Mark Berka, the lead designer on the team developing Silent Hill 8 recently conducted a video interview and divulged some of the team’s plans for the upcoming release of Silent Hill 8. Oddly enough, Berka noted that the game was still in its infancy, which doesn’t bode well for the expected 2011 release that Konami had given the game previously. The interview is conducted entirely in Czech, so if you want to check it out feel free to click here.

For those of you who would like a translated English breakdown of it all, we’ve included key notes below from a translation done by ‘Survival’ on the silenthillforum.com website.

They say they are focusing more on psychological horror and want SH8 to be more in line with the first games. The guy in black shirt is the lead designer. He says they want the game to be story driven with complex subtext and mystery. Finding out what´s the deal with main characters past and why he ended up in Silent Hill will be also an important aspect.

They chose him to be convict/prisoner becuase his backround offers a lot of new and fresh material to explore in SH universe. He even mentions life in prison and revenge between inmates. They´re not focusing on action (the game is supposed to be less action oriented then Homecoming). SH2 being the main inspiration for atmosphere of the game.

Konami has a strong influence on the development are able to change any aspect of the game if they don´t like it. He talks about Team Silent and how a lot of people have wrong impression of it. He say that aside from few key people the “Team” itself never really existed… he says this because the interviewer asks him is they worked closely with people who worked on original series. But he revealed that they are working with those key people who worked on previous games. He also says that while they liked the Silent Hill movie they´re not gettint any inspiration from it.

As a fan of the Silent Hill franchise, it’s great to hear that the development team is eagerly trying to bring the franchise back to its roots and glory days. Silent Hill: Homecoming didn’t hit the mark for me personally, so I’m definitely excited to see how Silent Hill 8 turns out. The decision to include a convict as the main character definitely has the potential to get interesting and probably has a lot of possibilities as well.

Hopefully the developers can meet the 2011 deadline as this would make for a great Holiday release next year.