A credible source has dropped an honestly hard to believe bombshell about the Silent Hill franchise.
Christophe Gans, a famed French movie director of his own merits, was the director of the Silent Hill film from 2006. In a recent interview with french media outlet Movie and Game, he claims there is a new Silent Hill video game on the way, and it is being worked on by Team Silent.
While there’s no reason to doubt Gans’ connections with Konami, so much so that we can’t merely label it as a rumor, there are a few things that should give one pause before accepting this claim as it is being presented to us.
For one, there were earlier rumors of a completely different Silent Hill game in production. To be specific, Bloober Team, who are the devs behind the Layers of Fear series, were rumored to be working on a remake of Silent Hill 2. For the record, Bloober Team has neither officially confirmed or denied that their next project is a Silent Hill game, but they do have an unrevealed game in production.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there is no real Team Silent as we imagine it. To be specific, the team of developers who had worked on the Silent Hill games as we know it aren’t really in the company anymore, and are not in a position to make this Silent Hill game.
I will quote Redditor RedPyramidScheme here, who explains this situation so well there isn’t any need to rephrase any of it.
“This was posted yesterday, but Team Silent was an existing team with rotating members. This mostly had to do with some of the members leaving to work at Sony after SH1, and SH3 + 4 being developed simultaneously. SH2 was developed by the people who made SH1 with some newcomers, and then the team was split for the third and fourth games.
Each Team Silent game was made by core team from the other games, so it was never a totally different team.
- Hiroyuki Owaku: SH1, SH2, and SH3.
- Takayoshi Sato: SH1 and SH2. He wrote an unused script for SH3, but was unable to be involved with the project.
- Masahiro Ito: Art and creature designer. SH1, SH2, and SH3.
- Masashi Tsuboyama: SH1, SH2, SH4, and SH5 (cancelled). The story of SH2 was developed by Tsuboyama, Sato, Owaku, Ito, and newcomer Suguru Murakoshi. Tsuboyama was an art designer on SH1 with Ito, the game director of SH2, and art director of SH3.
- Akihiro Imamura: SH1, SH2, SH4, SH5 (cancelled). Programmer of SH1, producer of SH2, 4, 5.
- Suguru Murakoshi: SH2 and SH4. He was a newcomer on SH2, in which he helped build the story and served as drama director. He wrote the scenario script and directed SH4.
- Norihito Hatakeda: SH2 and SH3. Built the base engine and did animations.
- Jun Inuoe: Creature designer for both SH3 and SH4.
- Akira Yamaoka: Composer and sound designer for the series, 1999-2009.
- Kazuhide Nakazawa: Animator of SH2, director of SH3.
Even SH4 was developed by team members going back to the first game. SH2 was developed by core members of SH1, SH3 was developed by core members of SH1 and SH2, and SH4 was developed by core members of SH1, SH2, and SH3 (mostly SH1 and SH2 because of the team split).”
Now Christophe Gans has been talking up the prospect of upcoming Silent Hill games for some time now. Last June he claimed that Konami has multiple Silent Hill projects in development, including movies and games. Konami’s response has been not to confirm any such projects, and even to have some alleged leaked images deleted. If what Gans is saying is all true, Konami won’t back him up on it, at least not yet.
With Gans putting it all in the line, however, Konami may be forced to finally speak up – and maybe they will be, if an official announcement is already scheduled before this year ends. Keep following GameRanx for future news on any new Silent Hill games and projects.
Source: Reddit
