Ahead of yesterday’s Silent Hill Transmission presentation, it was widely accepted that Konami had fallen out of favor as a video game publisher and slipped into a state of near-total insignificance. It feels like we’ve been joking for years about the precedence of this one-time jukebox-rental company’s many sidelines, which include casinos and gyms. Konami hasn’t settled for seemingly desperate failures with the latest technology trends, such as NFTs and Metaverse Development. The last big game launch – 2021 eSoccera rebranding of the ailing Pro Evolution Soccer series – was an absolute disaster.
Most of Konami’s troubles date back to 2015, a year that will live in shame for fans of the 1980s and ’90s greats who gave the company its name: Gradius, Castlevania, Contra, Suikoden, and of course, Metal Gear. 2015 was the year Konami canceled silent hills, a reboot of his award-winning horror series from Hideo Kojima and film director Guillermo del Toro; drawn permanently silent hills‘ acclaimed playable teaser pt from the PlayStation Store, making it almost entirely inaccessible if you don’t already have it installed; and carried out a lengthy and undignified split from its star creator, Kojima, which included removing his name from promotional materials for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and forbids him from accepting an award for it at the Game Awards.
At the same time, new games boss Hideki Hayakawa was proposing a shift away from console games towards mobile device development, the company was restructuring to remove power from individual studios such as Kojima Productions, and the Japanese press was building its reputation as an employer.
It’s entirely possible that Kojima was overindulged at Konami before. But the damage done to the publisher’s reputation with gamers — not to mention its ability and willingness to develop games — was severe. Aside from the general apathy towards the misguided of 2018 Survive Metal Gear and the barely remembered Contra game from 2019 Cons: Rogue Corps, the clearest example of which is that the Silent Hill brand lay dormant for a full decade. The last games released were Silent Hill: Downpour and book of memories in 2012.
This context made this week’s Silent Hill Transmission a defining moment for both the Silent Hill brand and Konami’s gaming division. Surprisingly, Konami was up to the opportunity.
Several things stood out about the series of announcements: their sheer volume, the breadth they covered, and—most pleasantly surprising of all—the ingenuity behind them.
Grouping five projects in this way certainly provided Konami with a degree of cover: none of them would be questioned as closely as they would be if they were revealed separately, and some of them could be fairly (read: extremely) lacking in detail . But it also gave the publisher a chance to show they had all the bases covered and understood both the business realities and the creative possibilities of modern franchise management. And it really seems so. Konami! From all companies!
So a remake of the fan favorite Silent Hill 2 leads the way, allowing Konami to remind fans of the series at its best and introduce new players to it, and carries minimal creative risk. But that is paired with Silent Hill fwho wants to take the series into new territory: a different time (the 1960s), a different culture (Japan), and a less gruesome and psychological, more organic style of horror.
With the movie Return to Silent Hill, Konami demonstrates an understanding that no contemporary entertainment franchise should be confined to one medium, as well as a keen understanding of what went right the first time (that is, hiring director Christophe Gans, who created the first, great, silent Hill Movie). The same thought is probably behind the interactive drama series’ most dubious announcement Silent Hill: Ascension.
The most intriguing train, however, is Silent Hill: City Falla new game developed in collaboration with boutique indie publisher Annapurna Interactive and published by No Code (Untold Stories, monitoring). It’s here that Konami acknowledges the tremendous innovation that smaller indie developers have brought to the horror space in recent years, as well as a smart willingness to see silent Hill Move across genres and markets and potentially into experimental forms within gaming.
No Code’s involvement also hints at another surprising and welcome development: a keen but brave eye for talent. When the news first broke that the Bloober team (layers of fear, The medium) worked with Konami and most likely worked on Silent Hill, it was easy to fear a return to where the series left off in 2012 – collaborating with decidedly mid-tier, sociable Western studios like Climax, Vatra, and Double Helix. But it turns out that bloober are remake overseers, working under the watchful eye of original art director Masahiro Ito while the creatives take risks f is being taken on by an intriguing coalition of talent: visual novelist Ryukishi07 and artists ball, backed by a relatively untried Taiwanese studio, NeoBards, and veteran producer Motoi Okamoto. Considering that safe, known amounts like Until dawn Developers Supermassive are known to have been involved in the Silent Hill pitch process. It’s great to see Konami taking a chance on such developers and adopting an unconventional development setup to achieve their vision.
It’s still very early days, of course, and many of these projects may not catch on. But this week, Konami re-emerged as a savvy and creative force in video games. Earlier this year there had been green shoots – GetsuFumaDen: The Immortal Moona well-received update to an old Konami game, and the obvious care being taken with the forthcoming one Suikoden 1 and 2 Remasters – but the Silent Hill Transmission makes it all but official: Konami, as an entity that apparently cares about making cool video games, is back. It’s even no longer unthinkable that it might have something interesting to do with Post-Kojima Metal Gear. This is now a reversal.
