A tweet from Blue Box Game Studios seemed to indicate that its previously revealed Abandoned may actually be Silent Hill. The studio previously went out of its way to state it had no ties to Hideo Kojima, before posting a teaser that let viewers, with good reason, to guess that the studio meant Silent Hill.
However, Blue Box later tweeted that it has nothing to do with Kojima or Konami and didn’t mean to insinuate that it did. So, what’s the deal?
Is Blue Box Game Studios making Silent Hill with Kojima at the helm?
https://twitter.com/BBGameStudios/status/1404890697006784521
If history is repeating itself, it’s likely Blue Box Game Studios doesn’t exist, so the statement it had nothing to do with Kojima wasn’t really a lie. Kojima’s ignominious departure from Konami resulted in the cancelation of Silent Hills, which is something that’s still lamented by legions of gamers. However, there are a series of clues that may mean that Kojima never stopped working on Silent Hill:
- Hideo Kojima used a fake studio when teasing both Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and PT.
- Blue Box lead designer and founder is named Hasan Kahraman.
- The studio’s only released game, The Whisperer, was completed by another studio, and its icon is a black handprint (like Death Stranding)
- The Blue Box Game Studios logo is basically the PlayStation Studios logo color-inverted.
- When the PlayStation Studios logo is shown in a game, it’s illuminated with a blue glow which makes a blue outline around the box the PS logo is in.
- In the Death Stranding Director’s Cut trailer at Summer Game Fest, Sam Bridges, wearing blue, gets into a cardboard box.
- The Twitter handle for Blue Box Game Studios is @BBGameStudios, another possible Death Stranding reference.
- The Blue Box YouTube page has a series of hills as the background image.
We wanted to set things straight. We have no relations with Konami. Silent Hill is owned by Konami. We do not have any relations with Hideo Kojima. It was never our intention to tease the name as Silent Hill. We sincerely apologize for this.
— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios) June 15, 2021
Despite Blue Box again denying it has any involvement with Silent Hill or Hideo Kojima, the evidence to the contrary is damning. There are three possibilities as to what could be happening:
- Konami sold or licensed Silent Hill to Sony, and Kojima Productions is currently working on it.
- Konami sold or licensed Silent Hill to Sony, and Blue Box (or another studio) is working on it without Kojima.
- Blue Box is purposefully misleading people to hype up its game.
Abandoned should receive a full reveal on June 22. Strangely, Blue Box has stated that the game would receive its own PS5 app showing in-game sequences running on the console. This is highly unusual and is another thing that points to Abandoned being something much bigger than an indue project by a small studio.
