The CEO of the studio remaking Silent Hill 2 is asking unconvinced fans to "give us a chance."
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Bloober Team boss Piotr Babieno touches on the general vibe towards the Silent Hill 2 remake right now. Some fans feel mixed about the studio's body of work, Konami's general form with the series, or how hush-hush development has been.
"I am dreaming that gamers will trust us, but I realize that trust is earned through actions, not through words," he says. "So that's why we have a policy of not commenting [on the specifics of the game] and raising hopes. We want to show our ambitions through our work, so we can't ask for anything more than 'give us a chance.'"
Babieno goes on to say that Bloober Team allows its devs to focus on their work with "peace of mind," but feedback to other games proves "invaluable in refining our project before its release."
Some fans' apprehension towards the Silent Hill 2 remake is rooted in Bloober Team's back catalogue, which can be hit or miss depending on who you ask. For example, we gave the "groundbreaking" Layers of Fear a perfect score, but the more recent The Medium half of that, remarking that it would be "hard to see this mildly spooky adventure as anything other than a misstep." The team's Blair Witch game did not win hearts either, with our review noting that "the Blair Witch is scary, but the bugs are scarier."
It is, perhaps, The Medium that generates the most chatter. Bloober Team's depiction of mental health remains debated among fans, and that's a persistent theme in Silent Hill 2.
It's not all on Bloober Team, though. Silent Hill's latest outing, a Twitch plays-style interactive streaming series, did not go down well. Fans took issue with wonky online infrastructure, microtransactions, and a live chat with unbalanced moderation – good luck typing "Hideo Kojima," for example. One player was so unhappy with it that they said Ascension made "the pachinko game look like a heartfelt passion project." Grim.
Issues currently lie with both the developer and publisher, then. With all that in mind, maybe it's wise to simply crack on and let the game speak for itself. It's not helping a great deal now, but it could pay off when the Silent Hill 2 remake launches on October 8 for PS5.
