When was it that terror in video games went from being synonymous with having a bad time? From thinking twice before playing with the lights off and the headphones turned up loud. In fact, lately there have been games that can be said that measure up, or one that manages to make your hair stand on end, but even franchises as large as Resident Evil stopped impressing for a long time in that sense, without clear conter with Resident Evil 7 or Resident Evil 2 Remake, which can be said to bring that feeling back a bit.
Today more than two decades have passed since the launch of Silent Hill, the original, that game that was born to tell others how to make a real horror game, the kind that broke your nerves. Before this game, venturing into this genre has never been so scary. At that time, Shinji Mikami's work had the players at their feet, but his proposal with the zombies used the typical resource to give easy scares. With this I am not hating Resident Evil in that sense, it is one of the franchises that I like the most in the sector, but Silent Hill was something else if it is horror we are talking about.
Harry Mason drives to Silent Hill with his daughter Cheryl. They have an accident. Mason is knocked unconscious. When he wakes up he checks to his horror that Cheryl is not in the passenger seat. They have reached Silent Hill, but the car is wrecked and Cheryl is missing.
In this game everything was designed to convey fear, discomfort and insecurity at every step you take, even disgust we could consider. The first stages of this game could not have been more discouraging: a completely empty city, where the only thing that we find at every step are traces of blood, strange bodies and figures, smashed wheelchairs, the ideal thing if you want to go to have a good vacation if you want to end up dying a horrible death.
In terms of graphics, this game is very different from what was used to in this genre, and it takes very good advantage of the limitations that the Playstation had. Use the console to your advantage to create a truly spooky atmosphere. Against Resident Evil and the pre-rendered scenarios, Silent Hill place environments completely in 3D, which allowed the developers to play around with the elements in the game to make visuals that could drive the player crazy.
There was a custom that the genre would star characters who could defend themselves in dangerous situations, but Silent Hill chose to put us in the shoes of a fairly normal guy.
Harry Mason, for the player, is a father who has lost his daughter after an accident and has to face it as any other would: desperately. He will find some ally or another, he will receive some help (very little), but basically he will face only a strange people that, in addition, has several alternative dimensions, each one more twisted.
Stephen King's "The Mist" is one of the influences this game draws on. In that work we discovered a small town that was abruptly flooded by a thick fog. A mist that hid strange monsters inside. The protagonists were a group of inhabitants who were forced to disappear into a supermarket without knowing with certainty what to expect or do to eliminate this threat. The point is that the fear of the unknown is what drives these types of plots.
In Silent Hill it was not for less, the city welcomes us with open arms with a setting quite similar to that of Stephen King, and at the same time it was a resource that the game developers took advantage of to not demand more from the console. With this they not only covered the deficiencies of the Playstation, but they were right to give that feeling of loneliness and fear of the unknown. Cheryl will appear from time to time in the thick fog and the player will be forced to go after her, but the fog… the fog is always there and strange sounds arise from it.
And as if this were not enough, the developers still wanted to generate more discomfort to the player through the use of the camera. By choosing some rather strange and disorienting angles, they achieve but more than what they had in mind for the mix they did with this game.
There are movies and games of this genre that over time lose that terror or at least that impression of the public. But there are also other works that keep their essence intact, such as Alien for example, which is and will continue to be one of the films most remembered for its psychological terror. Today, more than 20 years after this game, I can assure you that it maintains quite well what its creators wanted to convey in it.
Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack is excellent, but where the game especially excels is in the sound effects section. The fog (and the darkness when Harry wanders through areas where he cannot reach it) is the perfect excuse to transfer all the psychological load to the audio. Mason's visibility is always very low, which leads the player to be constantly aware of all the noises that occur around him.
To this must be added the most screwed-up invention of all those included in the game: the radio that Mason has on him and that warns him, with a sound of wonderful static, the proximity of some monster. A parallel can be established between this radio and the motion detector that Ripley carries to know the position of the xenomorphs in ‘Alien’, although the radio is much less appreciative.
Over time, Silent Hill ended up becoming a franchise with a fair amount of games, but I think none of them achieved what its first three installments did. Unfortunately I don't think it will return, but what it did was make it clear to us how a true horror video game is made. Silent Hill is terrifying, it gets under your skin and achieves everything that a game of its genre should do.