The Mysterious Abandoned Theories Explained
Gamers received many great reveals and announcements for highly anticipated games throughout E3 2021, including expanded looks at titles like "Starfield" and even a release date for "Elden Ring." However, the series that seems to be maintaining the most buzz after the event was never officially mentioned at E3: "Silent Hill."
Thanks to an elaborate, sometimes confusing, but thoroughly entertaining conspiracy gaining traction on Reddit and Twitter, some fans have become convinced that the upcoming PlayStation 5 exclusive "Abandoned" is actually the next game in the long-dormant "Silent Hill" franchise. Theories connecting the independently produced game from Blue Box Game Studios to "Silent Hill" actually originated well before E3, thanks to a now-deleted tweet and an official announcement on the PlayStation Blog from April.
The content of the brief announcement trailer for "Abandoned" and the games' general atmosphere drew comparisons to "Silent Hill," particularly due to a moment in the clip when the letters "P" and "T" are obscured. Fans on ResetEra immediately began to wonder if this new game was somehow related to the abandoned Hideo Kojima project "Silent Hills," which was accompanied by the mysterious lead in-game "P.T."
The speculation even prompted a response from Blue Box Game Studios to deny those connections, but as any good conspiracy theorist knows — that might just be what they want you to think. It certainly didn't help matters when Blue Box tweeted (via Reddit), "Abandoned = (First letter S, Last letter L)," only to later recant the hint.
Fans think Abandonded and Blue Box Game Studios are a front
The sprawling conspiracy theory that now occupies its own subreddit might not be so compelling if it wasn't for auteur game developer and human wild card Hideo Kojima. In the past, Kojima has used elaborate marketing campaigns, and that has made fans believe that the connections being drawn between "Abandoned" and "Silent Hill" are plausible.
Take, for instance, how Kojima went about revealing "The Phantom Pain" as the next game in the "Metal Gear Solid" series. In that incident, Kojima invented a fake studio (Moby Dick Game Studios) and used a phony name (Joakim, which was an anagram for "Kojima") to give details about the game. The developer even performed interviews as Joakim with his face bandaged.
In this case, fans not only noticed that the director of Blue Box Game Studios, Hasan Kahraman, has the same first and last initials as Kojima, but that Hideo translated into Turkish via Google Translate becomes Kahraman. Evidence piled up as fans discovered a recent tweet from Kojima that used the words "silent" and "hill," another that featured an image of him holding a blue box, and the fact that the Blue Box Game Studios YouTube channel banner is simply a photo of some pretty silent-looking hills. Beyond that, Konami also chose this moment to randomly launch a new set of "Silent Hill" merchandise — which seems like suspicious timing, to say the least.
If this all sounds too crazy to be true, that's because it easily could be. But when Kojima might be involved, it makes sense that people are willing to believe the unbelievable.