‘Silent Hill 2’ Remake – Konami Wants to Level Up Horror Game Play
Developers at Bloober Team want to be the next big thing in gaming–the company is hard at work on a horrifying Silent Hill 2 remake.
Bloober Team became an independent video game studio 2010. In 2016, the company was able to find its niche in horror games. Starting with Layers of Fear, the studio has developed exclusively horror-type games from Blair Witch to The Medium. This made the studio a perfect match to develop Konami’s remake of Silent Hill 2. Seems that with this new spotlight on them, they have big ideas for the future.
via Bloober Team
Let It Ride!
The CEO of Bloober team, Piotr Babieno, spoke with IGN about the future of Bloober Team at the 2023 DICE Summit. Babieno wants the studio to move past the “walking simulator” type of games that they made in the past and become a defining studio in the future of horror games. “Bloober 3.0” would be transitioning into something more like the current popular AAA horror titles with more complex stories, involved gameplay, and a much larger scope. The start of this new look at developing horror starts with Silent Hill 2–
“We still would like to make meaningful games, we still would like to keep our DNA to tell [stories] about things which are important to us,” he says. “However, not by environmental storytelling, but by full action, to have much more mass appeal. And I think that this is the reason why we have chosen Silent Hill.”
Babieno wants the future of horror gaming to be defined by what the studio creates. Bloober aims to provide an experience that the gamer will never forget in both gameplay and story. They want gamers to feel the impact the way they do when they play things like The Last of Us and Telltale’s The Walking Dead.
“Our idea is to make games which will make an impact on you, that you understand more not so much about our characters, not necessarily about the universe which we are creating, but about yourself,” he says. “Because those choices which we are offering in the game will allow you to understand better, ‘Am I [a certain kind of] person? Why did I make this choice and not the other? Is there something wrong with me?’ Those moral conflicts, which are in the best games, are not made by people more than once, maybe twice [in their real lives]. Usually never. But because we have the opportunity to check ourselves by playing games, we are able to understand ourselves and others better.”
Silent Hill 2 Teaser Trailer
Babieno feels that the studio has enough mistakes in the past to see the best course of action for the studio moving forward. Transitioning from 1.0 to 2.0 made games that were not really what they wanted to do for investors. The company needed to shift into something that developers would enjoy creating and players would enjoy playing. The biggest wake-up call was the release of the critically-panned Basement Crawl in 2014.
“I micromanaged at the beginning, I made a lot of mistakes by choice in projects,” he says. “And at the beginning we thought about our shareholders, and we tried to make them happy because they were investors in our company. We followed their needs….We awoke in 2014 when we launched Basement Crawl, which was the worst game on PlayStation for that time. And…it was the moment which changed us because we decided, if we would like to keep [making games], we need to focus on something that we will be part of, that we will feel we would like to give gamers.”
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Babieno also credits the company’s current position to him no longer micromanaging projects and letting the teams work more independently. The studio has since been doing great and layoffs have been avoided with attrition at an all-time low. The studio decided that the name “Bloober Team” would remain despite the transition to horror. There’s already a history with the name, and it will serve to show just how much the company has grown.
The Future of Bloober Team
When asked if their work on Silent Hill 2 means that studio has a future as the new Silent Hill developer, Babieno didn’t deny the possibility. He confirmed Konami is interested in conversations with Bloober in the future. But for the time being, Silent Hill 2 and a project with Private Division are the studio’s main focus. Babieno did, however, want Konami fans to know that the future is bright. Especially when it comes to new Silent Hill releases in the future.
“Those people who are in charge of Konami Gaming right now, of course I can’t tell you all the details, but I believe that they do understand how gaming works…..They came from companies which worked on many great projects, and I’m pretty sure that they are making great choices by choosing partners, by choosing projects…And I do understand that people are a little bit angry at Konami for the stuff which happened in the past, but I would like to say, give them the time, because they do know what they are doing.”
via Konami
Bloober 3.0 is an ambitious turn for the Polish studio and I for one can’t wait to see what the future holds for them.
“A little spark is all it takes. To set the human soul on fire.” – Layers of Fear 2
