Video game fans love a good mystery. Whenever developers and studios tease a new game without giving too much away, fans like to pick apart the teasers for clues and figure out where the game is going before the developers actually reveal the whole thing. Everything fromElden RingtoThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2has been subject to surging tides of fan speculation and theory crafting. The latest game to start a video game speculation trend isAbandoned,an upcoming PS5 exclusive survival horror game being made by little-known developer Blue Box Game Studios.
Blue Box hasn’t revealed an overwhelming amount of information aboutAbandoned,but it’s revealed just enough to get fans speculating. A lot of fans firmly believe thatAbandonedisn’t its own game at all, and that Blue Box Game Studios is secretly developing the nextSilent Hillgame. Blue Box Studios insists that it has nothing to do withSilentHillor Hideo Kojima,but in spite of that,Silent Hillfans are picking apart everything that they know aboutAbandonedin search of clues that would suggest Hideo Kojima is working onSilent Hillwith Konami again. No matter what Blue Box Studios says, the rumor mill keeps turning.
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The Longing for Silent Hill
Fans ofSilent Hillhave been waiting for many years to see a new game. During the early 2000s, there was alwaysSilent Hillcontent coming out. Konami seemed determined to deliver chilling experiences on the regular after the concept proved successful thanks to the first game, released in 1999. However, everything changed because ofPT.
Hideo Kojima, the acclaimed former Konami developer responsible for theMetal Gearseries, was working on a game calledSilent Hillsin 2014.PTwas a playable trailer for the game; it was a truly horrifying game to experience and it’s proven influential in years since. Unfortunately, Kojima and Konami parted ways shortly afterPT’s release, effectively cancellingSilent Hills.There hasn’t been aSilent Hillgame since.
This context is crucial to understanding what’s going on withAbandonedright now.Silent Hillfans are desperate to see their beloved horror franchise make a comeback. Even though Hideo Kojima wasn’t central toSilent Hillbefore his cancelled project, the falling out with Konami seems to haveputSilent Hillon the shelffor now. Now fans are desperate to see the series make a comeback. The hope is that Kojima, who famously likes to play mind games with fans, has a secret plan with Konami to work onSilent Hillagain and surprise fans with a new entry. It just so happens thatAbandonedlooks an awful lot like aSilent Hillgame, and so fans are jumping on it.
The Curious Plight of Abandoned
For those who don’t knowAbandoned,it’s an open-world survival horror experience that’s apparently meant to be very realistic and push players to find their own creative solutions to problems.Abandonedreportedly has a heavy focus on challenging combat that’ll push players to the limit. Jason, the game’s protagonist, has been brought to a strange snowy forest for mysterious reasons, and he’ll have to contend with both the wilderness and a bloodthirsty cult to survive. The game will draw players into the setting with razor-sharp graphics and use of the DualSense’s haptic feedback technology. Overall,Abandonedsounds like a pretty compelling additionto the PS5’s library.
Blue Box Studios probably never expected fans to jump onAbandonedfor the reason they did. Unfortunately for it, all of these concepts sound in no way out of place in a newSilent Hillgame. In fact,Abandonedsounds like it could be a return toSilent Hillgames from beforePT,which notably lacked any combat. Since Blue Box Studios has been pretty quiet about the game for the most part, fans have been left to sift through what little information there is and draw their own conclusions. Many feel stronglythatAbandonedreally is aSilent Hillgamein spite of Blue Box refuting the claims, on top of lots of evidence to the contrary.
For one thing,Silent Hillis one of Konami’s most famous properties. It wouldn’t make much sense for Konami to handSilent Hilloff to an indie developer just to surprise fans; that’d be a lot of extra work for not much payoff. For another, there’s no reason to believe that Hideo Kojima will be working with Konami against anytime soon, let alone getting a second shot atSilent Hill.He’s very focused on his work at Kojima Productions right now. In fact, reports suggest that Kojima isn’t even working on a game for Sony right now. On the contrary,Kojima and Microsoft are reportedly in talksto work on a game together. All these signs suggest that the PS5 exclusiveAbandonedhas nothing to do withSilent Hillor Hideo Kojima’s next game.
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Abandoned and Silent Hill’s Futures
Even asAbandoned’s developers release videos of themselvesto prove they’re not Hideo Kojima,Silent Hilland Kojima fans are remaining skeptical that he’s not attached toAbandoned.That’s a good sign that, no matter what else happens duringAbandoned’s life, it’ll be remembered as the game that everyone mistook forSilent Hill.It must be a little frustrating for the team at Blue Box Studios to see people insist thatAbandonedisn’t what Blue Box says it is and that there’s a conspiracy afoot. On the bright side, though, theAbandonedkerfuffle translates to a lot of free publicity for an otherwise relatively unknown studio.
On the other side, the newfound fame ofAbandonedsays a lot about the hole left in the horror game industry bySilent Hill’s sudden disappearance. There’s a huge market forSilent Hilltitles that’s still hoping and praying that Konami will return to the series someday. People are jumping onAbandonedbecause it appears to scratch thatSilent Hillitch.
IfSilent Hillisn’t coming back anytime soon, then games likeAbandonedare even more valuable. They keep a certain flavor of horror games alive while one of their biggest contributors is absent from the industry. If there’s one thing that all the talk aroundAbandonedproves, it’s that game developers should remember that fans leave no stone unturned.
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