If you were among the many people eagerly anticipating Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro's take on the Silent Hill franchise, you might want to grab yourself a stiff drink and take a seat. We have a bit of...news...
Following a flurry of rumors over the weekend, Konami has confirmed, by way of an official statement sent out to multiple sites this morning, that Silent Hills has been canceled. The statement reads as follows:
Konami is committed to new Silent Hill titles, however the embryonic ‘Silent Hills’ project developed with Guillermo del Toro and featuring the likeness of Norman Reedus will not be continued.
In terms of Kojima and Del Toro being involved, discussions on future Silent Hill projects are currently underway, and please stay tuned for further announcements.
As tremendously disappointing as this news is, it's also not terribly surprising. The fate of Silent Hills had been up in the air since news broke that a rift had developed between Kojima and Konami. That speculation got a lot more weight behind it when over the weekend word got out that P.T., the free "playable teaser" released last year to promote Silent Hills, would be disappearing from the PlayStation store as of Wednesday, April 29.
Guillermo del Toro may have confirmed the news this past Saturday, as well. Matt Hackney, an attendee at an "Evening with Guillermo del Toro" event in San Francisco tweeted out that del Toro had confirmed the game was done, quoting him as saying, "It's not gonna happen and that breaks my greasy heart."
There's a lot to unpack here, but ultimately, the big takeaway is that a very promising-sounding project is now dead in the water. The ongoing Kojima/Konami drama appears to be chugging along unabated, and now Guillermo del Toro is 0 for 2 on video games, after this and his ill-fated project with THQ, inSANE, were both canned.
Even worse, P.T., one of the neatest horror experiences to come around in quite a while, will be disappeared in just a couple of days. If you haven't had a chance to play that thing yet, now would seem like a prudent time to do so. It's worth it, even if you're not especially invested in Silent Hill-related stuff.
Meanwhile, Konami also just voluntarily delisted itself from the New York Stock Exhange. Things seem to be going great over there, don't they?