I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more from Silent Hills when this year’s Tokyo Game Show comes along later this month. Otherwise, I doubt Sony would have dedicated as much of their pre-TGS press conference to the game. After Hideo Kojima took the stage to discuss Silent Hills and Metal Gear Solid V, his collaborator on the former project — Guillermo Del Toro, director of films and maker of freaky monsters — was given a turn to talk about the upcoming game.
His message was brief and offered nary an answer to the myriad questions we all have about the still incredibly mysterious Silent Hills, but there were a few things he said that I found really interesting.
For example, I had no idea Guillermo Del Toro was such a big fan of Silent Hill, and specifically its storytelling. He even referred to the series as one of his favorite video game franchises. That’s reassuring, seeing as the future of the series is now partly in his hands.
He’s clearly a fan of the games, but his reasons for collaborating on it go deeper than that. For him, Silent Hills is exciting because the series “exists in a realm that will allow me to explore things that I normally don’t do in my films.”
Del Toro is known for his imaginative creature designs and he’s certainly no stranger to the horror genre after his work on Mimic, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Mama, as well as the new TV series The Strain. Maybe what he means by this is the brand of horror the Silent Hill series employs is less restrictive. It’s meant to be disturbing and unsettling, macabre and terrifying. Compared to the games, his filmography looks tame. He may see Silent Hills as his opportunity to push boundaries.
Just before he left, Del Toro left us with a very bold claim, saying “What we hope to achieve is to bring the best of all of what we do and combine it together into something that is better than anything we’ve done before.”
It’s no secret that he and Kojima have accomplished a lot during their careers. They’ve each made it further than most in their climb to the top of their respective fields, so that sort of ambitious statement goes a long way. I hope they’ll be able to deliver.
You can watch all of Guillermo Del Toro’s pre-TGS video message here.
