Silent Hill 1 and 3: Hell is Empty, All The Devils Are Here.

Oh boy.

Alright, first off, I apologize for the lateness of this article, I intended to have an article over Silent Hill 1 up last week, but during my walkthrough of it, I decided it would be best to cover both Silent Hill 1 and 3 in the same article. Before you ask, yes, this does make sense. It wasn’t very well publicized at the release of Silent Hill 3, and some even consider it to be a bit of a spoiler, although I don’t. The fact is that Silent Hill 3, as opposed to the second game, which was a completely stand-alone game, is actually a direct sequel to the first game, so I considered it to be best to cover both games in one article.

The most pressing issue that I have to ask myself, upon completion of both games, is that, can I honestly recommend Silent Hill 1? The game, when it came out, was very scary, and it certainly has its fair share of scares now, there exists two problems with it that many fans are in quite vehement denial of: first off, the graphics are abysmal. Now, in some cases, I am willing to make exceptions, but games on the Playstation exist on a very unfortunate plane: they lack the ability to say “I don’t have to have realistic graphics; I’m a SNES games!” or “I have good graphics; I’m a PS2 game!” So they exist in a unique quagmire of games where the game’s quality is dependent on other attributes, and unfortunately for the first Silent Hill game, its ability to scare the player is severely diminished by the graphics, and their quality, and the voice acting, which, while the game certainly holds a special place in my heart, is bested by my seventh grade production of The Crucible.

What to say about the game, however, that doesn’t give the impression that I hate it, which I certainly don’t? It is absolutely true that I did enjoy the game when it came out, and there are many people who still enjoy it quite a bit now, but the problem with it is that, in addition to the normal flaws of the series, namely bad voice acting and a worse script, it seems to suffer for it the most. The cutscenes are left feeling cheesy and hokey, as opposed to scary, and the graphics, which have an appearance not unlike lego blocks, unfortunately acts as a severe retardant to the game’s scariness.

Yeah, sorry, maybe I'm spoiled, but this just doesn't have the same impact as the first picture.

The story itself seems simple on the surface, and indeed, on the surface, it is quite simple. I say “on the surface” because there are many things going on underneath the main story, which I’ll get to in a moment. The main story is that a man named Harry Mason, while passing through the town of Silent Hill, crashed his car and lost his girl, Cheryl. Harry is completely focused on getting her back, and plunges himself headfirst into the monsters that begin to occupy the town in order to find her. There are a few side characters, in particular the policewoman Cybil, who helps Harry, the enigmatic Dahlia, who doesn’t really seem to be all there, and a doctor named Michael Kauffman. At first, they seem to be merely backround, but as Harry learns more about the actual goings on, their importance becomes much more apparent.

SPOILERS

It turns out that Dahlia and Kauffman are members of a cult in Silent Hill, which secretly runs everything in the town, and that as insane as their cult is, it turns out there is some truth to their mythology. So much so in fact, that the aberrations present within the town are the manifestations of the delusions of a girl named Alessa, who, according to the mythology of the cult, or The Order, is to be the mother of their god, because she was born with unexplainable powers, and thus, 8 years before the events of the game, Alessa was used in a sacrificial ritual where a person is purified before their god by burning them alive. Alessa survives, and receives the spirit of their god within her, and The Order intends to have her birth this “god,” and spread their nightmares across the world.

Alessa, however, wants none of this, and during the ritual, uses her powers to separate her soul from her body, and thus thwart the birth of “god.” This spirit manifests itself in none other than young Cheryl, who, now that she has returned to Silent Hill, the shit has officially hit the fan.

Eventually, Harry himself finds this out, but continues in his journey, because while even he knows that he may never see his girl again, he will never give up looking for her. Due to his non participation in the alleged “background” events of the game, the god is born, but Harry defeats it, since the birthing ceremony is incomplete, and thus the god is weakened. After this, as Alessa dies, she hands Harry a newborn baby, its origins unknown. Harry, recognizing that this child is the closest that he will ever get to his daughter again, leaves the town with the baby, and claims it as his own.

END SPOILERS

Ultimately, I have to say, that while it was good for its time, Silent Hill 1, which as of this writing, is 12 years old, is simply too dated for me to recommend playing it now, if you didn’t play it when it came out. The people at Team Silent were still getting their legs, and the technology available then simply makes the game not as good as what followed.

However, the story is quite good, and very well presented in spite of the poor script and acting, and plays very well into that of the third game.

The third game itself begins with our protagonist, Heather, asking herself where she is, as she is from the get go, in an area of horrors and danger. The first two games had areas that were simply creepy, but not dangerous to start out in, but Silent Hill 3, tying in with its theme, sets Heather into danger immediately. This theme is one of helplessness, as while you progress, unlike the other games, which would occasionally shift into horrific perversions of the previous areas, but nothing in the series was ever quite as severe as this. The walls are covered in rust, filth, blood, and everything about the Otherworld, as it’s called, has much of the horror of the other games, only cranked up to levels completely unheard of in the series. The Otherworld of the first game was quite scary, but focused mostly on imagery suggestive of incarceration, with occasional overtones of pain, which fit in well with the theme of Alessa’s torture. The second game, in keeping with the more morose story, had a lot of blues and “depressing” colors, but in this game, the Otherworld is like a diseased, fiery hell.

Heather eventually realizes that the area she was in was in fact a dream, and wakes up, with the intent of returning to her home, but comes across a woman calling herself Claudia, who tells Heather that she will be “The one who will lead us to Paradise with bloodstained hands,” and claiming that the horrors that beset Heather are the result of “the hand of God.” Upon hearing this, Heather collapses to the ground in pain, and the world around her descends into a bloody nightmare.

Your primary objective for this portion of the game is to escape the monsters and the terrors of the Otherworld, which, unlike in the first two games, which was confined to the town of Silent Hill, seems to follow Heather around.

Eventually, however, she finds her way home, and this is where the sequel aspect comes into play: it turns out that Harry Mason, the protagonist of the first game, is Heather’s father. It also turns out he has been murdered by The Order, and upon learning this, Heather vows revenge, and intends to return to Silent Hill to kill Claudia.

Now, to those who played the first game, the revelation that Heather is Harry’s daughter raises an interesting question: what exactly is she? She’s the baby that he took with him from the end of the first game, but what does that mean? As I said, to a modern audience, Silent Hill 1 has aged too much, and not in a good way, so does Silent Hill 3 adequately provide enough exposition to find out what is going on?

Ultimately, I say yes. There are a few scenes and moments that are sort of treats to players of the original game, the game is very welcoming to people new to the series, as there are several memos and such peppered throughout that explain what is going on, and what has happened, wheras the first game actually left large portions of the backstory and “behind the scenes” stuff blank, so, in an odd way, Silent Hill 3 actually explains more than Silent Hill 1 does.

The combat of both games is, in typical Silent Hill fashion, extremely non user friendly, and the camera remains one of the more dangerous enemies in the game, but in the first one, the combat remains simple, and ultimately not too much of a challenge. In the third game however, the most commonly suggested strategy for dealing with many of the enemies is the “run away like a scared little girl” strategy. The enemies in this game are quite dangerous, and like Silent Hill 2, are loaded with symbolism, although less overt than in the second game. Primarily, the enemies seem to be rife with symbolism that represents a young girl’s fear of sexual predators, from the looming, lumbering monsters which attempt to batter Heather with its extremely phallic arms (no, that is not me being immature, it’s really what it looks like), the extremely unsettling Slurper enemies, which are vagely humanoid monsters that drag Heather to the ground and appear to molest her. This all makes sense towards the end of the game, when you begin to realize just who and what Heather really is.

Seriously. Fuck these things.

Aside from the usual complaint of the series, which are the poor voice acting (although Heather’s is quite good) and the terrible camera, are the puzzles. Even on normal mode, you will have to consult a guide more than once, and hard riddle mode is simply unfair. There is a puzzle that literally requires you to know the eating habits of the Linnet Bird, which until playing this game, I had never even heard of. There’s also a very unusual puzzle towards the very end that I won’t give away, but you will almost certainly have to consult a guide for it. A bit annoying, but the game still remains one of the scariest experiences ever.

And that ultimately is its contribution. While Silent Hill 2 certainly has the best story, pacing, and all round experience, what it lacks, Silent Hill 3 more than makes up for: sheer unrelenting and abject terror. The game itself is short, and easy to find, and priced very well, and is extremely frightening, especially the last area, which I spent the majority of screaming obscenities as I ran from the horrors that surrounded me. The story isn't quite as good as that of Silent Hill 2, and as for Silent Hill 1, I'd say you're best off reading a synopisis of it, of which there exist several that go into much more detail than I did here, however Silent Hill 3 does a good job of filling the player in. What it does a better job of doing, however, is scaring the poo out of you.