The Silent Hill franchise is one of those key series in the history of gaming. While not the first survival horror title by any means, it’s mix of psychological themes with dreary environments remain influential on the genre and also still held in high regard, especially the second game for its subtle and disturbing storytelling. Much like every other Konami property, Silent Hill has been dormant for years, with the last game being Silent Hill Downpour all the way back in 2012. There have been a lot of rumors of the publisher looking to revive the series, and do I mean a lot, but ahead of any of that, one of the original voices mulls over what difficulties a modern Silent Hill would face.
In an interview with VGC, Keiichiro Toyama, who served as the Director on the first game and is one of the original Creators, was asked about a potential remake of one of the titles since Capcom has seen massive success with their recent Resident Evil remakes. Toyama, however, said he felt it would be a much harder task, saying it was easier to reimagine action games. He said for a horror title like Silent Hill, you would have to do a lot more rethinking of the concept.
“It’s not an action game where you can just refine the action as in Biohazard [Resident Evil]. To bring Silent Hill up to current standards or to polish up the graphics, the fans wouldn’t be satisfied. That’s not what it was about – how beautiful it was. I think you’d have to rethink the concept to make it interesting to fans.”
Toyama’s new studio, Bokeh Game Studio, recently revealed their debut title, Slitterhead, which certainly seems to take some similar cues from Silent Hill, as well as other games the artist and his team has been involved in like the Siren series. Whether we’ll see this mystical Silent Hill game that has been rumored for what feels like 20 years remains to be seen, but it’ll be interesting to see what that looks like if should exist.