You might remember last year when one of the biggest upsets in video game history occurred with a beloved survival horror franchise. When the announcement for the revival of the Silent Hill series came about, with the title Silent Hills, the fans were ecstatic. Even I was in awe and couldn’t believe it. But due to a nasty break-up with Konami and many other factors, Silent Hills was cancelled, ripped from our arms as quickly as we had embraced it. And now, months after the ordeal and after enduring some pretty public disdain from Konami, Hideo Kojima speaks out about Silent Hills.
In an interview with Polygon, Kojima goes on to describe the shift in survival horror game development after the release of P.T. He says,
After P.T. there were similar games that were released or were developed. Personally, I don’t want to do something that is in the same tone, I would prefer to do something that takes a different approach and a different perspective to it.
That quote was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for the death of the Silent Hills project between Kojima, actor Norman Reedus and director Guillermo Del Toro, shutting down any rumors or speculation that the three might be getting back together to continue the project.
When asked about Silent Hills directly, Kojima gave a stern prediction for the future of the title, but when it comes to working on horror, he isn’t too afraid to explore the genre.
Silent Hills, I don’t think that will ever happen. I would definitely like to explore horror and by horror I don’t mean horror as a genre, but more like the feeling of terror as a theme, as a topic and this is one aspect that gets really close to interactivity of scariness so that is something I would be interested in exploring in the future.
So Silent Hill fans, there you have it. Hopefully that will clear up any misconstrued speculations about the future of Silent Hills. And while Silent Hills is dead, that doesn’t necessarily mean another title can’t happen again in the future. But now that Kojima is gone and with Konami trying to focus on mobile gaming, I can’t really see another Konami revival happening any time soon. And don’t be discouraged by the huge flop of a game that Silent Hill Downpour was. Someone out there has a true vision for a new Silent Hill game, but all we can do is wait.
