Not sure why Silent Hill 2 is getting remade before the first one? Konami has a plan, apparently
Let's just hope it's a good one.
Much like Capcom starting its Resident Evil remakes with the second game, Konami has done the same with Silent Hill - but the question is, why?
You would think that the logical way to remake a series is starting from the beginning, but when Konami finally revealed that the Silent Hill series was making a comeback, it did so by announcing a couple of new games, and of course, a remake of fan favourite Silent Hill 2 from Bloober Team. It's that fan favourite point that is probably a big reason as to why it has received the remake treatment first, but in a recent interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Bloober Team's creative director Mateusz Lenart and lead producer Maciej Głomb offered some more in-depth reasons as to why it was that the second game is kicking off the Silent Hill revival.
"I think Silent Hill 2 just matches our DNA way better," Lenart explained. "It's much more emotional, a much more personal story than, for example, the first game or the third game. And we at Bloober were always fans of telling personal stories about people's experiences, people's feelings and how they go through them. Not so much about, you know, occultism and things from other worlds, right? So I think that was the main reason, basically."
As RPS notes, the first game is a bit more supernatural, there's some vague stuff about a weird church that comes across a touch cultish, it's a lot more about the vibes than it is some kind of psychological character study, which Silent Hill 2 more or less is. Lenart explained that Bloober prefers to tell more "grounded" stories, saying "Obviously [our games] feature some supernatural elements, but in the end it's all about a specific person, on a specific journey that they need to make to find out the truth about themselves."
While Silent Hill 2 might fit in better at Bloober, that doesn't mean the decision was all down to them. Głomb further explained, "Yeah, Silent Hill 2 is the best match for us as Bloober Team, in terms of our DNA and the games that we've done and that we did previously. On the other hand, it's not like we were making this decision, right? The franchise is connected to Konami's plans."
We're obviously aware of some of those plans, with other games like the potentially more indie-oriented Silent Hill: Townfall, and the Japanese-set Silent Hill f, but we'll have to wait and see if Konami has more ideas when it comes to remaking other games in the series. Our own Kelsey recently got to go hands-on with the remake, coming away from it feeling that "in spite of all my qualms and growing apprehension, it’s safe to say that Bloober Team has, so far, done the best job it possibly could have done while recreating the deeply-troubled world of Silent Hill."