Konami wants more Silent Hill games in the future, if devs have good enough ideas

It sounds like Konami is dead set on reviving the Silent Hill series, as a recent interview details potential for more games, titles that fell through, and more.

In an interview between IGN Japan, Silent Hill series producer Motoi Okamoto, concept artist and Pyramid Head designer Masahiro Ito, and composer Akira Yamaoka, the three spoke about a pretty wide range of topics to do with the games' history, as well as its future. For one, it sounds like the overall sentiment at Konami is that the developers at the company have wanted to bring it back for a while.

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"The Silent Hill series had been dormant for quite a while. Konami as a company wanted to bring it back, and lots of people working here wanted to make Silent Hill games," shared Okamoto. "The only thing was that everyone had different ideas of what Silent Hill is and why they loved it, making it difficult to coalesce around a single direction."

Okamoto continued to explain that while everyone had different ideas over the series, bringing it back with a remake of Silent Hill 2 was because that particular title represented "what true psychological horror is."

Obviously with the announcement of the remake came further announcements that indie studios like No Code would be offering their take on the world of Silent Hill with Silent Hill: Townfall. "There's only so much we can do ourselves, which means we need to work with lots of different indie creators if we want to make lots of different Silent Hills," explained Okamoto.

The producer also noted that there were actually a few projects that "never actually got off the ground," but believes that "the number of projects we have will only continue to grow. The fact we were reviving Silent Hill was a secret until now, so we couldn't exactly go out and yell, ‘Hey, everyone! Bring us your Silent Hill projects!’ We can do that now, so if creators from around the world who love Silent Hill bring us their pitches, I promise to look through every one of them. We're all ears." Essentially, developers out there that have a good idea for a Silent Hill game: send it Konami's way.

Both Ito and Yamaoka worked on the original Silent Hill 2, hence their involvement in the remake, and were also asked about what it was like working on the game. Ito touched on the influence of David Lynch's Lost Highway, and interestingly revealed that at one point James wasn't going to be the only protagonist. "There was a period when we were strongly influenced by that to have a twist where the protagonist suddenly switches mid-game," Ito explained, though ultimately it was decided to just focus on James as to not confuse players.

The full interview is well worth a read, as Ito goes on to talk about his design influences, and Yamaoka discusses the thought process behind some of his compositions.