If you’d told me five years ago that Silent Hill would be back with one of the best remakes of the decade, as well as one of the best new survival horror games — I probably wouldn’t have believed you. But now it looks like Silent Hill’s meteoric rise back to prominence isn’t anywhere near done, as we already have confirmation of the next game. Bloober Team, the same studio behind Silent Hill 2 remake, will be applying its talent to the very first Silent Hill, with another full-blown remake. After seeing what they did with the second game, I’m fully in on Bloober Team having full reign to reimagine the series’ inception point.
Although a Silent Hill remake was briefly teased by Konami earlier this year, full confirmation comes from Bloober’s own investor call. As reported by Eurogamer, during the call, Bloober team CEO Piotr Babieno and Vice President Karolina Nowak commented on the studio’s current slate, saying, “We have two first-party production teams, one of which is working on Silent Hill 1, and the other has begun work on a second project.”
While Bloober’s headcount currently sits at around 250 employees, that second team is astoundingly working on five smaller projects — although we don’t currently know what any of those are. But more interestingly, is that Bloober is looking to shorten its development windows and release games faster.
“Our goal is to become a leader in the horror genre, which translates into a strategy of releasing games in increasingly shorter periods between releases,” Babieno and Nowak say, “This is supported, among other things, by our second-party department. We also work on major titles within this department, so don’t expect a long wait between major releases.”
That certainly makes it sound like we could be waiting a shorter time for Silent Hill 1 than we did with Silent Hill 2, which took just over two years from announcement to release. And it’s going to be interesting to see how Bloober tackles the first game, which is arguably quite different from its sequel.
Originally released on PlayStation in 1999, the first Silent Hill is more of a straight survival horror experience, focusing on unraveling the cult at the heart of the titular town. Silent Hill 2, by comparison, layered in a lot of psychological elements and themes of tragedy, loss, and grief.
Prior to the release of Silent Hill 2 many people, including myself, worried whether Bloober would be able to capture the nuance of the game’s messaging and introspective main character. But I’m more than happy to eat my words, as Silent Hill 2 remake not only retains what made the original game one of the most important works of horror in video games, but manages to enhance it with some smart tweaks and genuinely phenomenal voice acting.
Those feelings are only heightened in the wake of Bloober’s newest game, Cronos: The New Dawn. With Cronos, Bloober created an original survival horror experience following in the footsteps of Dead Space, and more than anything it absolutely nails the “survival” part. Cronos is a tough-as-nails experience that demands a lot from the player, but pays it off in spades — and I’m genuinely hopeful that it could be a testing ground for Bloober’s work on the first Silent Hill.
Of course, the work needed to reimagine the first game is arguably going to be more — seeing as it was on the PS1, versus Silent Hill 2 on the PS2. But that’s also why it feels more fitting for a remake, a chance to put it more in line with the trajectory and sensibilities of the rest of the series.
But, most importantly, Bloober, in my eyes, has more than won benefit of the doubt for Silent Hill 1 — and I’m simply excited to see how the remake pans out.
