‘Abandoned’ could be Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hill game
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‘Abandoned’ could be Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hill game

by Marcos Thadani   ●   Last updated on
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You’ve got to love Internet conspiracy theories: they get people talking, satisfying that human desire to link random facts which are otherwise totally unrelated.

At least, that’s the case with most conspiracy theories, including a recent one which claims that a little-known developer named Blue Box Game Studios and their upcoming game Abandoned are actually a front for a new Hideo Kojima game, that game being a new Silent Hill title.

In this case, though, it’s hard to ignore the coincidences.

As the likes of Forbes have pointed out, Hideo translates to “Kahraman” in Turkish. This by itself wouldn’t matter much, if that wasn’t the surname of Blue Box Game Studios’ director (the guy is named Hasan Kahraman).

This is a pretty glaring coincidence, and enough to raise eyebrows for sure.

Also, the game was going to get some sort of trailer app on June 25 that would show the game in action, but this has since been delayed until sometime in August as was recently reported on Push Square.

In a video posted on Twitter, Kahraman said that he’s “decided to delay the app until August”, saying that “that is when the first trailer will also be released”.

Those with long memories will also remember that Hideo Kojima’s demo for Silent Hills (the mysterious P.T.) was also launched in August back in 2014.

Also, while Blue Box Studios is supposedly a small indie developer who has never ever put out a full game before, its game is getting full attention from Sony, as Abandoned has its own page on the PlayStation blog in which Kahraman himself writes about the upcoming PS5 exclusive.

What’s bizarre about the game’s description, though, is that despite the fact that the game is supposedly “at an early development stage” it is in fact scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2021, which is bizarre indeed…

Plus, the game’s description on the blog is pretty generic, with it stating the game is “a cinematic, first-person horror survival shooter set in a highly detailed open world environment” and also an explanation on how the level of immersion found in it “would not be possible without the DualSense wireless controller”.

Kahraman also explains on Sony’s blog how the people at Blue Box are “still unravelling the power of PS5” (good luck lads, your game is supposedly coming out this year). And there’s more generic blurb about delivering “realistic graphics, smooth character animations and minimal loading screens”.

Also, as Push Square has pointed out, the game’s announcement teaser (see below) has been put together with generic Unreal Engine assets, but does look pretty great overall. Nonetheless, this still suggests that Abandoned could be a front for something else, as we haven’t seen a second of gameplay from it yet, or for that matter a screenshot. And at some point in the trailer, a message on a wall is seen, with the letters “P” and “T” being covered by a tree branch…

There’s also the matter of Blue Box posting a video on twitter (via Screen Rant) from an art studio named NUARE, which is collaborating on Abandoned’s development. NUARE has worked on high profile games like Ghost of Tsushima, and (surprise surprise) also on Kojima’s Death Stranding.

This has made people question whether Blue Box really is the small indie studio it claims to be, or instead a front designed to generate hype for Kojima’s next game for Sony.

People have also pointed out how Blue Box’s initials (BB) are a direct reference to a character in Kojima’s Death Stranding (the baby in the jar), while Kojima did post a photograph of himself holding a blue box on Instagram recently.

One of his earlier tweets (see below) is also suspicious, and suggests he may be getting ready to announce a new project, possibly a new Silent Hill game.

The books Kojima is talking about in the tweet (Silent Wife and Joe Hill’s) could be a reference to his Silent Hills game, which Japanese company Konami cancelled back in 2015.

So could Abandoned actually be Silent Hills in disguise, meaning Kojima is getting ready to announce the project is back on after all this years this summer?

This remains to be seen, but it’s clear there’s more going on here than meets the eye. This is not the first time Kojima has built hype for one of his games with an elaborate ruse, he did so with the likes of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain in the past. And Konami has also been adding fuel to the fire on Twitter (via Forbes), teasing that something Silent Hills-related is “coming soon” on the official Konami shop account.

So it’s definitely going to be a long wait until August, when this whole affair should finally reach its conclusion when the trailer app for Abandoned is finally released for PS5 and (hopefully) the truth is revealed.

Read more: The people behind The Medium could be working on a new Silent Hill game

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