April 29, 2015 by Vinnie Leduc
2014’s biggest and best surprise is sadly now 2015’s biggest disappointment. The new Silent Hills game, announced last year through an amazing free demo called “P.T.” or Playable Teaser, which shocked everyone who played the horrifying experience and stole the summer, is now officially dead.
The highly-anticipated collaboration between film director Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy / Pacific Rim) and Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima looked to first be in trouble when Konami began removing Kojima’s name from their products online. With his name removed, but no official announcements made, rumors started to circulate that Kojima had left Konami… or possibly even been fired. Speculation that Silent Hills might not ever see the light of day increased when it was also announced Konami was planning on removing the demo for P.T. from the PlayStation Network on April 29, 2015.
But among all the speculation, it was Guillermo del Toro who broke the bad news to fans in attendance at a St. Francis Film Fest panel when asked about the status of the game and replying back:
“It’s not gonna happen and that breaks my greasy heart.”
The Walking Dead star, Norman Reedus (who was set to play the game’s lead protagonist), then went on to confirm on Twitter:
“Super bummed about this was really looking forward to it. Hopefully it’ll come back around. Sorry everyone.”
With both the game’s director and star speaking out publicly, Konami delisted their own stock on the N.Y.S.E. to indicate financial problems and issued an official statement putting the final nail in the coffin:
Konami is committed to new Silent Hill titles, however the embryonic ‘Silent Hills’ project developed with Guillermo del Toro and featuring the likeness of Norman Reedus will not be continued.
In terms of Kojima and Del Toro being involved, discussions on future Silent Hill projects are currently underway, and please stay tuned for further announcements.
We had joked that the team behind Silent Hills might be scared to tackle the project after how big of a success P.T. was out of fear that the end product couldn’t live up to the hype generated by such an amazing demo, but never had we expected things to turn out like this. To see one of the year’s most anticipated games be flat out canceled so soon is a total shock. Silent Hills looked to break Del Toro’s streak of games getting stuck in development hell, but sadly now it’s going to be the big tease nobody will ever forget or forgive Konami for letting go. R.I.P.P.T., we’ll always remember you scaring the shit out of us.