Despite rumors of multiple Silent Hill games in development, we’re yet to get an official announcement. That doesn’t stop a potential remake being a popular topic of conversation, though. In an interview with VGC, Silent Hill director Keiichiro Toyama said that if a new game was released in the future, he would be “very interested in it”, especially in seeing in which direction the franchise would head. In the meantime, the newly-anounced Slitterhead is Toyama’s newest creation but is yet to enter full production.
One of the things about a new Silent Hill game that would most interest Toyama would be “to know what a new entry would leave and change from the original”. There are reportedly multiple Silent Hill games in development right now after Konami outsourced the franchise to “various external development studios”. One is supposed to be a “major Japanese developer”, while Bloober Team confirmed they’re working with Konami on a horror IP. The Silent Hill games, as well as new iterations of the Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid franchises are expected to be revealed during 2022.
Toyama also explained how it would be difficult to remake the original Silent Hill game and meet the expectations of fans, something that Capcom has largely managed to do with the Resident Evil (Biohazard) remakes:
I think it would be harder to remake than Biohazard, because the gameplay as a concept is a little older. It’s not an action game where you can just refine the action as in Biohazard, 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.
Unlike movies, games are difficult to enjoy as in the original state – obviously because of the platform, but as time goes by game mechanics especially in usability lack rationality and sophistication. Visually speaking it’s clearly not made for modern equipment, so I absolutely don’t have any objection to modifying an original essence to fit the modern era which we live in today.
In the meantime, Toyama’s new studio Bokeh Game Studio is developing an action adventure game called Slitterhead. The game was announced at The Game Awards with a trailer, but aside from the fact that it features humans mutating into terrifying skeletal monstrosities that can rip other humans apart with ease, very little is known about it. While production was due to ramp up this year, it appears this hasn’t happened. Toyama confirmed they had finished the prototyping stage and they will now be “using our knowledge gained from the feedback to enter full production”. Hopefully next year brings more news on both Slitterhead and any possible Silent Hill titles.
[Source: Video Games Chronicle]
