I don’t think this era is over, just that the directors and developers may be changing. I don’t know if you’ve played it, but I found Dark Souls to have many of the same sort of sensibilities without evoking a power fantasy, all the while updating the mechanics to todays game standards. It tells its story through environments, gameplay and text snippets. The world feels hopelessly lost and much of the plot is left to the imagination, yet somehow through all that I felt very connected and touched by it all in the same way that I felt connected to James Sunderland.

Silent Hill 2 is one of the best games ever made and promotes much more thought and introspection than may of todays “artistic” games. I do think it’s important to recognize that it was very much an exception at the time and that many layers accidental as well as intentional contributed to that. This medium is quite new and there are many games ahead of us. Perhaps Del Toro and Kojima might be able to reconnect and make something amazing, not affiliated with an existing brand with so many expectations behind it.