Silent Hill 2 remake’s producer says the original Japanese devs wanted more changes than Bloober Team 

With the reveal of Silent Hill 2’s first trailer and release date, fans of the original game are growing both excited and anxious about how the modern remake will interpret the horror classic. In a recent interview with Famitsu, the Silent Hill series’ producer Motoi Okamoto made comments about the work-in-progress remake and the team’s efforts to stay faithful to the original. 

Surprisingly, Okamoto comments that it was Silent Hill 2’s original staff members, such as art director/monster designer Masahiro Ito and sound designer Akira Yamaoka, who were more eager to introduce changes to the upcoming remake. On the other hand, members of Poland-based developer Bloober Team would often counter such opinions, vouching for certain elements to remain untouched. 

“Game creators don’t want to make the same thing twice. I think that as the original creators, they had many parts they wanted to change,” Okamoto explains on behalf of the Japanese development staff. On the other hand, it seems these exchanges with Bloober Team were what helped the developers strike a good balance – keeping everything the original Silent Hill 2 did right as-is, while making the game more modern.  

 “It was thanks to the opinions of Bloober Team, who are huge fans of the original game, that the remake is highly faithful to the original,” Okamoto comments. Furthermore, the producer even suggests that had the remake’s development team been all Japanese, there may have been a lot more differences between the original and the remake. 

As for specific characteristics of Silent Hill 2 that the team wanted to keep in the remake, Okamoto mentions the balance of what is spoken versus what is suggested to the player via visuals and sounds, as well as the focus on the distinct psychological horror the original game embodied. In addition, the team was mindful of avoiding UI screens as much as possible to maximize immersion (for example, by having James physically take out the map instead of having a UI map screen). 

While new technology allowed the developers to pack more information and detail into the game’s environments, they made sure to do so in a way that does not compromise the setting of Silent Hill 2. For example, while tempted to enrich the city’s atmosphere with traffic lights and street lamps, Okamoto decided against doing so as there was no electricity in the original setting.

Silent Hill 2 is scheduled to be released on October 8 on PC (Steam) and PS5.