It took a while, but Konami finally revealed its plans for Silent Hill today, announcing that three video games and one movie are in the works, along with a project called "Silent Hill Ascension." In Konami's words, this will be a "large-scale interactive live event," with art and sound design by J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Games studio.

From what I can read from the announcement, it's basically a Silent Hill story, with the audience deciding the events; think "Until Dawn" or "The Quarry. In the words of the press materials, Ascension "immerses participants around the world in the psycho-horror at the heart of Silent Hill in an unparalleled way - by putting the all-new Silent Hill story and characters into the hands of the audience as the story unfolds, live across multiple platforms. by putting it in the hands of the audience as the story unfolds."

Words like "wild," "epic," and "innovative" are bandied about in the announcement (by J.J. himself), and they sound appealing: the technology at the heart of Ascension is by Genvid Technologies, which has developed a "Massively The most prominent example of Genvid's work is "The Walking Dead: Last Mile" on Facebook. It's like a smartphone game. You can "see and interact with the characters, play mini-games to accumulate influence points, and then bid on decisions, big and small, to influence the story." Basically, it's a way to pass the time to gain power to influence the plot.

The "ascension" we saw today was minimal: small text messages exchanged between panicked friends and a shadowy villain wielding what looked like a violent stick. A Twitch Plays-style approach to the Silent Hill story could be really interesting.

The game is scheduled for release in 2023, but the platform is yet to be determined. The presentation can be viewed below (starting around the 37 minute mark). Konami also announced a remake of Silent Hill 2 (opens in new tab), a new Silent Hill game set in "1960s Japan (opens in new tab)," and a Silent Hill game developed by the "Stories Untold" studio (opens in new tab).