How Silent Hill & Slitterhead Are Connected

Silent Hill and the newly revealed Slitterhead have an exciting connection: Keiichiro Toyama. Revealed during The Game Awards 2021, Slitterhead is an upcoming horror game and the debut project of Bokeh Game Studio. While it may not be a new Silent Hill game (although Silent Hill was jokingly mentioned numerous times during The Game Awards 2021), Toyama has a lengthy history with the franchise, and many fans will be excited to see what’s coming next.

Other than Resident Evil, Silent Hill is perhaps the most well-known horror game franchise of all time. Since its first launch on the original PlayStation in 1999, the series has amassed a cult following of fans who are eager for any morsel of news about its future releases. The hunger for more Silent Hill content has only grown since Silent Hills, led by Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear and Death Stranding fame, was canceled in 2015, although it did give fans the gift of P.T., a widely beloved interactive teaser for the game.

Following the cancellation, fans have scoured every public piece of information from Kojima, as well as the franchise’s developer and publisher Konami, hoping for any hint that the series still survives. Earlier this year, Silent Hill conspiracy theories began after Blue Box Game Studios published a string of cryptic tweets, penetrating the online discussions in full force, although it turned out to be a false alarm. While it’s not an official part of the Silent Hill series, however, Slitterhead may end up being a worthwhile spiritual successor – or at least something new that the same fans will enjoy.

Keiichiro Toyama Created Silent Hill & The Siren Series

Because of P.T. and his canceled project, Silent Hill is now closely associated with Hideo Kojima, but his interest in working on the series wasn’t public until mid-2012. P.T. followed a few short years later in 2014, and Kojima announced his official departure from Konami in 2015. Compared to Silent Hill’s two decades of releases since 1999, Kojima’s involvement with the franchise was relatively short-lived. Keiichiro Toyama’s work on Silent Hill wasn’t especially lengthy either, but it is an important name to know. Although he only worked on the original 1999 PlayStation game, Toyama is credited as the creator of the entire Silent Hill franchise. Now he’s the head of Bokeh Game Studio, the very same independent studio crafting Slitterhead.

In fact, Toyama has a short but rather notable body of work as a game developer. After Silent Hill’s release in the late 1990s, he left Konami to join one of Sony’s first-party development teams at Japan Studio. While there, he created yet another survival series throughout the mid-2000s, called Siren, which included Siren (2003), Forbidden Siren 2 (2006) and Siren: Blood Curse (2008). The Siren games weren’t as beloved as Silent Hill, though they have their own cult following, especially in Japan, but the later two entries especially received favorable reviews, and the series was praised for its originality.

In 2012, around the same time Kojima was thinking about pursuing his own Silent Hill game, Toyama and his team released Gravity Rush for the PlayStation Vita, which received high praise from critics and fans alike. Then, of course, he followed up his success with Gravity Rush 2 for the PlayStation 4 in 2017.

Slitterhead Is The Latest Of Keiichiro Toyama’s Horror Endeavors

Three years later, in 2020, Toyama announced he was leaving Japan Studio, and he formed Bokeh Game Studio alongside Kazunobu Sato and Junya Okura, both of whom also worked on the Siren series. After founding his own independent studio, he mentioned that he hoped to return to designing horror games. A return to Silent Hill specifically wouldn’t be possible, however, because of Konami’s ownership of the franchise.

Then, Slitterhead was officially announced at The Game Awards 2021, showing that Toyama had indeed returned to the survival horror genre. The trailer even opened with text mentioning its creator’s relationship to his former franchise, presumably in an effort to excite fans of the dormant Silent Hill with the thought of new secrets and mysteries to explore. As of now, Toyama’s involvement is Slitterhead’s only connection to Silent Hill, but it’s certainly a dramatic return to the spotlight for Toyama and the new Bokeh Game Studios team.

So far, Toyama has said that Slitterhead will be a horror action-adventure game, hopefully releasing in 2023. He’s also stated that players will control their character from a third-person perspective, which contrasts with Resident Evil’s recent change to first-person in Resident Evil: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village. Other than that, the only information he’s dropped is that the setting is vaguely inspired by Hong Kong in the 1980s and 90s, but the city in the game is fictional.

A Silent Hill Remake Probably Isn’t In The Cards

While it may not have been the horror game revival that Silent Hill fans initially wanted, it is exciting to see Toyama strike out on his own and return to his roots. Considering the reception to the Siren series, especially the last entry in the franchise, and his own enthusiasm regarding Slitterhead, it seems like he’s back to creating disturbing, grotesque worlds designed to unnerve the player, which is sure to be interesting. At the very least, it’ll be something new to explore as Konami decides what to do with Silent Hill, if anything.

Toyama’s return to horror means he has spoken about Silent Hill recently, though. In an interview with Video Games Chronicle earlier in December, Toyama said he thought remaking Silent Hill would be more difficult than remaking early Resident Evil games, which Capcom successfully executed with Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3.

In his opinion, remaking the original Silent Hill would be more challenging because it’s not an action-adventure game. He added that he didn’t believe refining the game’s visuals would be satisfying for fans, although he also mentioned that, in general, he wasn’t against the concept of remaking video games, saying that it helps to update and modernize mechanics as well. Again, however, even if Toyama wanted to remake the original Silent Hill, it wouldn’t be up to him since Konami owns the license for the franchise.

Regardless of the future of Silent Hill, Slitterhead’s connection to the series’ history is exciting for fans of horror games. To see Toyama return to the genre over a decade after Siren: Blood Curse’s launch in 2008 and as an independent developer, the possibilities for Slitterhead feel wide open.

Source: Video Games Chronicle

About The Author