For years, the
Silent Hill franchise has withered while developer
Konami made imprudent efforts to dump the legendary horror IP into bad movie schlock and
slot machines. So, fans treated the announcement that Polish studio Bloober Team would helm a remake of 2001’s franchise peak
Silent Hill 2 with the sputtering disbelief.
Bloober? The horror studio
notorious for its lackluster interpretation of
mental illness in games,
remaking one of the most legendary psychological horror games of all time? The company’s CEO and creative lead Piotr Babieno tells
Rolling Stone he’s heard the criticism, and he’s acquainted with the trouble it takes to reimagine a game fans say is untouchable.
23 years since its initial release,
Silent Hill 2 continues to be inextricable from both its effectively dated video game visuals, like levels filled with fog clouds as thick as butter, and the more intangible ability to induce claustrophobia. It is a monumental horror game, and developers still try to emulate it in popular horror titles like this year’s
Crow Country. Fans, too, revere
Silent Hill 2 like it’s a beloved family member, and have remained
heavily skeptical since the remake was announced back in 2022.
But Bloober seems to understand that, instead of trying to surpass impossible expectations, it’s more efficient to access the mood that helped set them. Babieno wouldn’t necessarily call his team’s game a remake, but a “romantic vision of the game from more than 20 years ago.” This nostalgic approach could be especially beneficial for publisher Konami, whose unsatisfying new
Silent Hill installments like the free-to-play 2024 first-person horror title
The Short Message has left some fans
discouraged. But, in its interpretation of
Silent Hill 2, Bloober offers melancholy hope.
Babieno is quick to mention that the
Silent Hill 2 remake is like fresh paint for Bloober as developers. Until now, the studio has been tied to strained psychological horror and slow-paced environmental storytelling. You’ll find evidence of these things in the studio’s landmark games like 2016’s
Layers of Fear and 2021’s
The Medium. But Babieno says Bloober is already approaching their games, including the mysterious new IP codenamed “
Project C,” differently.
“Internally, we are calling this ‘Bloober Team 3.0,'” he says. “I believe that Bloober today is a completely different team than three years ago.” He notes that, when Bloober began working on
Layers of Fear, the game that helped establish them as a studio, its team was made up of around 10 people. In 2024, Bloober has over 250 people on its staff.
This expanded version of Bloober will continue to prioritize horror games — Babieno says horror is part of the studio’s “DNA.” But Bloober wants its games to start communicating through action.
In this sense, Babieno says that Bloober’s
Silent Hill 2 will function as “a culmination of my work, but, at the same time, a gateway to the new.”
“Life is too short, and [the process of] creating games, I would say, is too long to make games that don’t feel significant,” Babieno says. “We want to create games that we would like to play ourselves, and games that will be very important to our audience.”
Bloober hasn’t had an easy metamorphosis. It’s been facing the challenge every studio encounters when trying to innovate a beloved franchise: competing with fans’ sugary memories.
“Let’s say [development has been] a daunting journey balancing preservation and innovation,” Babieno says.
He knows fans have been scrutinizing every trailer, rumor, and move that Bloober makes, but he suggests the remake’s success is an emotional problem for him, too. Babieno still remembers his first experience with
Silent Hill 2 — watching his brother play it — and how the game completely obliterated his concept of horror games.
Back then, “I read a lot of books from Stephen King, from Doestoyevsky […], I watched a lot of movies by Lynch, Fincher, Kieślowski,” Babieno says, but “games weren’t the medium that made me feel like you could go very deep into someone’s psychology.” That was before he witnessed
Silent Hill 2. He was fascinated by the game’s symbolism, things like the dense fog that blurs the boundaries between Hell and reality, and “basically, it’s changed my life,” Babieno says.
“Despite technological progress [in
video games],” he continues, “so many of us remember [visiting] the town of Silent Hill as one of the most important points in our lives.” Bloober takes pride in having had an open dialogue with
Silent Hill 2‘s original creators at Konami throughout the remake’s creation.
“Because of those conversations,” says Babieno, “we found a great balance of what we and our partner had in mind. It took us a long time to get there, with a lot of creative discussions and hard work, but we are very happy with the result.”
Just as its developers’ expectations had to shift throughout the
Silent Hill 2 remake’s development, Bloober asks that you hold your judgment until you play their game.
“I am dreaming that gamers will trust us,” Babieno says, “but I realize that trust is earned through actions, not through words. So that’s why we have a policy of not commenting [on the specifics of the game] and raising hopes. We want to show our ambitions through our work, so we can’t ask for anything more than ‘give us a chance.'”
Anyway, Babieno appreciates fans’ constructive criticism, which he says has so far been “invaluable in refining our project before its release.” Though, Babieno also stresses that Bloober prioritizes a supportive work environment where designers can focus “on their creative work with peace of mind,” which requires shutting their ears to gamers’ voices sometimes.
“We tried to make all possible fans happy, but, at the same time, be very faithful to ourselves,” Babieno says. Ultimately, fans might not anticipate every change Bloober decided to implement in its remake, but Babieno says “I really hope that when people play for the first time, they will understand that the choices we made were the best possible.”
With the
Silent Hill 2 remake on track for its October 8 release on
PS5 and
PC, Bloober is shifting its attention elsewhere. At the moment, the studio is working on a new survival horror IP it’s only referring to as “Project C.” A Bloober PR representative tells me that, since May, when publisher Private Division canceled its production agreement, “we are continuing on our own. It’s a much bigger game in terms of gameplay, action than our previous games that were focusing more on narrative and environment.”
Babieno can’t elaborate on this much, but he suggests Project C will showcase what Bloober wants to do differently.
“It will show how much we’ve learned over the years,” he says. Bloober is quivering with momentum. “I think that, right now, we know exactly where we are going.”
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