Screenshot: Bloober Team / Konami / Kotaku
Earlier this 12 months, the web was awash in rumors, studies, screenshots, and obscure Instagram posts pointing to a brand new upcoming Silent Hill recreation. Maybe even a number of video games, together with a remake of Silent Hill 2. Now Konami has lastly made the information official, together with that the Silent Hill 2 remake might be helmed by the Polish devs at Bloober Team. The studio had tried to tip-toe across the hypothesis, however that didn’t cease some gamers from freaking out about what the beloved PS2 basic would possibly find yourself like within the palms of the workforce that made 2020’s The Medium. Today’s affirmation has solely reignited the talk about whether or not Bloober is as much as the seemingly inconceivable job of profitable over Silent Hill 2’s cult following whereas modernizing the 20-year previous horror recreation.
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It’s been a decade now for the reason that final new mainline entry in Konami’s Silent Hill collection. 2014’s P.T., the Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro demo for the canceled Silent Hills recreation, is the final significant window anybody’s gotten into that horrorverse, and like diehards of different gaming franchises, Silent Hill followers have been determined for information of a revival. That dynamic was a key driver of final 12 months’s obsession with believing {that a} mismanaged indie venture known as Abandoned was secretly Kojima’s subsequent stab on the collection.
The rumor mill was up and working once more this 12 months as effectively. Here’s a fast rundown of the the place the Silent Hill reboot rumors began and the place they ended up:
July 6, 2020: Leaker Dusk Golem says a brand new Silent Hill is within the works at a Japanese developer. February 10, 2021: YouTuber TheGrateDebate lays out dozens of developer tweets and studies to make the case that Bloober Team may very well be engaged on a brand new Silent Hill. February 18, 2021: Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno tells Gamesindustry.biz it’s “been working for more than a year on another gaming project, another horror IP, and we’re doing this with a very famous gaming publisher.” February 18, 2021: VGC studies {that a} Japanese developer is engaged on a Silent Hill venture, however that Konami additionally shopped round licensing initiatives out to different studios. June 30, 2021: Bloober Team and Konami announce a strategic partnership to make video games collectively. October 1, 2021: VGC studies Konami is reviving its basic collection, together with Metal Gear, Castlevania, and Silent Hill.March 14, 2022: Reddit consumer spots new trademark from Konami for the collection. May 12, 2022: Dusk Golem shares pictures allegedly leaked from a 2020 model of a brand new Silent Hill and claims they had been later copyright striked by Konami. May 15, 2022: Podcaster and leaker NateTheHate tweets that a number of Silent Hill initiatives are in growth together with a brand new mainline entry, facet tales, and a Silent Hill 2 remake by Bloober Team that may be a timed unique for PlayStation. May 15, 202: VentureBeat reporter Jeff Grubb says his sources corroborate NateTheHate’s tweet, including {that a} reveal was initially deliberate for E3 2021 however later scrapped. According to Eurogamer’s Vikki Blake Bloober Team is certainly engaged on one thing Silent Hill associated.May 16, 2022: VGC studies that along with a remake, new mainline recreation, and episodic tales, in response to its sources the pictures leaked by Dusk Golem had been from a P.T.-style teaser codenamed “Sakura.”October 16, 2022: Konami broke its silence and introduced a mysterious Silent Hill showcase. October 19, 2022: Four Silent Hill video games are revealed to be in growth, alongside a brand new Silent Hill film, with Bloober Team making the remake. Advertisement
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Given the overwhelming proof even earlier this 12 months that Bloober Team, whose latest psychological horror video games embody Layers of Fear, Observer, and Blair Witch, was engaged on a Silent Hill, IGN requested the studio on the time concerning the rumors on the Polish video games convention Digital Dragons earlier this week.
“We can’t comment on anything we are doing because we appreciate our relationship with our partners, of course,” Babieno mentioned. “So we can’t [say] anything. We will make an announcement about our future projects as soon as we can. So then you will know much more.”
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To make this non-denial even weirder, IGN reported that Babieno went onto chuckle whereas including “officially,” implying the rumors already on the market weren’t utterly bunk. He continued, “I would say that it’s hard to work with someone who [owns an IP you’re working on], but we are always talking with those licensors, [saying] ‘Guys we would like to use your license, but we would like to tell our own story.’”
Now that we all know the rumor was true, it go away’s Bloober with the unenviable job of remaking a basic regardless of its noticed document of success within the horror style. Any departure from the spirit and vibe of the early Silent Hill video games is precisely what followers are afraid of, and why Bloober’s potential involvement invited a mini-backlash earlier this 12 months and once more following the showcase.
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“This horror game is not very spooky, but sometimes very boring,” Zack Zwiezen wrote in Kotaku’s assessment of The Medium. Bloober’s video games have sometimes been criticized for struggling to construct stress and falling into cliche. “bloober team remaking silent hill 2 is like a student in math class who failed every exam suddenly became the teacher,” podcaster Bobsvids tweeted in May. “The phrase ‘Bloober Team Silent Hill 2 remake’ evokes the same feelings that ‘Quantic Dream Star Wars’ does,” learn one other tweet that gained traction on the time.
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Some individuals’s disappointment with Bloober’s strategy to horror was summed up in a clip of YouTuber Jerma taking part in Layers of Fear and breaking down cackling as a ghost youngster slams right into a wall and falls over. The recreation got here out only a 12 months after Bloober launched the Bomberman-inspired Basement Crawl, one of many worst-rated PS4 video games on the time, and marked the studio’s polarizing flip towards first-person horror. Some have discovered it refreshing. Others have discovered it extraordinarily meh.
It was adopted up by 2017’s cyberpunk-themed Observer which was genuinely glorious and extra extensively praised, however would find yourself proving the exception quite than the rule. While there are those that cherished The Medium, Bloober’s most up-to-date string of initiatives has left others feeling like its expertise has been stifled by an over-reliance on worn out psychological tropes and tacky soar scares. An ideal recipe, in different phrases, to utterly bungle Silent Hill 2’s return.
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Here had been a few of the reactions instantly following immediately’s official announcement:
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Of course, no psychological horror recreation may very well be larger than the one followers are taking part in with themselves as they pour over comparability pictures pixel by pixel whereas ready for the sport to lastly come out.
Update 10/19/22 5:40 p.m. ET: A model of this story initially ran on May 19, 2022. It’s been up to date immediately following Konami’s Silent Hill showcase.