Summary
A producer atBloober Team, the studio responsible for the recent remake ofSilent Hill 2, indicates that he doesn’t look back on the studio’s past work too fondly. TheSilent Hill 2remake 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 ofBloober 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 likeA-Men,Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder,andBasement Crawl. 2016 saw a marked shift for Bloober Team, as the studio released the solidly-reviewed horror hitLayers of Fear, which decidedly gave the developer its horror identity. The years following saw Bloober release some good-but-not-great horror games, likeObserver, Blair Witch, The Medium, and aLayers of Fearsequel. Recently, the team revealed its next horror game at Xbox’s Partner Preview showcase, anew IP namedCronos: The New Dawn.
Just weeks after releasingSilent Hill 2to critical acclaim, the remake’s director and producerJacek Zieba spoke to Gamespotabout the studio’s history and future after revealingCronos: The New DawnandBloober 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 withLayers 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’sLayers of Fearput the studio on the map. Still, with thenew level of praise the studio has found with itsSilent Hill 2remakeafter years of somewhat middling horror games followingLayers 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, likeCronos: The New Dawn, that horror fans are already comparing to EA’s acclaimedDead Spacefranchise.
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 ofSilent Hill 2,fans of horror games should absolutely have Bloober on their radar moving forward, andCronos: The New Dawnalready has tons of buzz surrounding it. Since it’s been stamped with a 2025 release window, there’s a chanceCronoscould show up again with more information in December atGeoff Keighley’s 2024 Game Awards.
