The new Silent Hill game immediately jumped to the top of many gamers' "most anticipated" lists last month, when it was revealed that film director and gothic horror maestro Guillermo del Toro would be teaming with Metal Gear Solid mastermind Hideo Kojima to develop the game. That the news was delivered via an ingeniously mysterious interactive teaser trailer only sweetened the deal. Now, thanks to Kojima’s appearance at the Tokyo Game Show - and event beginning today - we have what may be our first taste of the new Silent Hill game itself.
P.T., the cryptic name given to the playable trailer that Kojima and company revealed at Gamescom last month, was originally thought to be a new original horror game from Konami. Ultimately, P.T. just proved to be Kojima's way of announcing Silent Hills. However, it wasn’t clear whether or not any of the footage or plot used in P.T. would make it into the new game.
The haunting new Silent Hills trailer is hardly less ambiguous: it is being billed as a "P.T. Concept movie," and was premiered at the P.T. stage of the Tokyo Game Show. As such, the trailer could be more of a display of mood, tone, and nightmare-inducing images than anything else. There's no guarantee at this point that anything seen in the trailer will also be seen in the new Silent Hill game. However, if there's one thing that the new concept trailer proves, it's that Kojima and del Toro know exactly what to do when it comes to mimicking the horrifying worlds of past Silent Hill titles.
The trailer takes us on a first-person stroll down a dark hallway, almost as if this game is being made with virtual reality headsets in mind. Along the way, we see thousands of maggots crawling up the walls, possessed toys wandering around aimlessly, bloody handprints covering the walls (at least the ones that aren't already saturated with maggots), and a gigantic arm reaching out of the darkness—presumably to kill and dismember us. The trailer ends with the unseen protagonist descending into an even-darker basement as his or her vision blurs. It's creepy and effective.
Kojima was there in person to present the hellish concept trailer to audiences at the Tokyo Game Show. However, del Toro also made an appearance via a pre-recorded video segment to explain how the P.T. and Silent Hills projects came to be. Del Toro said that he and Kojima have spent a fair amount of time discussing concepts and ideas for a new Silent Hill game, and many of those ideas have made their way into P.T. and this new concept trailer.
"The concepts we're discussing, the ideas that we're discussing and the tools that are in play to create Silent Hills are going to render an incredibly intense and an incredibly scary game," del Toro explained.
Judging from the new concept trailer, del Toro isn’t kidding. Kojima will likely be responsible for most of the gameplay development on Silent Hills, but you can bet that del Toro will be driving the ship as far as the horror and story elements are concerned. The director’s filmography—which includes movies like Blade II, Pan’s Labyrinth, and the Hellboy films—has an unrivaled skill for creating warped and nightmarish worlds populated by memorable creatures and colorful characters. His involvement in the new Silent Hill title will almost undoubtedly result in the most cinematic and story-driven entry that the franchise has seen in years, and we can’t wait to see the project unfold further.
Source: IGN