Fans Curious If Horror Dev Is Worthy

Screenshot: Bloober Team / Konami / Kotaku

Earlier this year, the internet was flooded with rumours, reports, screenshots and vague Instagram posts pointing to a new upcoming Silent Hill game. Maybe even multiple games, including a remake of Silent Hill 2. Now Konami has finally made the news official, including that the Silent Hill 2 remake will be led by Polish developers from Bloober Team. The studio had tried to tiptoe around the speculation, but that hasn’t stopped some gamers from freaking out about what the beloved PS2 classic might look like in the hands of the team that has created The Medium in 2020. confirmation today has only reignited the debate over whether Bloober is up to the seemingly impossible task of earning Silent Hill 2 cult following while modernizing the 20-year-old horror game.

It’s now been a decade since the last new main entry in Konami’s Silent Hill series. 2014’s PT, Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro’s demo for the canceled game Silent Hills, is the last significant window anyone has had into this world of horror, and like diehards of other game franchises, the Silent Hill fans are desperate for information on a revival. This dynamic was a major driver behind last year’s obsession with believing that a poorly run indie project called Abandoned was secretly Kojima’s next move in the series.

The rumor mill was up and running again this year as well. Here’s a quick look at where the Silent Hill reboot rumors started and where they ended:

July 6, 2020: Leaker Dusk Golem says a new Silent Hill is in the works from a Japanese developer. February 10, 2021: YouTuber TheGrateDebate features dozens of developer tweets and reports to argue that Bloober Team might be working on a new Silent Hill. February 18, 2021: Piotr Babieno, CEO of the Bloober team tells gamesindustry.biz he “has been working for over a year on another game project, another horror IP, and we’re doing it with a very famous game publisher”. February 18, 2021: VGC reports that a Japanese developer is working on a Silent Hill project, but that Konami has also bought licensing projects from other studios. June 30, 2021: Bloober Team and Konami announce a strategic partnership to create games together. October 1, 2021: VGC reports Konami is reviving its classic series, including Metal Gear, Castlevania and Silent Hill. March 14, 2022: Reddit user spots Konami’s new branding for the series. May 12, 2022: Twilight Golem Actions footage was reportedly leaked from a 2020 version of a new Silent Hill and claims it was later removed by Konami. May 15, 2022: Podcaster and leaker tweets from NateTheHate that several Silent Hill projects are in development, including a new main entry, side stories, and a remake of Silent Hill 2 by Bloober Team that would be a timed exclusive for PlayStation. May 15, 202: VentureBeat reporter says Jeff Grubb his sources corroborate NateTheHate’s tweet, adding that a reveal was originally planned for E3 2021 but later dropped. According Eurogamer’s Vikki Blake The Bloober team is definitely working on something related to Silent Hill.May 16, 2022: VGC reports that in addition to a remake, a new main game, and episodic stories, according to its sources, the leaked footage from Dusk Golem was from a PT-style teaser titled “Sakura.” October 16, 2022: Konami broke his silence and announced a mysterious Silent Hill showcase. October 19, 2022: Four Silent Hill games are revealed to be in development, alongside a new Silent Hill movie, with Bloober Team doing the remake.

Catch it all?

Screenshot: Kotaku / Bloober Team

Given the overwhelming evidence even earlier this year that Bloober Team, whose recent psychological horror games include Layers of Fear, Observer and Blair Witchwas working on Silent Hill, IGN asked the studio at the time about the rumors at the Polish Digital Dragons games conference earlier this week.

“We can’t comment on anything we do because we value our relationship with our partners, of course,” Babieno said. “So we can’t [say] anything. We will make an announcement on our future plans as soon as possible. So you will know a lot more.

To make this non-denial even weirder, IGN reported that Babieno laughed while adding “officially,” implying that the rumors already being aired weren’t completely untrue. He continued, “I would say it’s difficult to work with someone who [owns an IP you’re working on]but we still speak with these licensors, [saying] “Guys, we would like to use your license, but we would like to tell our own story.”

Now that we know the rumor was true, it leaves Bloober with the unenviable task of remaking a classic despite its successful record in the horror genre. Any deviation from the spirit and vibe of the early Silent Hill games is exactly what fans are afraid of, and why Bloober’s potential involvement has invited a mini backlash earlier this year and again. after the showcase.

“This horror game is not very scary, but sometimes very boring,” Zack Zwiezen wrote in Kotaku’s review of The Medium. Bloober’s games have sometimes been criticized for struggling to build tension and falling into cliché. “The bloober crew is remaking Silent Hill 2, it’s like a student in math class who failed every exam suddenly became the teacher,” said podcaster Bobsvids. tweeted in May. “The phrase ‘Bloober Team Silent Hill 2 remake’ evokes the same feelings as ‘Quantic Dream Star Wars'” read another tweet which gained ground at the time.

Some People’s Disappointment With Bloober’s Horror Approach Summarized in a clip of YouTuber Jerma playing Layers of Fear and collapsing cackling as a ghost child slams against a wall and falls. The game was released just a year after Bloober released the Bomberman-inspired Basement Crawl, one of the lowest-rated PS4 games at the time, and marked the studio’s polarizing turn towards first-person horror. . Some have found it refreshing. Others have found it extremely meh.

It was followed by the cyberpunk theme of 2017 Observer which was genuinely excellent and more widely praised, but would end up proving the exception rather than the rule. While there are those who like The Medium, Bloober’s most recent series of projects has left others with the impression that his talent has been stifled by an overreliance on worn psychological tropes and corny jump scares. A perfect recipe, in other words, to completely spoil the return of Silent Hill 2.

Here are some of the reactions that immediately followed today’s official announcement:

Of course, no psychological horror game could be greater than the one fans are playing with themselves as they pour out pixel-by-pixel comparison shots waiting for the game to finally release.

Update 10/19/22 5:40 PM ET: A version of this story originally aired on May 19, 2022. It was updated today following Konami’s Silent Hill showcase.