New Silent Hills Game Canceled

The highly anticipated new Silent Hills game, a collaboration between Guillermo del Toro and Metal Gear Solid designer Hideo Kojima, has unfortunately been canceled.

And the reason why… is kind of a confused mess.

This was announced to us yesterday, unofficially by Guillermo del Toro (who said he was deeply bummed about the whole thing), and then today it was made official by Konami, who had this to say to Kotaku:

“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.”

But why? The Playable Trailer for the game, aptly called PT, was widely considered to be one of the best horror experiences this generation of gaming, with horrifying scares and a rich, puzzling world that took players weeks to discover all its secrets… all in a single, repeating L-shaped hallway.

It’s… a long, involved mess. Basically, Konami’s relationship with Hideo Kojima has been falling apart in recent weeks, with the acclaimed game designer vanishing for a period, his name and the name of his studio (Kojima labs) being removed from his upcoming Metal Gear Solid game, to testimonials from both sides who were vaguely but unambiguously saying how the two parties were going to be parting ways in the near future. It’s… really convoluted, and it’s been happening for the past few weeks, a sort of slow-motion train wreck. This, however, is the first actual ‘result’, from a player’s perspective, of their little schism, and it’s sure to distress the heck out of a lot of horror fans.

That said. PT was such a brilliant game (which is also being pulled from the Playstation Store soon, so I suggest you get it now) it might be better if it never gets a follow-up, full release title. Like many things in live, PT was so good because it was tight, and it could be tight because it was small. Making a full game out of it might not be as good, and thus tarnish the excellent experience PT gave horror fans around the world.

And at the very least, before we lost a Silent Hill game we didn’t know was coming, we got a small Playable Trailer that we’re sure is very good. That’s something to be thankful for.