After the success of its reception of the interactive series Silent Hill: Ascension, and the failure to materialize of several other Silent Hill projects supposedly in the works.

Now, in a PR release on Prowly, Bloober Team has officially announced that it intends to continue working with Konami. It understandably avoids details surrounding what their next project will look like, but I'm betting it's more Silent Hill. There's a good chance it's another remake, and that'd be fine - but more than anything, I'd like to see a new Silent Hill game. If it is, Bloober Team has one major opportunity that it needs to seize, and one major pitfall it needs to avoid.

Silent Hill Should Ignore The Order Again

The Order Makes Silent Hill Boring

If Bloober is making another Silent Hill game, it needs to leave The Order behind. The Order is the powerful cult that lurks beneath the surface of every Silent Hill game. It more or less runs the show in Silent Hill, and its continued existence is generally considered responsible for most of the monsters and mysterious happenings that plague the fog-shrouded town. Introduced in the very first game, The Order has had a role in almost every single mainline entry (and a lot of the spinoffs since).

As a horror concept, The Order is decently well-thought-out, and undeniably creepy. It's also central to much of the lore surrounding the town of Silent Hill. Known for kidnapping innocent townspeople and performing blood sacrifices, it serves as the main antagonist of the first Silent Hill. The red, triangular hoods adherents wear subconsciously inspire James Sunderland's perception of Pyramid Head in Silent Hill 2. And the "angel" The Order worships, a monster they call Valtiel, appears directly in Silent Hill 3.

However, The Order is much better off in the background. If you've heard the old adage that explaining a joke makes it less funny, the same is true for horror. The unknown is scary; the known isn't. Turning Silent Hill's antagonist - or any horror antagonist - into such a human force makes it seem tangible, weak, defeatable. That makes it a lot less frightening, because the player, like the protagonist, comes to learn that if they break up The Order, all their troubles will cease. Even the big, scary monsters can be hand-waved away.

Silent Hill 2 Is Great Without The Cult Focus

The Order Takes A Backseat

Silent Hill 2 mostly leaves The Order behind to great effect. At its core, it's a personal, psychological story, not a work of occult horror. It focuses almost entirely on the personal journeys of its major characters, the trauma experienced by Angela, Eddie, Maria, and James. Every monster lurking around a corner, every burnt-out building, is a physical manifestation of their emotional pain. Silent Hill 2's story is a major factor in why it's considered the best in the series, and it was only able to pull that off by (mostly) ignoring The Order.

With The Order out of focus, Silent Hill 2 is able to present horrors that stem from a very real place: the human mind. Almost everyone is able to relate to one aspect or another of its characters' arcs. Few of us have had the experience of being pursued by a murderous cult that wants to sacrifice us to its monstrous god, but everyone has experienced some measure of grief, guilt, anger, insecurity, or regret - just a few of the emotions that Silent Hill 2 deals with.

Silent Hill is better - and scarier - when it's tied directly to the apparent insurmountability of our own pain.

That's not to say the rest of the Silent Hill series has a lesser focus on personal conflicts, or even that The Order doesn't exist in Silent Hill 2. The difference is that in Silent Hill 2, its presence is only felt in the background: as you explore the town, you find little signs that it was once there, of its past misdeeds, and the rest of the town's mourning. But you never really confront of The Order as such. You don't see Valtiel, and you don't have to fight robed cultists to progress through the story.

Instead, you get a sense that the cult's sacrifices left a residual veil of magic, like a fog hanging over Silent Hill. But it still doesn't fully explain where the monsters come from. The Order's sacrifices and Valtiel's power may add fuel to the fire, but the Lying Figures are still borne out of James' subconscious. They may have a supernatural appearance, but these are real-life horrors, and Silent Hill is better - and scarier - when it's tied directly to the apparent insurmountability of our own pain.

Bloober Team Has The Best Silent Hill Opportunity

Bloober's Next Silent Hill Game Could Be Anything

Bloober effectively has two potential paths ahead of it: continue remaking classic Silent Hill games, or break off in a new direction. As much as I'd personally love to be able to play Silent Hill 3 and The Room with 4K graphics on modern platforms, that's not what I want most for Silent Hill. Bloober has a unique opportunity to completely reboot the Silent Hill franchise, remake it entirely in its own image, and draw inspiration from its best entries to make Silent Hill more personal than ever before.

A completely original Silent Hill game from Bloober wouldn't be bound by the franchise's history. It could make a Silent Hill game with almost no connection to The Order at all, with a greater focus on personal conflicts and portraying trauma through horror. I'd be especially curious to see what that looks like in the modern day. Although Silent Hill 2 holds up perfectly fine 20-something years later, it's still very much a game of its own time. A Silent Hill game that takes our modern, 21st-century anxieties and translates them into monsters emerging from the fog would be fascinating.

This more personal focus is something that Silent Hill recently pulled off pretty well. Although it wasn't developed by Bloober, Silent Hill: The Short Message had a halfway-decent story that dealt with tough themes revolving around mental health and interpersonal conflict. It had a teensy bit of occult flavoring near the end, but it's clear that the monsters in that game come entirely from its protagonist's emotional state. While its story wasn't perfect, it's a clear signal from Konami about the future after Silent Hill 2, and hopefully Bloober will follow suit.