An article I wrote about 'Silent Hill 3'. I just love the whole series, and, although old, it says things that I haven't seen around.

1. Running scarce
or Burned, Burned, my baby is toast!
By Rodrigo Antezana Patton
Thus it begins.
You are only steps away past
the entrance to an amusement park,
but only the glowing details will
remind you of what it once was, now
it’s changed. The floor is grated,
metallic, rusty, here and there it has
gaps, and below it there is only
darkness to be seen. Peeling posters
on the wall publicize this place, and
the fun we are supposed to find
inside, but none of that remains,
only decay. Most shocking of all is
the presence of two human-size
costumes of the amusement’s park
pet, a rabbit, one is sitting, the other
is lying on the floor, both are
covered in what looks like blood. As
1 - Nice bunny, bloody bunny, dead bunny. Welcome to Silent Hill, the nightmare if that weren’t creepy enough, there
is about to begin. are two cages, one on each side.
They contain something and are surrounded by a layer of fiery, dancing, vapor.
You can’t get out, only the door that leads into the park is open. You know that inside you’ll find
trouble, you know you’ll have to fight, for an instant you stare at your hand and look at the weapon you brought
with you, it’s a small knife, barely bigger than a long fingernail, better than nothing, but surely not enough. On
top of that, you are a young girl, and the time has come for you to enter the next enclosure, you’ll run, you’ll
fight, you’ll be greeted by monsters. They’ll kill the girl, then she’ll wake up, and so will you.
It was only a dream, the real nightmare is only about to start.
Thus it begins, you are playing “Silent Hill 3”
Where am I?
I always preferred the term “nightmare” to “bad dream”. Nightmares make you glad to be back into this
world. After you’ve awaken from a nightmare, you look at the ceiling of your bedroom enjoying the simple fact
of reality. Nightmares expel you from the land of Oneiros, it’s the others that I call “bad dreams”, those that
invite you to stay there, those that you wake up from with your arms grasping through the air, trying to bring
back that which can only be found in dreams. Those are bad dreams. You look around your own world, and
disappointment follows, luckily; most of the times, the ‘bad dream’ is quickly forgotten. From this perspective,
“Silent Hill” is both, the best, and strangest, of ‘bad dreams’ or the oddest of nightmares, it expels you and yet
you eagerly come back.
The media phenomena behind the astonishing success of “Silent Hill” (SH) is a story by itself, but
continuous success can only derive from talent and lots of it. This brief writing will take a closer look at “Silent
Hill 3” (SH3), its many merits and small faults.
Who are you?
Once again we have a personal character, once again the main problem concerns and intimate ‘I’. The
first delivery had you with ‘I am looking for my daughter’, a small problem compared to so many campaigns to
save the world, of other games. On SH3 the key of the plot is ‘I must survive’, the first part of the game being ‘I
must get home’ (and you wouldn’t believe how hard that is going to be). The second part of the game isn’t that
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2. original, the father of your character, the pretty yet-not-beautiful Heather, is killed by an accomplice of Claudia,
and it’s revenge, besides your other problem, that moves you onward. But “SH” wouldn’t cave in to such a
simple formula, if it’s revenge what you seek to obtain, the game becomes an impossible endeavor. Before the
game ends you must forgive Claudia, or a female voice that sounds very much like hers.
The setting for the act of forgiveness
couldn’t be more appropriate, you enter a
confessional, inside you’ll hear a voice, so
emotive and well performed that you’ll have no
other choice than to forgive whomever uttered
those words. I don’t know if the director chose
to use only sound because his nearly perfect
graphic engine wouldn’t be expressive enough
for a moment like this, I think he did, anyway
the result is magnificent. I haven’t heard a plea
so convincing since or before this one, the
voice actor, of course, also deserves much of
the praise.
At the beginning you don’t know much
about your character, little by little you uncover
the story that she already knew, but it’s new to
you, the player. Heather is the adopted 2 - Meet Claudia
daughter of Harry Mason (the hero of the first
SH), the child that appeared after Lucifer’s death. The problem is what you carry inside of you, the seed of that
hellish god worshipped by the strange sect that settled on Silent Hill. The story, it’s undeniable, is the weakest
of all SH deliveries so far, specially when
you take a look at the other characters:
Vincent, detective Douglas Cartland or
Claudia Wolf herself, they are only
shadows of someone when you compare
them to Maria; of “SH2”, and haven’t
quite got the impact of Cybill, the
policewoman, or Lisa, the nurse of “SH1”.
Vincent is a thin guy with glasses,
neither your enemy nor your true friend,
his main role will be to mislead you, his
presence will allow a couple of twists, but
nothing more. He is there, within the
story, to look mysterious and enlarge it –
so that it won’t be even more linear. The
only interesting fact concerning Vincent,
is that he believes his own side of the tale,
as a character he is honestly trying to use
3 - Douglas Cartland, private detective. He's way in over his head. you, even if it may seem otherwise.
Douglas Cartland, the detective
guy, will tell you, and your character, a part of Heather’s past, he’ll also be a free ride to Silent Hill. He has
some interesting lines as well, his brief discussion about paradise with Samantha being the most important (I’ll
get back to it further on), but that hardly amounts to a strong presence.
It is Claudia’s actions that set the plot on wheels, it’s her will, plus the seed, that make everything
happen, but besides a confused human she is little more, you’ll remember what she did and does, but her face
will fade blended with all the confused and hurt characters available out there, in narrative land. Beyond
Heather, the other characters are unmemorable people in an unforgettable game.
So, finally, what is Heather like as a character? Mason, the first playable character of “SH”, was not an
outstanding personality, it’s the world that surrounded him, it’s his adventure and search that we remember him
by, not who he was. Heather is a step higher, but beneath the guilt ridden James Sunderland, the playable
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3. character of “SH2”. She is the girl that bears the promise of paradise (the strangest you’ve ever seen!) within
her, she is a sort of reincarnation, and ‘the will the live’. You can only play her if you’re willing to survive, for
that’s what she wants, we are constantly reminded the
sacrifice performed by her former self and the fact that
now she is not willing to do the same. Cheryl wants to
live, and before she becomes the dead cradle of god,
she will give them war. And that’s your story now, you
have to become an efficient ‘will to live’. If you give
up on a game you lose, if you give up on Silent Hill 3,
Heather dies. Most of the time, in games, the situation
isn’t that simple. The absence of the playable
characters would trigger, in most, a cataclysm, who’s
gonna save the world if you don’t? In “SH3”, to a
degree, her suicide could end the problem that starts the
story, ‘she’ contains the problem, ‘it’ lives within her.
Of course it is always difficult to enter the
‘laws’ of creative worlds such as this. But this
deduction is consistent with the information provided 4 - A Closer, the sort of creature you find in Silent Hill
by the game itself. It’s not advisable to dig any deeper, games. Notice its vague resemblance to something human.
because it’s extremely difficult to evaluate a playable Mishaped, strange.
character. For example, the creatures that Heather has to face, as we play her, I wouldn’t get near those things
even if they offered me the crown of Britain, if I were on that game they would have to change the name of
Heather to ‘The ever running man’ or ‘scream like a girl’, that’s what I would do... We don’t know how she is
copping with that reality, except for a line or two, nor what she thinks of the ever growing darkness, and so on.
Game characters, with the exception of Silent Hill 2, are raw creatures, you can only get the basics, so, basics it
is.
What is that?
Well, they are the main
characters, but what are we fighting
against in Silent Hill 3? Who is the bad
guy and why did she/he do all those
things? Funny as it may sound, we are
fighting against a better world, a “world
without pain”. Facts first, then we’ll get
philosophical. Heather, our character,
carries within her the “seed” of none
other than god itself. The information
we gather from the game tells us two
different things: first, ‘It’ the god, is a
supreme being, and, second, it is an
ancient god, not the ‘god’ of christianity
or its’ opposite, but those two points of
view agree that ‘It’ will come here to
‘deliver us from all evil’, literally.
Throughout SH3 we’ll battle the
nightmares that are coming as the power
5 - This guy's Vincent. He looks crazy, and he is, but not as crazy as Claudia.
of this god is made manifest. Everything
that is done, is so because she, Claudia, thinks it’s the right thing to do. She is insane, even accolites of the
same belief, such as Vincent, fight against her. She had a very painful childhood, of which we know only small
details, and now she wants to aid all of us by helping Heather die as ‘It’ comes into this world. The game itself
has a hard time coming to grips with this situation, Vincent tells Claudia that the reality that appears to his eyes
from time to time, the hellish scenes, aren’t exactly paradise, although that is what he and the other members of
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4. the church seek, other information also points in that direction. Leonard; for example, your unlikely ally in the
SH Hospital, seeks god to obtain more of what he already has, power (and it seems power has to come into a
body turned into &%$, he is a monster now, and a very ugly son of &%$).
So, is this god of SH bringing paradise to earth or is it a creature of nightmares, a cruel god of old? It
depends on who you ask, let’s go back to the facts: Claudia thinks that it will bring and end to pain. Everything
else seems to prove the opposite, that this god is pain itself. But Claudia wants to do the right thing, period (this
is important). Now, let’s get philosophical, how would a world without pain be? Or, the true question, how can
we reconcile this god of pain with a world without it? It’s impossible to give a reasonable answer, but to say
that pain would have to be pleasureable and that such a world would be selfdestructive, makes sense to me.
From this perspective, the bizarre human like --and yet not human-- creatures of the game, would be born from
an attempt to answer such a question. Those creatures, familiar yet alien, threatening yet suffering... remember
the nurses and their moaning, the dogs and their bandages, in every single one of them is present the corruption,
or aggression to, of the flesh, of humanity or the natural order of things. Fact is, that a world without pain
should get things upside down.
The nightmares that come into this
world are part of that upside down reality,
perhaps there isn’t any pain in that world
(Leonard seems to be doing fine, although it
will be hard for him to get a date with those
looks), but what is the price paid for that? It
seems something like a love for hell. And
that’s where all possible ambiguity ends,
Claudia’s reasons are meritory, benign, but the
game uses our language to present it to us, and
that is thoroughly negative: it’s decayed, it’s
bloody and metallic, rusted, broken, and so on,
those are clear and familiar images to us, they
are meant to upset us, and succeed
wonderfully. To us it can’t be other than a
negative reality, call it hell or whatever. So,
Claudia is wrong, or so it seems. 6 - There's a creature on the ceiling. Those pendulums were a pain in
When Douglas confronts Claudia, one the ass to kill.
of his observations concerns more her point of view than the sympathy she may have for the strange world she
wants to come about. Claudia defends herself and her actions because she wants a world without pain, and
Douglas’s answer is that that world would be interesting “for castrated sheep, maybe”. Those are the exact
words used by the character. So, is the idea
of paradise itself a sick idea, and therefore it
can only exist in a sick world? Allow me to
recall an argument: pain would have to be
pleasureable, a selfdestructive existence.
Yes, I believe that is one of the ideas given
to us in SH3.
Douglas doesn´t fight back on
Claudia’s convictions, he believes her, he
thinks that she is telling the truth. The most
obvious reaction would be to call her a liar,
or ask her to return to her senses, but no, she
is telling the truth, and the truth (a very
particular one) has been told to her.
Philosophically speaking, the result of
eliminating pain would eliminate everything
that motivates us to do something, it would
be a bleak world, becoming bleaker, or you
7 - Nurses are pretty, nurses are nice. Just shoot them all! could make pain attractive as its opposite is,
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5. as pleasure. But what would happen then, babies would jump into ovens, crucifixion wouldn’t be a punishment,
it would be a pastime, plus starvation and burning yourself alive, would be two of the most gratifying
experiences. In a word: selfdestruction, such a world would destroy itself, and be happy to do so.
Is that what they told
you?
So, as you battle
the forces of good,
because the good that
they seek is insane, you
roam through that
familiar territory, which
is a trademark of this
wonderful work, filled
with odd creatures,
sounds and puzzles.
“Silent Hill” is one of
those games that you play
because you like the way
it’s written. Games are
the ultimate way, or the
most recently used by
humans, to tell you a
story and by “written” I
mean every single
audiovisual and physical 8 - The merry go round. Perhaps the best battle of all Silent Hill games. You battle yourself,
(the vibrator) resource well, the character does.
used to present that fictional reality to you. Games are immersive audiovisual narratives. “Silent Hill” uses
every single trick available and writes a few new ones, in order to scare you. We have the limited visibility,
because of fog or darkness, we have threatening sounds, and hostile environments, on a scale from messy to
hellish, there is that familiarity of places we might know,
now torn and dark. And our enemies aren’t only aggressive,
they are familiar, as corrupted nature is.
On “SH3” they use a new trick, scarce health
packages and little ammo. You have to be careful with the
trigger, and never allow yourself to take too much damage.
From my own gaming experience, it works perfectly,
enemies seem more threatening and your victories over
them, more gratifying. It amazed me how this small detail
changed things, I became more careful and, therefore, my
fear of the next door increased. They had succeded again,
they managed to make me tense and fearful once more, their
story telling proved as good as always.
She is toast
But then, at the final stage of the game, I was ready
to face god, or so I thought. The setting was simple, but
attractive in that Giger-sort of way. Terrible, yet
recognizable, horrible, but born out of a human terror. The
evil god burned my character so many times that I thought I
would get the R&B version anytime soon. It was hard but I
managed, but by then she had been killed an obscenely
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6. large number of times. Man, Was it fun! The game was over, the story had ended.
I killed god.
Heather would go on, although now she had a little time to mourn her father and that’s the final picture,
an image of her over his grave.
Although it has the most simple story of them all (Silent Hill now has 4 installments), the environment
is still a jewel of inmersive audiovisual creativity. “Silent hill” enjoys teasing our senses with fear, and no other
game manages to paint such a picture, write with such a language. A lesson on what frightens us and how we
are frightened, this game remains being the best at it in the field.
(All the pictures
belong to
Konami. Used
for illustration
purposes only.
The text belongs
to Rodrigo
Antezana Patton
- © 2001 – 2007
If unchanged it
may be freely
distributed.)
mimeme.over-blog.com
© 2001 - 2007
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