Guillermo del Toro Name Drops Silent Hill at The Game Awards

Imagine if you could take the best of your favorite horror movies, the best of your favorite video games, and the best of your favorite books and make them one cohesive, fully realized universe? You can — or at least you can if you’re Guillermo del Toro. The famed director behind the likes of Pan’s Labyrinth and Pacific Rim has been doing just that with his own film and TV projects, but at the Game Awards 2017, he revealed a new project that would work with a team of developers to bring his vision to the world of video games with a brand new title called “Silent Hills.”

The game was supposed to be a sequel to the original Silent Hill, a game I’m sure many of us remember fondly. With del Toro’s involvement, the game’s new star Norman Reedus (who’s also an actor on The Walking Dead), and the man behind the original, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, this was going to be a game worth playing. But then Konami, the game’s publisher, canned it in 2015. It’s a shame, but there’s a reason why.

At the Game Awards, Guillermo del Toro took the stage to show off a new trailer for his upcoming game, The Shape of Water. The trailer showed off the usual del Toro-esque craziness with what appears to be a woman fighting off humanoid creatures. As you might imagine, the trailer was met with quite a bit of fanfare, considering it looked like a del Toro film rather than an actual game. But it was his comments about the game that really got the attention.

“I had a lot of fun. We are working with a very interesting and original concept,” del Toro said during his speech. “I’m really very, very excited about it. We are creating a world that is very different from anything I’ve done before. We are creating a world where we are trying to infuse everything that I love into the video game, but at the same time, working with a lot of very talented people.” With del Toro’s comments, it’s clear that The Game Awards are continuing to take steps towards legitimizing video games as an art form. It’s also interesting that del Toro is so excited about the project, since he tends to shy away from adapting or working on big Hollywood productions.