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You’ve no doubt heard the rumors and rumblings of Silent Hill<\/em> being reborn with a new title, some have been quick to wave it away, others still have held on to each new scrap of potential information with hopeful anxiety. I’ve decided to gather that information in one convenient little spot, starting from the beginning and going all the way to the ‘now’. At the time of this writing, all of this is still rumor and speculation — nothing has been revealed one way or another, and Konami’s only response to the rumors thus far has been to deny them<\/a>. Regardless of that denial, something<\/em> is happening with Silent Hill<\/em>. Take all of this information any way you like, the point here isn’t to convince you of anything; I only want to put all the pieces on the table. You can be the judge of whether or not it makes a picture.<\/p>\n Where exactly to start is a bit hard to tell, as a lot of little things happened before the ball really started to get rolling. Obviously, the very beginning is really just the end of the previous generation of the series — P.T.\/Silent Hills<\/em>. That’s a bit too far back though, and it’s been talked about to death. Following that event, Konami went into somewhat of a hibernation regarding games in general<\/em>.<\/p>\n In early 2017 Konami began marketing that they were seeking developers<\/a> to join their team, specifically noting the need for ‘Game Programmers, Designers, Planners, Network Engineers, Server Programmers, Scenario Writers, and developers with either home console or mobile experience’. While it may have been the very first glimmer of hope, I should point out that Silent Hill<\/em> is noticeably absent from all of this ‘now hiring’ marketing. A few months later, however, Super Bomberman R<\/em> released a Pyramid Head costume for the player character<\/a>. Chibi and smol, it was remarkable in that it was the first time Konami had publicly acknowledged Silent Hill<\/em> (outside of Pachinko machines) since P.T.<\/em> was taken down off of the PlayStation Store — two whole years after.<\/p>\n A year later, Konami filed new trademarks for Silent Hill<\/em> in the US<\/a> and another in Canada<\/a> a year after that. Some got hopeful, but it ultimately turned out to be for a second gambling machine<\/a>. That said, almost immediately before that machine’s reveal, Konami\u2019s European president Masami Saso gave an interview with gamesindustry.biz about the future of the company as a whole. It’s a mostly uninteresting read, generally talking about mobile markets and the success of the PES series, but at one point Saso talks about the ‘third pillar’ of Konami’s entertainment structure — console games. He didn’t talk about it much, but it piqued my interest:<\/p>\n \u201cEven with new platforms coming out, we believe high-end console games are the most important. We challenge for innovative ideas and technology within our console games and apply them to other devices, so we will continue to put effort into our console games. We also plan to increase our portfolio. In addition to the multi-device titles for PES<\/em> and Yu-Gi-Oh<\/em>, we plan to work on projects with other globally known IPs in the near future.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It struck me as funny timing that this statement followed closely behind the announcement that the Japanese government was going to crack down hard on Pachinko machine regulation<\/a> — which would be very damaging for one of Konami’s three pillars. But that hope wasn’t to last — what looked to be the final nail in a coffin that appeared to be made entirely out of nails appeared out of nowhere. Konami allowed the SilentHill.com web domain to default<\/a>, and for weeks the webpage was available for purchase. It later appeared to be confirmed that some plucky fan with an extra 10k laying around snapped it up, and has been using it to host memes<\/a> since. Doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot, especially as the page had essentially been parked for a decade before that, just acting as a way to search for the series titles<\/a>.<\/p>\n Generally speaking, things looked grim. Grimmer perhaps than they’d ever been back when Silent Hills<\/em> had been canceled and the future of the series was merely unknown. All of this seemed to point to a pretty definitive “It’s dead, Jim.” And then the rumors started.<\/p>\n Early this year, Resident Evil<\/em> leaker AestheticGamer\/DuskGolem dropped a bombshell on all of us.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll mention there is a couple new Silent Hill<\/em>\u00a0games in the works. Konami about two years ago reached out to various developers to pitch ideas for two\u00a0Silent Hill<\/em>\u00a0games, one a soft-reboot of the franchise, the other an episodic TellTale\/Until Dawn<\/em>-style game to go alongside the reboot. I don\u2019t know anything more than that though, but I sure do hope Konami\u2019s given it the appropriate budget and found the right developer to make those games succeed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We were particularly excited, as this actually lined up with some rumblings we’d heard through our own channels, but had chosen not to report on for fear of exposing the parties that leaked it to us. It was also interesting timing, lining up the comment that Konami started looking ‘about two years ago’ — which would line up with Konami’s hiring of new developers in 2017. Regardless of our own excitement and AestheticGamer’s track record with Resident Evil<\/em> (which is damn near impeccable), everyone was assured that salt had to be taken with this information. It just wasn’t worth getting hopes up and a rumor is just<\/em> a rumor until stated otherwise by Konami proper.<\/p>\n And then Konami proper talked about Silent Hill<\/em><\/strong>, saying the name out loud, in public, for the first time in 5 years<\/em>. PCGames Network reached out to ask about the rumor and a Konami spokesperson responded:<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot share anything at this point, but we are listening to customer feedback and considering ways to provide the next title\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If there was any one thing that truly sparked a turning point in this whole story, it was that. Following up almost immediately was the startling reveal of a third Silent Hill<\/em> film, which took everyone by total surprise. The director of the first film had been giving a very casual interview with a French film site, Allocine, when he commented briefly on projects he had in the pipeline. He’s been working on a Western Fatal Frame\/Project Zero<\/em> film adaption for ages, which he mentions, but then out of nowhere:<\/p>\n “And we\u2019re also working on a new Silent\u00a0<\/span>Hill<\/span><\/em>.\u00a0<\/span>The project will always be anchored in this atmosphere of a small American town, ravaged by Puritanism.\u00a0<\/span>I think it\u2019s time to make a new one.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I cannot think of a more inexplicable way to announce the third entry in that franchise, but that’s how it happened, so here we are. About a month later, Pyramid Head (and Silent Hill<\/em> creatures in general) designer Masahiro Ito made a few weirdly cryptic tweets about his beloved monster. Right before AestheticGamer’s leak, he’d revealed on Twitter that he had been hired on as a “core member” of some unknown project and that he hoped the title “wo[uldn’t] be canceled.” That verbiage caught the attention of a lot of fans, drawing lines between that statement and the cancellation of Silent Hills<\/em>.<\/p>\n Now to properly explain this next bit, way back in 2017 Ito was asked if he’d consider joining a reborn Team Silent to work on a new game, and his one stipulation was “If it’s not [a] sequel and I don’t have to use Pyramid Head or can kill him in the opening.” Fast forward to February of this year, and Ito made an inexplicable tweet out of nowhere:<\/p>\n Pyramid Head, R.I.P.<\/p>\n \u2014 \u4f0a\u85e4\u66a2\u9054\/Masahiro Ito (@adsk4) February 28, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nDeath<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Rumors<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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