Silent Hill 2 remake producer says original Konami devs wanted to make more changes, but thanks to Bloober Team 'the remake is highly faithful to the original'

The Silent Hill 2 remake aims to strike a balance between the original game's essence and modern enhancements, with input from the original developers and the remake's Polish developers, Bloober Team.

Silent Hill 2's original developers were keen to include new elements in the upcoming horror remake, while developer Bloober Team actually wanted to stay closer to the original horror game.

In a new interview with Famitsu, Silent Hill series producer Motoi Okamoto reveals original Silent Hill 2 developers, like art director Masahiro Ito and sound designer Akira Yamaoka, were eager to introduce changes from the original game for the new Silent Hill 2 remake.

However, developer Bloober Team, which is the primary developer on the forthcoming horror remake in Poland, was keen to stay closer to the original Silent Hill 2. Okamoto says if Silent Hill 2 remake's developers had been Japanese, the new game would probably have ended up looking a lot different to how it did back in 2001.

"Game creators don't want to make the same thing twice. I think that as the original creators, they had many parts they wanted to change," Okamoto says of the Japanese development team (as translated by Automaton Media). "It was thanks to the opinions of Bloober Team, who are huge fans of the original game, that the remake is highly faithful to the original," the producer adds.

Okamoto indicates that in conversations between Konami veterans and Bloober Team's developers, a good middle ground was found for Silent Hill 2's remake. Bloober Team has modernized the original horror game in certain ways, Okamoto says, so obviously certain things have been changed from the original Konami game compared to the remake.

Silent Hill 2 remake launches later this year on October 8 as a PS5 exclusive. Elsewhere in the recent interview, Okamoto revealed that Silent Hill 2's remake wont' use the much-talked-about 'yellow paint' to guide players around the environment, instead using visual cues like protagonist James Sunderland turning his head to look in certain directions, as well as lighting.

Speaking of upcoming games, look over our Summer Game Fest 2024 schedule guide for an overview of when some tantalizing new games could be revealed over the next few days.