This review contains spoilers
Silent Hill 3 was the sequel everyone expected Silent Hill 2 to be. One might expect a sequel to any video game to transfer its characters, themes, and overarching story to its successor because those are the products of familiarity that coincide with a sequel. However, Silent Hill is a series marked by the unexpected and does not adhere to the practices of industry standards. The ingenious people at Team Silent crafted a sequel in which the only familiarity was the titular town, making the town the focal point of the franchise instead of the characters and plot arc presented in the first game. Team Silent’s strides in being unconventional birthed a sequel that was an artfully terrifying adventure into the catacombs of a disturbed, disquieted mind. Silent Hill had managed not to peak with “the scariest game of all time” by subverting every expectation one might have with the sequel and setting a higher caliber for the Silent Hill franchise for every sequel. Using the concept of having the town as the sole, recurring character across each Silent Hill game was a bold but brilliant idea that would retain the fresh frights the first game delivered. There are so many fucked up people in the world that could pass through the ominous resort town and have their uniquely perverse psychological demons conjured up to attack them, providing endless fodder for sequel material. However, someone at Konami must have gotten cold feet despite the acclaim that Silent Hill 2 had received and reminded Team Silent that they were running a business and art has no dealings within the walls of commerce. Either that or the idea of having the town as the sole recognizable property did not actually foster an abundance of creative potential, and they ran out of ideas. Silent Hill 3 is essentially Silent Hill 2 on the merit that it’s the loyal sequel to the first game that many expected the real Silent Hill 2 to be way back when. Silent Hill 3 is still a Team Silent-grade Silent Hill experience, but I’ve always found it to be a bit of a disappointment in comparison to the first two games.
The opening cinematic to Silent Hill 3 doesn’t give the player too much context for the beginning of the game. Alas, Silent Hill 3 begins abruptly as a teenage girl with unkempt blond hair is holding a knife in the misty darkness of night with a neon sign flashing “Lakeside Amusement Park” overhead. Immediately, hostile demonic creatures will appear from all corners and overwhelm the girl, who will run frantically across the park practically defenseless with zero context as to what she’s doing. The objective is to quickly meander to the tracks of a wooden roller coaster where the car will make a head-on collision with the girl, killing her on impact. The revelation behind this shocking introduction is the first of many recycled ideas from the first Silent Hill in that it was a bad dream that the protagonist awakes from while in a stupor in some barren cafe. The girl heads to a payphone outside in the most lively and inviting setting ever seen in a Silent Hill game and tells her dad she’ll be home before dark. On her way there, a detective encourages her to take a detour with him so she can learn more about the events surrounding her birth, so the way home is going to be a bit bumpy.
If it wasn’t made clear from the introduction, Silent Hill 3’s female protagonist is Heather Mason, the daughter of Harry Mason, the protagonist of the first game. “Wait, her name is Heather now?” every Silent Hill veteran will ask themselves in a state of befuddlement. It’s not explicitly explained by Harry, but he understandably wanted his reincarnated adopted daughter to have the least amount of connection to her origins in that godforsaken town as humanly possible. He probably also didn’t want the evil cult to find her just in case they get bold enough to attempt a do-over on birthing the antichrist thing, which certainly explains the name change and the dyed blonde hair. A father mandating a weekly hair-dyeing session on his teenage daughter is a strange thing to enforce, but it’s better to be safe than sorry if the consequences involve revisiting Silent Hill. Seventeen years have passed since the events of the first game, and now little Alessa/Cheryl/Heather is all grown up, meaning the good ending of the first game is now canon. Despite Harry’s best efforts to protect his daughter for almost two decades, his defenses have been infiltrated, and the cult has caught up with him. Now it’s Heather’s turn to uncover the ungodly horrors in her place of birth. At least we can all be relieved that Harry isn’t once again the main protagonist of this direct sequel, and this and other subsequent Silent Hill games won’t be the tired plot of Harry rescuing his daughter from Silent Hill like Mario rescues Princess Peach.
Where does Heather fit in the league of sorry bastards who must visit Silent Hill in their respective entries? Quite comfortably, actually. Heather’s execution as a playable protagonist shows that perhaps there was more to be tweaked to the Silent Hill formula in the vein of quality-of-life enhancements. The wonky, disjointed controls are idiosyncratic to every Silent Hill game and to every survival horror game to some extent. However, I’d be lying if I said I never actively grunted orders at the awkward movements of both Harry and James at moments when they needed to be quick on their feet like someone trying to potty train their dog. Heather is by far the smoothest character to control, yet the developers have somehow impressively managed to retain the essential stiffness of survival horror controls. In a certain section of Silent Hill 3 that copies the Pyramid Head hallway chase sequence from Silent Hill 2, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how many times I startled Harry when I bumped into a wall or the many times changing directions with James during that particular section felt like rotating a life-sized marble statue in a Resident Evil puzzle. With Heather, I practically exited this part unscathed. I suppose it makes sense for Heather to be more nimble than her middle-aged dad and a chronic depressive. Heather also marks the first Silent Hill protagonist with a convincing, emotive voice, thanks to her voice actress. In a series synonymous with flat, cheesy voicework, Heather consistently possesses the vocal inflections of a teenage girl while carrying a range of emotions when necessary. Yet, the rest of the voice cast of Silent Hill 3 gives the typical B-movie delivery.
Silent Hill 3 is a game that seems like it has a lot to prove, and I’m not entirely certain why. The previous game was the sequel meant to showcase how Silent Hill graduated from the grainy, blocky, primitive 3D era with wondrous graphical enhancements. To some extent, Silent Hill 2 was that killer app with an evolved technical prowess, but the art style and direction of that game distracted the player all too often. Silent Hill 3, on the other hand, flaunts its technical features like a model walking on the runway, refining even the new features presented in Silent Hill 2. The pre-rendered cutscenes introduced in Silent Hill 2 via the new capabilities of the PS2 hardware were impressive for their time, but they were implemented inconsistently. We learn from Silent Hill 3’s example that this awkward irregularity was likely because the developers bit off more than the PS2 could chew. Silent Hill 3 does away with the pre-rendered cutscenes entirely, and the regular cutscenes that are present are treated to some additional rectification, so the cutscenes look crisper. Gone are the muted, murky graphics plastered all over Silent Hill 2’s grim aesthetic as Silent Hill 3 revisits the jarring aesthetic of the first game with extra visual flair. The bloody, rusted nightmare that is the “otherworld” has never looked so viscerally grotesque, and now we get to witness a finer-tuned version of this surreal hellhole with the magic of 21st-century gaming hardware.
If the aesthetic of Silent Hill has somehow lost its frightening impact upon the third visit, the developers made sure to provide those jaded Silent Hill veterans with some new obstacles to hurdle over. Silent Hill 3 is far more difficult than the previous two games, most likely a conscious decision from the developers to keep the game invigorating for veteran players. Their efforts have tapped into the vital essence of survival horror, which is the scarcity of resources and the feeling of being helpless. Health items and ammunition wouldn’t rain down upon the player in the previous Silent Hill titles, but they would find a plentiful amount of health drinks, med-kits, and ampoules if they took the time to thoroughly search every nook and cranny in both the overworld and each dungeon. Frequently, I felt like I was hoarding items by the end of the first two games. In Silent Hill 3’s case, on the other hand, the player would be fortunate to stumble upon as many as four healing or ammunition items per area. The comparatively scant number of items here arguably conveys that sense of panic and desperation that comes with trying to survive. Still, the extent of it is rather miserly on the developers' parts. I think by taking the time to explore the area, the player should be rewarded for their diligent efforts like in the previous games.
The new enemies Silent Hill 3 introduces serve as the crux of the deficient item dilemma. These foul, abhorrent dregs straight from the bowels of everyone’s deepest nightmares are the strongest and most diverse cast of monsters from any of the Silent Hill titles. The higher graphical fidelity may compromise the indistinct haziness that adds an element of scary ambiguity to their designs, so Team Silent seemingly pulled out all the stops in the creative department. Dog-like monsters no longer drip blood around the hub due to their total lack of skin but have split heads with each side having rows of sharp teeth. Skinless pterodactyls aren't patrolling the skies, but enemies like the Closer and Insane Cancer seem tall enough to reach the clouds. I couldn’t tell you what the Pendulums resemble, but they swim through the air with at least three tarnished-looking scythes. Remember when the spitting enemies from Silent Hill 2 would zoom around on the floor like a possessed Roomba after hitting them a couple of times? The developers decided Silent Hill needed more of that with the new Slurper enemies, whose pack-like numbers and hard-to-reach stature make them the bane of my existence. All these monsters vary in shape and size, but they all have something in common. Every single enemy in this game is a damage sponge. The larger enemies are presumably bulky, but even the smaller enemies are as durable as carbon fiber. The game supplies the player with half the amount of ammunition just for all the monsters to take twice the amount of damage to subdue. Fortunately, the larger enemies are easy to bypass, but the dogs and Slurper enemies are more ravenous than all other Silent Hill enemies before them. Silent Hill 3 is the only game in the series in which I was stuck between a rock and a hard place regarding my calamitous state of health and my destitute inventory. A part of me wants to praise Team Silent for emulating the struggle to survive in harsh conditions more effectively, but was this extent really necessary? The developers gave the player some new inventory items to help them, like the beef jerky bait and the bulletproof vest, but the results of using the jerky were inconsistent, and the vest weighed Heather down significantly. Also, you’re kidding yourself if you think a stun gun will do anything to these unholy beasts.
The odd thing is that most of these monsters exist outside of the realm of the town that we associate with them. Heather’s objective for the first half of the game is to return home, and she certainly doesn’t live in Silent Hill. Otherwise, the cult wouldn’t have had issues with finding her for seventeen long years. Heather’s residence is apparently Portland, Maine, and her identity could be inconspicuous enough in this New England metropolis to elude the cult for so long. That is until private dick Douglas Cartland is assigned by cult member Claudia Wolf to trace her whereabouts. After he succeeds in finding her, Heather’s existence is exposed, and she is no longer safe. Once Heather meets Claudia, things start to go south really quickly as the gruesome apparitions start to invade the mall. Silent Hill 3 is the most linear of the series, walking through the streets of “Portland, Maine” while dodging ungodly terrors. When Heather makes her way to Silent Hill, traversing through the town is still a straightaway trek with a few notable sights. While I felt dismayed that the town of Silent Hill got shorthanded in this entry, I came to appreciate a Silent Hill game with a more linear progression. The heavy reuse of areas in the town is evident that the developers could not think of any new ground to cover in Silent Hill without bloating the town to the point where it has as many landmarks as New York City. The same hospital from Silent Hill 2 even serves as a returning dungeon with the same layout.
However, “Heather’s Odyssey” raises a few questions. The previous Silent Hill titles solidified that the otherworld and the monsters in it were being fabricated by the remnant dark machinations of occult activity, giving the town otherworldly powers. This core tenant of Silent Hill remains consistent across both Silent Hill 1 and 2 despite their different ways of executing it. How can the otherworld go mobile? Did Team Silent sacrifice all continuity to provide consistent creepiness for Heather to endure even if it doesn’t make sense? This question has been asked numerous times, and some have surmised an explanation. Heather’s existence in this cult is nothing but a vessel to give birth to their dark lord and savior, who will usher in the twisted new world order. Since she is the reincarnated version of Alessa and Cheryl, who have spawned the demon, she is also carrying the demon child, making her witness the otherworld wherever she goes. It’s a sound theory, but it raises even MORE questions. When was the conception, and how was this demon conceived? I assumed in the first game that the ritual Dahlia conducted was to both impregnate Cheryl and have her birth the demon there, and Harry was too late to prevent this from happening. Heather is the reincarnation of Harry’s first adopted child Cheryl. We see her as a baby after Cheryl is immolated during the process of the ritual, and since then, she doesn’t even have an inkling of who she really is or anything about Silent Hill until the events of this game. What impregnated her and when? Has she been housing the fetus since birth, and does it only grow when she’s around the town or the cult? Survival horror gameplay outside the town of Silent Hill just jumbles up the continuity of the series.
Harping on the awkward conveniences, Silent Hill 3 implements is a fine segway to discuss my primary grievance with Silent Hill 3. One of the most effective aspects relating to Silent Hill’s horror factor is its pacing. The subtle ambiance of the fog mixed in with the dim hallways in the abandoned town is supposed to put the player on edge. The otherworld is a means to elevate that disquieted feeling with ghastly imagery to make the player sweat, delving deeper into the nightmare. The boss of a dungeon is meant to be the climax and defeating it serves as the player’s relief, like they are waking up. The first Silent Hill executed this progression flawlessly as early as the first sequence, using the nightmare pacing model for the rest of the game to great effect. Silent Hill 3 attempts to do the same, but the sloppy execution of the dream sequence is indicative of how the rest of the game treats one of the franchise's most crucial elements. Heather is already summoned to the harrowing heights of the amusement park section with little subtly to speak of leading up to it. The otherworld acts less as the danker part of diving deeper into the rabbit hole of Silent Hill and rather like a light switch. The otherworld takes up most of the time spent in each mapped section in the game. The reason “Nowhere” from the first game was so effective is that the otherworld slowly engulfed the town as the game progressed, and “Nowhere” felt like a point of no return with no sign of relief in sight. Silent Hill 3 makes the mistake of raw dogging the player with the otherworld without any lubrication, and the player becomes all too familiar with it. The only instance where Silent Hill achieves the transition tactfully is in the hospital, where a bathtub flooding with blood signals the otherworld at a tasteful halfway point in the dungeon.
Effective moments like these are all over Silent Hill 3. While the game may not treat the player to a horrific dirge, little nuggets of sheer horror are dusted over certain parts to leave that lasting impression. Some highlights include the recurring presence of Stanley Coleman, a former patient of the Brookhaven Hospital. He has developed a case of puppy love for Heather and displays it by sending her creepy love notes and a headless doll as an offering. Needless to say, Heather is put off by his affections, but this doesn’t halt the tenacious Mr. Coleman. Once Heather warps to the otherworld of the hospital, a phone starts ringing in one locker, similar to the phone segment from the first game. An unknown caller, who we assume is Stanley sings the “happy birthday” song to Heather with an unsettling cadence, and the player is just as disoriented by the scene as Heather is. In the same hospital is the infamous “mirror scene” where a room with nothing but a sink progressively starts to sprout blood-red veins from every corner of the room until Heather’s visage in the mirror stands motionless, and Heather is murdered by the room. To add tension, the exit will be locked until the last five to ten-second window before Heather is consumed, leaving the player in a red-faced frenzy trying to escape. This moment tends to be the unanimously pivotal scene among those who have played this game, but there was one scene that affected me even more. Once Heather comes home from the most hectic scenic route imaginable, the player would expect to see good ol’ Harry without those PS1 pixels considering Harry is Heather’s father. Unfortunately, we see Harry in a state of bloody disrepair as he’s been murdered in his living room chair. Douglas didn’t only inadvertently make Heather unsafe with his detective work, but Harry as well. It seems the cult didn’t take kindly to Harry preventing the birth of their savior all those years ago, so they wiped him out as a vindictive act of revenge. Heather is understandably upset, and her father's death is the catalyst that brings her to Silent Hill to enact vengeance on Claudia. I, too, was infuriated upon seeing Harry’s demise, for playing as him for the duration of the first game allowed me to become attached to him. Harry might be a schmuck. Hell, he’s such a schmuck that his apartment is just as dingy and uninviting as the interior of any building located in Silent Hill. But, he was the bravest, most valiant schmuck in gaming, and I became far more invested in Silent Hill 3 after this moment.
Other than becoming a tale of retribution, what is the substance of Silent Hill 3’s story? What separates it from the previous two games on a conceptual level? On the surface, not too much. The sole unique attribute that Silent Hill 3 has that the first game doesn’t is Heather as a protagonist, but her character and story have to be stronger than her becoming Inigo Montoya. Could the otherworld in the context of Heather’s character be a fit of extreme hysteria, like a satanic version of The Yellow Wallpaper? Initially, I had this mildly sexist joke in mind to make fun of how Silent Hill 3 signified a drought of creativity at the Team Silent office, but I started to consider this allegory seriously. Singling out Heather as the franchise’s female protagonist and dissecting her role based on her gender would normally process a shallow analysis, but there is surprisingly enough evidence to support the claim that Silent Hill 3 is a stark feminist work.
I criticized Silent Hill 3 for being too relentless with the otherworld, and I’m still of the opinion that it overstays its welcome. However, looking at the game through Heather’s character, there might be a deliberate reason why Heather’s Silent Hill experience is more relentless than the two other protagonists. Is there any other type of person as scared, volatile, and frangible as a teenage girl? Young women around this age tend to be in serious danger at all corners, whether they put themselves in it. The men surrounding them start to see them with a carnivorous lust, hunting them down like a lion does a zebra. All the while, they never ceased the level of condescension they expressed when the teenage girl was prepubescent. Under a certain lens, the male creeps in a teenage girl’s life are like the enemies in Silent Hill. Monsters such as the Insane Cancer and the Scrapers have more voracious energy and masculine forms than any of the enemies in the previous games. The Closer vaguely resembles a warped caricature of the most primal essence of a teenage girl, as if the otherworld is mocking Heather’s femininity. The Split Worm boss is essentially a basilisk-sized penis, a not-so-subtle rendition of a fear of sex and its consequences. Harry and James’s adventures through Silent Hill were daunting enough, but Heather struggles even more because the town is trying to prove her capabilities because she's a woman.
Any Silent Hill fan, new or old, can see clearly that the cult is a sickening organization, but Silent Hill 3 delves deeper into the dogmatic depravity that fuels it. One can recall from the first game that the God born from Alessa would “cleanse” the world by engulfing it in fire, disintegrating the corrupt influence of humanity, and leaving the world in a state of still oblivion that they refer to as a “paradise.” Claudia, the successor to Dahlia, pontificates emphatically about the cult’s ideal world of purity to Heather. The latter is naturally unconvinced that extinguishing mankind in a fiery inferno is a sensible way to ameliorate the world’s problems. As fucked up as the cult is, it’s not farfetched to mirror it to some organized religions in real life. Maybe the cult is a twisted reflection of the hypocritical zealotry often expressed by officials and fanatics that comprise many world religions. Perhaps the repugnant imagery that makes up Silent Hill is an ugly reflection of the influence of religion behind its seemingly pristine mirage. Vincent Smith, a preacher for the cult, is charismatic on the surface but smugly speaks of nothing but iconoclastic rhetoric that makes him seem psychotic. Claudia preaches benevolence but browbeats any skeptics with threats of eternal damnation. Personally, I’d rather go to hell than Silent Hill, and this cult’s actions based on their religious practices are the reason why.
Relating to the feminist connections, what is one of the biggest societal institutions dedicated to suppressing women's rights? The answer is organized religion. Specifically, in Heather’s case, the right to choose to birth a child. Somehow, Heather is pregnant with the cult’s savior and experiences chronic aches and pains so painful that she writhes on the ground in agony. She is constantly reminded by Claudia that birthing God is her destiny, for she is Alessa who did the same all those years ago. Alessa’s memories start to infiltrate Heather’s psyche to further solidify the connection between the two once she reaches the chapel. This dungeon’s map is even drawn in crayon, similar to what Alessa would do as a child, an ironic contrast between the child-like innocence of the drawing and the nauseatingly unscrupulous land it’s mapping out. However, Heather is not Alessa and does not have to go through with giving birth to something she desperately does not want alive for a cause that she finds utterly horrific. Heather expresses her autonomy as both her own person and as a woman in the best scene in the game. Her act of saying “fuck you” to Claudia and her cult is by aborting the fetus by drinking a liquid found in a locket she’s had for the entire game. She coughs up the fetus, much to Claudia’s chagrin, but Claudia is too pious to give up. Claudia consumes the fetus as its innate powers morph her into the final boss, God, an abomination whose depiction would offend any religious group. After vanquishing the evil, Heather returns to the amusement park to reconvene with a wounded Douglas. She’s in high spirits with a newfound confidence that she is free to live her own life now.
If Team Silent were forced to revisit the story arc of the first game for whatever reason for Silent Hill 3, then I suppose I can be glad that this was the finished product. It seems that I underestimated the ingenuity of Konami’s team of eccentric weirdos, as they still never lost their magic touch while working under constrained parameters. While the story of the first Silent Hill could’ve been under wraps, placing the reborn Cheryl from the first game in the protagonist role managed to breed new life into the already established mythos and consider it from a different perspective. The distinctive properties from the first game have never looked so sublime. However, this is why I feel Silent Hill 3 is still lackluster despite its quality. Silent Hill 3 feels as if it tries far too hard to become the better version of the first game by using so many of the same elements and amplifying them. Still, the developers got so caught up in making Silent Hill 2.0 on the newest console that they forgot the importance of subtlety in a Silent Hill game. That, and being all too familiar with the first game, inherently squandered the full potential of a Silent Hill sequel that we already knew was possible from Silent Hill 2’s shining example. Perhaps I would’ve been less harsh on Silent Hill 3 if it had been released before Silent Hill 2. With all that being said, Silent Hill 3 still exemplifies most of the best qualities the series is known for and playing it will keep you awake at night for at least a week. Ultimately, if you’re comparatively subpar to the two most outstanding pieces of something in your respective genre, you’re still pretty good with all things considered.
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
The opening cinematic to Silent Hill 3 doesn’t give the player too much context for the beginning of the game. Alas, Silent Hill 3 begins abruptly as a teenage girl with unkempt blond hair is holding a knife in the misty darkness of night with a neon sign flashing “Lakeside Amusement Park” overhead. Immediately, hostile demonic creatures will appear from all corners and overwhelm the girl, who will run frantically across the park practically defenseless with zero context as to what she’s doing. The objective is to quickly meander to the tracks of a wooden roller coaster where the car will make a head-on collision with the girl, killing her on impact. The revelation behind this shocking introduction is the first of many recycled ideas from the first Silent Hill in that it was a bad dream that the protagonist awakes from while in a stupor in some barren cafe. The girl heads to a payphone outside in the most lively and inviting setting ever seen in a Silent Hill game and tells her dad she’ll be home before dark. On her way there, a detective encourages her to take a detour with him so she can learn more about the events surrounding her birth, so the way home is going to be a bit bumpy.
If it wasn’t made clear from the introduction, Silent Hill 3’s female protagonist is Heather Mason, the daughter of Harry Mason, the protagonist of the first game. “Wait, her name is Heather now?” every Silent Hill veteran will ask themselves in a state of befuddlement. It’s not explicitly explained by Harry, but he understandably wanted his reincarnated adopted daughter to have the least amount of connection to her origins in that godforsaken town as humanly possible. He probably also didn’t want the evil cult to find her just in case they get bold enough to attempt a do-over on birthing the antichrist thing, which certainly explains the name change and the dyed blonde hair. A father mandating a weekly hair-dyeing session on his teenage daughter is a strange thing to enforce, but it’s better to be safe than sorry if the consequences involve revisiting Silent Hill. Seventeen years have passed since the events of the first game, and now little Alessa/Cheryl/Heather is all grown up, meaning the good ending of the first game is now canon. Despite Harry’s best efforts to protect his daughter for almost two decades, his defenses have been infiltrated, and the cult has caught up with him. Now it’s Heather’s turn to uncover the ungodly horrors in her place of birth. At least we can all be relieved that Harry isn’t once again the main protagonist of this direct sequel, and this and other subsequent Silent Hill games won’t be the tired plot of Harry rescuing his daughter from Silent Hill like Mario rescues Princess Peach.
Where does Heather fit in the league of sorry bastards who must visit Silent Hill in their respective entries? Quite comfortably, actually. Heather’s execution as a playable protagonist shows that perhaps there was more to be tweaked to the Silent Hill formula in the vein of quality-of-life enhancements. The wonky, disjointed controls are idiosyncratic to every Silent Hill game and to every survival horror game to some extent. However, I’d be lying if I said I never actively grunted orders at the awkward movements of both Harry and James at moments when they needed to be quick on their feet like someone trying to potty train their dog. Heather is by far the smoothest character to control, yet the developers have somehow impressively managed to retain the essential stiffness of survival horror controls. In a certain section of Silent Hill 3 that copies the Pyramid Head hallway chase sequence from Silent Hill 2, I couldn’t help but be reminded of how many times I startled Harry when I bumped into a wall or the many times changing directions with James during that particular section felt like rotating a life-sized marble statue in a Resident Evil puzzle. With Heather, I practically exited this part unscathed. I suppose it makes sense for Heather to be more nimble than her middle-aged dad and a chronic depressive. Heather also marks the first Silent Hill protagonist with a convincing, emotive voice, thanks to her voice actress. In a series synonymous with flat, cheesy voicework, Heather consistently possesses the vocal inflections of a teenage girl while carrying a range of emotions when necessary. Yet, the rest of the voice cast of Silent Hill 3 gives the typical B-movie delivery.
Silent Hill 3 is a game that seems like it has a lot to prove, and I’m not entirely certain why. The previous game was the sequel meant to showcase how Silent Hill graduated from the grainy, blocky, primitive 3D era with wondrous graphical enhancements. To some extent, Silent Hill 2 was that killer app with an evolved technical prowess, but the art style and direction of that game distracted the player all too often. Silent Hill 3, on the other hand, flaunts its technical features like a model walking on the runway, refining even the new features presented in Silent Hill 2. The pre-rendered cutscenes introduced in Silent Hill 2 via the new capabilities of the PS2 hardware were impressive for their time, but they were implemented inconsistently. We learn from Silent Hill 3’s example that this awkward irregularity was likely because the developers bit off more than the PS2 could chew. Silent Hill 3 does away with the pre-rendered cutscenes entirely, and the regular cutscenes that are present are treated to some additional rectification, so the cutscenes look crisper. Gone are the muted, murky graphics plastered all over Silent Hill 2’s grim aesthetic as Silent Hill 3 revisits the jarring aesthetic of the first game with extra visual flair. The bloody, rusted nightmare that is the “otherworld” has never looked so viscerally grotesque, and now we get to witness a finer-tuned version of this surreal hellhole with the magic of 21st-century gaming hardware.
If the aesthetic of Silent Hill has somehow lost its frightening impact upon the third visit, the developers made sure to provide those jaded Silent Hill veterans with some new obstacles to hurdle over. Silent Hill 3 is far more difficult than the previous two games, most likely a conscious decision from the developers to keep the game invigorating for veteran players. Their efforts have tapped into the vital essence of survival horror, which is the scarcity of resources and the feeling of being helpless. Health items and ammunition wouldn’t rain down upon the player in the previous Silent Hill titles, but they would find a plentiful amount of health drinks, med-kits, and ampoules if they took the time to thoroughly search every nook and cranny in both the overworld and each dungeon. Frequently, I felt like I was hoarding items by the end of the first two games. In Silent Hill 3’s case, on the other hand, the player would be fortunate to stumble upon as many as four healing or ammunition items per area. The comparatively scant number of items here arguably conveys that sense of panic and desperation that comes with trying to survive. Still, the extent of it is rather miserly on the developers' parts. I think by taking the time to explore the area, the player should be rewarded for their diligent efforts like in the previous games.
The new enemies Silent Hill 3 introduces serve as the crux of the deficient item dilemma. These foul, abhorrent dregs straight from the bowels of everyone’s deepest nightmares are the strongest and most diverse cast of monsters from any of the Silent Hill titles. The higher graphical fidelity may compromise the indistinct haziness that adds an element of scary ambiguity to their designs, so Team Silent seemingly pulled out all the stops in the creative department. Dog-like monsters no longer drip blood around the hub due to their total lack of skin but have split heads with each side having rows of sharp teeth. Skinless pterodactyls aren't patrolling the skies, but enemies like the Closer and Insane Cancer seem tall enough to reach the clouds. I couldn’t tell you what the Pendulums resemble, but they swim through the air with at least three tarnished-looking scythes. Remember when the spitting enemies from Silent Hill 2 would zoom around on the floor like a possessed Roomba after hitting them a couple of times? The developers decided Silent Hill needed more of that with the new Slurper enemies, whose pack-like numbers and hard-to-reach stature make them the bane of my existence. All these monsters vary in shape and size, but they all have something in common. Every single enemy in this game is a damage sponge. The larger enemies are presumably bulky, but even the smaller enemies are as durable as carbon fiber. The game supplies the player with half the amount of ammunition just for all the monsters to take twice the amount of damage to subdue. Fortunately, the larger enemies are easy to bypass, but the dogs and Slurper enemies are more ravenous than all other Silent Hill enemies before them. Silent Hill 3 is the only game in the series in which I was stuck between a rock and a hard place regarding my calamitous state of health and my destitute inventory. A part of me wants to praise Team Silent for emulating the struggle to survive in harsh conditions more effectively, but was this extent really necessary? The developers gave the player some new inventory items to help them, like the beef jerky bait and the bulletproof vest, but the results of using the jerky were inconsistent, and the vest weighed Heather down significantly. Also, you’re kidding yourself if you think a stun gun will do anything to these unholy beasts.
The odd thing is that most of these monsters exist outside of the realm of the town that we associate with them. Heather’s objective for the first half of the game is to return home, and she certainly doesn’t live in Silent Hill. Otherwise, the cult wouldn’t have had issues with finding her for seventeen long years. Heather’s residence is apparently Portland, Maine, and her identity could be inconspicuous enough in this New England metropolis to elude the cult for so long. That is until private dick Douglas Cartland is assigned by cult member Claudia Wolf to trace her whereabouts. After he succeeds in finding her, Heather’s existence is exposed, and she is no longer safe. Once Heather meets Claudia, things start to go south really quickly as the gruesome apparitions start to invade the mall. Silent Hill 3 is the most linear of the series, walking through the streets of “Portland, Maine” while dodging ungodly terrors. When Heather makes her way to Silent Hill, traversing through the town is still a straightaway trek with a few notable sights. While I felt dismayed that the town of Silent Hill got shorthanded in this entry, I came to appreciate a Silent Hill game with a more linear progression. The heavy reuse of areas in the town is evident that the developers could not think of any new ground to cover in Silent Hill without bloating the town to the point where it has as many landmarks as New York City. The same hospital from Silent Hill 2 even serves as a returning dungeon with the same layout.
However, “Heather’s Odyssey” raises a few questions. The previous Silent Hill titles solidified that the otherworld and the monsters in it were being fabricated by the remnant dark machinations of occult activity, giving the town otherworldly powers. This core tenant of Silent Hill remains consistent across both Silent Hill 1 and 2 despite their different ways of executing it. How can the otherworld go mobile? Did Team Silent sacrifice all continuity to provide consistent creepiness for Heather to endure even if it doesn’t make sense? This question has been asked numerous times, and some have surmised an explanation. Heather’s existence in this cult is nothing but a vessel to give birth to their dark lord and savior, who will usher in the twisted new world order. Since she is the reincarnated version of Alessa and Cheryl, who have spawned the demon, she is also carrying the demon child, making her witness the otherworld wherever she goes. It’s a sound theory, but it raises even MORE questions. When was the conception, and how was this demon conceived? I assumed in the first game that the ritual Dahlia conducted was to both impregnate Cheryl and have her birth the demon there, and Harry was too late to prevent this from happening. Heather is the reincarnation of Harry’s first adopted child Cheryl. We see her as a baby after Cheryl is immolated during the process of the ritual, and since then, she doesn’t even have an inkling of who she really is or anything about Silent Hill until the events of this game. What impregnated her and when? Has she been housing the fetus since birth, and does it only grow when she’s around the town or the cult? Survival horror gameplay outside the town of Silent Hill just jumbles up the continuity of the series.
Harping on the awkward conveniences, Silent Hill 3 implements is a fine segway to discuss my primary grievance with Silent Hill 3. One of the most effective aspects relating to Silent Hill’s horror factor is its pacing. The subtle ambiance of the fog mixed in with the dim hallways in the abandoned town is supposed to put the player on edge. The otherworld is a means to elevate that disquieted feeling with ghastly imagery to make the player sweat, delving deeper into the nightmare. The boss of a dungeon is meant to be the climax and defeating it serves as the player’s relief, like they are waking up. The first Silent Hill executed this progression flawlessly as early as the first sequence, using the nightmare pacing model for the rest of the game to great effect. Silent Hill 3 attempts to do the same, but the sloppy execution of the dream sequence is indicative of how the rest of the game treats one of the franchise's most crucial elements. Heather is already summoned to the harrowing heights of the amusement park section with little subtly to speak of leading up to it. The otherworld acts less as the danker part of diving deeper into the rabbit hole of Silent Hill and rather like a light switch. The otherworld takes up most of the time spent in each mapped section in the game. The reason “Nowhere” from the first game was so effective is that the otherworld slowly engulfed the town as the game progressed, and “Nowhere” felt like a point of no return with no sign of relief in sight. Silent Hill 3 makes the mistake of raw dogging the player with the otherworld without any lubrication, and the player becomes all too familiar with it. The only instance where Silent Hill achieves the transition tactfully is in the hospital, where a bathtub flooding with blood signals the otherworld at a tasteful halfway point in the dungeon.
Effective moments like these are all over Silent Hill 3. While the game may not treat the player to a horrific dirge, little nuggets of sheer horror are dusted over certain parts to leave that lasting impression. Some highlights include the recurring presence of Stanley Coleman, a former patient of the Brookhaven Hospital. He has developed a case of puppy love for Heather and displays it by sending her creepy love notes and a headless doll as an offering. Needless to say, Heather is put off by his affections, but this doesn’t halt the tenacious Mr. Coleman. Once Heather warps to the otherworld of the hospital, a phone starts ringing in one locker, similar to the phone segment from the first game. An unknown caller, who we assume is Stanley sings the “happy birthday” song to Heather with an unsettling cadence, and the player is just as disoriented by the scene as Heather is. In the same hospital is the infamous “mirror scene” where a room with nothing but a sink progressively starts to sprout blood-red veins from every corner of the room until Heather’s visage in the mirror stands motionless, and Heather is murdered by the room. To add tension, the exit will be locked until the last five to ten-second window before Heather is consumed, leaving the player in a red-faced frenzy trying to escape. This moment tends to be the unanimously pivotal scene among those who have played this game, but there was one scene that affected me even more. Once Heather comes home from the most hectic scenic route imaginable, the player would expect to see good ol’ Harry without those PS1 pixels considering Harry is Heather’s father. Unfortunately, we see Harry in a state of bloody disrepair as he’s been murdered in his living room chair. Douglas didn’t only inadvertently make Heather unsafe with his detective work, but Harry as well. It seems the cult didn’t take kindly to Harry preventing the birth of their savior all those years ago, so they wiped him out as a vindictive act of revenge. Heather is understandably upset, and her father's death is the catalyst that brings her to Silent Hill to enact vengeance on Claudia. I, too, was infuriated upon seeing Harry’s demise, for playing as him for the duration of the first game allowed me to become attached to him. Harry might be a schmuck. Hell, he’s such a schmuck that his apartment is just as dingy and uninviting as the interior of any building located in Silent Hill. But, he was the bravest, most valiant schmuck in gaming, and I became far more invested in Silent Hill 3 after this moment.
Other than becoming a tale of retribution, what is the substance of Silent Hill 3’s story? What separates it from the previous two games on a conceptual level? On the surface, not too much. The sole unique attribute that Silent Hill 3 has that the first game doesn’t is Heather as a protagonist, but her character and story have to be stronger than her becoming Inigo Montoya. Could the otherworld in the context of Heather’s character be a fit of extreme hysteria, like a satanic version of The Yellow Wallpaper? Initially, I had this mildly sexist joke in mind to make fun of how Silent Hill 3 signified a drought of creativity at the Team Silent office, but I started to consider this allegory seriously. Singling out Heather as the franchise’s female protagonist and dissecting her role based on her gender would normally process a shallow analysis, but there is surprisingly enough evidence to support the claim that Silent Hill 3 is a stark feminist work.
I criticized Silent Hill 3 for being too relentless with the otherworld, and I’m still of the opinion that it overstays its welcome. However, looking at the game through Heather’s character, there might be a deliberate reason why Heather’s Silent Hill experience is more relentless than the two other protagonists. Is there any other type of person as scared, volatile, and frangible as a teenage girl? Young women around this age tend to be in serious danger at all corners, whether they put themselves in it. The men surrounding them start to see them with a carnivorous lust, hunting them down like a lion does a zebra. All the while, they never ceased the level of condescension they expressed when the teenage girl was prepubescent. Under a certain lens, the male creeps in a teenage girl’s life are like the enemies in Silent Hill. Monsters such as the Insane Cancer and the Scrapers have more voracious energy and masculine forms than any of the enemies in the previous games. The Closer vaguely resembles a warped caricature of the most primal essence of a teenage girl, as if the otherworld is mocking Heather’s femininity. The Split Worm boss is essentially a basilisk-sized penis, a not-so-subtle rendition of a fear of sex and its consequences. Harry and James’s adventures through Silent Hill were daunting enough, but Heather struggles even more because the town is trying to prove her capabilities because she's a woman.
Any Silent Hill fan, new or old, can see clearly that the cult is a sickening organization, but Silent Hill 3 delves deeper into the dogmatic depravity that fuels it. One can recall from the first game that the God born from Alessa would “cleanse” the world by engulfing it in fire, disintegrating the corrupt influence of humanity, and leaving the world in a state of still oblivion that they refer to as a “paradise.” Claudia, the successor to Dahlia, pontificates emphatically about the cult’s ideal world of purity to Heather. The latter is naturally unconvinced that extinguishing mankind in a fiery inferno is a sensible way to ameliorate the world’s problems. As fucked up as the cult is, it’s not farfetched to mirror it to some organized religions in real life. Maybe the cult is a twisted reflection of the hypocritical zealotry often expressed by officials and fanatics that comprise many world religions. Perhaps the repugnant imagery that makes up Silent Hill is an ugly reflection of the influence of religion behind its seemingly pristine mirage. Vincent Smith, a preacher for the cult, is charismatic on the surface but smugly speaks of nothing but iconoclastic rhetoric that makes him seem psychotic. Claudia preaches benevolence but browbeats any skeptics with threats of eternal damnation. Personally, I’d rather go to hell than Silent Hill, and this cult’s actions based on their religious practices are the reason why.
Relating to the feminist connections, what is one of the biggest societal institutions dedicated to suppressing women's rights? The answer is organized religion. Specifically, in Heather’s case, the right to choose to birth a child. Somehow, Heather is pregnant with the cult’s savior and experiences chronic aches and pains so painful that she writhes on the ground in agony. She is constantly reminded by Claudia that birthing God is her destiny, for she is Alessa who did the same all those years ago. Alessa’s memories start to infiltrate Heather’s psyche to further solidify the connection between the two once she reaches the chapel. This dungeon’s map is even drawn in crayon, similar to what Alessa would do as a child, an ironic contrast between the child-like innocence of the drawing and the nauseatingly unscrupulous land it’s mapping out. However, Heather is not Alessa and does not have to go through with giving birth to something she desperately does not want alive for a cause that she finds utterly horrific. Heather expresses her autonomy as both her own person and as a woman in the best scene in the game. Her act of saying “fuck you” to Claudia and her cult is by aborting the fetus by drinking a liquid found in a locket she’s had for the entire game. She coughs up the fetus, much to Claudia’s chagrin, but Claudia is too pious to give up. Claudia consumes the fetus as its innate powers morph her into the final boss, God, an abomination whose depiction would offend any religious group. After vanquishing the evil, Heather returns to the amusement park to reconvene with a wounded Douglas. She’s in high spirits with a newfound confidence that she is free to live her own life now.
If Team Silent were forced to revisit the story arc of the first game for whatever reason for Silent Hill 3, then I suppose I can be glad that this was the finished product. It seems that I underestimated the ingenuity of Konami’s team of eccentric weirdos, as they still never lost their magic touch while working under constrained parameters. While the story of the first Silent Hill could’ve been under wraps, placing the reborn Cheryl from the first game in the protagonist role managed to breed new life into the already established mythos and consider it from a different perspective. The distinctive properties from the first game have never looked so sublime. However, this is why I feel Silent Hill 3 is still lackluster despite its quality. Silent Hill 3 feels as if it tries far too hard to become the better version of the first game by using so many of the same elements and amplifying them. Still, the developers got so caught up in making Silent Hill 2.0 on the newest console that they forgot the importance of subtlety in a Silent Hill game. That, and being all too familiar with the first game, inherently squandered the full potential of a Silent Hill sequel that we already knew was possible from Silent Hill 2’s shining example. Perhaps I would’ve been less harsh on Silent Hill 3 if it had been released before Silent Hill 2. With all that being said, Silent Hill 3 still exemplifies most of the best qualities the series is known for and playing it will keep you awake at night for at least a week. Ultimately, if you’re comparatively subpar to the two most outstanding pieces of something in your respective genre, you’re still pretty good with all things considered.
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com