The rumored connections between BLUE BOX Game Studio's Abandoned and Silent Hill have had a "negative effect" on the game's development according to studio founder Hasan Kahraman. The upcoming indie horror game has had a history of denying such rumored connections, but recently Kahraman spoke out about the issues that the rumors have caused.
Although he didn't go into much detail about the disruptions, Kahraman said in an interview with Al Hub earlier this week, that the Silent Hill rumors "had a negative effect, even on the development process with a lot of distractions." The reported impact on development makes a lot of sense as the conspiracies connecting Abandoned to the Silent Hill series and to Hideo Kojima have been running rampant since the game was announced in April.
Despite the fact that Kahraman and the rest of the BLUE BOX team have denied the connections on numerous occasions, speculators believe that Kojima is connected to the game in some way or another. For some, the list of coincidences is too great for theories of Silent Hill or Metal Gear Solid connections to be put to rest.
Further denying any connection to other established horror-shooter IPs, as translated by Ragid Hallak, Kahraman went on to say that "Abandoned is a first-person shooter, but in a realistic environment with some horror elements as well. It's not quite a horror game like Resident Evil or Silent Hill but there are scary scenes in it."
The PlayStation 5 exclusive title is still expected to launch later this year with the Abandoned real-time experience app updating tomorrow. As detailed by Kahraman in the same Al Hub interview, BLUE BOX felt that allocating resources for a trailer wasn't in the studio's best interest so they created "an app that works on PS5 so people can experience the real-time graphics as well as the technical side of it such as 4K resolution. They will get to know what the game looks like and how it looks better than regular trailers."
Recently, an image for the game was released that featured a blurred image of a face that bore a striking resemblance to Metal Gear's Big Boss, fueling the conspiracy fires even further. Hopefully, the real-time experience app will help give fans a better understanding of what the game actually is and finally confirm or deny conspiracies surrounding the game's relationship to Kojima and Konami. Until then, however, it seems like speculation will continue.
Abandoned is currently in development and is set to release in 2021 for PS5.
Source: Al Hub (The interview appears to have been pulled from the Al Hub website)