Silent Hills is canceled, and this survival horror fan is bummed
Commentary: After rumors of Silent Hills' grisly death swirled on Sunday, Konami confirms that the video game starring Norman Reedus has been axed. CNET's Anthony Domanico is not happy.
Silent Hill the franchise isn't dead, but Silent Hills the game is.
Game publisher Konami revealed to CNET sister site GameSpot on Monday that the video game collaboration between legendary video game designer Hideo Kojima, director Guillermo del Toro and "The Walking Dead" actor Norman Reedus has been officially canceled.
As a gamer who has played most of the Silent Hill games and thoroughly enjoyed the playable trailer P.T. that was released on PlayStation 4 in 2014 to hype the upcoming game, I was deeply disappointed by this. When P.T. first came out, I spent many hours being scared silly while trying to figure out how to beat the creepy game to unlock the trailer for Silent Hills.
P.T. took me back to my days as a teenager staying up way too late to get spooked by games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill -- franchises that set the tone for what survival horror games should be by aptly combining scary monsters with under-armed characters that had to rely on evasion and solving puzzles over overt violence. Given how good P.T. was at delivering the right level of scare at the right times to keep gamers on their toes, I envisioned more late nights with Silent Hills, scared out of my mind as Pyramid Heads and Butchers came out of nowhere to terrorize me as I made my way through the deserted town.
When I learned that Silent Hills would be produced by Kojima, the mastermind behind the Metal Gear Solid series, I instantly knew it was going to be fantastic. Adding the brilliant and imaginative del Toro as director and Reedus as the main protagonist in the upcoming game would just make Silent Hills that much better. And, after Kojima revealed that he was making his very best effort to scare the pants off of gamers, I knew I needed to play this game.
Sadly, it wasn't meant to be.
In March it was revealed that Kojima is set to leave Konami after work on Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is completed, and on Sunday it started to become clear that Konami's relationships with Norman Reedus and del Toro were all but finished as well. The company stayed mum on the news until Monday, confirming to GameSpot that the game had indeed been canceled, but that Konami would continue to work on the Silent Hill franchise.
While Konami may very well bring a new Silent Hill game to its lineup soon, it's hard to imagine it will be as good as the game Kojima, del Toro and Reedus were plotting. I'll still play it, of course, as I'm a sucker for survival horror games, but my dreams of walking around Silent Hill as Daryl Dixon destroying horrific creatures with my trusty crossbow are all but dead.