Hasta La Gadget!

Silent Hill fans, hold onto your butts. Konami today dropped a ton of news about the future of its iconic horror franchise, and aside from confirming a long-rumored remake of Silent Hill 2, the studio revealed three new games in the same universe: Silent Hill Townfall, Ascension and f. They all sound like incredibly different experiences.

Townfall comes from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, a Glasgow studio known for strong narrative skills and horror world-building in titles like Observation and Stories Untold. The short teaser for Townfall features an old-school pocket television clipping through tense conversations and disturbing scenes, and it looks to be the most traditional Silent Hill game of the trio.

Ascension is the least game-like installment here, but it comes with a big name attached: JJ Abrams. It’s an interactive streaming series where “the entire community shapes the canon of Silent Hill,” and its tagline is “Face Your Trauma Together.” Ascension comes from Abrams’ studio, Bad Robot, and Genvid, a company that produces interactive live shows. It’s described as “a new form of entertainment that blends community, live storytelling and interactivity.” Ascension is due out in 2023.

And then there’s Silent Hill f, a game that sounds like an exciting departure for the series. It’s coming from Ryūkishi07, a creator known for crafting acclaimed visual novels with psychological horror and supernatural mysteries at their core. The teaser for f is gorgeous and gruesome, featuring a young woman as she’s consumed from the inside-out by the tentacles of a flesh-eating plant. A YouTube description for the teaser says the game is “set in 1960s Japan featuring a beautiful, yet horrifying world.” The video only gets bloodier as it goes, so dip out early if it’s making you squirm — or lean in and get a good look, you lovely freak. There’s no word yet on a release date or platforms for f.

And that isn’t where Konami’s renewed interest in Silent Hill ends — alongside Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2, a new movie called Return to Silent Hill is in the works from Christophe Gans, the director of the 2006 film adaptation.

Konami’s Silent Hill 2 remake for PC and PlayStation 5 isn’t the only reimagining of the classic 2001 game on the horizon: The company just announced that the story is also being adapted into a new major motion picture. Return to Silent Hill will apparently serve as a direct sequel to the original 2006 adaptation, and will be helmed by the very same director, Christophe Gans.

The project seems to still be in the development phase. There’s no teaser trailer, just a handful storyboard images and pieces of conceptual artwork. Gans spent most of the announcement talking about the plot of the game itself. “We decided to go back to the best of these stories,” he said during Konami’s Silent Hill Transmission live stream. “The film tells the story of a young guy coming back to Silent Hill, where he has known a great love — and what he’s going to find is a pure nightmare.” 

Victor Hadida, who also worked on the 2006 film, is also returning to produce, and says that while the project is planning to give the franchise a modern twist, staying true to the spirit of the original game is a key focus. Gans seems to agree, calling the original Silent Hill games “great artistic achievements.”

Hearing Christophe Gans talk about the project is genuinely interesting, as the director ponders the unique challenge of translating the immersive narrative that only a video game can deliver into a shorter 90-to-100-minute experience. We won’t see how well he manages it for quite some time, however. Return to Silent Hill does not yet have a release date. 

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