After four cancelled games, Masahiro Ito might finally catch a break.

We cannot ignore Ito when it comes to the initial success of Silent Hill. The first game, which launched in 1999 on PS1, has had him as the background and monster designer. Two years and a PlayStation later, he became the art director in Silent Hill 2. Another two years later, in 2003, Ito had even more work to do (he was the art director, the monster designer, had involvement in CGI movie editing, as well as the modelling and the dramatic camera angles). The franchise continued its uphill path. In Silent Hill 4: The Room (2004) and Silent Hill: Origins (2007), Konami only gave him special thanks, and meanwhile, in 2006, he was the illustrator in a comic book (Silent Hill: Cage of Cradle).

Here, we can notice a minor break in his career, and for a good reason. His next project, NightCry, was released in 2016 on PC (and in 2019 on PlayStation Vita, respectively). The monster designs were his work, and he also was the character designer in the first post-Kojima Metal Gear, Metal Gear: Survive, in 2018. He also was an environment designer in World of Tanks… still, we can safely say that his involvement in Silent Hill with Team Silent is the biggest work so far.

Ito shared an image on Twitter, saying it’s a test render from a few years ago, using Unreal Engine 5. He added that it has nothing to do with Silent Hill, as well as the fact this is from a game that has been since cancelled. Finally, he wrote that he has seen four games he worked on getting the shaft, and to that, we should simply state that the Japanese artist is unlucky…

He intentionally said before that he hopes this game will not be cancelled when he announced in early 2020 that was a core member in a new project. But he’s anything but talentless. Too bad that this image below will never be materialized…