San Francisco Sightseeing Articles

San Bruno, CA was the initial design inspiration for the downtown portion of Silent Hill 2. Known in the development as Old Neely Street, early development screenshots of the fog-laden Silent Hill show a number of storefronts that borrow liberally from actual shops in San Bruno (see comparison slideshow).

Considering that the town is adjacent to the San Francisco Shuttle International Airport, the use of San Bruno makes sense. This would be the first town Konami developers from Japan would come across if they were in the country to vist Konami's American offices (at the time, they were located in Redwood City). More importantly, San Bruno has been known to attract the occasional fog, though not as much as San Francisco Tour 10 miles north.

It is also understandable that these designs would not make the retail version. Team Silent probably did not want to trouble Konami's legal department in discussing image appropriation with San Bruno's city council. There were also rumors that the building details and the polygonal count was too high for the PlayStation 2.