Original Silent Hill 2 artist Masahiro Ito didn't want to remake the survival horror masterpiece, but decided to cooperate to "make sure the core was preserved"

Silent Hill 2 Remake screenshot showing Pyramid Head standing in a door way with rain falling onto his head.

(Image credit: Konami)

Silent Hill 2 Remake is just months from release, but original art designer Masahiro Ito says he almost rejected the chance to work on it entirely.

"Back in late 2019 or 2020, he says that [Konami series producer] Motoi Okamoto reached out to him via Twitter, as it was called back then, and asked whether he would be willing to cooperate in a Silent Hill 2 Remake," Ito-san's translator said at the Tokyo Silent Hill 2 Remake preview event on August 8. "At the time, he had felt that there was no need to do such a thing. So his original plan was to reject the idea."

However, he soon had a change of heart. "Even if he were to reject the idea, he said he felt that there was always the chance that Konami would be open to creating a remake even without his support.

"Rather than let the project go without him, he felt it was best for him to cooperate and to do his best to make sure that the core of what made Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 2, was preserved in the best way possible. There was the initial idea of preserving the core but giving it a new coat of paint," he says of his reasons to work on the project despite not feeling a remake was all too necessary.

Ito-san then addressed the different content, stylistic, and design changes that had been tabled for the remake and how it differs from what the game turned out to be. "The original idea that Konami and Bloober Team had in mind may have been a little different from what we ended up with right now. But [Masahiro Ito] believes that by cooperating [in the remake], he was able to inject the core principle of what Silent Hill 2 is and preserve it in a way that is brushed up and polished, so that players of the current generation will be able to appreciate what was crucial to Silent Hill 2."

Check out all the gnarly upcoming horror games still to come this year, from Slittterhead to Silent Hill 2.

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Jasmine is a Senior Staff Writer at GamesRadar+. Raised in Hong Kong and having graduated with an English Literature degree from Queen Mary, University of London, she began her journalism career as a freelancer with TheGamer and TechRadar Gaming before joining GR+ full-time in 2023. She now focuses predominantly on features content for GamesRadar+, attending game previews, and key international conferences such as Gamescom and Digital Dragons in between regular interviews, opinion pieces, and the occasional stint with the news or guides teams. In her spare time, you'll likely find Jasmine challenging her friends to a Resident Evil 2 speedrun, purchasing another book she's unlikely to read, or complaining about the weather.