While horror franchise Silent Hill has traditionally revolved around spooky events happening in the eponymous American town, Konami and developer Neobards made a bold change with Silent Hill f by taking it to a small Japanese village instead. In an interview with Inverse, series producer Motoi Okamoto has expressed interest in taking the series to even more unique settings rather than going back to Silent Hill or even Ebisugaoka.
In the interview, Okamoto spoke about the possibility of setting a future Silent Hill game in Central or South America where the writers and developers tap into more unique local folklore to craft an interesting story. He went on to note that places like Russia, Italy and South Korea might also end up as potential settings for future games in the series.
“We believe we could perhaps take similar approaches with other cultures across the globe,” said Okamoto. “For example, in Central or South America, we could perhaps tap into the more local, shamanistic beliefs and see how that ties in. But we could also try to expand our horizons and look into other regions, like possibly Russia, Italy, or South Korea, because all those areas have their own unique types of belief systems. I believe that will be a gateway for us to expand our concepts further.”
When asked about those places in particular, Okamoto spoke about the various political upheavals that they had seen, from military governments to coups. He noted that this would lead to interesting folklore arising from these locations.
“Those areas have been affected by a lot of military governments and coups,” he said, “There is a type of bravado and ‘machismo’ that comes from these political landscapes. There’s also the more folkloric angle coming from shamanism and local beliefs.”
He ultimately did acknowledge the fact that developing games that make use of these settings and their local folklore would be difficult, especially if Konami were to take on Central or South America as future locations for Silent Hill games. This is due to the fact that these locations don’t have many developers that could handle the scope of a project as large as a major horror franchise.
“There is one issue: Central and South America do not have very many prominent development studios for video games capable of handling an IP like Silent Hill,” he explained. “So while they have a lot of interesting movies, books, and tales, how we would translate that into games is something we still have to explore.”
The release of Silent Hill f this year, along with the Bloober Team-developed Silent Hill 2 remake from 2024, marks a major comeback for Konami, especially with regards to its commitment to the horror franchise. Okamoto had noted that the company unveiled three titles back in 2022—Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill f, and Silent Hill: Townfall to show its commitment to bringing back the series.
Silent Hill f is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review.
