Despite the influx of new Silent Hill games that were announced last year, it’s only the beginning for Konami. The company wants more studios to pitch Silent Hill projects and continue expanding the new wave of games in the franchise. Silent Hill series producer Motoi Okamoto is welcoming developers from around the world to begin pitching new ideas, whether it’s an indie studio or larger company it seems.
Speaking to IGN Japan recently, Okamoto said that Konami and the Silent Hill team were actively accepting pitches from other studios. The stream held in October last year revealed a number of new projects set in the horror universe, including a remake of Silent Hill 2 from Bloober Team, the episodic Silent Hill: Townfall from No Code and Annapurna Interactive and Silent Hill F, a new mainline entry in the franchise from Resident Evil Re:Verse studio NeoBards Entertainment and Higurashi writer Ryukishi07.
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Okamoto was asked about the October stream and the sheer volume of new Silent Hill projects, to which he replied:
“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. That’s why we made moves to work together with people around the world who want to make Silent Hill games and approached Bloober Team, as well as Anapurna Interactive and No Code.”
Okamoto further explained that the company wasn’t able to accept every project that was pitched, but are still open to accepting more ideas should they best suit the Silent Hill franchise:
“Unfortunately, there are some projects that never actually got off the ground. Still, I think 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.”
It seems like Konami might be going for the quantity approach to bringing back the Silent Hill series in a big way, but we hope it doesn’t sacrifice quality in the process. In fact, Okamoto reassures fans that this probably isn’t the case as the team is looking for “unique, highly artistic and original” ideas that go beyond simply remaking older titles. He elaborates:
“I knew from the start of the project that just a single remake would not be enough for players to consider it a series revival. There were unfortunately some projects that never got started, but we’ve been talking with many creators and are still having lots of discussions about what to do going forward. I’m happy to see players reacting to Silent Hill f, which is a Japanese-style horror game, with even stronger interested than I’d expected. The future of Silent Hill will only continue. I think what’s important about the series is that it’s unique, highly artistic and original, and I’d like to continue focusing on that.”
Source: IGN