Silent Hill boss says Konami announced three games at once to show it was committed to the series’ future

Silent Hill series producer Motoi Okamoto says Konami announced three games at the same time to prove it was serious about the IP’s future.

In October 2022, Konami broadcast a ‘Silent Hill Transmission’ live stream, where it announced three new games – a remake of Silent Hill 2, a Japan-themed entry called Silent Hill F, and a narrative title called Silent Hill Townfall from Scottish studio NoCode (now known as Screen Burn).

It also announced “interactive streaming series” Silent Hill: Ascension, which ran for 21 episodes and was critically panned, despite winning an Emmy award for Outstanding Innovation in Emerging Media Programming.

Since that Silent Hill Transmission, both the Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill F have been released to critical acclaim and a positive response from fans of the series.

In a new post on X, Okamoto explained that the decision to announce all three games during the same broadcast was a deliberate attempt to assure those fans that Silent Hill had a future, and wasn’t just going to be a one-off release to appease them.

“Three years ago, in 2022, we announced three titles – Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill f, and Silent Hill: Townfall,” Okamoto said (as translated by Automaton). “We didn’t want to just announce a single remake to ‘test the waters’. We wanted people to feel how serious we were about reviving the series.

“Developing a remake and a new title simultaneously naturally involves risks, but we wanted to convey our commitment first and foremost. Only when a new game is announced can the future of a series be seen.

“Users won’t feel motivated to engage with an IP unless they can sense it has a future. If the company takes a wait-and-see approach, so will the players. The company needs to show how serious it is so that users can get genuinely excited. I think that’s only fair.”

Okamoto also referred to an earlier post he made, in which he stated that the Silent Hill 2 remake had to be made with both existing fans and newcomers in mind, rather than simply appealing to those who had played the original version, because not every fan returns for a remake.

“It’s probably a bit different for anime and games, but with remakes, even if you consider old fans, at best, about half of them will come back, so it tends to lead to shrinking,” he wrote. “If you don’t design [the remake] with about half new audiences and half old fans in mind, the customer base won’t grow.”

VGC’s Silent Hill 2 review said the remake “proves the doubters wrong”, calling it “a skilfully handled retelling of one of the medium’s most loved survival horror games”.

“It stays faithful to the original (to a fault at times) but breathes enough new life into it to simultaneously ensure that long-time fans will appreciate the respect shown, while newcomers won’t find it antiquated,” we wrote.

Our Silent Hill F review was similarly positive, stating that the game is “certainly a diversion from the main series in a lot of (mostly welcome) ways, but it’s still very much a Silent Hill game at heart”.

“By focusing more on action – especially after a surprising twist halfway through – it risks alienating some survival horror fans by making combat the priority rather than the last resort, while some of its puzzles are too obtuse for their own good, but it’s still an astoundingly beautiful game that horror fans really should experience regardless of its flaws,” we concluded.