Has it really been seven years since P.T. was striking fear into PlayStation 4 owners everywhere? The teaser demo for what turned out to be the next Silent Hill game was a modern phenomenon. A demo that was also an announcement of the next game in a beloved franchise, and it had Hideo Kojima collaborating with Guillermo del Toro working on it? This was going to be a monumental game that completely changed the franchise.
Unfortunately, we all know what happened after that. Kojima and the owners of the Silent Hill IP, Konami, had a rather public falling out. The new game was canceled and P.T. was pulled from the PlayStation store, never to return. After Kojima left the company, Konami showed less of an interest in making video games and it seemed like the Silent Hill franchise was dead for good.
All of that was in 2014 and as time has gone on some of those old feelings have cooled down. Konami isn’t all the way back into video games, but they’re not as opposed to them as they once were, and new hope has begun to form in the Silent Hill fanbase that one day the franchise will return. This hope has been fueled by rumors that Konami is interested in selling the rights to develop some of their most well-known IPs such as Metal Gear Solid and, yes, Silent Hill.
Adding to the bread crumb of rumors is the announcement that Konami and Polish developer Bloober Team are forming a partnership together. The assumption is that Bloober Team will be making a horror game for them, and it just so happens that Konami has one that’s been dormant for quite some time.
It is a historic day for me and the culmination of several years of our work. The fact that such a renowned company as KONAMI has decided to strategically cooperate with the Bloober Team means that we also joined the world leaders in gaming and became an equal partner for the leading players in this market. – comments Piotr Babieno, president of the Bloober Team.
Bloober Team’s previously developed titles, The Medium, Observer, and Layers of Fear were all Psychological Horror games, so a Silent Hill like horror game is clearly in their wheelhouse of games they can make. However, does that mean this newest game is going to be a Silent Hill game? Fans of the franchise certainly hope so. Their love for it is so strong that they recently tried to talk themselves into a conspiracy theory that Hideo Kojima was using viral marketing to secretly develop a new Silent Hill game for a studio called Blue Box Game Studios. In reality, they’re making a game called Abandoned and had to shoot those rumors down multiple times until everyone accepted it.
This idolization of a single franchise from the outside can sound a little absurd, and to be honest, it is, but that absurdity comes from a fanbase that just wants to see a revival of what some argue are the best horror games ever made. Before P.T. came out the bigger question about Silent Hill was if they were going to consistently make good games ever again. Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Downpour were despised by fans, while Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was a welcome surprise. Silent Hill: Origins was disliked, but not as much as Downpour, and Silent Hill 4: The Room was just disappointing. So, after the first three games, which are all considered great horror games, there is a single game that is considered well done. The rest were okay at best and despised at worst. So to have P.T. be a game that not only struck the same kind of fear everyone felt when playing those original three games but also be a new game in the franchise, only to have that taken away from them, it felt like fans were robbed of something great.
That is where the source of this major desire to have a new Silent Hill game comes from. They just want to see a franchise that was so close to being relevant again actually get the return it deserves. Until they get that they’re going to continue chasing every single rumor they can find. Every bread crumb is a new one in the hope that Silent Hill comes back. On the positive side, it really does feel like a new game is in the works somewhere. The town of Silent Hill will call us back eventually. We just need to wait a little longer.