Dead by Daylight director shares how Silent Hill & other new content comes together

With Heather Mason and Pyramid Head revealed, Behaviour Interactive's creative director shared how the conversations and development that lead to Silent Hill in Dead by Daylight happen.

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In one of the most exciting additions to Dead by Daylight yet, Behaviour Interactive is bringing the Silent Hill franchise over with Heather Mason as a survivor and Pyramid Head as a killer. It is most certainly the “iconic horror franchise” Behaviour promised fans, and in a recent interview, creative director Matthew Côté shared how the process of including a franchise like Silent Hill in Dead by Daylight comes to be.

Behaviour Interactive creative director Matthew Côté spoke to Prima Games in an interview posted on May 26, 2020, chatting about the new Silent Hill content addition in Dead by Daylight. In that interview, Côté goes into details about the process by which the collaboration with existing franchises happens.

“If I had to summarize, it would go a bit like this," Côté explained. "First, there's a contact. Most of the time it's us reaching out but it can happen the other way… The first conversations will quickly tell if both sides are interested… Then there's usually a bit of a pause while legal people fiddle with complicated paperwork. Lastly, we get to make the chapter.”

It may seem cut and dry, but there are definitely differences between working with film franchise holders like Warner Bros. Pictures on Nightmare on Elm Street and another developer like Konami. It’s a distinction Côté goes on to describe.

“For Silent Hill, specifically, the main difference was the fact that Konami is a game developer, which means we had a very productive first meeting where we could establish parameters and boundaries extensively and quickly since we both knew exactly what was needed,” Côté continued. “We had a bunch of ideas for this chapter. Let's say that the team was fired up and excited. That meant a few ideas got turned down by Konami for not being right for them. That's fine. We had so much we wanted to do, it was necessary to cut somewhere anyway.  But we're happy that a few of our crazier ideas did make it in.”

The interview goes on to speak to the design of chapters, easter eggs, and the transition to remote work amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the glorious new addition of Silent Hill content including Heather Mason and Pyramid Head coming in June 2020, in honor of Dead by Daylight’s 4th anniversary, it’s an interesting look into what makes the series tick and how it moves on new content. Stay tuned to Shacknews for more information and details on Dead by Daylight and the upcoming Silent Hill chapter.

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.

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