In October of last year, a remake of Silent Hill 2 was announced. It’s been over a year since, and news of how the project’s coming along has been as quiet and as foggy as the titular town of Silent Hill itself.
These development draw-distance blues came to a head on Twitter last week when the studio, after being asked when they could expect some news, bluntly replied that it’s Konami’s job to handle that sort of thing.
Reading between the lines, you might see some frustration there. But I’m willing to take it at face value, especially since Bloober Team doesn’t hail from Konami itself—Silent Hill games are all partner projects, since the in-house studio “Team Silent” no longer exists. Still, Bloober’s CEO has some faith, saying Konami “knows what [it’s doing].”
The recent disasters of Silent Hill: Ascension has created an atmosphere of doubt, though. In fairness, Konami’s weird discount chatroom experiment has been made by a completely different set of devs. Bloober has the chops to pull a remake off, making a game we gave a 90 in our Layers of Fear review. Still, there’s enough anxiety that Bloober Team felt the need to make a second statement this week.
Bloober confirms that the project’s development is “progressing smoothly and in accordance to our schedule”, though it reiterates—in a less matter-of-fact way—that Konami is still responsible for sharing any further details.
“We kindly ask for a bit more patience. Once Konami, as the game’s publisher, shares more information, we are confident that the wait will be worthwhile.” Bloober has some big shoes to fill with the remake—especially considering the series’ recent history. The devs there have my sympathy. I do, however, feel like this industry habit of dropping a cryptic teaser months before you’re ready to show anything else is starting to exhaust fans.