Why didn't Silent Hill 2 Remake studio Bloober start by remaking Silent Hill 1? The devs explain

rockpapershotgun.com:

When Bloober and Konami announced that they were remaking Silent Hill 2 as part of a comprehensive series reboot, it made immediate if slightly deflating sense to me. Silent Hill 2 is the more feted of the Hills - if I were a calculating franchise custodian tasked with 'bringing back' one of the acclaimed original trilogy, that's probably the instalment I and my spreadsheets would fix upon. I mean, it's the game with Pyramid Head in it - the nearest thing Silent Hill has to a mascot, and it's not like there's an issue of cutting out plot material: each game in the Silent Hill series is, on some level, a distinct story with a distinct protagonist.

Still, the decision to 'skip' the first game in the series, whose world, narrative themes, music and art direction set the parameters for all the rest, made my brain itch a bit, and when I ran into Bloober's creative director Mateusz Lenart and lead producer Maciej Głomb at a Konami event, I had to ask about it.

"I think Silent Hill 2 just matches our DNA way better," Lenart began. "It's much more emotional, a much more personal story than, for example, the first game or the third game. And we at Bloober were always fans of telling personal stories about people's experiences, people's feelings and how they go through them. Not so much about, you know know, occultism and things from other worlds, right? So I think that was the main reason, basically."

Some context: without giving too much away, the original Silent Hill is more of a supernatural affair, with your character Harry swept up in various diabolical doings, though it's also a work of psychological projection. The sequel switches priorities, placing a sorely disquieted brain at the centre, though it keeps one foot in that lineage of occultism.

Lenart added that Bloober prefers to tell stories that are similarly "grounded" and focussed. "Obviously [our games] feature some supernatural elements, but in the end it's all about a specific person, on a specific