Silent Hill 3 is a layered tale covering many different but related subject matters, but its beating heart is the story of Heather, who starts her story as a young girl who must make her way through an oppressive and hellish landscape of rust, monsters, and men. Vincent is deceitful, manipulative, and pest-like in his annoying recurrence. Leonard is equally as deceitful but also helps shed light on Claudia’s traumatic childhood as the daughter of an abusive father with a cultish obsession. Douglas is a cop, who has knowingly killed people and willingly followed and pestered a 17-year-old girl through an abandoned mall until she is forced to hide in the women’s washroom. Harry’s murderer is indirectly Claudia, but the actual killing was done by her servant; by “him”. Claudia and Heather’s sisterly love for one another is implied to have lasted a short time, since they were both then forced into a cult they wanted nothing to do with, and in Heather’s case, she was forcibly impregnated under the guise of birthing a paradise for a bunch of lunatic child-abusers. This is the story of Heather fighting against her assaulters, reclaiming her identity and discovering who she really is. If this wasn’t a clear enough depiction of unwanted teenage pregnancy, Heather drops the line: “But a God born from hate can never create a perfect paradise!”, which tacitly disproves Claudia’s indoctrinated beliefs that pain must bring happiness. She then swallows a pearl of Agloaphotis, which aborts the God fetus from her body.

This is a game which shows a categorical understanding of the permeating patriarchal violence that is bred in modern-day society, and which expresses a staggering amount of empathy for almost all of its characterized women. There will never be another game as elegantly put together as this one.