On Wednesday, October 19th, Konami held the SILENT HILL Transmission Livestream to discuss potential upcoming projects from the franchise. This was huge news for the gaming community because Silent Hill has been dead since the cancelation of the highly anticipated Silent Hills, the full-length game for P.T., the iconic playable trailer that never went anywhere. After the cancelation, it seemed like the franchise would probably not be revisited. The only real content fans got from Silent Hill in the last several years has been the Dead by Daylight collaboration back in 2020.
While some fans were skeptical over the possibility of any real news, rumors of a new game or movie being in the works have circulated for quite some time now. The SILENT HILL Transmission Livestream shook the gaming community to its core, though, as they unveiled not one, but three new games, a new film, and more. Not to mention, they've also announced a whole line of new merchandise.
5 Silent Hill: Ascension Offers A Different Experience
Silent Hill: Ascension is, by far, the strangest announcement that's come out of the SILENT HILL Transmission. The vague trailer features a string of ominous text messages and a shadowed new monster. Promising to be a live experience where viewers, players, or participants will "face your trauma together," not much is actually known about what, exactly, this project is, though the trailer did promise that the event would take place in 2023. It also attached a link to a website: Ascension.com.
In collaboration with Bad Robot Games and Behaviour, the independent game company responsible for the popular multiplayer horror game Dead by Daylight, Ascension seems to be some sort of mass gaming experience in which people around the world can participate.
Genvid Entertainment, another collaborator on the project, took to Twitter to clarify. "SILENT HILL: Ascension is a completely new kind of experience. It is an interactive streaming series where the community shapes the canon together live."
4 Silent Hill f Goes To Japan
Silent Hill f is one of three games announced during the SILENT HILL Transmission. In true Konami fashion, the trailer is quite ambiguous, full of beautiful imagery that ends with one disturbing sequence where the woman's face falls off. This game clearly exists within the Silent Hill franchise, but it promises to take place in Japan during the 1960s. Since Silent Hill is based on the real town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., this game is shrouded in the mystery of how it will explore and expand the mythology of Silent Hill.
Not much is currently known about this project or what it's attempting to do, but that hasn't stopped fans from speculating about how this game will fit into canon. Perhaps it will be exploring other places that are like the Silent Hill fans love to fear, or perhaps it will be some sort of origin story. Either way, the trailer is intriguing, and it's adding to the revitalization of the franchise.
3 Return To Silent Hill Set For The Silver Screen
Perhaps one of the more divisive announcements Konami spoke about was the upcoming film Return to Silent Hill. Film adaptations of popular video game franchises are rather commonplace by today's standards, but they have a reputation for being particularly bad. Silent Hill is no stranger to this phenomenon. In 2006, Christophe Gans' Silent Hill was released while 2012 saw Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. Both films were met with mixed reviews, although they arguably both managed to capture the essence of Silent Hill and what the haunting town is all about.
Rumors have been spreading about the potential for a new Silent Hill film, but many fans prayed that it would be a game instead. On October 19th, Konami surprised fans with both. Return to Silent Hill will see Christophe Gans taking the director's chair once more. As a follow-up to his original film and his own interpretation of Silent Hill 2 the game, Gans is looking forward to reconnecting with the horror franchise. As fans often are about these adaptations, many are skeptical, but the original film was actually widely successful. This new project is ambitious but has the building blocks to be fantastic.
2 Silent Hill: Townfall Will Continue The Game Franchise
Just like many of the announcements, Silent Hill: Townfall was unveiled with a trailer that didn't actually tell audiences much. Designed to be deeply unsettling and creepy, it gives just enough to pique interest without giving away much of anything. Silent Hill: Townfall will be a new game in the Silent Hill franchise.
Jon McKellan, the creative director of No Code, spoke about working on Townfall. Unfortunately, he didn't elaborate much on it during the Transmission, but he did insinuate that more news on the new title would be available in 2023. Until then, he suggests combing through the teaser that we do have to see what we might have missed. There are many secrets hidden within this brief teaser, apparently, and fans are already hard at work trying to iron them out.
1 The Silent Hill 2 Remake Is The News Everyone's Been Waiting For
In 2019, Resident Evil released a completely remade for modern consoles' version of Resident Evil 2 and it became one of the best-reviewed games in the franchise. With the massive success of this remake and its ability to push the older RE games into a newer generation for both long-term fans and new fans, the franchise has gone on to release a remake of RE3 and a remake of RE4 is due out in March 2023. Since these games have proven to not only be a hit but have actually rejuvenated the franchise, many game companies have followed suit.
With a remake of The Last of Us released earlier this year and a remake of Dead Space slotted for 2023, this trend has become quite popular. Of course, Resident Evil didn't create the concept of remaking old games, but it did set a standard for modernizing outdated games and adapting them to modern audiences authentically.
Since the release of all these remakes have taken the gaming industry by storm, rumors about a Silent Hill remake inevitably began bubbling up. Konami did not disappoint during their Transmission Livestream, as they opened with a 3-minute-long trailer for the remake of Silent Hill 2. Arguably the most recognizable game in the franchise and the one that fans refer back to the most frequently, Silent Hill 2 is the perfect way to reintroduce the world to Silent Hill. It is the game that introduced the world to Pyramid Head, after all.
From the detail of the trailer and the fact that it was the first thing announced, it's safe to assume that this remake will be released before any of the other games. Old fans are pumped to revisit their childhood nightmares and new fans are looking forward to experiencing the chilling horrors that await them before diving into the new games that Konami has to offer.