Nothing stings fans of Silent Hill quite like seeing Resident Evil‘s current triumphs. It’s not necessarily out of resentment (you can love both y’know), rather it’s because they know that if handled right, Silent Hill could also be revitalized like it almost promised to be a few years back. You know, before that ill-fated Kojima Productions rebirth was ground into dust?
The crux of that pain inflicted by Resi‘s revival as a horror force is that it is indirectly due to that P.T. demo. Capcom smartly capitalized on its fate to make Resident Evil 7 what it was, and now here we sit on the 20th anniversary of Silent Hill‘s debut, with no promises on the horizon and no sign Konami is eager to do something for it.
Konami could, of course, argue it doesn’t need to do anything about it, as its still healthy and profitable despite the doomsayers declaring its death after the Kojima debacle.
Yet there is a compromise to be made if perhaps at this point, Konami gave the keys to that particular IP to someone else in order to do the most fan-pleasing (and somewhat necessary) thing. By that I mean to remake the original Silent Hill. Something a touch meatier than Shattered Memories, if we’re going to be a little more specific.
If Capcom can make a buck or two off Silent Hill‘s misfortunes, then why shouldn’t Konami take a leaf out of its book and go the remake route? Twice this has proven successful for Resident Evil, and if the reception to Resident Evil 2 is anything to go by, there’s plenty of goodwill to be earned from updating a classic. Especially one that stands to be lost to time if things carry on the way they are.
Silent Hill deserves to have its name made relevant again. A remake doesn’t have to be high budget (which has been the off-putting issue for Konami with anything, hence the remaster, annual sports games, and spinoffs made of stapled-together assets from previous work), and it’s perhaps the safest way to gamble in the series once more.
Of course, finding the right development team to essentially remake Silent Hill from the ground up isn’t the easiest task. In an ideal world, you’d let the series creators and writers back into the fold to steer the new vision in the right direction, but whose to say any of them would still want to work for Konami at this point?
As much as it would be a feel-good story to have old hands on it once more, a fresh take could also do wonders, especially for a portion of the audience that never got to experience the series in its prime. Bloober Team, with its head-spinning horrors Layers of Fear and Observer, would be a good, understandable, fit for Silent Hill, as would Penumbra and Amnesia developer Frictional Games. Frictional, in fact, could be very effective at injecting new life into Silent Hill given how smart and psychological its games tend to be.
Yes, Silent Hill as a franchise has had a major problem with being shipped around from sequel to sequel, and that’s a risk, but surely with such an intriguing and solid framework to work from, there’s just enough guidance to keep a remake feeling like it should whilst allowing for reinvention.
Is it optimistic to think Konami would budge on such a thing? Perhaps. We’ve seen where its overall gaming interests lie in recent years, but unlikely turnarounds can happen, and even Konami as a company can change.
Seeing horror gaming thrive without Silent Hill is a sad sight indeed, and it’s one I’d love to see rectified sooner rather than later. Whether Konami chooses to be involved or not remains to be seen.
Who would you have remake Silent Hill? Let us know your dream development team to revive the classic series.
