Editorials
Exploring the Weird World of Cancelled ‘Silent Hill’ Games
Being a Silent Hill fan can be pretty rough. While fellow survival horror franchises like Resident Evil never stopped releasing sequels, remakes and adaptations, it’s been a decade since the last official Silent Hill game. And even then, most of the games released after the original Team Silent disbanded weren’t exactly masterpieces to begin with. There was a glimmer of hope back in 2014 with the surprise announcement of Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills, but that project was cancelled faster than a series protagonist can chug down a Health Drink.
Fortunately for fans, Konami’s Silent Hill Transmission appears to indicate that the dog days are over, with a staggering four unique entries currently in development. While this is the best horror news I’ve heard all year, there’s always a risk that not all of these projects will make it to the finish line. After all, Konami has a history of mishandling their flagship horror franchise, and several interesting takes on the Silent Hill IP have been cancelled in the past.
So as we wait for the new entries in the series, I thought that this might be a good time to look back on the weird world of cancelled Silent Hill games to see if there are any compelling ideas that might be worth revisiting in the future. After all, those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it, and I think there’s plenty to learn from the foggy streets of that cursed town.
Obviously, we aren’t privy to everything that goes on at Konami, so there are likely more than a few cancelled entries that we’ve never heard about. That means this article is limited to projects that have been leaked by developers and Konami itself, though we’ll mostly be focusing on the ones that at least got past the conceptual stage.
We deserved so much more!
The earliest known cancelled Silent Hill title comes in the form of Team Silent’s Silent Hill 5, which was meant to be a standalone story in the vein of SH2. As revealed during interviews with series veterans Akihiro Imamura and Akira Yamaoka, this unfinished game supposedly contained the darkest narrative that the Team had ever come up with. There were even rumors that the protagonist was meant to recall the events of the story while being locked up in a psychiatric hospital.
Imamura also claimed that the Team wanted to try their hand at daylight horror, with the game featuring our first look at Silent Hill as a real town with ordinary citizens going about their business. During the course of the campaign, gamers would see the town slowly become corrupted by the encroaching Otherworld, with the director even citing films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jacob’s Ladder as major influences on development.
Unfortunately, Konami didn’t like the direction that the game was headed in and decided to disband Team Silent once and for all, shifting the development of the title to a western studio. This ultimately resulted in the underwhelming Silent Hill: Homecoming, which many claimed to be the beginning of the end for the franchise. That being said, a few elements of the cancelled game did make it into Homecoming, such as the dramatic Otherworld transitions (which were meant to capitalize on the PS3’s upgraded hardware) as well as several references to Jacob’s Ladder.
After the end of Team Silent, several western developers attempted to pitch their own Silent Hill games to Konami, usually with little to no success. Renegade Kid (known for Dementium) and WayForward Technologies (who later developed the controversial SH: Book of Memories) both tried to get SH games on the Nintendo DS, and Climax Studios pitched the ambitious Silent Hill: Cold Heart for the Wii.
There was a game here. It’s gone now.
While that last game would evolve into the underrated SH: Shattered Memories, Climax Studios had another interesting cancelled project in the form of Silent Hill: Original Sin. A portable precursor to what would eventually become SH: Origins, the game was meant to be an action-packed third-person shooter influenced by comedy shows like Scrubs. A sizable chunk of this bizarre title was completed before Climax shifted development to their UK studios, where the game was reworked into a more traditional prequel.
Original Sin was quite close to completion when it was transferred overseas, and Origins ended up re-using a lot of the game’s assets. While I’m curious about how the title intended to implement its horror-comedy and base-building elements, I think discarding these ideas in favor of a more traditional SH experience was the right move.
Another mysterious unmade project from this era is Silent Hill: The Box. Developed by Silicon Knights, the creators of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain, this entry was meant to be an open world survival horror experience with a focus on exploration. While it’s unclear if Konami was ever actually involved with the game, Silicon Knights eventually managed to transfer the project to THQ, who rebranded the title as an original IP dubbed The Ritualyst.
Unfortunately, financial struggles at THQ resulted in the game never being finished despite years of secretive work. Since then, quite a few ambiguous screenshots from early stages of the game’s development have leaked online, but none of these show what gameplay would have been like. An interesting detail about this early material is that most of the images appear to have been rendered in Unreal Engine 3 despite Silicon Knights’ then-ongoing lawsuit against Epic Games.
What might have been…
After a few more years of aborted sequels like Masahiro Ito’s proposed follow-up to Downpour, which was meant to kill off Pyramid Head (Ito is quite vocal about his distaste for the character’s continued use after SH2), it seemed like Konami was finally getting their act together with the development of a then-rumored reboot involving Hideo Kojima, Guillermo del Toro and Junji Ito.
Naturally, I’m referring to the ill-fated Silent Hills, which has become something of a cautionary tale in the gaming industry. While not much is known about the inner workings of this unfinished title, Kojima made it clear that P.T. was meant to be more of an atmospheric mood piece than a literal representation of the finished game’s mechanics. From what little details can be gathered online, it appears that the team’s main goal was to focus on abject terror instead of Survival Horror as an established genre, with several rumors indicating that the game would rely on creepy gimmicks and online functionality to personalize its scares.
It’s also clear that the game was supposed to be more cinematic than previous outings in the series, with Guillermo del Toro going even comparing some of the game’s qualities with The Last of Us, going so far as to note that it made no sense that such a remarkable game wasn’t going to be completed after so much work had gone into it.
Fortunately, the development time wasn’t completely wasted, as several concepts from the cancelled game would later show up again in Death Stranding, and P.T. wound up inspiring a whole generation of indie horror titles. That being said, it’s still a shame that the greatest living auteur in the industry never got to show us his unique vision for the series, though I’m glad that Konami appears to be embracing several different voices with their new announcements.
After all, Silent Hill has always worked best as an anthological series, with each entry exploring a completely different facet of the franchise. So if at least a couple of these newly announced games make it to their release dates, I know I’ll be there waiting for them in the fog with my trusty flashlight and radio.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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