Three Days In Tokyo With The Creators Of Silent Hill, Siren, And Slitterhead
I'm two floors below ground, surrounded by screaming drunks and breathing in enough secondhand smoke to take at least a decade off my life. I'm here with Keiichiro Toyama, most well-known for creating the Silent Hill series, but also the creator of the Siren and Gravity Rush series, and most recently, the founder of Bokeh Game Studio, making the upcoming Slitterhead.
A cramped, old, smoky bar in a shopping mall deep beneath a Yokohama train station might not immediately appear conducive to game development, but things are starting to click in my head. Mixed with pounds of nicotine, the air in the bar is communal and light. It's also distinct compared to the more modern, formulaic streets immediately above our heads. In an hour or two, we'll walk a few blocks over and hit the nightlife and drinking alleys. Tucked within the immensely larger Tokyo surrounding them, these areas have their own distinct senses of space, much like the worlds of Toyama's games. He's been living in Yokohama for decades, he tells me. Something like Gravity Rush – with its unforgettable, topsy-turvy, boozy, and somewhat seedy world – makes a lot more sense to me now.
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