Why Silent Hill is so iconic, and why we’re still waiting
Born From A Wish: The Burden of Reviving Silent Hill, Part I
By Adrian Tizoc Marshall
Sometimes Dead is Better
In 2012, a woman named Cecilia Giménez attempted to restore a fresco of Jesus Christ from the 19th century by Elías García Martínez to disastrous results; so disastrous, in fact, that it was thought to be an act of vandalism against the Santuario de la Misericordia, a Roman Catholic Church in Borja, Spain. Later, it came to be recognized as a successful tourist attraction, and Giménez asked to be compensated by the church for the foot traffic she had generated with her egregious disfigurement of the painting.
Her purpose, to my knowledge, is unknown, but that story has stuck with me for a long time, and came to mind as I began to ruminate on the state of Silent Hill, a series to which I owe a great debt for how much insight it gave me as an artist.
So, we ask the obvious: why would the church hire an amateur to recondition a priceless piece of art with significant attachments both physical and spiritual? It seems almost obvious that there should be some hesitation restoring invaluable historical artifacts, regardless of condition.
Well, why would Konami want to dig up the dead?
Because it’s still alive, or at least, the fans think so; but only just, and in need of some objective assessment.
A Dream of Dark and Troubling Things
You have heard it everywhere at this point; somewhere, someone is reviving Silent Hill. The problem for me is not who, nor is it what, but instead: why?
What feels like ages ago now, I played Silent Hill 2 for the first time, and not long after, Silent Hill 4: The Room. It took me years before I had the time to return to the first game, and eventually, to finish Silent Hill 3. In that time, however, it introduced me to a wealth of literature, fine art and cinema I now admire intensely; I only grew to appreciate the games and their insights more when a stranger broke my jaw one night on the street just before Christmas in 2017, disappearing from my life as if he had never been there at all.
My reverence for Silent Hill and what the series has come to represent in my own growth as a creative individual is not unique whatsoever, but in the aftermath of my own trauma, my background in art education has opened my eyes; not just to the foundation of art, but to the cornerstone of any formal human expression — creative intent. Every successful endeavor to create something comes with the human intent to communicate something profound not just to its audience, but to its creator, and an artist can be interpreted as the translator between the idea and its depiction.
The creators of Silent Hill were no strangers to art across a broad spectrum of mediums; instead, the group of developers that would become known as “Team Silent” within Konami’s Tokyo development team were largely unacquainted with the problem of game design itself as a form of interactive storytelling. While they were famously incapable of fitting into the puzzle of commercial game design, the substantial role meant for Silent Hill came in the form of a problem posed by the executives that gathered them together: Konami wanted their own Resident Evil, but more specifically, they wanted what Capcom had. As businessmen, they saw it as an opportunity to make use of idle hands to craft their own commercially viable horror success story, but their psychological pastiche came almost entirely from the conceptual assertion that the team should take a look at Western media in the form of Hollywood. Konami never said what films, nor did they say what filmmakers, and the result was successful enough that they never had to ask questions about what motivations there were to continue making titles in the franchise. Silent Hill had plenty to say back then because there were still things to be said; there was an intent.
Pick any game in the franchise and you’ll find distinguishable homage to art in all its forms; a number of its most famous cutscenes are indebted to the work of David Lynch, one of the directors I most admire. Compare these two images, for example:
The similarities are also significant to Silent Hill 3, where a certain subway car has striking resemblance to that featured in Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder:
Parallels to previous works are the bread and butter of the Silent Hill franchise, and if Jacob’s Ladder; both a retelling of Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and a key inspiration for all four of Team Silent’s original Silent Hill games; can attest, it would be that art is both created and curated as a circular purpose to interpret word, sound and image with the intent of examining a psychological discourse. The part that made Team Silent visionaries, however, was that they were both creating and curating at a time during which interactive entertainment had not yet matured to the same standard as other art forms. And that is the central precedent at the core of Silent Hill during its prime as a franchise; it cannot be compared to previous works in gaming, only those of literature and film. Resident Evil is not an exact point of comparison, given the two games’ diverging ideological approaches to horror, nor is Fatal Frame, whose reverence for Japanese folklore and horror films is in another category unto itself, and did not exist at the time of the original Silent Hill.
All that said, looking at the series from a contemporary lens, we must acknowledge the culture of regurgitation that poisons the well for both film and game design in Western media, which is the very antithesis of Silent Hill’s form and function. While there are aberrations, such as Denis Villeneuve’s outstanding sequel to Ridley Scott’s influential Blade Runner released 35 years later, or Resident Evil’s brilliant shift to first person with Biohazard; they are similar to Silent Hill in their existence. Or, at least, when compared to this year’s Marvel tentpole or Ubisoft’s latest Far Cry title. The most meaningful art often explores euphoric, irreplaceable happiness as deeply as it does morbid, implacable sadness, and Silent Hill at its strongest was no exception, although it also understood the purpose of art’s more indescribable qualities. But what did Origins, Shattered Memories or Homecoming, the three Climax-developed entries in the series, reflect upon thematically in ways that had not been explored by its predecessors?
An excellent question, only compounded by another: what did remaking Jacob’s Ladder accomplish but to fall short of the original both critically and commercially?
Take a look at these two clips:
How many people you have spoken with about Silent Hill have acknowledged its widespread array of influences Eastern and Western, literary and cinematic? How many fans of Silent Hill have even considered how profoundly similar Mary and James’ bedroom is in mood, tone and design to Andrew Wyeth’s Master Bedroom?
How many of your friends have pointed out the striking resemblance of Walter Sullivan’s disturbing, neglected infancy and Ryu Murakami’s equally harrowing Coin Locker Babies? Or the way Henry Townshend’s apartment, suddenly connected to a seemingly subterranean labyrinth of worlds, has comparable qualities to Mark Z. Danielewski’s dense, indescribable House of Leaves? Or, perhaps, Masahiro Ito’s vivid appreciation for the paintings of Francis Bacon?
Any work, constructed in tangible or intangible form, will fail to justify itself necessary so long as it comes from a place of insincerity; art is sincere, both in its intentional and unintentional creation and in its reverence for the art that came before. It is the expression of human imagination, positive and negative, that becomes reflective of the core of the human experience. But every work of fiction has an intersection with an aspect of our reality, and Team Silent understood that; they were not game developers, or as Takayoshi Sato once said in an interview with IGN:
Most people working for game companies are game freaks, but the Silent Hill team are artists and programmers first — mainly artists. Silent Hill 2 is not a typical game because most of our staff didn’t grow up playing games. Because of this, we hope to provide the gamer with a different sort of game.
The Devils are Really Angels
Something that is almost immediately notable about the examples above is that although they owe a great deal of debt to the artists that inspired them, they are not derivative. Ito’s brush strokes, choice of medium, and recollection of important artistic works are all only pieces of an individual that is impossible to categorize; his paintings are recognizable because he borrows characteristics of many works of art that spoke to him personally, not just a singular source. All art is a product of an existential ancestry that has heritable cultural and circumstantial effects on its potency.
A noteworthy aspect of horror as a conceptual philosophy is that it does rely heavily on the emotion of discomfort; pushing against the standards of society has that much in common with decidedly the most controversial game in the franchise, Silent Hill 4: The Room, a game that is incessantly chastised for its most experimental, cyclical qualities, but thematically, its gameplay intertwines with the game’s distressing premise: a journey through the psyche of a vicious killer that has surprising parallels to the profile of a voyeuristic, reclusive photographer.
Michelangelo Antonioni, a film director of great prestige in cinematic history, would surely have some thoughts about that.
Henry’s encounter with a risqué woman in a empty subway station, whose implied offer to “reward” him for assistance locating the way out of the underground, is recognizably comparable to aspects of the film’s plot; but Silent Hill 4 does not resemble Blow-Up outside of this premise alone by any stretch of the imagination, and that referential characteristic of Team Silent’s games explains quite succinctly why Homecoming is so frustratingly uninspired.
Silent Hill 2 is well-known to be, in fact, inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment; but nothing in the game, nor in any of the statements in the numerous interviews that can be perused on the Internet with Team Silent’s staff, is there anything derivative beyond a passing glance at the architecture of their respective inspirations, or simply an aesthetic or contextual allusion to an inspirational work. Even the more blatant examples, such as Ito’s paintings or the Sunderland bedroom, are set pieces in a much larger narrative picture, something he willingly discusses on Twitter regularly with fans.
Even Hideo Kojima, Lord and Savior, esq., has some similarities to Team Silent, at the very least, when drawing his inspirations from other artistic sources; he approaches them with creative liberty while still keeping its referential purpose intact.
A Desire to be Punished
Revitalizing a franchise with a fanbase whose only allegiance is to its most superficial aspects is dangerously likely to repeat history, as has been demonstrated over the past few years with cheap imitations torn apart by fans who scream and rattle Konami’s cage like animals in a zoo, hoping beyond hope that the publisher will beg Kojima Productions on hands and knees to save the world with the game they cancelled; a delusion that, unfortunately, may come true after all, but only if they are willing to settle on the notion of Silent Hill(s) from another developer entirely. Bloober Team, maybe? Or Blue Box? Bloobox Team? Sad Square Studio?
Red Candle Games, maybe?
As long as it has the name; there is an immense power in the name: Silent Hill. It’s a place, a concept, a mantra, a description; the whole package. But it isn’t Centralia, Pennsylvania; get it right. Right?
No, listen. It’s bread.
No, you’re wrong. It’s about circumcision.
You’re all wrong. It’s an urban legend.
In Water
The problem of Silent Hill is not the understanding of who and what influenced the original team; it is the attempt to recreate Team Silent’s template, something that is irreplicable, an identity that is individual to the assortment of artists who made it work, and the culture of fandom that often manifests as vocal, stubborn gatekeepers across social media, believing their interpretation to be as important as the creators’. Is it really any wonder that there are no new games in the franchise? The last time they tried, a sensational YouTube account crucified the wrong person and held them accountable for a corporation’s mismanagement; the last developers that attempted a mainline title, regardless of its divisive reception, were shuttered almost immediately; an independent developer from the Netherlands is clumsily losing a battle against a mob of conspiracy theorists.
Want to make a new Silent Hill?
Any team that takes the series forward needs to let the art tell the story, much like the cinema that inspired Silent Hill, and focus on a new aesthetic framework first, completely disconnected from what came before outside of loose thematic similarities, something that Downpour managed relatively well; where the town itself is concerned, at least.
That last bit comes with a stipulation: expectations will destroy this franchise completely, and to some extent, have caused irreparable damage already. Even if everyone got another sort-of Team Silent-led game to “soft reboot” the franchise as hideously exaggerated rumors implied in the last year or so, it would not be what they wanted; especially when half the new fans think Hideo Kojima created the franchise and hold P.T. as the indisputable standard by which Silent Hill exists, Konami are constantly berated for what they do or don’t do, and a large measure of people try to write off Silent Hill 4 as if it never existed, although it’s arguably the best experimental horror game of all time, and I would even suggest that was the moment in which Team Silent took their games in a transcendental direction that deliberately used cyclical trauma not just as metaphor, but as gameplay, something that happens with increasing rarity in the gaming industry.
In time, the question will be whether the fans are willing to let someone with a vision define the series not by its establishment, but by its rebirth. Konami is afraid of all of us, make no mistake; that’s why there’s nothing new to discuss about Silent Hill; at least, not right now, but probably not in the near future, either.
