R07 said that the names of the cast in SHf were recycled from Umineko. Specifically, they were the names of Jessica's friends in Umineko EP2; Hinako, Rinko & Sakuko (who themselves are references to Higurashi, Hanyuu, Rika and Satoko).
He says he wrote a lot more various "notes" than were actually implemented in the game. I'd want to read those.
During the planning stage, there were a lot more areas to explore, they conceptualized an abandoned mine underneath the town, a bath house, and being able to wander old shops around town each with their own sort of color palettes. The only area to survive this stage was the school.
Sakuko's death in the early game was going to be the Wedding Day Hinako monster grabbing her head and crushing it like she does to her parents in the latter parts of the story, but they didn't want to show the monster too early.
During the first chase sequence where Hinako runs into a dead end, R07 wanted a button prompt on the door that would say something like "Open" but it not actually doing anything to make the player panic until the ladder from the big sister comes down and Hinako escapes onto the roof. Reminds me of the gimmick of the storage room in the hospital of SH3.
The Hinako's uniforms were bought and distressed physically and then scanned into the game.
Hinako's hair was a big topic of debate between the Japanese team and NeoBards. The Japanese team wanted a bob cut for Hinako and NeoBards wanted a ponytail because it would be less intensive on the engine and would serve Hinako's personality as a tomboy. R07 requested the bob and so they went with that.
Konami recorded many of the ambient loops in the places the game recreates from the real-life town SHf is based on.
One of the hosts says something like "I guess when Hinako's friends die they come back as monsters." Referring to Sakuko's death earlier and then the introduction of the first enemy. R07 says "No Comment."
Many of the routes you take in the game had no input from the scenario writers, and they were surprised at how the level-design team at NeoBards did things. Like, the key hidden behind the torn monster's face in one of the houses wasn't scripted. There were times where R07 would request specific things or request sequences be a certain way, but doesn't elaborate on a specific example.
During conception, the main theme was going to be Hinako choosing either the childhood best friend to marry or the fox man, instead of being able to choose whether Hinako even wants to get married. One of the main contributing factors for this narrowing in scope was that R07 didn't feel like the game could spend enough time on each love interest for the player to feel like both characters were developed deeply enough. If he could have had the time to rewrite the scenario, he would have spent more time developing Shu because by the time the game begins Shu is already in an altered state from his "everyday" self, so the player doesn't get to bond with Shu like Hinako did. One of the hosts says she would have liked to have a more heartwarming end to Schu's ending, R07 says he would have too but making any change to a 3D action game requires the cooperation of many people and a lot of money.
(imo, Shu's ending in the final product was Hinako choosing to regress, to run away from the changes that come inherently with growing up.)
R07 says that both the light and heavy attacks have the same DPS but the heavy attacks contribute to the stun buildup and light attacks don't. In easy mode, they made light attacks also contribute to the stun buildup so you can forget about heavy attacks and just swing whatever you have around. R07 is actually really knowledgeable about the combat mechanics but I don't know if that's just cause he's a nerd about game systems or if he had any input on them during development.
R07 comments on how the first Silent Hill game set in Japan didn't have a natively Japanese development. He says this during the Sakuko "burial?" scene where he comments that NeoBards didn't really know the "feeling" of a Japanese candy shop on conception but they did a good job researching things and making the game feel authentic. He says that it's a huge relief to have a trustworthy partner in development so he can focus 100% on his side of the work without micromanaging every detail.
R07 says that one of the first things he discussed with Konami was how he didn't want to make a Silent Hill with a Japanese texture, but instead make a Silent Hill whose story required the Japanese setting. He didn't want SHf to feel like it could be transplanted into Western town without issue. He says that what would be called a monster in America would be a Yokai in Japan, and Yokai come with very expansive history and cultural ties. He compares this to the regular zombie enemy in Resident Evil, what started out as a very basic monster becomes slightly different and more lore-intensive with every iteration. (I think he's referring to how the RE creatures became Las Plagas and then Ouroboros and then the Mold in RE7). This also ties into the various Gods present in the Ebisugoaka, how each God is replaced by the new one (The water dragon with the tree and then the fox, I suppose.) and each forgotten deity becomes resentful and then manifests as a different monster.
During testing in the first Shrine-world area, after finishing the tribute puzzle, the blind monsters would swarm into the shrine interior and the player would have to ring bells scattered throughout the room and scare them away. There would have been lore explaining that the bells signified the start of the monster's torture when they were alive so they would scurry away in fear at the sound of the bell. He guesses the mechanic wasn't intuitive to players so it was scrapped.
Fans started calling fox-man "Melo-san", which was a new term for R07. It's shorthand for "melodramatic".
R07 wanted Shu and fox-man to be CPU teammates like Maria and Eileen, they each would have their own unique behaviors and it would allow the player to gauge the reliability of each potential partner. R07 had to hastily rewrite the scenario when told that they wouldn't be able to implement that feature. It's the main reason why the game is mostly allegorical for Hinako's mind. Coincidently, it reinforced some social norms present in the Showa-era, where men usually walked ahead of the women, so the fox-man is always way ahead of Hinako when escorting her throughout the shrine. It also tied into how although Shu leads the way with a baseball bat in the mid-point of the game, when it's time to actually face the monsters he's nowhere to be found. He found it reinforced the idea that although Hinako wants them to fight together, she can only rely on herself when it matters most.
He confirms that although the easy-mode difficulty was something that they had in mind since conception, it wasn't until the Hinako actress started streaming that they implemented it.
Katoyuki (fox-man) has two step-sisters from his father's (Hidetoshi)'s arranged marriage. They are not named, just that they were almost killed by Katoyuki's mom's (Sachie) curse on the Tsuneki family [Physician's note in SHf]. R07 wanders what an Umineko styled Tsuneki family gathering might be like considering Katoyuki basically stole their brother's spot as heir to the Tsuneki family.
[I actually had to do a little bit of research into this comment because I couldn't decipher what exactly R07 was saying. At first I thought he meant that one of the sisters literally shows up at the Umineko family gathering but he was just speculating about the drama that might unfold at a Tsuneki family gathering.]
During testing, the stone key Hinako uses to open the gate at the shrine after solving the rotating lock puzzle would have been used as her actual weapon in that area.
R07 says that there was an interview where a mistranslation stated that he was afraid of women. He wanted to make it clear that he is *not* afraid of women. And that there are aspects to being a woman that he will simply never understand to the same degree as someone who has that lived experience so when he expressed that, it was translated as him being "afraid of" or "terrified by" women. He says that men and women are fascinating because they can never truly understand each other. He says he's seen reviews from overseas that state that SHf is anti-marriage and he states that wasn't his intention and its such a mischaracterization of the story that it makes him wonder if it was a problem with localization or if the reviewer never actually played the game. He wonders if the story he wanted to tell is inherently incompatible with translation. He says it's not about being strong or weak (in relation to gender) but about knowing that there's unknowns and respecting that. In the end all he can do is have faith that translators will be able to properly convey the story he wrote.
He says that since Higurashi and Umineko have been translated and are being read overseas, he worries the story is not being conveyed properly and it might lead to misunderstandings.
He says that there's a notion overseas that perceives arranged marriages as a violation of human rights and in the modern standards of consent are concerned that aspect is correct. However, practically, there were times where a parent's guidance on if marriage into a family is useful and personally, he would be more afraid of entering a marriage of love over an arranged marriage because of the uncertainty of the values the other person's family holds. When two people marry for love there's no knowing the kind of family you're marrying into.
He references Eva from Umineko, who says that marriage isn't something just happens after you become good friends, there's a lot of logistics involved, especially when finances are concerned. He thinks that a man and a woman can fall in love and get married or get married and then fall in love. So in the story of SHf, arranged marriage is portrayed in such a grotesque way because Hinako herself is scared of the concept and R07 is simply trying to convey that the system was "normal" at the time. So don't misunderstand Hinako running away from marriage as R07 wanting to convey an anti-marriage message.
That being said, Hinako herself doesn't hold any negativity towards the marriage itself, just the suddenness of the proposal and how fast things are progressing without allowing her the time process it. Hinako has a very stubborn personality so it's hard for her to change course once she's already decided something, even if she knows it's the "wrong" thing to do. She's very like her father in that way.
R07 shares a personal anecdote where he got bopped on the head by a stranger cause he was running through a rice field as a shortcut. He was upset about it as a kid but when recalling the memory he figures it's reasonable not to want random kids running around your property.
R07 says that Silent Hill at its core is about the psychological world depicted from the protagonist's subjective point of view, so if Hinako's perception is distorted then so is the world around her.
Hinako's father is always angry because Hinako herself is always picking fights with him.
R07 says that he wanted the doll enemies to have a variety of weapons. The tools that represent housewives, things like sewing needles and kitchen tools, that idea didn't end up in the final product but they did manage to implement giving the dolls different hairstyles.
The investigator searching for the shrines in the second playthrough has an entry in the journal where he's looking away from the camera and holding a map, according to R07, iss him or his likeness. He was also going to be the principal in the school but R07 said that was so obviously him it broke his immersion so it's one of the NeoBard directors instead.
R07 is a gamer and will rage at his teammates when playing games. Notably CoD and Black Ops although it's been years since he last did so.
In the scene where Rinko pushes Hinako down the stairs, R07 planned to have Rinko already killed by a monster and the camera would reveal that the Rinko at the house was some sort of angler-fish antennae monster.
