Keiichiro Toyama, the creator of the Silent Hill series, has been busy since he departed Sony Japan Studio last year. With Kazunobu Sato and Junya Okura from the Siren game series, he formed the new Bokeh Game Studio, and the studio's new horror game Slitterhead was revealed at The Game Awards 2021 last week.
Recently, the Silent Hill creator spoke in a recent interview with Video Games Chronicle, where he was interviewed on the chances of a Silent Hill remake. He was asked if he'd be interested to see remakes of the Silent Hill games by Konami similar to the recent Resident Evil remakes by Capcom. However, Toyama replied that remaking the Silent Hill video games would be more challenging than expected.
Toyama said that he thinks it would be harder to remake the Silent Hill games than it would for the Resident Evil remakes because the gameplay concept is a little older. He said that Silent Hill isn't an action game where you update the graphics and action up to current standards, like in the Resident Evil remakes. When it comes to remaking the Silent Hill games, he thinks "you'd have to rethink the concept to make it interesting to fans."
The interview continued with Toyama sharing his general thoughts on video game remakes saying, "Unlike movies, games are difficult to enjoy as in the original state." He said, "Obviously because of the platform," and went on to state that over time the game mechanics, when it comes to usability, will start to "lack rationality and sophistication." Toyama points out that some older video games were, visually speaking, not made for modern equipment, so he doesn't have any objections to modifying the original essence of a game for the modern era.
There have been multiple rumors and leaks that suggest Konami allegedly has multiple Silent Hill games in development, and that they have been outsourced to other game studios for development. Not to mention the rumors that Konami has new entries in the Castlevania and Metal Gear franchises currently in the works as well. However, the publisher has not publicly confirmed these reports at the time of writing.
This wouldn't be the first time the Silent Hill franchise was revisited in recent years. A good example is the now-cancelled Silent Hills video game that would've been helmed by Hideo Kojima. Some speculated that the PS5 exclusive game Abandoned might have been connected to the franchise in some way, but that was denied by the developer Blue Box Game Studios. However, the new game Slitterhead by Bokeh Game Studio seems to continue in the horror tradition of Silent Hill, as evidenced by the trailer shown at The Game Awards 2021.
Source: Video Games Chronicle