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Silent Hill

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Silent Hill (サイレントヒル) is the title of a survival horror video game franchise, produced by Konami. As of 2004 there are five games available (one available only in Japan), all of which were released to strong sales and critical acclaim. The Silent Hill games are distinguished from other games in the same genre, such as Resident Evil, in that the focus is far more on character, story, and atmosphere rather than action and violence. The games' story lines unfold like that of a film, and multiple resolutions are possible depending upon what decisions the player makes during gameplay. Often, the player is left to wonder whether or not a sequence in the game has actually occurred in reality.


What is Silent Hill?

Silent Hill is a lakeside resort town, in the United States, that seems to be shifting between this world and the "Otherworld". In the first two games the protagonists are seemingly accidentally drawn to the town which, to the protagonists, appears abandoned by human who have been replaced by fearsome monsters and demonic entities. In the third and fourth games, the horrors of Silent Hill have been "brought to" the games' protagonists. In each game, players are required to uncover a complex mystery to explain why they are being haunted by Silent Hill's horrors. Thus the games have a primarily narrative basis, rather than being driven by action.

Silent Hill is portrayed in different ways in the various games. The enemies and environments all relate to the themes and plot of each game. The first game is focused on a cult in Silent Hill and their religious activities and thus the game contains religious symbolism of the struggle between good and evil. The second game suggests that the town may be a metaphorical incarnation of a person's troubled psyche, or perhaps a kind of purgatory. The third game continues the notion of the battles between good and evil forces, like the first installment, in religious overtones. The fourth game is openly surreal in its depiction of environment relating to the psyche of the protagonist. There is a prevalent presence of sexual metaphors throughout the series that seem to derive from the protagonist's angst and fears and gives a symbolic representation of the characters' mentality. Much of the underlying themes in the games are depicted by scenery rather than by dialogue and gives Silent Hill a great deal of ambiguity which can be intepreted in more than one way.

As Silent Hill is perceived through the protagnosts' eyes, it is not always clear whether what is seen by the player is a just a deranged hallucination or if the town is truly changing into the grotesque scenes that the player must travel through. In all of the games the player will occasionally run across clear defiances of the laws of physics. For example, a player may enter a doorway only to find themselves inexplicably back in the same location or somehow transported to a far away place. There are also times when the protagonist is situated in a location that cannot be pointed out on the map provided. When present in such a situation in the first installment the map simply names the place "Nowhere". Here the game is wholly lent to the player's interpretation.

It is worth noting that the manual to the first game describes Silent Hill as a small New England resort town. The surroundings of Silent Hill are similar to the region, particularly the fog. The town might be located in Southern New England, possibly Massachusetts or Connecticut. In the second game, the number plates on all the cars in the game are from Michigan. The fourth game takes place in a town called Ashfield, which resembles Fall River, Massachusetts. The town of Silent Hill is also located near a large body of water called Toluca Lake, which suggests a Southern California location. Again this provides a fair amount of ambiguity about Silent Hill and its surrounding environment.

Numerous fan forums and message boards have sprung up on the Internet in the years since the games' introduction, where the symbolism and themes in each game are enthusiastically discussed.


Atmosphere

The games' visual design has come in for strong praise, depicting dark, fog-enshrouded, decaying environments enhanced by chilling (and very sudden) sound effects. Composer Akira Yamaoka has provided atmospheric and emotional music for the series, which ranges from melancholy piano solos to heavy rock pieces. Many fans and reviewers have referred to the Silent Hill games as among the most disturbing ever made.

Film adaptation

Main article: Silent Hill (film)

In 2003 a motion picture based on Silent Hill was announced, with French director Christophe Gans (The Brotherhood of the Wolf) attached. The movie has the working title of Silent Hill: Centralia and will involve a woman who takes her sick child to a faith healer, ending up in the town of Silent Hill. The location of the movie is set in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Shooting commenced in April 2005 for a planned release on April 26th 2006.

The cast includes Radha Mitchell (known to most audiences as the pilot Fry from Pitch Black) and Sean Bean (known as Boromir in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and as agent 006 in the James Bond film, GoldenEye). Several characters from the games are also set to appear, including Cybil Bennett and Dahlia Gilespie.

Synopses

Template:Spoiler

Silent Hill (1999)

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Harry Mason and his wife find a child in Silent Hill

Seven years ago Harry Mason and his wife found a baby by the road and adopted her as their own, naming her Cheryl. Though the wife soon passed away Harry Mason continued to love Cheryl as his own daughter.

At the start of the game we find Harry Mason and Cheryl going to the town resort of Old Silent Hill. Strange events occur before they have even entered the town. A cop on a motorbike drives past and only moments later Harry sees the bike lying by the side of the road and the cop is nowhere in sight. Soon afterwards a figure suddenly appears on the road, Harry turns the car and slides off the road. When he regains consciousness Harry discovers that Cheryl is missing and he finds himself in the midst of the evil slowly engulfing Silent Hill, "a world of someone's nightmarish delusions come to life."

Several easter eggs, hidden references and a large amount of pop-culture references can be found throughout the game. As an in-joke for horror fans, most of the town's streets in the first game are named after popular horror and suspense novelists, such as Ray Bradbury, Ira Levin, Robert Bloch, Dean Koontz and Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King). If you care to look carefully enough, the word "Redrum" can be seen written on a door in a street, referring directly to Stephen King's The Shining. Also, the names of three members of the band Sonic Youth appear on a faculty list at the school. There is also a silly UFO ending that Team Silent included in the first Silent Hill. This ending became so popular with fans that Team Silent included alternate UFO endings for both Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. The UFO endings seem to lampoon off of each other. It should be noted that the UFO ending for Silent Hill 2 is only available in the Xbox version, or the Greatest Hits version for the PS2 in the US. The UFO ending is intact for all other non-US versions of Silent Hill 2.

Silent Hill Play Novel (2001)

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Andy in Silent Hill Play Novel

Released on Game Boy Advance only in Japan. The game featured a related and unrevealed plot in Silent Hill 1. An incomplete, visual translation can be found at Silent Hill Heaven A plot guide detailing the Boy Spring Scenario, in which you play Andy who lives in the house next to Harry and Cheryl Mason, can be found at Gamefaqs.

Silent Hill 2 (2001)

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Pyramid Head painting found in Silent Hill 2

Three years ago James Sunderland's wife Mary passed away from a terminal disease. James, still grief-stricken from the loss, receives a letter from his late wife asking him to meet her at their "special place" in Silent Hill. James finds the resort town replaced with a mist-shrouded hell full of crawling monsters. While searching the town's decrepit buildings for clues, James encounters other odd people, including a little girl who seems to know a great deal about James' and Mary's relationship, and a mysterious young woman named Maria who is the spitting image of Mary.

The Xbox version of the game, subtitled Restless Dreams (Inner Fears in Europe), featured an additional scenario where players controlled Maria. This level was included on the PlayStation 2 version when the "Greatest Hits" edition was released (also known as Platinum Edition). The title of the original scenario with James is called Letter from Silent Heaven. The one featuring Maria as the protagonist is named Born from a Wish. This scenario was also included in the Director's Cut version of the PC edition.

Silent Hill 2 does not have a direct narrative continuity to the first game, but shares locations with the third game, and a few allusions in Silent Hill 3. The fourth game expands upon some of the town's history as related herein.

Silent Hill 3 (2003)

Heather

Seventeen years have passed since the events of the first game. Heather is a normal teenage girl who loves to shop and has a sharp attitude about almost everything, but one Sunday the past catches up with her. Avoiding a stranger who claims that he is a detective, sent to find her, Heather suddenly finds the environment transformed into a strange decaying landscape. She attempts to escape the horror to her home and her father, yet on the way she faces a mysterious and forgotten secret.

The plot and locales of the third game are directly tied to the first Silent Hill.

Silent Hill 4: The Room (2004)

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The apartment in Silent Hill 4

Henry Townshend, living in South Ashfield, a town neighboring Silent Hill, one day finds himself mysteriously locked in his own apartment. He cannot escape through either the windows or his front door, which has been chained shut from the inside. No one, not even people standing directly outside his front door, can hear him when he pounds on the door and cries for help (see reference to duality of reality, above). After five days of entrapment Henry finds a hole that has opened up in his bathroom wall. Armed only with a steel pipe that broke lose when the wall opened, he is about to venture into the hellish madness of Silent Hill.

This installment of the series features revised controls, modifications to the item menu and map, and segments that are played from a first-person perspective. The plot of the game expands upon the history of a serial killer mentioned in Silent Hill 2 and of the cult that seems to control the town.

However, Silent Hill 4 was not originally slated to be a Silent Hill game. The Silent Hill team of designers planned for it to be an original concept for an original game not affiliated with any other franchise. After the general pre-production of the game, Konami decided that launching a new franchise was too much of a marketing risk, and instead opted to convert the game to a Silent Hill title. The connections to the second Silent Hill game, including the story of the serial killer, were added when the game went into full production.

Silent Hill 4: The Room was released on September 7 2004. –––——————————————

Silent Hill comic books

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Dying Inside

A series of comic books written by Scott Ciencin with artwork by Ben Templesmith, Aadi Salman, Nick Stakal and Shaun Thomas published by IDW Publishing.

Silent Hill Original Graphic Novel (2000)

An original Silent Hill graphic novel was completed in 2000 by British comic company Com.X, but for some reason was never published. Com.X and Konami have repeatedly stated that they still intend to publish the book, but no firm date has been set. Interestingly, IDW had no idea that this project existed when they pursued the licence.

Silent Hill: Dying Inside (2004)

Released as five issues, with the first two dealing with a doctor and patient, while the final three cover a group of goth kids. (Later released as a trade paperback)

Silent Hill: Among the Damned (2004)

Concerns a soldier dealing with survivor's guilt.

Silent Hill: Paint it Black (2005)

In this we find an artist drawn to Silent Hill when he needs to find inspiration for his latest work.

Silent Hill: The Grinning Man (2005)

State Trooper Robert Tower encounters The Grinning Man in Silent Hill.

Inspirations and references

This section is for trivia and speculation concerning the series, and contains spoilers.

  • All four Silent Hill titles contain references to the movie Jacob's Ladder. Silent Hill's gradual progression to stylized decay from perceived normalcy bears close resemblance to the films visual aesthetic. Silent Hill 2 shares its idea of a personal purgatory. The monsters in Silent Hill 3, with their heads jolting in strange ways, resemble that of the disfigured human-creatures in the movie. Another strong reference is the use of the name Bergen Street for the subway platform to which Heather, the main character, tries to make it in the game. Bergen Street station played a significant part in Jacob's Ladder and the setting looks very much alike. Similarly, the "Subway World" in Silent Hill 4, with its surreal decay and blocked exits, echoes scenes from the film.
  • Much of the style of the first game's abandoned town setting is said to have been inspired by the movie Phantoms. The movie is based on the book Phantoms, which is written by horror novelist Dean Koontz; as noted above, one of the streets in the first Silent Hill is Koontz St.
  • In Silent Hill 2 a sign mentioning Historic Route 26 is shown. Route 26 is located in the western mountain area of Maine on the New Hampshire border. The Scenic Byway is unique in that it connects with a New Hampshire Scenic Byway and passes through Grafton Notch State Park.
  • In the liner notes of the Silent Hill 4 soundtrack an address is listed for the strip club Heaven's Night. That address is: 2121 Carroll St., South Vale, ME.
  • The cult series Twin Peaks is said to have had an influence on many aspects of the games. Both the game and the TV series takes place in a resort town. David Lynch's often dream-like sequences in the series are also very much alike to the surrealistic occurrences throughout the games.
  • A song in Silent Hill 3 is titled "Sickness Unto Foolish Death". This might be a reference to the existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's theory on despair, which he wrote in his Sickness Unto Death, an existential concept to describe the state we're in when we have to make choices in a world of uncertainty. This state is the "loss of self." Looking at the third installment of the series with this theme in its context, it could be seen as Heather's difficult choice of vengeance vs. submission to the Otherworld of Silent Hill, and how she loses her self-awareness in the process of determined vengeance.
  • One of the end songs in Silent Hill 2, "Angel's Thanatos", is most likely a reference to the Freudian idea of Thanatos. It is the desire to give up life and return to non-existence. The song precedes the ending in which James commits suicide.
  • Silent Hill's Incubus, at the end of Silent Hill 1, is visually based on Baphomet. Silent Hill 3 also contains references to Metatron, an angel detailed in the Kabbalah.
  • Wheelchairs are recurring features in the series. In Silent Hill 1 a boss, Cybil, is found lying in a wheelchair. At one point in Silent Hill 3, Heather passes a glass wall. On the other side is an empty wheelchair outside of a room in what appears to be a mental institute. This strongly resembles a prominent image in the movie Session 9. Another wheelchair can be found lying on the floor, its wheel still spinning, resembling a shot in Jacob's Ladder. In Silent Hill 4 the player is attacked by a wheelchair, which is an enemy which cannot be beaten. An empty wheelchair is also a recurring image in the film The Changeling.
  • Throughout the series it becomes clear that there may be 3 levels of reality in Silent Hill, like layers of skin or like scar tissue over a festering wound. The top level is where people live out their normal lives, and is not really any different to any other town. The next level down could be called 'Foggy' Silent Hill (or the 'Alternate' Silent Hill), where an all-pervading fog often obscures visibility to a matter of feet, similar to Stephen King's The Mist (a favorite story of one of the series' developers). Some monsters are apparent here, but by and large the town itself is much the same (the town, not the people). The third layer down, where the real corruption of the reality lies, can be called Otherworld (also known as 'Nightmare' Silent Hill until its true name is revealed in the third game). This darkness is not just a physical darkness, which is used to great effect to put the gamer on edge, but also corresponds to the kinds of monsters found here. This Otherworld is the rotten core of the town, where the wound inflicted in the beginning continues to grow in power and enormous might. However, the recent comic book adaptations only have two layers, with Silent Hill being in fact an abandoned and monster-infested ghost town.
  • In Silent Hill 2, the hero finds himself pursued relentlessly by a monster he dubs "Pyramid Head". Pyramid Head is a mute, seemingly invincible killer that, despite his slow skulking gait, always seems to be able to head off the hero at every turn. This is very similar to the character Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series of horror films.
  • In Silent Hill, Lisa Garland's outfit seems to be made to look like the nurses outfits in The Exorcist III.

See also

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