The fan-favorite
Silent Hill series is in Vatra's hands now, and at E3 2010, Konami's formally confirmed that the newest installment, currently under a working title, will hit in 2011.
It promises to continue the legacy of the series' most distinctive elements -- the titular town, with its fog and its dual dreamworlds, the elements of psychoanalysis, dread and survival. These are the components that have always remained constant throughout the series; however, if fans have had an enduring complaint about
Silent Hill, it's come down to the combat, which no entry in the series is universally understood to have fully accomplished well.
Paired onstage, the game's producer and design director discussed "evolving our core combat in a logical direction", rather than skew toward what the studio sees as two extremes: the absence of combat in most recent Wii entry
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and in the combat-heavy preceding Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title
Silent Hill: Homecoming.
As shown in the
press conference trailer, the player is cast as prison inmate Murphy Pendleton, whose transport vehicle accident leaves him fleeing police for the fog of Silent Hill. As an escapee, Pendleton has only those weapons and items he can find in his environment to fend off his enemies.
The key, however, is how the series will fare now that distinctive composer Akira Yamaoka, to whose music much of the series' tone and identity must be credited, has left Konami for Grasshopper Manufacture. Vatra seems to have found a suitable replacement in Daniel Licht, who handles the theme for serial killer TV series Dexter and the horror movies Hellraiser and Children of the Corn.
