The Layers of Fear studio really thinks people will like what it does with Silent Hill.
Bloober Team, it's fair to say, is not everyone's cup of tea. Some people like what they do quite a lot, and others, well, not so much. So when Konami announced the Silent Hill 2 remake in 2022, and that Bloober was making it, the reaction was not universally enthusiastic. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno acknowledged the apprehension but said the studio has come a long way over the years and expressed hope that fans will "give us a chance" to prove what it can do.
Some of the concerns about the Silent Hill 2 remake are the result of Konami's less-than-stellar record with the series in recent years. The Twitch Plays-style episodic series Silent Hill Ascension, for instance, was "a complete disaster" in the words of staff writer Harvey Randall, and so poorly written some viewers assumed it had to scripted by AI, even though the head of the production company responsible for it insisted that wasn't the case.
Bloober Team itself, as noted, is kind of notoriously uneven. We scored Layers of Fear a 64% in 2016 and gave Layers of Fear 2 a 57% a few years later, but the 2023 remake earned an extremely positive 90%. The Medium, which arrived in 2021, garnered an even more impressive 92%, but 2019's Blair Witch? 58%. The studio's later work definitely seems more solid than its earlier stuff, but it's clearly not a smooth upward trend.
Exacerbating Silent Hill 2 worries even further is the fact that neither Bloober Team nor publisher Konami have said a whole lot about the remake. Bloober Team asked followers for "a bit more patience" in 2023, saying that "once Konami, as the game's publisher, shares more information, we are confident that the wait will be worthwhile."
Prior to that, Babieno had defended Konami's approach to the Silent Hill series, urging fans to give the company time on Silent Hill 2, "because they do know what they are doing."
Long-suffering Silent Hill fans better hope so: Babieno said Bloober Team's take on Silent Hill 2 isn't necessarily a traditional remake so much as a "romantic vision of the game from more than 20 years ago," and that developing it has been "a daunting journey balancing preservation and innovation." There's also apparently been extensive collaboration with Konami on the project, leading to "a great balance of what we and our partner had in mind."
"It took us a long time to get there, with a lot of creative discussions and hard work, but we are very happy with the result," Babieno said.
All the same, he knows that nostalgia is a powerful drug that can set expectations unreasonably high, especially when it comes to games as impactful and influential as Silent Hill 2.
"I am dreaming that gamers will trust us, but I realize that trust is earned through actions, not through words," Babieno said. "So that’s why we have a policy of not commenting [on the specifics of the game] and raising hopes. We want to show our ambitions through our work, so we can't ask for anything more than, 'Give us a chance'."
That's a fair request, I suppose—and in the end, all anyone can really ask for. The Silent Hill 2 remake—which, for the record, is officially entitled Silent Hill 2, no "remake," which I guess is okay because the original Silent Hill 2 is no longer available for purchase—is set to launch on October 8.
