The Silent Hill franchise was a literal game changer.
Not only did it inspire my novel series, the Saving Grace Trilogy, but it also birthed over a dozen Silent Hill games and two feature films. The franchise is still very relevant today in 2022.
Some could argue that the survival-horror genre came to life because of the franchise, flashing death on our television screens since the late 1990s. But what really makes these games so uniquely terrifying?
Silent Hill uses real life to scare its players. Death, loss, grief, and regret are common themes within the games, and it’s something that we all face at some point in our lives. It’s just not always black and white.
In many of the games, you spend the first three quarters finding a way to survive, doing your best to keep the hero character alive and to liberate them from the darkness that Silent Hill beckons. Only then do you discover that this character that you have been saving time and time again… is no true hero at all.
As the plot unfolds, you’re left feeling betrayed, sickened, and confused as to why the character did what they did, and why you spent so much time helping them, believing them, and feeling sorry for them. Redemption feels like a far away fetch to say the least, and you hate them for it.
There is good and bad in everyone, and Silent Hill reflects on this prose with tragically haunting stories. Silent Hill is a psychological game, and in its darkness it shines a light on the human condition.
The reality is that those who we often see as victims are really the perpetrators of their own personal hell.
The psychological sides of the games are entirely predatory. The choices that you make within the game directly affect the storyline. You play the game, and the game plays you. As most of us enjoy these games with good intentions, offering help, performing side tasks, and engaging in commentary with other characters; every move that you make only has you digging your own grave just a little bit deeper. ‘Dammit’ is the first word that comes to mind.
“The murderer was with me the entire time?”
Silent Hill will fool you over and over, playing at your morals and your conscience until you feel like you’ve been used up. In a way, you become the main character in the games.
Background noise is also a heavy influence in the gameplay. Every day things like wire fences, TVs, radios, and desks are converted into either a weapon or a supernatural force. There’s the radio that blares static noise when you’re approaching a threat, the twisted fences where mutilated bodies hang, the television that turns on and off on its own, and the school desk with cryptic writing carved into it.
All of this is chillingly complimented by the sounds of electrical buzzing, fan blades whirring, scraping metal, and other industrial sounds that you might hear on a walk through a city. These sounds and objects are suddenly used against you, keeping you on edge and forcing you to be unwillingly aware of just how dangerous everyday norms can be.
These games are not for the faint of heart. Silent Hill makes it so that you become the lead in a psychological thriller, and in the end, there is rarely justice prevailed.
Because that’s how life is sometimes; horrific things happen because they just do. Chaos, horror, tragedy and death are forces that we can’t always come out triumphant against, and Silent Hill paints that picture for us in blood. |THIS ENT
[By Sydney Walters]
