Silent Hill 2: Who are Konami and Bloober talking to?

The State of Play on January 31, 2024, showcased the highly anticipated preview of the Silent Hill 2 remake with high expectations for the release date. What we got: a sign with the phrase "in development for PlayStation 5," but that's not the worrisome part.

Silent Hill 2 flirts with disaster: Who is to blame for this outburst?

Let's start by assigning responsibilities. As Bloober Team made public months ago, the progress, posts, videos, anything related to Silent Hill 2 is entirely Konami's responsibility. Both the Polish studio and the Japanese company are heading in the same direction but in separate lanes, and that's not okay.

So, the idea of presenting a "combat trailer" for Silent Hill 2 comes from Konami, and the result hasn't been as expected, with a barrage of criticism, almost drowning the hype that surrounded the game, and now we don't know what the heck we're going to get our hands on. And it's all the worse when it comes to the return of a remake of a work that rests in the pantheon of video games.

The preview has exposed visual ups and downs. On the one hand, it's pleasing to see a reworked design of this cursed town and its buildings in the solemnity of its days and evenings covered in ash, as well as the lighting effects and contrast with the overwhelming nightmare that comes with the arrival of the night and the presentation of this ruined facet fueled by the pain and madness of its characters. On the other hand, some designs are worrisome for their poor quality and, at times, reveal the limits that this project likely had; that's the origin of fans' outcry that it looks like a "remake."

Video: Silent Hill 2 - combat trailer

At this point, I don't know if that's good or bad. Is it an exercise in honesty, showing the game as it is in an era when trailers can be beautiful models that distract attention from the disaster happening around them? If the goal was to impress, they didn't achieve it, and there are more doubts than excitement now.

Right here is where the question arises, who are Konami and Bloober talking to? I understand this is a business, but I highly doubt that Silent Hill 2 is a broad business. I wish it were as a fan, and it would be great if it happened, but the expectation is not so high as to forget that the franchise is cursed commercially and that, at least during the time of Team Silent, they were works made out of passion that sold fewer copies with each installment.

Presenting a combat trailer is proving counterproductive, especially if the goal was to appeal to a non-existent niche of new players or catch the attention of that audience eager for shooting and hitting buttons. Referring to Silent Hill is speaking to players from other generations, perhaps to a tiny percentage who connected with the franchise through one of the 9 million copies sold in total since 1999 and who, due to luck or whatever factors, still play video games.

What's seen in this preview inevitably echoes Joel's style in The Last of Us, but the most dangerous part is that Silent Hill 2 is approaching, with its over-the-shoulder camera and that well-defined blonde hair of James Sunderland while shooting, the territories of Resident Evil 2 Remake and even Resident Evil 4 Remake, where it will inevitably lose. The social media thermometer shows jokes referring to Bloober's game as “the Chinese version of Resident Evil remakes.”

Unfair? Perhaps, but we should consider it because it goes against the very concept of the franchise. Resident Evil and Silent Hill never had anything to do with each other; they took separate paths. That's why seeing elements like the visual perspective and combat sequences that Capcom's franchise perfected in 2005 and resumed in 2019 is, at the very least, strange in a work where zombies and biological experiments were foreign.

Konami, with little interest as in recent years, but Bloober Team is playing with fire

Konami may have shot itself in the foot with this presentation of Silent Hill 2, but the inquisitive gaze is also on Bloober Team, and not without reason. Tackling this Survival Horror classic and one of the best games ever created is serious business because the margin for error is equal to zero. A Silent Hill 2 remake cannot, under any circumstances, be below the original work. It can be at the same level and perhaps even better, but those are the only two options because if you look back, there's the precipice that ends in disaster.

Today, questions have resurfaced about whether Bloober was the right choice for this remake or if it was simply irresponsible to do so. I cannot deny that the company has sought to specialize in the horror genre, and with The Medium, they took a significant step in terms of technical advances to handle two planes on one screen; it's pure ingenuity, thinking about puzzles and exposing the real world and that devoured by shadows, a general concept of this game.

However, I cannot overlook that this is a studio that in the horror genre throws everything but hits nothing. Its proposals for immersive first-person horror games, now a more worn-out variant, did not stand out and exist on the level of a 70 rating. Nothing extraordinary.

Despite this, it seems that the recognition gained with The Medium injected vigor into Bloober Team to the point of making them think they could handle such a responsibility. Just a year ago, in January 2023, there was already controversy over what the studio would or would not do with the Silent Hill 2 remake and the liberties they would take.

That's where the head of marketing, Anna Jasinska, raised an alarm by stating: “we do not deviate from the original concept when remaking this cult classic; we only have some ideas on how to make some scary elements more appealing to the contemporary audience.” I wonder, which contemporary audience? The same one that Piotr Babieno, CEO, imagined, making him mention that they could sell 10 million copies?

Today, the Silent Hill 2 trailer was scrutinized by fans, who haven't been slow to criticize the lack of allusions to details, just as in the original work, to James's guilt and torment, as apparently, they were replaced by generic phrases that break this amalgam where everything had a reason and coherence. What was stated and presented makes me think that, then, Bloober Team also doesn't really know who they're talking to.

Hopefully, it's just a nightmare and nothing more

Honestly, I hope I'm wrong, and hopefully, Silent Hill 2 is a product worthy of its legacy, but perhaps that's my wish as a fan, very different from what the research and analysis show with the available material.

The combat preview presented in the State of Play is indefensible, as it is the least important aspect of the original work. In fact, it's only there because it's a product of its time, and we weren't ready for a proposal without weapons, without means of defense. James Sunderland, just like Harry Mason before, is an average, clumsy, fearful, and tormented citizen; his combat was also, in theory, nothing that put the focus on that aspect.

Silent Hill 2 is a descent into a spiral that invokes the worst human feelings in an environment as melancholic as it is terrifying. A relentless walk, puzzles that only increase tension and frustration, cynicism, madness, and anxiety of those characters that will appear on the way, along with the symbolism of Pyramid Head. There was plenty to grab onto to maintain expectations, but both Konami and Bloober decided to cancel each other out, and now uncertainty has taken over those who await it, and there will surely be news in the coming days related to its release.

I know that Silent Hill is a cursed franchise in its concept and reality in the industry; it can't be any other way, but it's said that it's not a good idea to disturb the dead because the price to pay can be very high.