After the huge success of the PT demo, it seemed like Silent Hills was on track to be one of the biggest horror games ever. Unfortunately, Konami canceled Silent Hills and parted ways with director Hideo Kojima, so the project was never able to come to fruition. Details on what exactly Silent Hills would have entailed remain hard to come by to this day, but new information suggests that it would have had incredibly terrifying ARG mechanics.
Apparently, Silent Hills would have allowed players to opt-in to special features that would have continued haunting them even when they weren't playing the game. This would include things like players getting text messages, emails, and more from the game. Apparently, this feature would have even extended to smart lights, allowing the game to cause players' lights in their homes to flicker on and off at random. Needless to say, these real world hauntings would have gone a long way in making Silent Hills one of the scariest games ever made. Players can escape most horror games by simply turning their console off, but that wouldn't have been the case with Silent Hills.
Other features would have involved using the PlayStation 4 console itself for some scares. Exact details are unavailable, but Silent Hills would have supposedly altered the PS4 console dashboard in some way, and also use information from players' save files to freak them out. Kojima has done things like this in the Metal Gear Solid series, and it also sounds very similar to Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem on the Nintendo GameCube, so there is a precedent for these kinds of things in video games.
This information comes from Alanah Pearce of Rooster Teeth, citing a developer who worked on the project. However, Pearce stated that she is not fully confident in her source, and so fans should note that it's possible this information is made up. Since Silent Hills is canceled, it's unlikely that we'll ever know if there was any truth to this, but perhaps these gameplay features will be used in future horror game projects.
Hideo Kojima is making a horror game, and it stands to reason that the legendary developer will use some of the ideas he had for Silent Hills. Beyond that, Sony's Japan Studio is rumored to be making a PS5-exclusive Silent Hill game, so perhaps that game will incorporate some of these ideas.
The latest on the Silent Hill PS5 game is that it will be a reboot from the director of the original Silent Hill, so it's also possible that it will go in a completely different direction. Regardless, these ideas sound like they could have added up to be a truly unique horror gaming experience, and it will be interesting to see if other developers copy these ideas since Silent Hills has been canceled.
Silent Hills was in development for PS4.
Source: RelyOnHorror