With the cancellation of Silent Hills earlier this year Konami both confused and shocked fans. However seemingly none more so than acclaimed director Guillermo Del Toro. One of the most exciting things about the game was the involvement of horror visionary Del Toro, responsible for such works as “Pans Labyrinth” and “The Devils Backbone”, and how he would work with the esteemed Hideo Kojima. After the excitement caused by the outstanding P.T demo the idea that Konami would pull the plug seemed unimaginable.
In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Del Toro spoke about how he felt about the games cancellation and the progress the team was making.
“We had a great experience and had great story sessions with hundreds upon hundreds of designs,” he said. “Some of the stuff that we were designing for Silent Hills I’ve seen in games that came after, like The Last of Us, which makes me think we were not wrong, we were going in the right direction, The thing with Kojima and Silent Hills is that I thought we would do a really remarkable game and really go for the jugular.”
Silent Hills was also recently revealed to have been worked on by acclaimed horror manga legend Junji Ito, further adding to the disappointing realisation that this game would never see the light of day. During the interview Del Toro went on to discuss his confusion around the cancelled game.
“We were hoping to actually create some sort of panic with some of the devices we were talking about and it is really a shame that it’s not happening. When you ask about how things operate, that makes no f**king sense at all that that game is not happening. Makes no f**king sense at all.”
Konami claim that they will continue to work with the Silent Hill licence but in terms of this project their statement reads that it “will not be continued”.
“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.”
Unfortunately Del Toro doesn’t wish to work on another video game but reveals that he is still close friends and regularly keeps in contact with Kojima. Hopefully this is the last we see of the drama surrounding this game and with Del Toro and Kojima’s friendship fans can still hold out hope for a future collaboration.