Bring us back to the foggy streets of Silent Hill
Silent Hill, a horror franchise almost every gamer knows, was the reason of our sleepless and scary nights. Terrifying visual effects, disturbing sounds covering the dark corridors, gloomy atmosphere of the various locations and frightening creatures that haunt our dreams. Even mentioning its name was enough to give chills to some people. But now, its nothing but a distant memory and only few of us expect a good work from this horror franchise anymore. What did Konami do wrong, what happened to our lovely Silent Hill ?
When the first game released in 1999, there were only few
horror-adventure games in the market like Resident Evil and Alone in the
Dark. After first Silent Hill’s remarkable success, Konami realized they had a
blockbuster game on their hands, and it should continue to amaze horror fans.
Team Silent, the team produced Silent Hill series, was
consisted of developers that ignored and under-performed in their previous
projects and in some ways always told to be ‘’silent’’ and accept their roles.
But when this group of people came together, they produced the ‘’Silent Hill’’
project and shook the gaming industry with a big surprise. After the first
game’s release on Playstation and PC, the sequel ‘’Silent Hill 2’’ followed it on
Playstation 2. Second game of the series was pushing boundaries of gaming and
showed us how dark a game can get with its fascinating storyline and memorable
characters. Like the first game, second Silent Hill’s selling numbers made
Konami happy and inspired them to continue the franchise.
Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4 released on Playstation 2 and PC,
which were fun and as scary as the first two games. However some critiques did
not consider them as masterpieces like the first two, but sells and reactions
of the fans were still positive for these games. And this was the point when
things started to get kind of complicated for Team Silent and Silent Hill
series.
Even though Team Silent was eager to continue the series,
during the mid 2000’s Konami went under some changes and had to disband Team
Silent. Some developers of Team Silent moved to other projects (even produced
Siren, another appreciated horror franchise), and the others ended up in
Grasshopper Manufacture. At this point, a western developer team ‘’Climax
Studio’’ took the responsibility of the franchise and produced ‘’Silent Hill
Origins’’ and actually made a surprisingly good job even though it was a combat
focused game.
The downturn of the series started with ‘’Silent Hill
Homecoming’’, which was produced for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 and PC. The uninteresting
main character, boring puzzles and change in the combat system are not welcomed
by the fans. Indeed, it was not a bad game but surely it wasn’t good enough to
be a Silent Hill game neither. The next game was ‘’Silent Hill: Downpour’’ and
just like Homecoming it ended up in disappointment and even the
remake of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 couldn’t clean up the mess Konami has
created. Morale was low among long-time fans of the series and there was no light
in the end of the tunnel anymore.
When Hideo Kojima, the producer of Metal Gear series,
announced his involvement with the new ‘’Silent Hills’’ project which was starring
Norman Reedus and the consultation of Guillermo Del Toro; it was time for Silent
Hill fans to become hopeful again. The first person Playable Trailer (P.T.) got
good reviews and feedbacks, everything was going just fine. Yet again the
misunderstanding between Konami and Kojima ended up with a divorce, in
addition, the ‘’Silent Hills’’ project got shutdown forever. Thus, fans of the
series experienced cumulative disappointments which no community has ever faced
before.
Konami’s wrong policies and market moves ended up in
disaster and got so many bad reactions, at this point even releasing a new
Silent Hill would damage Konami’s already bad reputation. But that constant question
remains among the fans: Will Silent Hill ever going to return with a game that respects
to its roots ? Or is it just going to disappear in the fog like James Sunderland,
with its past mistakes and regrets ? There are still no confirmed news or
signs about a new project and it seems hope is all we have left in our hands.