Silent Hill 2 Dev Has Harsh Way to Describe Studio's Older…

Summary

The director and producer of the Silent Hill 2 remake isn't fond of Bloober Team's older games.
The studio released several poorly reviewed games before finding its niche in 2016 with the release of Layers of Fear.
Bloober Team recently announced its next horror game, titled Cronos: The New Dawn.

A producer at Bloober Team, the studio responsible for the recent remake of Silent Hill 2, indicates that he doesn't look back on the studio's past work too fondly. The Silent Hill 2 remake was released in early October to glowing reviews, surprising many gamers who felt the game looked subpar in its showings leading up to release. The remake of Konami's 2001 horror classic has become the best-reviewed game in the fifteen-year history of Bloober Team, sitting at an average score of 87 on OpenCritic.

It's safe to say that Bloober Team's early history was less than stellar, with the studio having released several relatively unknown and poorly reviewed games like A-Men, Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder, and Basement Crawl. 2016 saw a marked shift for Bloober Team, as the studio released the solidly-reviewed horror hit Layers of Fear, which decidedly gave the developer its horror identity. The years following saw Bloober release some good-but-not-great horror games, like Observer, Blair Witch, The Medium, and a Layers of Fear sequel. Recently, the team revealed its next horror game at Xbox's Partner Preview showcase, a new IP named Cronos: The New Dawn.

Just weeks after releasing Silent Hill 2 to critical acclaim, the remake's director and producer Jacek Zieba spoke to Gamespot about the studio's history and future after revealing Cronos: The New Dawn and Bloober Team finding its identity as a horror house, referencing the studio's past work. "We want to find our niche, and we think we found our niche, so now we just–let’s evolve with it," Zieba said. "And how that happens is more complex, but it also happens organically in a way, like with Layers of Fear, people in the studio were like, ‘Okay, we made some sh*tty games before, but we [can] evolve.'"

Bloober Team Producer Calls Studio's Past Games "Sh*tty"

Zieba makes it clear that the "sh*tty games" he's referring to are the ones Bloober Team made before 2016's Layers of Fear put the studio on the map. Still, with the new level of praise the studio has found with its Silent Hill 2 remake after years of somewhat middling horror games following Layers of Fear, one could interpret Zieba as referencing Bloober's entire body of work pre-Silent Hill 2. It's clear that Bloober Team wishes to continue its newfound success and become regarded as one of the best horror studios in the industry. One way to do that after remaking a 20-year-old horror classic is to create an original IP, like Cronos: The New Dawn, that horror fans are already comparing to EA's acclaimed Dead Space franchise.

We want to find our niche, and we think we found our niche, so now we just–let’s evolve with it. And how that happens is more complex, but it also happens organically in a way, like with [2016’s] Layers of Fear, people in the studio were like, ‘Okay, we made some sh*tty games before, but we [can] evolve.'

With Bloober Team doubling down on horror and becoming a more well-respected studio as a result of Silent Hill 2, fans of horror games should absolutely have Bloober on their radar moving forward, and Cronos: The New Dawn already has tons of buzz surrounding it. Since it's been stamped with a 2025 release window, there's a chance Cronos could show up again with more information in December at Geoff Keighley's 2024 Game Awards.

Image