Can I ask a question here please:
Would someone please explain what the hell possessed Konami to insist on most of the recent SH entries to be Western developed? What happened to the classic SH team?
For some reason they became fixated on the idea that the series needed a new dev team despite the fact that the games were splendid to begin with and had no major shortcomings.
A question many of us wish we knew.
The easy answer is: Konami wanted to take a franchise that had a now-familiar name, a loyal fanbase, and turn out more games with cheaper developments... thus outsourcing to low-experience Western devs.
As far as the original masterminds who, as a collective of talent, fans lovingly refer to as 'Team Silent'?
Let's list a few major members of the Silent Hill team from SH1-4 and what they have done since:
Keiichiro Toyama (Director/Writer)- SH1
Projects Post-SH1: Creative Lead @ SCE Studio Japan; Created the SIREN series and Gravity Rush. Rumored to be making a new PS4 horror game.
Akihiro Imamura (Producer) - SH2, SH4
Projects Post-SH4: Unknown
Masashi Tsuboyama (Director)- SH2; (Art Director) SH4
Projects Post-SH4: Unknown
Hiroyuki Owaku (Writer/Scenario Designer)- SH1, SH2, SH3
Projects Post-SH3: Assisted in end-of-production work on SH4. Worked on Silent Hill: Cage of Cradle, a Japanese digital manga.
Kazuhide Nakazawa (Director)- SH3
Projects Post-SH3: Joined Kojima Productions. Assisted (unspecified) in MGS4, MGS
W, MGSV (?)
Suguru Murakoshi (Drama Director/Scenario Designer)- SH2, SH4
Projects Post-SH4: Joined Kojima Productions. Assisted (unspecified) in MGS4, MGS
W, MGSV (?)
Takayoshi Sato (CG Creation/Direction)- SH1, SH2
Projects Post-SH2: Briefly worked with EA on Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. Currently works for a small dev called Virtual Heroes, Inc.
Masahiro Ito (Art Direction/Creature Design)- SH1, SH2, SH3
Projects Post-SH3: Worked on promotional art for Origins, Homecoming, Downpour, Book of Memories, and some of the comics/digital novels. Current projects unknown.
Of course you also have Akira Yamaoka, but he's still very active in the industry and hasn't disappeared like pretty much every other former Silent Hill Team member not named Keiichiro Toyama.
It's just baffling to me.
Besides the major names listed above, you also had some amazing technicians within the teams that made absolute magic with those games (especially SH3).
Many are believed to have been shifted to Kojima Productions with the heavy development of MGS4 and it's assumed many are still there, but I don't have the time or patience to go through the lengthy list of credits for SH1-4 and try mixing and matching with the lengthy credits of MGS4 or even Ground Zeroes.
Major players, like Imamura, Owaku, and Tsuboyama being MIA in this industry is just a fucking tragedy, in my opinion.