Silent Hill Transmission Announcements

Silent Hill has been a quiet franchise for a while now. It’s been eight years since PT (Playable Teaser) and the announcement of the now-canceled Silent Hills, and ten years since the last mainline game released with Silent Hill: Downpour. Aside from a collaboration with Dead by Daylight and a multitude of questionable leaks, fans have been waiting to see more for a long time.

The official Silent Hill Twitter account hyping up a transmission video out of nowhere did a lot to garner interest. Although some names were leaked from the video’s initial description, I’m not sure everyone was expecting how much would be announced. Let’s go over the highlights of this 48-minute transmission.

Kicking it all off was the announcement everyone has been waiting for and expecting since remakes have proven to be so successful: Silent Hill 2 is being remade for current-generation hardware. The release date is unknown, but it will be coming to Steam (store page here) and PlayStation 5 as a console exclusive for 12 months. It’s being made by developer Bloober Team on Unreal Engine 5.

A majority of the teaser trailer was CGI aside from a short snippet of James walking with an over-the-shoulder camera. Later statements from the developers in the transmission and on a PlayStation Blog post reveal that they want to keep the spirit of the original and recreate everything while also providing modern enhancements. Some of these enhancements include rebuilding the combat system, seamless loading, and better audiovisual elements.

Next was another teaser trailer for another game. Silent Hill: Townfall is being developed by No Code and published by Annapurna Interactive. This felt like even more of a teaser as it only consisted of a creepy pocket television shifting through channels/images as a man cryptically spoke in the background.

The creative director for No Code did provide their intent to do something a little different. Given their two previous titles, Stories Untold and Observation, I think it’s a fair assumption that this will be a project that stands out from previous projects.

This transmission wasn’t just for games. Return to Silent Hill is a new movie directed by Christophe Gans, the director of the original 2006 Silent Hill movie. Although the first movie and the second movie took influence from the first and third entries in the mainline series, this will be based on Silent Hill 2. For his return, Christophe mentions that he wants to remain faithful and surprise the audience at the same time with new surprises and redesigns.

Silent Hill: Ascension was the next title to be shown. It’s being developed by Behaviour Interactive of Dead by Daylight fame as well as Genvid, who specializes in creating social community experiences they call Massively Interactive Live Events (MILEs). Other contributors include Bad Robot Games and DJ2 Entertainment.

Their take on Silent Hill will be a 24×7 interactive streaming series where the community will shape what happens. Looking at what previous projects Genvid has made and some of the producers working on it, this could very likely use metaverse elements. No specific release date was provided but it’s expected to be available in 2023.

Ending the transmission was another new game that bears similarities to the previously leaked Project Sakura. Silent Hill f will be set in Japan during the 1960s and is being developed by NeoBards Entertainment. It is also being written by Ryukishi07, who is known for writing the popular When They Cry visual novel series and most recently Loopers. There was no release date, platforms, or genre listed, but many are excited at the prospect of Ryukishi07 being on board. The CGI trailer is arguably the creepiest of the bunch and might not be the best to watch for anyone squeamish or with Trypophobia.

Those are the highlights of what was announced, and I have to admit it’s a big 180 after going so many years without substantial content. Even though not everything had a release date attached, there is now a whole lot to look forward to for the Silent Hill franchise. If you want to see the entire transmission, which includes additional details from the creatives working on some of these projects as well as some merchandise announcements, check out the video below.