A new Silent Hill game may have been in the works this whole time, and none of us knew anything about it. According to prominent leaker AestheticGamer, the fifth installment in this infamous horror franchise is currently in development at Sony’s Japan Studio, where it entered the production stage at some point last year.
Of course, Silent Hill has been the subject of more rumors than we care to count, mostly because we can’t keep track of them all. Indeed, while we’ve heard that Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima had picked up the plans for a sequel which he was forced to abort in 2014, other reports say that God of War director Cory Barlog is secretly considering taking on the project.
According to AestheticGamer, however, the game will be headed by Keiichiro Toyama, creative director of the 1999 original. According to the leaker, Akira Yamaoka, the composer of Silent Hill 2, is on board as well, as is concept artist Masahiro Ito.
Rather than being a remake of the first game in the series, as many fans suspected, AestheticGamer believes the upcoming Silent Hill will be a soft reboot, meaning that, although while not moving too far into uncharted territory, it’ll still be rooted in the franchise to such an extent that those who haven’t played through the previous entries will have an inferior experience.
Why exactly the series’ latest iteration is being produced by Sony when the intellectual property still belongs to rival company Konami is not clear. Although AeshteticGamer doesn’t think that Sony is planning to buy Konami’s rights to the franchise, what alternative arrangements might have been drawn up between the two industry giants remains unknown.