Konami rumored to be rebooting MGS, Silent Hill, and Castlevania

That's according to rumors!

Konami is set to ramp up its premium game development with new instalments and remakes for its biggest franchises, including Metal Gear and Castlevania.

That’s according to publishing sources who spoke to VGC anonymously, because they did not have permission to discuss their projects publicly.

Konami’s premium games output has slowed down significantly in recent years. The last new Metal Gear game was 2018’s critically panned Metal Gear Survive, while the last mainline Castlevania release was 2014’s Lord of Shadow 2.

In the past decade, the company has arguably grown a bigger reputation for its Pachinko gambling games, than for its premium PC and console releases.

I mean, sure! I'll play more Metal Gear. I kind of hope it's more in the open world style of MGS5 than anything else, though.

I'm afraid that a complete reboot end up being a total disaster like dmc. If they follow the foot steps of Capcom with RE remakes I'm pretty sure they'll have us all riled up!

I mean, I don't know what kind of faith I have in Konami even if they decide to outsource their games to third party studios. Silent Hill had its moment of revival when PT came out but Konami basically aborted that game when they decided to put Kojima in the grave and after Metal Gear Survive I'm not even sure if Konami understands what Metal Gear even is. Konami could try to make Metal Gear their tent pole franchise and stick MGS5's bones in a new open world every year but that's not really what I as a long time Metal Gear fan would even want from a game. Metal Gear was uniquely Kojima and without him who knows if it even has a chance of retaining the wackiness and whiplash that series has.

As with Castlevania, Lords of Shadow 1 and 2 were fine as standard B games called Lords of Shadow but once you slap the Castlevania name on the cover it just makes me go "Did Konami ever play a Castlevania game?" Castlevania and Metroid had that Metroidvania section cornered but now with the rise of indies coming out, a third of them seem to Metroidvanias that technically rival Konami's. It seems Iga's pretty content with Bloodstained so I don't see him leaving his indie team to go back to work for Konami. I've got some mild excitement for the return of these franchises but I won't be surprised when 6 years from now we're talking about how big of a flop Metal Gear Survive 2 and Castlevania Nocturne of Darkness were.

I don’t think these franchises really have meaning anymore and so I have no expectations.

Can a good MGS come from someone that isn’t out of their goddamn mind?

What could you do to make a proper Castlevania stand out from its successors?

What new ways can we disappoint Silent Hill fans?

I’m interested.

Handing MGS remakes over to what looks like a support studio doesn't fill me with much confidence. This all feels like they finally realised that shutting down there studios and treating there employees badly was maybe a bad move, especially after all your profits from pachinko machines probably dried up thanks to 2020.

I don't think Konami will release a Castlevania better than Timespinner or Bloodstained. I'd actually like to see them try something different with those franchises that most Metroidvania games can't afford to do.

Pretty sure most of the key talent behind MGS5 went with Kojima, but i did enjoy Survive more than most people so maybe there's a chance.
We'll see what kind of budgets they're willing to afford game development, MGS requires a lot unless they're going to half ass it with smaller releases, also rebooting the Metal Gear story sounds insane, many people say it's full of bullshit but fans are crazy about that bullshit, woud you replace it with new bullshit? Because if you dumbed it down you wouldn't be honouring the franchise, i'd rather they dropped the "Solid" and made new "Metal Gear" games with new characters, i don't want to see my favourite characters reimagined.

If the only things to come out of this are quality remakes of MGS2 and SH2, I'll be happy.

With Konami taking such a break, it's been interesting to see other companies make their games for them. Contra? We got Blazing Chrome. Castlevania? We got Bloodstained (both in linear and Metroidvania form) and a million others. Silent Hill? So many spooky games.

I'll probably still play these games because I KNOW WHAT THAT IS but I'm curious if these new attempts will stand out from the pack. I love so many classic Konami games and it'd be great to see them pull off a Capcom-esque renaissance.

At the very least, just gimme MGS3 in the Fox Engine that's not a pachinko machine.

I'm one of those odd ducks who thinks the worst part about Metal Gear was Kojima's lack of an editor, so assuming this isn't another franchise cash-in, sure, why not? (Edit: I think I stole that editor line from Zombie_Pie. Still true!)

Plot twist: They're all upcoming pachinko machines.

I just want to see MGS4 being rescued from the confines of the PS3. The HD remasters of MGS2 and MGS3 are already pretty decent and available on multiple platforms and you can even play the original MGS on PC.

Kojima IS Metal Gear so even at the height of Konami I wouldn’t have any faith in them making a proper MGS game without his input - much less now when the company is obviously viewing game dev as an afterthought. Their recent release of eFootball certainly doesn’t spark much confidence.

This is all well and good but what was the last new non-PES, non-bemani game they put out? That terrible dual-stick Contra a few years back? Rebooting the IP is obviously the 'sensible' thing to do given the current culture's slavish devotion to established IP but I'd be surprised if there's enough actual continuity on the dev side to make the IP actually meaningful. I know they just did a big internal reorganisation but a reorg of a games division that was putting out nothing is still a whole lot of nothing.

Given how eFootball is going, I'm not even sure the in-house guys have the right circumstances to pull it off. I'd love to see it but there's just been too many bad decisions.

• Release PES 2021 but call it a seasonal update so it gives off the impression it's PES 2020 with updated teams. It was not quite that.
• Start from scratch on UE4, using the mobile game as a base to start from.

The only saving grace is that, as a free-to-play product, you have to think Konami aren't going to abandon ship on it. If these rumours are true (big if), it at least shows Konami aren't winding up.

Noty sure I trust Konami, under current management, to make anything worth playing.

...Then again I could say the same of Bethesda, Bioware, or Gearbox.

I mean first I don't believe any of it in the first place, we've been hearing some of these rumors for years now. Honestly, I just want all the Silent Hill, MGS, and Castlevania games remastered and re-released on steam. The've done a good job so far with the Castlevania stuff(though still no SOTN on PC which is surprising) but MGS is more scattered all over the place, and then you have issues like MGS4 being stuck on the PS3 only, and Silent Hill is in even worse shape with 1 just being a PS2 game and the PS2 versions of 2 and 3 still being the best ones after the awful HD collection.

Please don't suck... As others have mentioned, Konami have a pretty crap reputation. This could get ugly.

If this turns out to be true (rumors rarely are, mind you) then I would expect little more than a forgettable game with a familiar title. I'm not confident that many would be especially passionate about the working on a project for which the entire purpose would, in my opinion, be little more than to serve as a reminder that these gaming franchises exist. I expect that lack of passion would show in the final products.

Could they turn out to be high quality? Sure. I don't expect that any team would be given the resources or have the motivation to get them there, though.

Games like the Metroid Prime series, Batman Arkham Asylum, and the first Dark Souls show that Metroidvania type design can work in 3D games. Obviously it's way more expensive and challenging to make a 3D metroidvania, so while indies have the market covered in the traditional 2D Metroidvania space there is a real opportunity to do a big 3D Castlevania with a true Metroidvania world design.

The problem is that the people that are left at Konami haven't made anything of note in a long time that shows that they're able to make a quality game. Well apart from PES/ Efootball and... that bomberman for the Switch?

Is it time to hear that rumor again already? I feel like it's about once a year.

@onemanarmyy: I wouldn't even give that bomberman that much credit. I don't think it even cracks the top 50% of bomberman games out there.

Those were both sooooooo good. Timespinner is super underrated.

Here is hoping they make another Metal Gear Solid: Survive.

It's hard to imagine metal gear without Kojima, it will undoubtedly be missing something. It could end up good in it's own right if they really reboot it from the ground up, tone wise and everything. At that point though it'd be best to just make something new instead.

tbh, I think they could find another writer from the anime/manga sphere that could write an appropriately incoherent story for a new Metal Gear game. It could be done, but certainly the style and humour would be different from Kojima’s.

Or get one of the numbered Japanese game devs. There could be something to a Metal Gear directed by Suda51, or Swery65.

All I want is Zone of the Enders 3 and Metal Gear Rising 2. DGAF about SH or MGS. As for Castlevania...as long as it's a linear 2.5D game done well and no more Metroidvania.