Editorials
This Was a Weird Year for ‘Silent Hill’
2015 was a mostly good year. It left us with some fun games to play and more to look forward to in 2016 and beyond. It knew exactly what we wanted — more zombie games — and that’s what it gave us. H1Z1 came first, followed by the Resident Evil remaster, Dying Light, the Zombie Army Trilogy and Resident Evil Revelations 2. By April, we were smitten.
And that’s when it made its move.
In the final week of April, news broke that Silent Hills might be cancelled. It seemed impossible. Why would Konami destroy the series’ final chance to be relevant again? Why would any company go against their best interests by throwing away a game that would’ve combined the talents of director Guillermo del Toro, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, horror manga artist Junji Ito, and “The Walking Dead” star Norman Reedus.
It was a bewildering move that I’ve spent more than enough time complaining about. It sucks, but Silent Hills wasn’t the first horror game to get cancelled, and it certainly won’t be the last.
The point of no return came when Konami set fire to every single thing that had any relation to Hideo Kojima. All mentions of him suddenly vanished from the promotional materials for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Kojima Productions was forcefully disbanded and P.T. was removed from the PlayStation store.
Konami had become the sort of thing you might expect retching into a bush in the Alchemilla Hospital parking lot. Their position as a respected publisher of amazing franchises like Castlevania, Metal Gear and Silent Hill was ruined. They no longer cared about the community that had supported them for decades.
The reason for this spectacular implosion is, unfortunately, deeply lame. When Hideki Hayakawa took over as Konami’s new head honcho, the company announced a “corporate restructuring” so they could focus less on creating stunningly ambitious works of interactive art that go on to define entire console generations so they could churn out more mobile games.
This led to a “power struggle” between Hayakawa and Kojima, otherwise known as the guy who guides the development of all those stunningly ambitious works of interactive art that go on to define entire console generations.
Now, this series does still has a future — it just won’t be using the Silent Hill name.
What might’ve been lives on through the bits and pieces that were deemed salvageable by a growing number of talented indie developers that have since used them as the foundation for games like Allison Road, Layers of Fear and Visage.
Everyone had their own idea of what Silent Hills would’ve been like, and that was enough for some to invest a significant amount of time and money into realizing that potential, in part, for the nearly 200,000 fans who rallied together to petition for its return.
That petition didn’t give us exactly what we wanted, but it couldn’t have anyway. Konami can’t hear us anymore. They’re in Pachinko heaven now, oblivious to the fact that their fate is about to align with the beloved survival horror franchise they so unceremoniously ended.
We can only hope that Silent Hill will stay true to its genre and survive this horror. It’ll probably be some time before we hear from it again. Until that time, we can take some comfort in knowing that the admin who went bonkers for baby penises on the Silent Hill wiki a couple weeks ago has had his reign snipped by a popular vote.
It’s been a real roller coaster ride of a year, but it’s over now. The New Year is almost upon us. I know you’ve grown tired of this conversation, so if you’d like to sneak one final jab at Konami, this is your chance. Don’t hold back. They’ve done plenty to earn it.
With his studio restored and a partnership with Sony in his back pocket, Kojima has gotten back to work doing what he does best. It could be just about anything, and that’s exciting. So…
What would you like to see come next from the new Kojima Productions?
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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