GO EAT SNAKES amirite God?

In the month preceding the U.S release of Silent Hill 3, I’d managed to inadvertently do two things to help me get ready for it.

The first was I stumbled across my old DVD copy of Jacob’s Ladder, which I had long assumed lost in my families’ move to a new house about four years ago. The significance of the movie to Silent Hill is obvious to anyone whose seen and played the two, but for those who haven’t done one or the other, it’s best said that Silent Hill is frequently referred to as Jacob’s Ladder: The game.

The other, and perhaps most importantly in understanding the nature of Silent Hill 3’s story, was I started to listen to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ album: Murder Ballads.

Nick Cave is frequently referred to, and somewhat affectionately, as a poorman’s cross of Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen.

With a heroin addiction.

His album Murder Ballads is quite true to the title; it’s a collection of songs about Murder. Some traditional, most original, plus a Bob Dylan cover thrown in for good mix. Aside from the Bob Dylan track it’s quite easy to categorize the songs into two types: there are those that lament murder, and those that revel in it.

“The Kindness of Strangers” laments the death of Merry Bellows. It’s a tragic song complete with a spoken (sung) moral. Told from the perspective of some unnamed party, as though he is just someone who read the story about a murder in a local newspaper.

So Mothers keep your girls at home
Don’t let them journey out alone
Tell them this world is full of danger
And to Shun the company of strangers
O poor Mary Bellows

Where as “The Curse Of Millhaven”, told from the perspective of the young female teenage killer Loretta, is a song in love with itself. Opening with the joyful shouts/screams of the band members that segues into a brief oompa-lumpa type sound. Goddamn if the song doesn’t love singing about killing people.

Since I was no bigger than a weavil they’ve been saying
I was evil
That if “bad” was a boot then I’d fit it
That I’m a wicked young lady, but I’ve been trying
hard lately
O fuck it! I’m a monster! I admit it!

So getting to the point. Silent Hill is a cover, an imitation of horror. A Dean Koontz story told by David Lynch.

Silent Hill 2 laments horror.

Silent Hill 3 fucking loves horror.



One of the main keys to a good horror story, or a good ghost story, is tragedy. Sorrow. Unfathomable grief. From the base of suffering comes the terror. To bring it back it Jacob’s Ladder, what makes the film so memorable is not the fact that it’s one of the few genuinely creepy films that holds up over time (due partly, no doubt, to Adrienne Lynne’s decision to do all the effects “In Camera” as opposed to some post-production technique) is not so much unsettling imagery, but the genuinely affecting story of a man going through purgatory, attempting to reconcile with his regrets in order to reach salvation. Never mind that the means for his salvation lies in Mcaughly Culkin.

Or take the less theologically heady The Shining (the movie adaptation that is), it’s not the isolated hotel, the disturbing images within the haunted hotel, that makes it memorable. It’s a father driven to the point that he would attempt to kill his family with an axe while doing a Johnny Carson impersonation that makes it linger. I have no doubts that should I ever drive my father to that point, it wouldn’t be so different a situation. Though I’m sure that I could sway him back with the warm glowity-glow of television.

But the main point is that any supernatural, or extremely horrific, plot point should be used to make us understand the fundamental every day tragedy that is the focal point of the great horror stories.

The other way to go as an alternative is retaining the mystery. If you can explain everything away at the end, then to some degree you’ve fucked up. In a story that details something unknown (and isn’t sci-fi) you can’t make it completely known. Because it cheapens that feeling of “what the hell is going on?” when at the end, you can explain it all away. It’s not scary when you know what happened, that feeling of unease when presented with infinite possibilities, even those beyond literal description, is forever gone.

It’s like David Lynch said when discussing Twin Peaks, “A great mystery doesn’t offer a solution” because it’s not ever knowing the answer that keeps it alive and fascinating. Once you tell what it’s all about, then quite honestly, who gives a fuck?

Now a horror story doesn’t have to be both. In fact, it’s probably better to stick to one. The mystery, or the tragedy. It can mix elements of both… but if the heart of it is a tragedy, then you need some solid explanations, and if the heart is the unknown, the you must never explain it fully.
It’s the mystery that makes the original Silent Hill work so well. As I said, the underlying story of the original Silent Hill is pure B movie material. Quiet mid-American town hides something sinister… drugs are involved… evil cult tries to resurrect it’s god and so forth. What makes it so endlessly fascinating is that connecting all the dots is left up to the player. He/She has to analyze everything, not just narrative information, but the environment he plays in. The enemies he faces. The ending he receives (out of a total of four, plus a joke ending) to come to any sort of conclusion. I’d even venture to say that part of the reason the story is so highly regarded is that there exists something of a definitive plot guide, written by President Evil (A.K.A Dan Birlew, who has gone on to become a Guide writer for BradyGames. Incidentally, he apologizes for the Final Fantasy IX guide, and would like you to know it wasn’t his fault.).

Though I have no doubt it’s about 99.9% dead on in it’s interpretation, there still remains the fact that it’s one fan’s interpretation, though well informed and knowledgeable as it is. See, when he wrote the official Brady Games guide to Silent Hill 2 and had the opportunity to ask several questions concerning the SH1 story to the Konami staff, he was answered with either “There is no relation between the situation of the first game and the new game Silent Hill 2." Or "The focus is the game at hand, which is not similar to the previous product." Though sometimes he was granted an "That is an accurate description."

There is this wonderful feeling to the original Silent Hill that even though every aspect to it is deliberate on the part of the creators; even they do not know the full extent of what they created. That it sort of grew on it’s own. That even they can not explain everything the player experiences. And it’s because of that, that the first Silent Hill still makes me uncomfortable to this day.

Silent Hill 2 is the tragedy focused entry to the series. Though there is no attempt to explain why Silent Hill is the way it is in the story, it isn’t so much in the interest of mystery (though there are tidbits thrown in here and there to flesh out the history of the town to those interested) but because it’s irrelevant. It’s not about the town, it’s about why the main character James comes to the town. It’s about why the three other supporting characters came to the town. In short, it’s about guilt. If Jacob’s Ladder was the aesthetic influence of Silent Hill, then it is the narrative influence on Silent Hill 2. It is a journey through purgatory in which how the player actually plays the game decides his outcome. Though frustrating for attempts to reach alternate endings, it is such an interesting idea for determining endings that I can overlook the slightly flawed, and almost subjective manner, in which endings are determined (for “In the Water” you have to not heal often after receiving damage, examine the knife that Angela gave you after contemplating suicide with it and so on…). If you’re suicidal, then you ain’t gonna receive forgiveness. You’ll receive punishment. Look for your dead wife in earnest, by healing yourself and looking at her picture, and you might make it out of Silent Hill with hope for the future… and so on.

A friend of mine from school had never played the original Silent Hill. He started with part 2. He said he was terrified by it, but was disappointed by the end because it didn’t explain why “everything was so fucked up in that town”. At that point I had to explain the idea of subjective storytelling and the fact that facts don’t matter so much in this kind of story, as do perceptions of the characters. When he wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that, I just brought up Fight Club as an example. Love it or hate it, Fight Club may be the most educational film in terms of narrative technique this generation. I’ll come back to David Fincher a little latter incidentally.

This is what makes Silent Hill 2 such an interesting “survival horror” game. Even on the hardest difficulty level, the game is a lot easier than say, the easy setting on the Resident Evil remake. Sure, you can attribute that partially to the fact that you can move forward and backwards while using your weapon. But it really comes down to the fact that the “monsters” aren’t the threat, aren’t the true evil, but rather the character you control is.

This could be an interesting discussion as to forcing a player to control someone whom they may be morally be opposed to, but I’m not here to really discuss Silent Hill 2. Praise or Bury, I’m here to talk about Silent Hill 3.

Silent Hill 3 tries to combine the mystery and tragedy of the first two games, and because of this doesn’t end up with a particularly interesting story. It is a story that is told as well as it can be, and if you had to make a direct sequel to Silent Hill 1 (yeah, fuck you, I’m spoiling it for you) then you probably couldn’t come up with much better, it reveals as much about the original as it has to without telling every little detail or getting bogged down in too much “ahhhh! So that’s what happened!” moments (though in an odd way, the one scene that does it is possibly the best narrative moment in the game. But due mostly to aesthetic reasons, which I’ll get in to in a bit).



To borrow the words of the Silent Hill 3’s scenario writer (and writer of SH2… and maybe 1? I’m too lazy to look at the manual) Hiroyuki Owaku concerning SH3 “The feeling of fear prevailing in Silent Hill 3 differs from that Silent Hill 2. In Silent Hill 2 we tried to create a sense of fear sustained by silence. That silence lying within each individual which is progressively transformed into anxiety. It was a kind of fear that built up little by little. Gradually it escalated into horror. For Silent Hill 3, a different approach was used. We wanted to create a more violent, direct feeling of fear.”

For better or worse, this effect had been masterfully achieved. Where as in Silent Hill 2 you couldn’t help but feel “this isn’t worth finding some dead bitch, I’m not going any further” In Silent Hill 3 you tend to feel like “I have to keep moving to get the fuck out of here!”. The game has such an immediate visceral effect that was not present in the previous two, that even before you know the situation your character is in, you fear. You don’t fear the fact that your character may die so much as you’ll witness something you really don’t want to. Well sort of…

I have to admit that even though my first playthrough was set to the easy action level, I just had to pause the game in the opening sequence. The sound design is so aggressive (done by series veteran sound designer and music composer Akira Yamaoka) that I had to take my headphones off. The particular enemy that unnerved me so much makes this kind of sound that was…

Well, remember in Dumb and Dumber, when Jim Carrey does the self-described “most annoying sound in the world”? How it was both annoying and funny? This sound was both annoying and terrifying, which essentially means it was anxiety-inducing. I mean real anxiety. Increased pulse rate and heart palpitations. It is strongly recommended that those highly susceptible to stress not play the game with headphones on.

Of course, adding to the stress in the more combat and overall action oriented gameplay. Enemies are more aggressive than in the previous two games. And remember those random drops into nothingness formed by the metal grates in the original Silent Hill? Well now you can actually fall into them. Add to that several instant death sequences and you get the feeling that for the first time in the series, the fear of having your character actually die has been factored in the scare… uhhh, factor.

Which may be one of the problems with the game. The fact is in the first two games, the death of the character had a narrative importance. In the first game, Allesa was trying to prevent Harry from unwillingly completing Dahlia’s plan. In the second, it was James’ just reward. In this one, well it seems the point is to just add gaming stress on top of the intended horror stress. In the first two it served as something of an appropriate end… where as in this one, even the villain doesn’t want you to die. And neither does Heather. The possibility of death is meant to make sense only in terms of being a game. They do an admirable job of covering this by having the “monster” Valietel drag Heather off when she dies in certain areas of the game… as though her death was part of some master plan, but when completing the game you realize that it really doesn’t make much sense. But didn’t I talk about having a mystery with indefinable answers as one of the main joys of great horror? Well, I guess I forgot to mention that it doesn’t work when you see/feel the creators making excuses.

This could also stem from the choice of who the main character is. Don’t get me wrong, I think Heather, as written, is one of the more personable and believable characters you’ll see in a videogame horror franchise. But here’s the difference, Harry and James were both ordinary people. They weren’t exactly randomly caught up in the circumstances that led them to Silent Hill, but it wasn’t a given that they were the kind of people that would naturally end up in their respective horror situations.

Conceptually, the character of Heather must inevitably face Silent Hill and the manifest Hell it entails. Whereas the previous two games had a feeling of “Gee, doesn’t it suck for these two guys to be here. Sure, they made choices that brought them here, but damn!”. For heather it’s more of a case of “Man! She has no fucking clue what she is, and why she’s fighting these creepy things! Isn’t it fun fucking with her?”.

Lament and revelry. You can’t help but get the feeling that the creators are downright gleeful of the situations they put Heather in. NOTE: Heather the character, not the player who controls her. Obviously they loved terrifying the player in the first two games, but this time they actually seem to enjoy manipulating the character herself.

So if you’re going to be gleeful at manipulating a character whose supposed to be an “innocent”, how do you get away with it without seeming like a group of misogynist assholes?

Simple, you make the style retro-hip. Tragically retro-hip!
Silent Hill 3 is an odd, but strangely successful, merging of two kinds of chic; heroin and retro 70’s.




Heather could have come out of those Gap Ads some years ago...

the first issue of the gamer's quarter

Without a good plot, I'd just be left with a virtual ghost house. A well-designed one, maybe, but still...

Except the plot for Silent Hill is trite and stupid, while the plot for Silent Hill 2 is good, but nothing more.

If I don't care about what's going on, if I don't care about the story or the characters, well-executed or not, the game becomes a mere ghost house.

I sure as hell didn't care about anyone in the first game.

Oh, I never really cared about a "Silent Hill" character. And I'm talking about the whole series, here. They're too "fake". US movie characters thought up by Japanese people, and it shows.

Hmm... I'm not entirely sure the distinction is that important, in these games... I mean, I wish it were, but...
What's the "narrative" of a "Silent Hill" game? Mostly opening doors, picking up weapons and killing monsters. It's all pretty generic stuff. I guess you could argue that "Silent Hill 4 The Room" also "forces" you to go into that hole and makes you (or rather "allows you to"? does that still count?) peep at your neighbour, but...?

I'm afraid I'm not really convinced... I think you're making the game look a bit smarter than it really is, here. I could be wrong though.

For example, yes, I guess you could "make sense" out of the monster design, but are we really sure the guy who designed these creatures had all that in mind at the time? We know that was at least partly the case in the first game (the game pretty much tells you so), but here?
As for the holes... Well, that's nothing new since Lewis Carroll, is it?

OK, now, I really doubt they had that in mind... ^^;

I think it's more important than that. Well, it is as far as I'm concerned, anyway.
Like you said, "Silent Hill" games are "experiences". I certainly don't play them for the gameplay itself (who does?). But experiences like that have to be immersive. And when the plot feels like it's been written by a bunch of people who never met each other, like it's never been proof-read... Well, that can't work.
Without a good plot, I'd just be left with a virtual ghost house. A well-designed one, maybe, but still...

"Silent Hill 3" felt quite a bit like a ghost house... But at least, it looked and played well enough for me to enjoy it despite its glowing-green-reagent-fuelled plot.
"Silent Hill 4 The Room" didn't even have that. The gameplay had regressed, for some reason. As for the plot... Well, you know how I feel about it. And on top of that, it was being spoon-fed to you in a way that was even more ludicrously videogame-y than in the first "Bio Hazard" game: "Don't bother trying to uncover the mystery yourself. We'll have some guy leave memos for you once in a while. It's simpler that way. Oh, and he'll also provide you with actual gameplay advices! How cool is that?" (that might be funny when Kojima does it, but since when do "Silent Hill" games work like that? I guess that's a memo I never got). Now, that's all but immersive. And no, first-person sequences won't make up for it.

Then again, that doesn't amount to much in the end, in my opinion... More important plot points than just that one would have been nice.
While "the revelation" saved James from being an entirely bland cardboard character, the poor guy needed a bit more than that to become a real boy. And then, there are the other characters, who only existed to fade in and out of James' life and thoughts for a few FMVs...
(I do like the game, but I also think it's not "all that"...)

Isn't that kind of the idea?

If you're really losing sleep over things like backstory continuity maybe you'd be better off reading comic books

d0000000d

hl2 is totally coherent! no, really!

(kinda?)

I can see how illness fits the plot... But of course the monsters are going to be images of illness/disfigurement. Isn't that the case for all human-based monsters in general, even in other games?
As for sexuality... What does it have to do with the plot?

You think James and Mary were still getting it on regularly while she was suffering from her illness?

I can see how illness fits the plot... But of course the monsters are going to be images of illness/disfigurement. Isn't that the case for all human-based monsters in general, even in other games?
As for sexuality... What does it have to do with the plot?

Wow, you... kind of missed the entire point of that game, didn't you?

Why do you think the main villain of the game was a giant walking dick with a big sword that had a penchant for rape?

I mean, hell, have you played ANY square enix game, EVER? Any of the Metal Gear games? Half Life 2?

Because the game was trying to be "shocking"?
Something else?

Why was Cynthia so seductive?

So we've got a plot about a guy who gets "frustrated" with his wife's illness and kills her. He's then seduced by someone who looks exactly like her, and is hunted by a large, violent representation of male sexuality at its most basic. The latter kills the former multiple times.

If you go there, Harry was a widower.

The way I see it:
A game that you play for the gameplay doesn't need a great plot.
A game that you play for "the experience", or that pretends to be "art" (and Konami certainly played that card a lot ever since the announcement of "Silent Hill 2"), better have a decent plot.

The way I see it:
A game that you play for the gameplay doesn't need a great plot.
A game that you play for "the experience", or that pretends to be "art" (and Konami certainly played that card a lot ever since the announcement of "Silent Hill 2"), better have a decent plot.

Are you capable of grasping symbolism or is nothing real until it's explicitly stated?

So you're telling me you play it for the story?

To answer your question, I play it for a bit of both, I guess. I think the stories are good enough. Certainly not great, but not too terrible either.
I think they're nice games. But I certainly wouldn't call them "art" or scan them for some hidden subtext. And I believe that's not how Square Enix is trying to sell them either, right?

no one is calling Silent Hill "art" either.

Multiple purposes is usually an indication of a good piece of media!

Multiple purposes is usually an indication of a good piece of media!

despite all being thematically linked and central to the plot

Now you want me to prove Pyramid Head and Maria are central to the plot of Silent Hill 2?

Pyramid Head and Maria are both sexual. Pyramid Head, in addition to being pretty damn phallic

?
The big sword? Does that make Cloud pretty damn phallic?

?
The big sword? Does that make Cloud pretty damn phallic?