Contact me - marensdasein@gmail.com
I am a Silent Hill fanatic like absolutely bonkers about the franchise. I came to it late in life, with a sub-optimal first exposure: the movie. I knew of the franchise by reputation and knew that the movie wasn't well received, but I knew enough the movie would at least look and sound cool. As I didn't have any game consoles at the time and the few PC ports the franchise received, the movie was really the easiest access point. Even though the movie is largely despised it gripped me. I thought it was excellent in its class of mid budget horror; mostly due to the visual and auditory aesthetics lifted from the games. When I eventually got a PS2 in 2012, buying the Silent Hill games was a priority. I have most of them now having been lucky enough to pick them up before their price exploded to more than $200-$300 over the COVID retro game boom. I played 2 first went back to 1 and jumped to 3, gave 4 a good try but never actually finished it. Somewhere along the line I also got through Silent Hill Homecoming but lets be honest that barely counts as a Silent Hill game. Looks pretty cool in places though.
I bring all this up because my exposure to the franchise with the movie first as opposed to the common first exposure of the original Silent Hill 2 might be a factor in how differently I see the franchise from most fans. I recently watched a video by Tale Foundry on Nebula (I'll link the video here once its on YouTube) titled: Silent Hill's Identity Crisis. It echos a lot of what I hear from my fellow Silent Hill fans. Notably, that what makes a good Silent Hill game is best exemplified by storytelling and gameplay innovations of Silent Hills 2 & 4. Therefore the argument is that in trying to recapture the "magic" of original Silent Hill the weaker games since 4 have actually moved away from what made the games great. This is almost accurate. Tale Foundry cites the creation of the first game and the formation of Team Silent as a hot bed of innovation that progressed through the rest of the series with a small hitch in Silent Hill 3 where the team was forced to conform to studio expectations. The video implies a continuity of Team Silent throughout the first four games that is just not the case. Team Silent was just the name given to whomever happened to be working on Silent Hill. There was some continuity, but Akira Yamaoka is the only creative lead to have worked on all four. Of 10 key members listed by wikipedia half of them worked on more than 2 games but even then mostly in producer roles not as creative leads. This leads to Silent Hill not being as creatively cohesive as a lot of people have led themselves to believe. I really think Silent Hill's identity crisis has been a problem with the franchise from the second game onward.
Look at those first four games: you have the first game which while outstanding in execution I don't think is as innovative as Tale Foundry made it out to be. In terms of gameplay, it's pretty much stripped down Resident Evil with a larger, but shallower, play space, a more flexible camera, and simplified gameplay mechanics. Narratively, it's a Japanese take on Dean Koontz's Phantoms with a bit of Stephen King thrown in for good measure. Then Silent Hill 2 ignores most of the lore and becomes a character study of 3 unrelated lost souls seeking somthing in the town. Then in 3 the series tries to marry the psychological horror of SH2 with the supernatural horror of SH1. It has difficulty squaring that circle (well for some people anyway I think the game is pretty much perfect). Common complaints are that the psychological aspects are underdeveloped, and the lore is overly complicated. Silent Hill 4 has very much the same problem. The game is torn between trying to add to the franchises increasingly complicated lore and being a character study of it's antagonist. Despite the game's quite frankly genious gameplay innovations (the first time the franchise has even really attempted to break away from the gameplay formula of Silent Hill 1) it still struggles to really have it's own identity. The fact of the matter is I think too many Silent Hill fans look at Silent Hill 2 and say "this is what Silent Hill is." Despite Lore Foundry's cry for more innovation in the series I think they're falling into this trap too. They see Silent Hill 2 as the thematic and tonal blueprint that should iterated on for gameplay and narrative innovation, and that's just not supported by the majority of the franchise's successes.
Honestly, at risk of getting deeply cynical, Silent Hill is a brand. A brand that, like many brands, has gotten far too incestuous over its long lifespan. Fundamentally, Tale Foundry and I agree on the main point: that to survive the franchise needs to innovate or die. Where I take issue with the video is this idea that there is some core "Silent Hillness" that needs to be captured in this innovation. But really there hasn't been a core to the franchise right from the start; at least no more so than there is a "core" to Star Wars, or Star Trek, or Indiana Jones. The thematic and tonal focus that Silent Hill 2 pushed the franchise toward, that every game since has tried to echo, isn't what makes Silent Hill Silent Hill... unless you want to concede that Silent Hill 1 isn't really Silent Hill. That seems like a ludicrous proposition to me. It also precludes the original Silent Hill film from being really Silent Hill, and while its a huge departure in theme and narrative, most fans agree it at least feels like Silent Hill. There isn't a single magic bullet to making a good Silent Hill game. Some vibe that needs to be struck. A good Silent Hill game just needs to be a good game in the Silent Hill franchise.
Contact me - marensdasein@gmail.com