Silent Hills has become somewhat of a myth as time has gone on. A playable teaser, P.T., was released, which came with a hidden video at the end that showed a brief snippet of Norman Reedus walking out into what is assumed to be the titular town of Silent Hill. To be directed by Hideo Kojima, the game instantly shot up many wishlists. It would have seen involvement by two big names, one being film director Guillermo del Toro (who is working with Kojima now on Death Stranding and was pretty vocal about his feelings on Silent Hills’ cancellation), with the other being Junji Ito, legendary horror manga writer known for his short-form “body horror” stories that are noted for their gruesome and unsettling imagery.
It was never clear what role Ito would have or how he was involved. As you can see from the tweets below, Ito spoke at the Toronto Comics Art Festival and detailed the casual way he was invited to the project by Kojima, how he didn’t even hear about the cancellation from Kojima or Konami but through other sources, and he hadn’t committed a single sketch for the project till that time (thanks to Twitter user @MinovskyArticle for transcribing the talk).
Maybe the most interesting aspect is it shows how little Silent Hills as a project actually seemed to exist. It’s never been clear exactly how much development had went into the game beyond P.T., but when you consider the guy who was meant to be leading the monster design didn’t submit a single sketch or idea, it seems to imply that very little work was actually done- if any.
Kojima is now currently working on Death Stranding with Sony, a game that also seems to barely exist since we’ve gotten nothing but vague teasers for years. Perhaps Junji Ito will get to work on a video game someday and unleash nightmares on us all (if you aren’t familiar with his work, brace yourself before you search for some, because it is some horrifying stuff). Either way, it looks like Silent Hills is destined to be nothing more than a myth lost to time.