Fear of blood and silence - An essay on my relationship with Silent Hill

Introduction

I recall being a little boy, one who, at the time, could barely understand the English language. I remember how deeply in love I was with video games, the long agonizing hours I sat down playing my favorite stories.

One day of that age, I visited the neighborhood's video club and I noticed a new game, one that had many copies on the main shelf. The cover was blurry and I could hardly tell the main face apart from the rest of the image: there it was, a person looking pale and weak appeared, with a vague look in its eyes. I decided to give the product a try and so I rented a copy. That same night, with the lights turned off and total silence surrounding me, I started walking my path in the streets of Silent Hill.

F I R S T_P E R I O D

When fear ran through blood: Silent Hill

The main theme of the game did not just introduce me to the story, but literally invaded my soul, scattering its pieces to hell. The many people that played this game, when they were little, know what I am talking about: the images of lonely faces, the old wooden-house standing alone in the wilderness, that mysterious woman's photograph on the wall, the car that crushes while a little girl covers her face, the flash and the awkward mist that follows. There has hardly ever been a better introduction for a survival horror game.

Harry, a young father, came around after the car accident he had when he approached the entrance of the city called Silent Hill, to find out that his little girl was not on her seat. As he looked around through the mist he spotted her, but for unknown reasons she ran away while he followed her through the city's empty streets. Not a sound could be heard. The girl went into an alley. In it, there were hospital beds filled with blood. Harry followed her, soon reached the end of the path and got a big, dark surprise. The nightmare was all but over and the monsters were real. His daughter was gone and he was alone, left with the will to save her.

Such was the intensity of the story that my heart was struggling to break off my chest. As I played on, the fear turned into anguish and nervousness, then from time to time to fear again. The roads of that town were either empty or blocked, some utterly destroyed, giving a feeling of absolute isolation. The only company there was out there were the monsters. But the main character was not a S.T.A.R.S. officer with fighting skills of professional soldiers and the knowledge of using a machine gun, like in Resident Evil. Neither a sexy super-woman like Tomb Raider's Lara Croft. Harry was a constrained, average person. Average in everything except the fact that he was trapped in a dreadful town buried in thick mist, where shapeless beings were hidden, his daughter lost. This was true horror.

I never managed to gather the money to buy the game but in reality I never left the streets of Silent Hill. The bell in the middle of the school rang in the same, devastating way. The scars on the walls remained. The night always fell without warning while the sirens cried out loud, revealing the spookiest creatures a morbid mind could give birth too. "Never give them the chance to get you" became my favorite motto as a player. It was a wise strategy considering how rare bullets in Silent Hill have always been.

Akira Yamaoka, then a much younger and talented Japanese music composer, proved to be a master of melodies. There were many moments where his music gave the story an outworld appeal. The introduction's theme is by far my favorite Silent Hill track, but it is just one of Yamaoka's many monumental moments in the game. Lisa's themes are some more of the beautiful musical compositions that one would not be able to believe it was written not by the gods, but by a human being.

Silent Hill, the original PSX version, was not just a new game. It was an original experience for my generation. It still remains, in my opinion, unmatched by any other PSX game, and only a few other Horror games can challenge it.

Coming back for yet another nightmare: Silent Hill 2

Many years passed since the original visit in the streets of that city, when something unexpected happened: a man named James got a letter. He said it was written by his deceased wife Mary, In the letter she asked him to travel to Silent Hill and join her in their "special place." This town again. The mist was still there and even though such a long time had passed it remained as thick as ever. Isolation and horror were still the rule.

Odd creatures were still walking around, faster and stronger this time, but gamers soon found out that living people, for example a female teenager who keeps repeating she needs her mother, a little girl who keeps on running away, or a youngling who seems to have escaped surveillance, were sometimes much scarier than monsters. The only exception seemed to be that creature with a muscular body and a huge red pyramid for a head, which was usually pulling a huge sword through the ground. That being inspired fear from the very first moments one laid his/er eyes on it.

Akira Yamaoka was the soundtrack's composer again. How was this man able to use melodies and silence in an equally amazing way? Here he truly managed to perform to the maximum. Just the effort to mention my favorite tracks is extremely difficult: Promise, Betrayal, Theme of Laura, Stairs of Fire, Music Box, and so many others. For me, and the gamers of my generation, the music of Silent Hill 2 was and is the best example of how sound can empower and, at the same time, be empowered by images.

The special thing about this game was that its best part was not its artwork or its music,, its gameplay and riddles, etc. What I, and other gamers all over the world, fell in love with was the story and the way it was slowly revealed to us. Each character had a reason for his/her actions, each event was not isolated from the main story but could still be engraved onto memory for the shake of its own value. Silent Hill 2 was an epic story made of smaller epic stories. The combination of all the elements mentioned above did not produce a spooky tale or a breath taking game, but a true piece of art. It still remains one of the very few cases that the world of consoles has produced something so precious. It is very hard to imagine a game similar to Silent Hill 2 being released anytime soon.

The devil child and the spread of evil: Silent Hill 3

A couple of years passed, when Silent Hill fans met Harry's daughter, Heather, who was found running away from a detective. She was not fast enough to escape hell and neither were the gamers. This time players discovered what is like when shopping is not about picking your favorite clothing but dodging the punch of a creature being the size of two grown up men, with a shaking head and no eyes but five mouths. That when darkness finds a person, there is a reason, always a bad one. Silent Hill was back.

The gameplay did not change much compared to the previous two games. Odd riddles and some shooting were the rule, although most players preferred to ran away since the bullets were, one more time, a rare treasure. The artwork was an improved copy of the second game, but this time the mist did not exist and so we had a much darker result. I liked the fact that there was more noise and dirt on the characters themselves. That gave this game a personality to help it differiate itself from its predecessors.

Once again, Yamaoka delivered a monument for musicians and listeners to admire. Praising this man becomes a cliche after a while, for most of the time he is composing music with his absolutely personal style and highly artistic value.

In general, Silent Hill 3 was, in my opinion, a little bit worse than the first two games, only for the reason that there was little surprise in its style and quality. That does not change the fact that it is a game that 99,9% of the companies which publish products for this market will never be able to create. Neither that I, like most of the people who played it, got many hours of pure fun and horror from it. Heather got to be the fans' favorite protagonist, not only for her looks but her personality as well.

Entering the hole again: Silent Hill The Room

Being locked up in your place and having the same nightmare night after night is a bad thing, but there is hardly any comparison to that and being locked up inside your place, with a giant hole appearing in your bathroom, the hole being an entrance to a tunnel that leads to places with dreadful monsters and a killer that was once thought to be dead, but in reality is still killing human beings. Oh, about that nightmare: it is everything but a dream.

The paragraph above is probably the best way to describe what kind of bipolar game The Room was. Herny Townshend, the main character, was much slower, less expressive and convincing compared to other protagonists like James or Heather. That characteristic was not found only in the case of Henry. The rest of the cast was of much lower quality in comparison to the previous games. There was not a single person of the level of Harry, Angela or Kaufman.

This time the gameplay had many new elements, e.g. there was more shooting going on, there were totally new places to visit, etc. But the fact was that the gameplay was clumsier, the riddles consisted of predictable, sometimes even silly challenges, the control buttons did not function the proper way, etc. What made the original trilogy unique did not exist in this game. What was still there was, of course, Yamaoka's music and its familiar quality, depicted in themes like Room of Angel. But after three marvelous OSTs, his performance, seized to be something unexpected, became the norm. Thus, it could not add more points to the quality of the game.

In general, The Room was a disappointment. For the first time there was a title in the franchize that would not be equally good to the original game. That something that made Silent Hill fans proud of their support to the team, faded away. It would be better if the game had been published under a different title, as it was originally planned. People like me would be less hard on it, since The Room is a very good game, just not a worthy of the Silent Hill brand. The worst was yet to come.

S E C O N D_P E R I O D

Not much horror this time: Silent Hill Origins

There are not many things to say, surely not more than what Yatzee added, when it comes to reviewing Silent Hill Origins, the game that turned the most horrifying franchise in history, into a walk down the park, leaving the brand's fan base in total dismay.

The arguments made against this game can be briefly putted into one word: Travis. Is there anything to this man, a person that seems to have absolutely no reason for walking the streets of Silent Hill, that resembles the first four games? Is there any other game out there with such a cold hearted, indifferent and insignificant protagonist? Travis makes Henry from Silent Hill The Room look like he was Meryl Streep, just a step before winning the Oscar for Most Expressive and Emotional Character of the Year. Yet, this person was supposed to fill the shoes of men like Harry Mason. What is more disturbing though is that, instead of finding new interesting characters, they made this walking brick meet the characters of the original game. Was it so hard to come up with new faces to present? Could it really be this tough not to look at fans as cows to be milked but as people who want ton enjoy themselves and congratulate you for your hard work?

I would be willing to forgive the designers for these horrible choices, if there were 1. new, particularly smart, elements in the game play, 2. an exciting story to tell. Neither of the two goals was achieved. Origins is a mix of the original trilogy, having a very similar course of development to Silent Hill 1, but lacking anything that could have the effect of boosting a player's enthousiasm. The graphics were discent, copy/pasting on the work done for the older releases.

Akira Yamaoka tried to save the day for this one, but like in the case of The Room, his efforts made the fans to think when and how they would buy a copy of the soundtrack, but not so much the game itself.

I have heard that in Japan, that game was released as Silent Hill 0. I guess the number in the title really meant to stand for something -even though the game is not that bad, just a title with a little more quality than your average horror publication of the month. It would be much much better if someone kicked Travis out of it.

Blood, fear & ice: Silent Hill Shattered Memories

Just when it seemed like the brand was doomed to decline, Silent Hill Shattered Memories appeared. This game is one of the few things I have witnessed in this life resembling a miracle. It renewed the series without taking away its essence -the horror and the intensity of unexpected events and developments. It did use the cliches and characteristics of the original trilogy without becoming a poorly functioning Frankenstein like Silent hill Origins.

The foremost characteristic of the game is that it forces the player into certain actions, yet there is a very real feeling of a hunt taking place, since our main hero -Harry Mason in a very different version compared to the original- is unable to defend himself using bullets or any kind of weapon. This may sound hard for younger players to live with, but anyone who has the patience to go through all the running will be rewarded by what made this brand one of the favorite games for players all over the globe, that is, an incredicle plot and compelling storyline.

We got another soundtrack of greatness by the one and only Akira Yamaoka. This time the songs were less in number since the story was shorter, but that is no reason to complain when we have the good fortune to listen to songs like Acceptance -one of my personal favorites-, Hell Frozen Rain and the rest of the soundtrack.

There is no way to describe the return to the days of the first Silent Hill. The new additions and the anguish that came back to hunt the players. This is a must-have game.

L A S T_P A R T

The present

I have not played two of the most recent games of the franchise, Homecoming and Downpour. For the latter I know nothing, for the former I have heard that is a good game, even thought the level of difficulty goes through the roof. The graphics look wonderful, the soundtrack is composed by Yamaoka again (Homecoming was his last project for Silent Hill). Unfortunately I cannot buy a PS3 console to play it... yet.

Conclusions

Silent Hill is an important video game to me. The first three games always remind me of my old days as a dedicated player, when trying to defeat Red Pyramid was my biggest concern in life. There is no way I can describe the many things that make me love this brand: its unique storyline, the amazing soundtracks -the only ones I can compare to Final Fantasy's music- the graphics and sketches, the fact that thanks to the dvd containing the "making of" the second game I found out about Francis Bacon, the ideas and symbolisms behind each person and monster, the incredible gameplay.

Silent Hill will always hold a piece of my heart because it is a piece of art, a product of unique excellence. It remains a part of my youth, something I cannot get over, even though now I dislike its genre. All I can say is: Thank you Team Silent, thank you Konami, for offering such a masterpiece for us to enjoy.