When Bloober and Konami announced they were remaking Silent Hill 2 as part of a comprehensive reboot of the series, it immediately, if somewhat depressingly, made sense to me. Silent Hill 2 is the more revered of the Hills—if I were a calculating franchise custodian tasked with “reinstating” one of the acclaimed original trilogies, this is probably the one I’d go for with my spreadsheets. I’m talking about the Pyramid Head game—the closest thing Silent Hill has to a mascot, and it’s not that there’s a problem with cutting out story material: every Silent Hill game is, on some level, a separate story with a separate protagonist.
Still, the decision to “skip” the first game in a series whose world, storylines, music, and visuals set the parameters for everything else had my brain itching a little, and when I ran into Bloober’s innovative director, Mateusz Lenart, and lead producer, Maciej Głomb, at a Konami event, I had to ask about it.
“I think Silent Hill 2 just fits our DNA better,” Lenart began. “It’s a much more emotional, much more personal story than, for example, the first game or the third game. And we at Bloober have always been fans of telling personal stories about people’s experiences and their feelings and how they go through them. It’s not about, you know, the occult and otherworldly stuff, right? So I think that was the main reason, fundamentally.”
Some context: Without giving too much away, the original Silent Hill is more of a supernatural affair, with your character Harry getting involved in various diabolical acts, though that too is a work of psychological projection. The sequel changes priorities, placing a painfully disturbed mastermind at the center, though it still has one foot in the occult.
Of course, choosing which Silent Hill game to pursue was beyond Bloober’s control. “Yeah, Silent Hill 2 is the best choice for us as Bloober Team, given our DNA and the games we’ve done and the ones we’ve done before,” Glomb agreed. “But then again, it’s not like we made that decision, right? That series is tied to Konami’s plans.”
“So we had that proposal, probably because of our DNA, our experience with Silent Hill 2. And we were very happy to do that version of the game, just because it fit our feeling. Even in our previous games we were so inspired by Silent Hill 2 in more specific ways – in Layers Of Fear, which is a completely different game, but having these different endings, it was inspired by Silent Hill 2. Having these little things throughout the game where we’re not saying this is going to lead to a different ending.”
As I said, if I were a shrewd Konami executive, I’d probably greenlight Silent Hill 2 for a remake before any other. As a gamer, though, I’m curious to see how the Bloober remake will fare with those who haven’t played the horror game that started the trend. It’s still my favorite Hills title, and Silent Hill 2 is a richer game to understand how it responds to the original game – what it preserves, what it discards.
While there was a “remake” of sorts in the form of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the original Silent Hill lives on today primarily as a retro horror: the PS1’s graphics and visual direction became a distinct aesthetic, evolving with the hi-fi photorealism of later Silent Hill sequels. I guess we’ll always have Itch.io.
