Silent Hill 2 director Masashi Tsuboyama reflects on the extraordinary talent of the original game’s development team 

Following the success of the remake, Silent Hill 2 director Masashi Tsuboyama recently took to social media to show his appreciation for the original game’s development team. Tsuboyama attributes Silent Hill 2’s success not just to a single individual, but to all of the Team Silent developers whose skills, personalities, and backgrounds contributed to the 2001 release. 

In the thread on X, Tsuboyama reflects on Silent Hill 2’s development process, explaining that a lot of time was spent building the game’s framework. Core concepts, such as James Sunderland’s backstory, experiences, and how the game progresses, were thoroughly discussed between lead artist Masahiro Ito, lead writer Hiroyuki Owaku, and Tsuboyama himself before more elements were added. Tsuboyama gives special mention to Ito and Owaku, highlighting how they worked on Silent Hill 2’s framework from scratch and “demonstrated their full potential in their respective fields of expertise.” 

When it comes to graphics, Tsuboyama is still astounded that they were able to build such a complex graphics engine within a short time frame. Since Unreal Engine and Unity didn’t exist at the time, Team Silent had to create an engine that could process real-time shadows, light, and the ever-present fog. It is thanks to Silent Hill 2’s programmers that all of these elements blend together to create an eerie and unforgettable experience. 

Tsuboyama’s only regret is that the core Silent 2 development team didn’t get to participate much in the game’s promotion. Due to the hours of work they put into the title, most of the developers didn’t have the time for promotions. This was before social media, so you couldn’t spread news from the comfort of a computer. Tsuboyama specifically wishes that he got to do more overseas promotions for Silent Hill 2. 

Funnily, Tsuboyama likens the original Silent Hill 2’s production team to the game’s Dog ending, where James Sunderland discovers that a Shiba Inu named Mira is behind the horrific events that transpired. For context, the final product, like this bizarre bonus ending, wound up being different to how they had originally visualized it. 

Silent Hill 2 may have evolved into something unexpected, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t well-received in the long run. The game has since become a classic for many players, and its development has been recalled fondly by Tsuboyama, Masahiro Ito, and translator and voice director Jeremy Blaustein, who even commented on Tsuboyama’s thread, saying that translating the original Silent Hill 2 was “one of the greatest experiences of his professional career.”