for my playthrough of silent hill in the last couple weeks, I was comfortable on the couch in my living room, surrounded by earnest support and goofy comments from friends. I played silent hill 3 in the opposite setting, trapped in my room alone, unable to see virtually anyone thanks to a positive covid test. wood-panel floors, nauseating warm light bleeding through closed blinds, and the industrial cacophony of silent hill 3 on the tv in front of me. dunno if this made the experience any more or less authentic, or helped me channel my ennui into a suitably hateful object. didn't really make me much less miserable regardless.
silent hill was a redemption, silent hill 2 was a masterpiece, and then team silent split into two teams, prodded on konami to strike while the iron was hot. while the silent hill 4 team tore up the prior canvas and created a new concept wholesale, silent hill 3 meandered in circles until finally being patched together and sent out the door. it is, without a doubt, the gimped entry. slightly shorter than silent hill 2, the game reuses the hospital locale from that game nearly wholesale along with the slice of silent hill around it, which happens to be only time heather actually gets to wander the streets of the titular town at all. it lacks the side quests of the original and the player psychoanalysis of the sequel, concluding with only a single ending on a first playthrough and slightly different one if you prioritize combat on a subsequent run. on structure alone it feels unfortunately slight.
a purely structural view of a silent hill game diminishes the importance of its indelible imagery, and silent hill 3 comes out guns blazing in this regard. this is a vengeful silent hill, dripping with bile and blood and pulsing with constant stark red. heather, mother of God, intensifies the usual otherworld into something even more hellish. the usual flayed-flesh walls and rusty grating give way to squishy fatty surroundings that completely choke out light and close in around heather, sapping her health. crucified corpses found in the cages of prior games now brazenly hold their dead offspring, barely beyond that of a fetus. behind cracks in the walls and gaps in the floors heather is constantly stalked by loyal servant valtiel, who will drag her corpse away if she is to die. however, when she finds him curled within a wooden womb in woman's locker room of the hospital, she can't help but feel pity at his childlike mannerisms. the game heavily ruminates on these ideas of maternalism and the body being violated, making true on the potential wrought from silent hill 1's story.
which I must say, silent hill 3 returning to the occult origins of the series allows the developers to reinterpret and heavily expand upon the first game's concepts. while that game only plays with the implications of its plot, silent hill 3 centers the experience around the tortured soul at the heart of silent hill 1: alessa. her consciousness within heather allows her trauma to bubble to the surface as the game continues, reliving and recontextualizing moments from the first game that were only glimpses past the blank eyes of harry mason. heather's sense of unreality within the fog and other worlds are not simply expressions of fear but furthermore her grasping with the hidden memories she must let percolate from within her. she is not who she thinks she is, and her struggle with silent hill is not simply one of unleashing smothered guilt but rather letting the memories of alessa relive within her without overtaking her. the endgame reflects this heavily, as the bowels of the order's church turn into a garden of memories from the original game remade for heather to navigate and relive her past life. loose connections in the first game are made concrete here, immortalizing alessa not just as an off-screen torture victim and a vanishing spirit but a real girl, one who tried to reconcile both an earnest belief in god with the fury and broken psyche of her abusive mother. indeed, the game analyzes the cult itself heavily in these closing chapters, focusing on religious doubt and the interplay of accepting a community versus actually adhering strictly to said religion's practices. vincent and claudia's relationship is at the center of all of this, with vincent wishing for restoration as he succumbs to pleasures of the flesh, all the while naively hoping to restore the status quo of the cult he helps run.
the absence of this lens within analyses like that of super eyepatch wolf reveal an inability to dissect this game outside of the lens of silent hill 2's individual psychological breakdown. clinging onto poorly sourced interviews has allowed such a belief to exist, when really it seems more clear that silent hill 3 simply had a troubled development (starting off as a... rail shooter?) and shuffled into its current state with a small team and truncated budget. the story threads from sh1 may have been used partially to help buoy the creatively adrift project, but they certainly are integrated with a thoughtfulness that does not seem solely some executive-level demand to "franchise-ify" the series. the narrative this game presents features a psychologically-damaged protagonist that heavily distances itself from simply repeating james sunderland's story; heather struggles to maintain her emotions and frequently lashes out in comparison to james' near-suicidal indifference to the events around him. she learns to accept and show love to her alessa side, giving her the strength to press on and challenge her role as vessel for god. she's expressive even in her flavor text and perfectly shifts moods on a dime in her cutscenes; I would dare say she's the best of the original three protagonists. to lament that she needed an identical arc of suppressed guilt to james sunderland trivializes the many undercurrents this game implants within its understanding of the events of the original game.
so why did I like it less than the first two? the rail shooter origins for this game may shine through more than expected given that the game overall has a somewhat heavier focus on action. for the first half of the game this is not much of an issue -- you can play the game running past each monster with little problem, just like in the prior entries. a few new systems are added to supposedly spice things up such as a clumsy block and beef jerky for distracting the dogs, but actually putting these into practice feels difficult. investigating doors also now takes place in real time, meaning that the usual gameplay loop of clicking through dozens of doors with jammed locks now feels genuinely dangerous. solid change, and one that I think benefits the series more than anything. it's into the second half of the game with much more involved boss fights and strong enemies that completely block off certain hallways where the gameplay begins to fall apart. healing items are actually somewhat scarce, and I managed to finish the game with absolutely nothing left. having to navigate these awkward shooting sections with combat that has changed little from the first entry just feels like a waste of time, and frankly reduces the horror aspect for it for me. the enemies may feel less powerless than in prior entries, but their presence becomes more of an annoyance when you stumble into rooms with several identical ones all swarming on you or when they begin to use firearms against you.
but this is the second half of the game, right? what about the first half? possibly the real extenuating factor that really lost my interest was the subway/sewer/construction site/office building section. in what makes up easily over a quarter of the game, heather runs through endless concrete halls and through the same copy-paste building format over and over again. endless reception desks and subway signs and sewer hallways just... don't scare me. you get a little otherworld taste at the end of that office building section that saves the experience a little bit, but after so long of just wandering about with little threat from the enemies around you, it feels almost too brief. the second half has the excellent amusement park locale which is just absolutely sickening to look at and to hear, but it's sandwiched between the hospital reused from sh2 and the church by which point the combat focus becomes more annoying. this whole second half is littered with virtually every great setpiece in the game (shame on me for somehow walking past the infamous mirror room, the womb otherworld is really hard to see in), but there's just so many more nitpicks here than I had with the prior two games.
the process of writing this honestly makes me think that I particularly enjoy thinking about this entry much more than I do playing it. a lot of the best reviews on this site come from this game as well imo. it's a shame then that this particular game goes a little overboard in making each of its areas truly dangerous. when I laughed at silent hill it was a way of hiding my true fear; when I get annoyed at silent hill 3 it simply dilutes that real fear and renders it secondary. and wow did that final boss have a fuckton of HP.
silent hill was a redemption, silent hill 2 was a masterpiece, and then team silent split into two teams, prodded on konami to strike while the iron was hot. while the silent hill 4 team tore up the prior canvas and created a new concept wholesale, silent hill 3 meandered in circles until finally being patched together and sent out the door. it is, without a doubt, the gimped entry. slightly shorter than silent hill 2, the game reuses the hospital locale from that game nearly wholesale along with the slice of silent hill around it, which happens to be only time heather actually gets to wander the streets of the titular town at all. it lacks the side quests of the original and the player psychoanalysis of the sequel, concluding with only a single ending on a first playthrough and slightly different one if you prioritize combat on a subsequent run. on structure alone it feels unfortunately slight.
a purely structural view of a silent hill game diminishes the importance of its indelible imagery, and silent hill 3 comes out guns blazing in this regard. this is a vengeful silent hill, dripping with bile and blood and pulsing with constant stark red. heather, mother of God, intensifies the usual otherworld into something even more hellish. the usual flayed-flesh walls and rusty grating give way to squishy fatty surroundings that completely choke out light and close in around heather, sapping her health. crucified corpses found in the cages of prior games now brazenly hold their dead offspring, barely beyond that of a fetus. behind cracks in the walls and gaps in the floors heather is constantly stalked by loyal servant valtiel, who will drag her corpse away if she is to die. however, when she finds him curled within a wooden womb in woman's locker room of the hospital, she can't help but feel pity at his childlike mannerisms. the game heavily ruminates on these ideas of maternalism and the body being violated, making true on the potential wrought from silent hill 1's story.
which I must say, silent hill 3 returning to the occult origins of the series allows the developers to reinterpret and heavily expand upon the first game's concepts. while that game only plays with the implications of its plot, silent hill 3 centers the experience around the tortured soul at the heart of silent hill 1: alessa. her consciousness within heather allows her trauma to bubble to the surface as the game continues, reliving and recontextualizing moments from the first game that were only glimpses past the blank eyes of harry mason. heather's sense of unreality within the fog and other worlds are not simply expressions of fear but furthermore her grasping with the hidden memories she must let percolate from within her. she is not who she thinks she is, and her struggle with silent hill is not simply one of unleashing smothered guilt but rather letting the memories of alessa relive within her without overtaking her. the endgame reflects this heavily, as the bowels of the order's church turn into a garden of memories from the original game remade for heather to navigate and relive her past life. loose connections in the first game are made concrete here, immortalizing alessa not just as an off-screen torture victim and a vanishing spirit but a real girl, one who tried to reconcile both an earnest belief in god with the fury and broken psyche of her abusive mother. indeed, the game analyzes the cult itself heavily in these closing chapters, focusing on religious doubt and the interplay of accepting a community versus actually adhering strictly to said religion's practices. vincent and claudia's relationship is at the center of all of this, with vincent wishing for restoration as he succumbs to pleasures of the flesh, all the while naively hoping to restore the status quo of the cult he helps run.
the absence of this lens within analyses like that of super eyepatch wolf reveal an inability to dissect this game outside of the lens of silent hill 2's individual psychological breakdown. clinging onto poorly sourced interviews has allowed such a belief to exist, when really it seems more clear that silent hill 3 simply had a troubled development (starting off as a... rail shooter?) and shuffled into its current state with a small team and truncated budget. the story threads from sh1 may have been used partially to help buoy the creatively adrift project, but they certainly are integrated with a thoughtfulness that does not seem solely some executive-level demand to "franchise-ify" the series. the narrative this game presents features a psychologically-damaged protagonist that heavily distances itself from simply repeating james sunderland's story; heather struggles to maintain her emotions and frequently lashes out in comparison to james' near-suicidal indifference to the events around him. she learns to accept and show love to her alessa side, giving her the strength to press on and challenge her role as vessel for god. she's expressive even in her flavor text and perfectly shifts moods on a dime in her cutscenes; I would dare say she's the best of the original three protagonists. to lament that she needed an identical arc of suppressed guilt to james sunderland trivializes the many undercurrents this game implants within its understanding of the events of the original game.
so why did I like it less than the first two? the rail shooter origins for this game may shine through more than expected given that the game overall has a somewhat heavier focus on action. for the first half of the game this is not much of an issue -- you can play the game running past each monster with little problem, just like in the prior entries. a few new systems are added to supposedly spice things up such as a clumsy block and beef jerky for distracting the dogs, but actually putting these into practice feels difficult. investigating doors also now takes place in real time, meaning that the usual gameplay loop of clicking through dozens of doors with jammed locks now feels genuinely dangerous. solid change, and one that I think benefits the series more than anything. it's into the second half of the game with much more involved boss fights and strong enemies that completely block off certain hallways where the gameplay begins to fall apart. healing items are actually somewhat scarce, and I managed to finish the game with absolutely nothing left. having to navigate these awkward shooting sections with combat that has changed little from the first entry just feels like a waste of time, and frankly reduces the horror aspect for it for me. the enemies may feel less powerless than in prior entries, but their presence becomes more of an annoyance when you stumble into rooms with several identical ones all swarming on you or when they begin to use firearms against you.
but this is the second half of the game, right? what about the first half? possibly the real extenuating factor that really lost my interest was the subway/sewer/construction site/office building section. in what makes up easily over a quarter of the game, heather runs through endless concrete halls and through the same copy-paste building format over and over again. endless reception desks and subway signs and sewer hallways just... don't scare me. you get a little otherworld taste at the end of that office building section that saves the experience a little bit, but after so long of just wandering about with little threat from the enemies around you, it feels almost too brief. the second half has the excellent amusement park locale which is just absolutely sickening to look at and to hear, but it's sandwiched between the hospital reused from sh2 and the church by which point the combat focus becomes more annoying. this whole second half is littered with virtually every great setpiece in the game (shame on me for somehow walking past the infamous mirror room, the womb otherworld is really hard to see in), but there's just so many more nitpicks here than I had with the prior two games.
the process of writing this honestly makes me think that I particularly enjoy thinking about this entry much more than I do playing it. a lot of the best reviews on this site come from this game as well imo. it's a shame then that this particular game goes a little overboard in making each of its areas truly dangerous. when I laughed at silent hill it was a way of hiding my true fear; when I get annoyed at silent hill 3 it simply dilutes that real fear and renders it secondary. and wow did that final boss have a fuckton of HP.
Vee
1 year ago
And yeah, Heather rules. She carries this game, otherwise it's weaker than the first two imo.