At the Toronto Comics Art Festival this weekend, horror manga artist Junji Ito finally spoke about his involvement in Konami’s cancelled Silent Hills game.
For those who don’t remember, Ito was approached by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro to design the game’s monsters. Following the highly publicized Konami/Kojima split, Ito remained mum on Silent Hills‘ cancellation, and it has now emerged that he had a very good reason to do so: he never even got around to starting any work on the game.
According to a transcript of Ito’s talk provided by Twitter user MinovskyArticle (thanks, Game Informer), Kojima, del Toro, and Ito held a meeting to discuss the project. However, Ito never heard back from the duo after the meeting concluded, and he later learned about the cancellation from “outside sources.”
Ito said:
I don’t know anything about games. I don’t play them. I am afraid that if I get into them, I’ll miss deadlines. I have never played Silent Hill. I have known Hideo Kojima for 20 years. He is a nice older brother type.
I told them [Kojima and del Toro] that I know nothing about games. Kojima told me I would be fine. Del Toro gave me tickets to Pacific Rim. It was excellent.
Kojima was at Konami back then. I came to a meeting and del Toro hugged me. It turns out, he is a big gamer. Del Toro wanted the game to be in one location and keep the horror in the player’s face in that way.
Once the Silent Hills meeting was over, we went to karaoke. I didn’t hear anything after that. I heard that the plan got scrapped through outside sources. I have (sic) seen Kojima and del Toro since. I never started designing monsters. Nothing exists. There are no roughs or sketches.
The future of Silent Hill remains in limbo.
What do our readers think of this?
[Source: MinovskyArticle (Twitter) via Game Informer)]
