Surprise! Silent Hill IS Returning

I’ve been known to get a bit grumpy about the neverending talk about Silent Hill and its inevitable return. Well buckle in, folks, because now it’s been officially announced.

I’ll do a quick rundown of the announcements shortly. But first, let’s look back at all the happy months and years insiders have been promising this moment will come. We couldn’t have got here without them.

And don’t forget to take a moment’s silence for the inevitable disappointment after this series has been massively built up in minds since the PT/Kojima announcement in 2014.

Done? Okay, let’s take a look at the announcements.

Silent Hill Returns

Silent Hill 2 is getting a remake, and that seems fair. It’s more than a couple of generations old, and there’s plenty that can be added to that world to make it stand out. Bloober Team, best known for games including The Medium, will develop it. They say they are focussing on keeping the atmosphere of the original game intact while updating the game to modern standards.

As is all too often the case, this will be PlayStation 5 and PC exclusive for 12 months, before Xbox players will be able to check it out themselves. Indeed, that is if Konami bother with the port.

Three other games were announced too. Silent Hill F got a beautiful looking trailer, and promises a story written by graphic novel writer Ryūkishi07.

Silent Hill Ascension is being described as an “interactive series”, where players watch together and can influence the outcome. Hopefully not too much, else the final boss will either be Sexy Hitler or Hilly McHillface.

Finally, adventure-puzzle developers No Code are working on Silent Hill Townfall.

Fans of the Silent Hill films will also get a new film, unsurprisingly called Return to Silent Hill.

For each of the trailers, check out the full video:

But Is This Good?

Oh, absolutely. Even if, like me, you’re absolutely sick of people talking about Silent Hill.

This is a series that peaked in the early 2000s. It sold less than 10m copies over, what, around 10 major releases? For context, Danganronpa – the graphic novel series starring an evil anime bear – announced last year they’d topped 5m copies sold.

None of this really matters. A good game is a good game, and Silent Hill has potential. But the hype that has been built around it in the last eight or so years puts so much pressure on the developers that I’m going to be curious to see the scale of reaction. There’s either going to be a lot of very angry people or a lot of very happy people. I truly hope it’s the latter.

But regardless of the quality of all or any of these games, this perhaps gives a sneak peak at Konami’s strategy for its IP going forward. And that truly is exciting.

We have four games announced – a remake, a new game, an interactive series and a puzzle game – across massively different genres and from different developers.

It’s a really interesting way forward, and I can’t wait to see if the same applies to the likes of Metal Gear and Castlevania. Perhaps those rumours about remakes and remasters of the Metal Gear games really do make sense.