Every Silent Hill rumor that might be announced at Konami’s Silent Hill Transmission event

On Wednesday, Konami will officially kickstart Silent Hill with “the latest updates” on a series that has been dormant for a decade. It’s a moment that content-starved fans have been waiting for for years. However, what is the outcome?

The rumor mill around Silent Hill has been busy for nearly two years and we have some idea. So active, in fact, that it’s become rather confusing, with multiple projects mooted, and multiple developers said to be involved — some new to the series, some not.

This is where we try our best to collect all of the data and put it together into four prospects. (Unless it’s three…)

Silent Hill: A Short Message — a playable teaser?

The most concrete sign of Silent Hill activity in the lead-up to Konami’s reveal event was the Korean game rating body’s classification of a game called Silent Hill: The Short Message. Gematsu noted that Uniana is the publisher. Uniana regularly publishes Konami titles from South Korea.

It is a title that suggests an experience of only a few seconds. This matches reports about a playable teaser, in the form of P.T., the infamous demo for the Kojima Productions’ canceled series reboot, Silent Hills. Video Games Chronicle said that this teaser, codenamed Sakura, “is intended to be released as a free digital title to build anticipation for the larger [Silent Hill] projects.” It is not clear if it is a completely stand-alone experience or a preview of a new Silent Hill game.

VGC also connected the teaser and a collection of images that appeared to have been taken from Silent Hill’s new game, which were leaked May 20,22. Konami filed a copyright claim for the images to prevent them from being taken offline. However, both of these claims failed and proved their authenticity.

Image: Masahiro Ito/Konami

The images are supposedly from 2020 and show a messy, dilapidated and trash-strewn room; a woman’s face styled like a collage of scraps of paper, some scrawled with messages like “I hate myself”; a screenshot of another messy room with text overlaid; and two images of a hallway plastered in post-it notes, with a figure covered in blossom lurking at the end.

Masahiro Ito, an art director and monster designer responsible for creating the Pyramid Head character and the previous three games’ graphics is signing one of the last images. Ito has said he is working as part of the core development team of a new, unnamed game, and also retweeted the official announcement of Wednesday’s Silent Hill update

The art is mysterious and evocative, although it’s important to remember that things may have changed in the past two years. This remains the most concrete prospect for Wednesday’s reveal, however. The sensation created by P.T.It makes sense to repeat the trick using a teaser, and it is possible that we will even see a simultaneous release. The Brief MessageThis week.

A new, mainline Silent Hill game — made in Japan?

It’s logical that Konami’s efforts to revive the franchise would ultimately end in a continuation or reboot of the main Silent Hill series. Multiple reports suggest that this is happening, although it’s not the only Silent Hill project in the works. NateTheHate, Jeff Grubb, and VGC all report hearing that a “mainline entry” is in the works alongside other projects.

That’s about all that is known about this project… unless the images mentioned above are actually related to the full new game rather than the teaser, or the game and the teaser are closely linked. Each of these could be distinct.

In February 2021, VGC reported that Konami had outsourced a Silent Hill project to “a prominent Japanese developer.” This seems most likely to be the home of the new mainline game, although VGC noted that the Japanese project was “something of a departure from past Silent Hill games.” It would also be a point of interest because Konami turned to a series of Western developers to make Silent Hill games after 2004’s Silent Hill 4 – The RoomMixed results.

As well as Ito, regular Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka has shared the announcement of Wednesday’s event. In 2021, in a since-deleted video interview, Yamaoka said his next project would be “the one you’re hoping to hear about.” It seems as though Konami is making an effort to round up at least a few key members of original developer Team Silent for its new Silent Hill projects.

A remake of Silent Hill 2 — from Bloober Team

Polish horror specialist Bloober Team is a developer from Bloober Team. Fear in layersAnd The MediumSince last year, the Silent Hill series has been in close contact with. Speculation began when CEO Peter Babieno told GamesIndustry.biz “we’ve been working for more than a year on another gaming project, another horror IP, and we’re doing this with a very famous gaming publisher. I can’t tell you who. I can’t tell you what the project is, but I’m pretty sure when people realize we’re working on it, they will be very excited.”

A few months later, Silent Hill’s IP was almost confirmed when Bloober announced that the company was entering into a partnership deal with Konami. After having contributed to the music, Bloober also worked with Yamaoka to create a new title. The Medium.

For a while, Bloober was assumed to be leading Silent Hill reboot or continuation, until the reports from NateTheHate, Grubb, and VGC in May this year all linked the developer with a remake of 2001’s Silent Hill 2 — which is felt by most fans to be the best game in the series. According to reports, the game will undergo a major rework, including multiple new endings as well as revised animations, AI and puzzles. According to some reports, the game may be an exclusive for PlayStation.

Some very poor quality imagespretinent to be from the Silent Hill 2 Remake was first posted to Twitter on September. They did match some details in the game, as you could see by peering into the murk. Allegedly they are taken from a pitch demo Bloober made before the project was even greenlit, and don’t reflect its final quality.

An episodic series of “short stories”

There’s a third, or fourth, Silent Hill project that may or may not be in production, but the evidence for this one is slighter.

Leaker Dusk Golem — responsible for the major image leak from the teaser or mainline game in May — said that he had heard as early as 2018 that Konami had been soliciting Silent Hill pitches from studios for two projects. One was a “reboot,” the other an “episodic game.” In May of this year, NateTheHate mentioned “side ‘stories’” as a project in development, and VGC referred to “a smaller, episodic series of ‘short stories.’”

It’s been reported that Jusqu’à la Dämmerung Dark PicturesSupermassive Games was a participant in this pitching process. However, it was eventually rejected. Another name connected with the episodic series by VGC’s sources was boutique publisher Annapurna Interactive.

This is the vaguest prospect — and it goes without saying that none of these projects is confirmed, and they could all have been canceled or changed, even if they are real. But one thing is sure. Rumors and reports have been swirling about Silent Hill’s activities for quite some time. Konami seems determined to bring the series back in a big way, working both with external studios and some of the series’ originating talents. Here’s hoping it will have something substantive to show for its efforts this week.