Silent Hills cancelled

Come here to chat about Kojima's now sadly defunct Silent Hills.

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jeremyjh
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by jeremyjh »

It is said he is leaving Konami because they are moving to a new headquartors thats a lot nore lock-down when it comes to emails, phone calls, etc and he does not like that one bit, his contract is up in December
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by jdnation »

Both Kojima and Ken Imaizumi are listed as contractors. Other rumors are that Yoji Shinkawa and other staff are also being treated as 'dispatched employees.' So Gamespot's insider seems to be right.

The level designer Amaro offers no comment, and someone at the L.A. studio says they are proceeding as normal.

The VA Akio Atsuka is also worried about Kojima and has trouble getting to see him apparently.

The social media and media silence continues. Also the latest broadcast of Kojima Station has been indefinitely delayed.

As PR releases note and if you read between the lines, Kojima and KojiPro will still work on MGSV to completion. Though whether or not we'll see Kojima promoting it at E3 or TGS is unlikely except perhaps through a video or something...

It's a troubling situation that is reflecting very badly on Konami and therefore is unlikely to be a marketing stunt. If it is it's unprecedented.

I doubt Del Toro would continue this without Kojima on board, our best hope is that somehow Kojima and staff could work on it as contractors, extending their status past MGSV which will likely be renegotiated, but there seems to be some bad blood going on.

Konami is already announcing development of the next Metal Gear game and that it's hiring an entirely new staff for it. Perhaps Kojima would be brought in as a consultant, but it looks like they really will be parting ways.

Couple this with the possibility that Konami likely wants cheaper shorter dev times to annualize Metal Gear and even extend their gaming to be more mobile inclusive and it could be the case that a franchise like Silent Hill doesn't fit that mould like Metal Gear could.

So the question is whether Del Toro wants to work with anyone other than Kojima, or whether Konami wants to continue that project which will take a long dev time and expense that could otherwise be shifted to more guaranteed things such as another Metal Gear or more mobile content.

The crap thing about all this is, that knowing how Japanese studios tend to work, we will probably hear absolutely NOTHING about Silent Hills whatsoever. Not even a confirmation of whether or not its cancelled. At least not from Konami. Del Toro or Reedus on the other hand might leak something alluding to a cancellation or some indefinite situation which they will have to disregard to go work on other things and not wait around for.

There is also the chance that the L.A. Studio could handle it entirely, but that's up in the air...

So we either gotta hope that Kojima and KojiPro are contracted to finish Silent Hills, or it's likely the project will be shelved with nary a word about it because corporations would rather shut up and say nothing than confirm anything that will produce negative news. They will simply hope we all will give up and stop asking them about it as it reaches Half Life status. Konami will either do nothing more or farm out another Silent Hill to a new overseas studio for a new gen and that will be our confirmation that the game Kojima and Del Toro wanted is dead.
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Its Gone Now
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

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Kojima apparently will not allow Konami to continue development with the Fox engine, they will end up using (if it gets made) the unreal 4 engine. This could be bad news as changing the engine during development could cause problems.

Kojima had some beef with Konami and his contract (or K productions contract) runs out in December. At which time he will most likely be taking his team elswhere and Kojima productions could become a force of their own.

Seems like P.T could indeed go down as the biggest tease ever if we don't get a new SH game.

At the moment though SHs is allegedly cancelled for the time being.

Why do people keep shitting on Silent Hill? It's maddening.
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by unreadphilosophy »

If Konami ends up shelving Silent Hills, I will consider them dead in my mind. That project is probably the last thing they have to repair a reputation that's already been tarnished in the minds of so many people. Regardless of what they think, it's impossible to ignore that the business choices that they've made in the past few years have been extremely questionable, and the only series that has kept them afloat so far is Metal Gear, and that's only because of Kojima's existence. Speaking of which, it absolutely floors me that Konami seems to be acting so damn apathetic toward the idea of Kojima leaving. It doesn't seem like they're doing anything whatsoever to try and work something out that would give him some sense of desire to stay. Are the current heads of Konami so arrogant and delusional that they would actually risk losing the rest of their creditably by letting one of the most influential game developers of our generation walk out the door? It's just...mind blowing.

The only good thing that would come out of this for Kojima is that if he truly does end up leaving, it would give him the ability to become an independent contractor and sell his talent to the highest bidder. When it comes right down to it, I can't think of a single developer out there that wouldn't give their right arm to work side-by-side with Hideo himself.
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by SHACKled89451 »

AuraTwilight wrote:Silent Hills is probably fine because Konami likes money.
I have to agree here, the franchise has brand loyalty, or it wouldn't have lasted as long as it has. The future details may be uncertain.. But over a million downloads of PT when it came from relative obscurity seems to speak for itself, no? In any event, going to remain positive until given a reason not to :)
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Typographenia
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Typographenia »

unreadphilosophy wrote:Regardless of what they think, it's impossible to ignore that the business choices that they've made in the past few years have been extremely questionable, and the only series that has kept them afloat so far is Metal Gear, and that's only because of Kojima's existence.
ImageImage
unreadphilosophy wrote:Speaking of which, it absolutely floors me that Konami seems to be acting so damn apathetic toward the idea of Kojima leaving. It doesn't seem like they're doing anything whatsoever to try and work something out that would give him some sense of desire to stay. Are the current heads of Konami so arrogant and delusional that they would actually risk losing the rest of their creditably by letting one of the most influential game developers of our generation walk out the door? It's just...mind blowing.
It can't be that they're just too hard headed to keep him. There must be some sort of practical business reason or significant disagreement among them for this to be occurring. Kojima was given the key to the city to do whatever he wanted for so many years, so it's not that they don't respect or want him. Whatever it was that happened, they clearly have it in their best interests to not keep him on board. Whether that reasoning seems correct to us, Kojima, or anyone else...

One of the largest factors I could imagine would be that he essentially gets to do whatever he wants. That's great from a developer's stand point, consumers get to benefit from him and his team trying out all of the stuff that they want to, but how does it influence Konami's finances? They probably make a nice sum of cash from his game sales, but how does the time it takes to develop and turn around a project affect them? Kojima's running joke of "kept you waiting, huh?" is pretty funny to us, but I doubt stock holders and staff get that same chuckle. This is all speculation, but I can't see them not batting an eye at the dev cycle length of his projects in comparison to other studios. I'm sure that's not the only reason something like this occurred, but it is likely a factor.
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Leo Ho Tep »

SHACKled89451 wrote:
AuraTwilight wrote:Silent Hills is probably fine because Konami likes money.
I have to agree here, the franchise has brand loyalty, or it wouldn't have lasted as long as it has. The future details may be uncertain.. But over a million downloads of PT when it came from relative obscurity seems to speak for itself, no? In any event, going to remain positive until given a reason not to :)
With the way P.T put the light on Silent Hill again, I can't see them cancelling Silent Hills indeed.
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Its Gone Now
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Its Gone Now »

Leo Ho Tep wrote:
With the way P.T put the light on Silent Hill again, I can't see them cancelling Silent Hills indeed.
They may not have much of a choice unfortunately. Besides, contrary to what we like to believe Silent Hill isn't amazingly popular, it doesn't sell like some games do.

It's the sad truth that Konami have not made a lot in the last few years from SH releases, so they wouldn't loose too much sleep over canning SHs, regardless of how awesome it could have been.

I don't want to see it cancelled but potentially great games have been cancelled in the past.
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by supperhater »

God this is potentially the most disappointing thing ever to me - even though the whole Silent Hills Kojima/Del Toro thing did always seem too good to be true. It's funny when I think back 6 or so months ago when PT came out and the project was revealed, I was literally in disbelief for about a week thinking no fucking way... but man it's a bitter pill to swallow to think that it could just be outright dead in the water all of a sudden. The Kojima/Konami split sucks in general but for me Silent Hills was a way bigger deal than basically anything else in the gaming world.

I know a new SH may still happen without Kojima (and most likely without Del Toro too) but who the fuck knows how that might turn out, it could be good or it could be like the game equivalent of the second SH film, i.e. dreck.

I know it's just a silly hypothetical thought but while playing Bloodborne recently I couldn't help but wonder what the director of that game (and maybe his whole team even) could do if given the opportunity to work on a Silent Hill game... Not in the style of other From Software games, though it could certainly take a few little elements here and there.

The art direction and atmosphere in Bloodborne makes me think he/they could pull that aspect off very well at least, though of course it wouldn't be an action RPG (though the combat style I think would work pretty well for a SH game if it was toned down a bit and the option to run was a bit more prevelant than it is in something like BB). And in addition to a bigger focus on story in general than in other FS games, it would obviously need a main character with their own story to tell rather than one you create who is silent throughout the game as that would almost surely not work for an SH game.

I could imagine an extremely creepy game (possibly even set in a time period way before any of the other games including origins - like 1700s or 1800s even - which is something I generally wouldn't want to see unless in the hands of very capable developers) based on my recent experience with Bloodborne, which isn't a pure survival horror game but has strong horror elements and fantastic atmosphere/art direction and gameplay.

Just thinking out loud, but for me right now this is almost the best case scenario (near unimaginable as it may be...) next to the proposed game by Kojima and co.
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ashatteredmemory
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by ashatteredmemory »

I don't think Guillermo Del Tore would leave the project. I think he really wants to make a game by now, seing that his InSane is in development hell. As many other people mentioned, Kojima might not even be leaving Silent Hills since he has shown interest in the series for a long time, or on the other hand, Kojima leaving the project might not be that much of a bad thing.
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Matt S
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Matt S »

I really really hope the Silent Hills as promised in the PT demo sees the light of day; that is the fan in me though, we shall see...


And worst case scenario: I was interested in the talent behind Silent Hills; Kojima could always do the game as a new IP. Just call it Spooky Hills or some such
RIP Silent Hills
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Number 7 »

They've been removing the Kojima Productions logo from all of their upcoming products from what I understand. I don't think anything has changed more than it already has.

Also, since tomorrow is April Fool's Day, I would take any articles that might come out tomorrow saying that Silent Hills is dead with a grain of salt.
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Matt S
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Matt S »

Yeah, good call
RIP Silent Hills
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Leo Ho Tep
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Leo Ho Tep »

the removing anything kojima ain't bad actually. What would be bad would be them closing the page... They didn't.
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Skele »

Leo Ho Tep wrote:the removing anything kojima ain't bad actually. What would be bad would be them closing the page... They didn't.
Silent Hills is going to be made, however, it's really looking like Kojima and Del Toro won't be a part of that. That leaves me very uninterested, as another mediocre game puts the nail in the coffin for me.
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by clips »

Skele wrote:
Leo Ho Tep wrote:the removing anything kojima ain't bad actually. What would be bad would be them closing the page... They didn't.
Silent Hills is going to be made, however, it's really looking like Kojima and Del Toro won't be a part of that. That leaves me very uninterested, as another mediocre game puts the nail in the coffin for me.


I agree, with not only Kojima kicked off of this project, but his entire team that was running this project will most likely be gone as well. i'm baffled as to how those guys at konami can see how big of a success that P.T. was and turn around and get rid of the guy that put the series back into the spotlight with a strong showing.

Yes..we don't know what happened behind the scenes, but letting this guy go in which what seems like was the only guy keeping them relevant in the gaming field, ( i have heard konami makes money off of Casino machines) still seems like a very foolish move.

In other reports, it looks like konami have added his name back to a few products..


http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/arch ... itles.aspx


Who knows what the heck Konami is doing.....
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by pink_isnt_well000 »

Its Gone Now wrote:Kojima apparently will not allow Konami to continue development with the Fox engine, they will end up using (if it gets made) the unreal 4 engine. This could be bad news as changing the engine during development could cause problems.
I've always been pleased with the Unreal engines. So I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing? I guess because I have never had any interest in the games Kojima makes I don't see what the big deal is regarding him not working on this game. I am a fan of del Toro's films so as long as he's still on board I'm happy. But to be perfectly honest I will not be heartbroken if they decide to not make another game.
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by SPRINGS02 »

^Unreal 4 engine is solid, but the fox engine is something people were really excited to see, it's supposed to be better than the unreal 4 engine. More importantly though, kojima not working on it, means his development team most likely won't be working on it, and they are a pretty great development team. Now knowing konami, they'll probably hand it off to some random small development team with less experience again.
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Re: Silent Hills may be in trouble

Post by Its Gone Now »

^ also, one does not simply change the engine the game is run on, pretty sure they'd have to start again from scratch.
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