• Silent Hill is back with a whole host of new titles announced by publisher Konami.
• A classic remake, a new film and three new games are reportedly in development.
• The new titles will be under the microscope as they have a massive legacy to live up to.

In our restless dreams, we see that town… And now everyone else will get to see it in numerous new ways thanks to publisher Konami.

Eight years after the final Silent Hill videogame entity came to PlayStation in the form of that PT demo headed by Kojima Productions and Guillermo del Toro, publisher Konami has opened the floodgates on the IP during Wednesday’s Silent Hill Transmission event.

Silent Hill 2 Remake

Konami unveiled that a remake of the beloved horror classic Silent Hill 2 is in the works from developer Bloober Team. The title is set for the PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam. It will require some hefty hardware according to the upcoming game’s Steam page.

Fully remade to terrify audiences, the intense psychological horror masterpiece SILENT HILL 2 is coming to PlayStation®5 and STEAM® #SILENTHILLhttps://t.co/erxCqMr3qp pic.twitter.com/xZH79a2kP1

— Konami (@Konami) October 19, 2022

Recommended specs include a GeForce RTX 2080 or AMD Radeon 6800XT. The specs note that for players hoping to scrape by “Playing on minimum requirements should enable to play on Low/Medium quality settings in FullHD (1080p) in stable 30 FPS.”

From what we can see in the announcement trailer above, impressive graphical fidelity seems like a selling point. The original was a graphical powerhouse for 2001, pushing the PlayStation 2 to its limits.

No release date is set for the Silent Hill 2 remake (it is available for wish listing on PS5 right now, however), but Konami was only just getting started.

New film: Return to Silent Hill

A new movie, Return to Silent Hill, has also been announced with a trailer.

Christophe Gans, the writer-director of the solid 2006 Silent Hill film is returning to helm the project. It looks like the new film will take into account the storyline of Silent Hill 2 (the videogame not the critically panned film) in some way.

“The film tells the story of a young guy coming back to Silent Hill, where he has known a great love, and what he’s going to find is a pure nightmare,” says Gans.

The film is very much in pre-production from what we can see in the teaser. So far only in the artwork and storyboarding, stage and the series mascot Pyramid Head is confirmed to be returning, as well as some of the creatures of the 2006 film.

All new games

Brand new games in the series were also announced at the event though details are still very scarce.

The first one is something called Silent Hill: Townfall developed by Observation and No Code, creators of the horror puzzle game Stories Untold. Perhaps this will be the direction the game will take. No Code creative director John McKellen says players should expect “deep psychological horror.”

Konami also teased a possible Until Dawn-like title with Silent Hill Ascension. This will apparently be a  “live, real-time interactive series” where players can change certain outcomes and become a part of the series canon. The game will not feature a reset button so players will be locked in depending on their choices.

Silent Hill Ascension is coming in 2023, according to Konami.

The event concluded with the announcement of a brand new mainline title, ushered in with a lavish cinematic trailer that follows a young girl in what seems to be a Japanese “sailor” style school uniform being chased by creeping floral growths a la The Last of Us cordyceps fungus.

The trailer concludes with a woman looking at the camera before her face falls off. Creepy stuff. It seems the game will either be set in or will have something to do with Japan, while previous titles have all been set in Stephen King-flavoured little America.

Silent Hill F is being developed by China’s Neobards Entertainment. It will feature a story written by visual novelist Ryukishi07 and will have monsters designed by artist kera. Some of their works on Twitter are definitely very surreal and apply well to the style of the series.

Konami is investing heavily in the IP with all these releases. It is an explosion of new content coming for something that players have been talking about and asking for since the doom that befell PT and Silent Hills.

Long-time fans should remain somewhat cautious though. The series is known in equal measure for industry-changing games and for disappointing flops. Titles like Silent Hill: Downpour and Silent Hill: Homecoming spring to mind. Both of which were critically mediocre and commercially underperformed.

Hopefully, the teams behind the new games and movies are ready to take on the legendary IP because if they aren’t, the fans will surely let them know.