‘Silent Hill 2’ Remake Producer Says Game’s Success Sets The Stage For Franchise Reboot

This interview has been edited for clarity.

25 years after the original game was released back in 1999, survival horror series Silent Hill is finally primed for a reboot – if the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake succeeds, that is.

In a media preview for the upcoming remake that Geek Culture attended in Tokyo, Japan, Silent Hill series producer, Motoi Okamoto, made it clear that the remake serves two purposes. The first is to remind gamers of the seminal game, while the second and more important reason, is to show audiences, new and old, that the Japanese publisher is capable of bringing the franchise to greater heights.

“We fully understand that Silent Hill 2 probably has a whole special place in many people’s hearts as being memorable and as a masterpiece,” reminded Okamoto-san to the dozens of global media present. 

“So by introducing the remake of this game as the very first major title that we wanted to address to all of our players and all of the fans that Konami is serious about rebooting the series and that we are capable of delivering a high-quality Silent Hill game.”

Unfortunately, he did not elaborate on what or how the reboot would come along, though this marks the first time that Konami has addressed years of speculation that a reboot of the series was in the works, as it has been 12 years since a mainline Silent Hill game has been released. 

Little has been revealed about the upcoming game, Silent Hill f, which was announced back in 2022 but Okamoto-san statement shows that Konami reboot plans begin with delivering a high-quality Silent Hill 2 remake as the company’s first major remake title.

Originally released in 2001, Silent Hill 2 is an iconic psychological survival horror game that outperformed its predecessor to become a greater classic over the original. Aside from the multiple sequels spawned over the years, the franchise was even adapted into two films – Silent Hill (2006) and Silent Hill: Revelation (2012) – and come 8th October, the highly anticipated modernised remake, which is more of an overhaul of the game that will include new music, redesigned set pieces and update game design, will remind a new generation of gamers why the game remains an iconic masterpiece.

While the first four games in the series were made by Team Silent, a development team within Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, subsequent games in the series were developed by non-Japanese developers, which fans saw as a reason for the later games’ drop in quality. 

While the remake will tap on the expertise of some of the game’s original developers, such as creature designer Masahiro Ito and original composer Akira Yamaoka, game development is led by Polish developer Bloober Team, with input from Konami and the publisher was confident enough to invite global media down to have an unprecedented 4-hour long hands-on with the game, and to speak with Okamoto-san, Yamaoka-san, Ito-san, as well as Mateusz Lenart, creative director at Bloober Team, and Maciej Glomb, lead producer at Bloober Team.

Sharing more on the soundtrack for the remake, Yamaoka-san proudly reveals that he composed over nine hours worth of music, and has since wondered how the team was going to fit it all into the game. 

“I have reworked for the tracks, so there are segments, there are bits and pieces of original tracks that you can hear, but all of the tracks have been reworked from the ground up,” he says, as he is aware that the soundtrack is very much well-loved by fans, so he made sure to retain bits and pieces of the original tracks.

When it comes to the monsters and creatures in the game, fans of the original shouldn’t expect things to look the same from 23 years ago says Ito-san. 

“We have made some minor changes to some of the monster designs to tie-in with the changes that we’ve made to the combat design. There are no brand new monsters in the game, but there is one example of a monster where it has been reimagined to some extent because I wanted to reflect the ideas that could not be realised in the original game.” 

And in case you’re wondering, the monster in question is the headless and armless Mannequin, with legs for arms. The team was able to spawn a “Spider Mannequin” variant of it for the remake, which essentially looks the same as the original, but now with the ability to climb up walls, which ups the scare factor and challenge for gamers.

But while fans have faith in team Konami and the game’s original developers, the same cannot be said for Bloober Team, best known for developing less-than-successful horror games such as The Medium (2021), Blair Witch (2019), Observer (2017) and Layers of Fear (2016).

But it was the company’s reputation that made Konami want to seek a partner that had a strong passion towards the game too. 

“We had a list of candidates that we were willing to work with and among them, Bloober Team stood out. So we reached out to them and visited them, and I had personally selected them,” revealed Okamoto-san. 

And according to Glomb, everyone at Bloober Team are big fans of the original Silent Hill games. “Once you play the game from the beginning to the very end, you can see this passion in almost every aspect of the game, from the reimagined visuals and audio to the AI of the enemies.”

Adding on to that, Glomb is most proud of what the team had achieved with the overall gameplay flow and level design, especially the puzzles, because they were able to strike the right balance of both memories of the original game and new content, which he believes will surprise even long-time fans of the series.

Working on a much-loved game and remaking it was no easy task, and it was not easy for the team to decide how much of the game to retain or change from the original. 

“I think at the very beginning we had a lot of conversations about characters, monsters, and redesigns and didn’t want to change anything completely because we are too afraid to touch too much of the game,” admitted Lenart.

“But after some time we saw that we needed to expand on the idea to create a game that would be competitive in this generation of consoles.”

But it doesn’t mean Blooper Team is here to make changes just to modernise the game for new audiences. One element of the original game is that it starts off really slowly, which was fine back in 2001, but gamers in 2024 might not have the same level of patience, and Blooper Team was very careful in how they wanted to address it, said Lenart.

“I think it was very tricky because obviously, you will want to stay true to the original, which was very slow at the beginning. And this might not be how games are created these days, which tend to start on a very high note just to maybe interest players more into the game before it kind of slows down. We actually discussed a lot of different approaches to that such as making it more action heavy at the beginning. But we just didn’t feel this is Silent Hill and that’s why we made the choice to keep it as it was and only pick up the pace after some time.”

And while it is a remake, there are parts of the game that are new, introduced by Konami and Bloober Team, but the essence of the original still remains, shares Ito-san. 

“The original idea that Konami and Bloober Team had in mind at the start may have been a little different from the final rendition we ended up with right now, but I believe with my deep involvement in the project, I was able to maintain the core principle of Silent Hill 2 and preserve it in a way that’s more polished so that gamers of the current console generation will be able to appreciate the Silent Hill 2 remake in the best way possible.”

Silent Hill 2 will be released on 8 October on PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam.