Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama has said that he thinks remaking his horror classic would be more difficult than remaking a Resident Evil game.
During an interview with VGC, Toyama was asked whether the idea of Konami remaking a Silent Hill game would interest him – given that Capcom has seen great success out of its Resident Evil (known as Biohazard in Japan) remakes.
“I think it would be harder to remake than Biohazard gameplay as a concept is a little older,” Toyama said. “It’s not an action game where you can just refine the action as in Biohazard. To bring Silent Hill up to current standards or to polish up the graphics, the fans wouldn’t be satisfied.”
“That’s not what it was about – how beautiful it was. I think you’d have to rethink the concept to make it interesting to fans,” he added.
Elsewhere in the interview, Toyama was asked what his opinions on remakes are in general. “Unlike movies, games are difficult to enjoy as in the original state,” he said. “Obviously because of the platform, but as time goes by game mechanics, especially in usability, lack rationality, and sophistication. Visually speaking it’s clearly not made for modern equipment, so I absolutely don’t have any objection to modifying an original essence to fit the modern era which we live in today.”
While remaking and reinventing popular video game franchises has become increasingly prevalent over the last few years, the longstanding debate over their existence within the industry was dredged up once again recently after fans of the Pokémon franchise began calling remakes of Brilliant Diamon and Shining Pearl lazy even before they had been released.
While it doesn’t seem that Toyama will be working on a new Silent Hill game any time in the immediate future, the creator’s new studio Bokeh, revealed its first game during The Game Awards last week. Named Slitterhead, the studio showed off a pretty harrowing trailer. During the footage shown, fans were treated to some horrific scenes of the game’s monsters, which included a woman undergoing a painful transformation process to become a grotesque skeletal creature.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
