Silent Hill 2’s original art director brings up the game’s lack of popularity in Japan compared to the West as he observes the same thing happen with the remake
With its October 8 launch just around the corner, anticipation for Konami and Bloober Team’s upcoming revamp of the 2001 horror classic Silent Hill 2 has been on a continuous rise. The atmospheric Story Trailer released on August 20, as well as numerous positive early impressions from the media, have helped dispel many of the concerns people had about the project following its initial announcement. But how are things going over in Japan?
Following the release of Silent Hill 2’s latest trailer on YouTube, Ito Masahiro, who was the art director of the original Silent Hill 2 and is also involved in the remake’s development, shared on his personal X account a post about how many times the Japanese version of the trailer has been viewed compared to the English version. The original poster of the comparison points out the game’s overwhelmingly high popularity overseas, noting how the English-language trailer has 20 times more views than the Japanese one.
Quoting this post, Ito comments, “Unfortunately, Silent Hill 2 has been much more popular in the West/Overseas than in Japan since the release of the original.”
Of course, this is not to say that Silent Hill 2’s remake is encountering negative reception, if the numerous positive comments from Japanese gamers are anything to go by. It is most likely not Ito’s intention to measure popularity based on YouTube views either, however, he has on several occasions talked about Silent Hill 2’s relative lack of popularity in Japan when compared to the ovations it receives in the West. Back in 2019, the creator talked about the game’s initial sales being bumpy in Japan, as well as how the title met ridicule online for not being a “legitimate” sequel to its predecessor.
The poor commercial performance of Silent Hill 2 even led to Konami attempting to lowball Silent Hill 3 with a proposal for an arcade spin-off-type game. Although this proposal ended up being abandoned, it squandered precious time and money, affecting the quality of Silent Hill 3.
Commenting on Silent Hill 2’s reception in another post from 2019, Ito says in English, “Silent Hill 2 took soooo long time to be somewhat popular. In Japan it still has not been somewhat popular. Many people like Pyramid Head but most of them don’t know SH2. Unfortunately, this is REAL LIFE.” The artist has not gone into detail about the reasons for this gap, but has on one occasion stated that the game “absolutely didn’t match the trend of the time” in response to a fan.
Although he has mentioned that Silent Hill 2’s status in Japan has gradually improved, Ito’s recent response to the reception of the title’s remake suggests that he is still conscious of the disparity in how the game is seen in its country of origins vs in the West. Perhaps Bloober Team’s earnest efforts to faithfully remake Silent Hill 2 will help the title get the attention it deserves.
Silent Hill 2 is scheduled to be released on October 8 on PC (Steam) and PS5.
