10 Video Game Remasters That REMOVED Things Fans Loved

6. Removing The Fog - Silent Hill HD Collection

Silent Hill 2
Konami

When it comes to remastering games, one of the biggest mistakes developers make is thinking that just because they can, they should. In the case of the Silent Hill HD remasters, that mentality resulted in the team removing most of the fog effects present in the original games in favour of a cleaner look.

Now, a little bit of background. With the early titles in the franchise, fog was utilised not only as an artistic flourish to give the town of Silent Hill a creepier, more surreal atmosphere, but to mask the limitations of the hardware. With these being highly-detailed and fully-rendered 3D worlds, having fog heavily obscure most of the screen allowed the developers to hide loads in the environment and texture pop-in to create a more immersive world.

With the jump to the PS3 and Xbox 360 era though, that limitation was no longer an issue. As such, the devs of the remasters removed this fog and rendered more of the environment, giving you a larger look at the levels but in doing so removing a key part of the atmosphere.

Looking at the two side by side, it's clear which approach is more effective, as without the fog, the Silent Hill remasters quite literally showed all its flaws in the cold light of day.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.