others.
Yeah Tomm loved SH so much he hated all story lines with cults, aka all but 2, and wanted to REWRITE the script of SH2.
It's like adopting a child and forcing it into getting several cosmetic surgeries an changing their behavior. True love.
TP's painting analogy is perfect. No one can improve the Mona Lisa. That;s inherently impossible. No on can improve SH2. It was made by a specific group of people at a specific time. And its a product of that circumstance. All changes would be a farce.
Goof job repeating things that didn't happen
@@Feasco Since TP quoted and referenced the sources for all that stuff it will be easy to give you the exact source.
Which one do you need?
Wanting to rewrite the script for the rerecording or that he dislikes all cult plot lines in SH?
Compared to how big corporates ruins things, like how Konami ruins things now, He improved things.