So… Silent Hill 3’s subway level.
Before I get into why Silent Hill 3 represents the series’ plateauing, I’ll talk about the very worst it has to offer. As a series, Silent Hill is based upon the exhaustive exploration of areas dotted with numerous locked doors and inconvenient obstacles that often require the completion of macabre puzzles to bypass. These are then interjected with horrific monsters lurking around the shadows, prevailing madness dripping from the ceilings and the constant threat of an air siren piercing the mumbling silence, and the walls starting to crawl. Silent Hill locations bathe in insanity and misery, perverting normality to invade that little space behind your eyes and worm their way into your brain. It’s a kind of beautiful suffering; a more artistic and loving version of video game horror, miles apart from zombie dogs smashing through the window for the umpteenth stint. Half the time, you want that next door to open just to see what perversion might happen next. Half the time, you’re secretly glad it’s inoperable because you’re worried about what the locked room might contain.
Strip all of that away. The wonderful sorrow, the gore-stained walls, the horrific conundrums, the stalking atrocities – throw it all aside. What’s effectively left is a confusing series of interlinked rooms with no clear path leading to the exit. You’re left with a befuddling investigation into dark corners, dead ends and mounting disinterest. What’s effectively left is Silent Hill 3’s subway level.
The Subway Stage. Spoilers: nothing ever really happens.
It’s important to ultimately disclaim Silent Hill 3’s awfulness: it’s not a bad game by any stretch (the series decided to save that particular label for the very next title in the franchise) but it does suffer from some deep-set flaws that take problems inherent to Silent Hill as a whole, then magnify them. While the previous titles openly suffered from the same base issues, they successful disguised them behind excellent choices and design. They drove you on with macabre curiosity and powerful narrative. They presented questions and ensured you were inquisitive or appalled enough to track down disconcerting answers. Harry Mason woke up from a car crash, and his daughter was missing; she was out there in the swirling mists somewhere, and he had to find her. James Sunderland received a touching letter from his wife inviting him to visit her at “their special place”. This might have been a Hallmark moment if she hadn’t been dead for a handful of years. Silent Hill 3’s Heather Morris takes a nap in a diner, wakes up, and then there are monsters.
This might be a little unfair on Heather, who manages to be the series’ stand-out protagonist merely by being a teenage girl, and not a morose twenty-something male sulking around the depressing landscapes. As such, she injects an almost immature and rebellious streak to a setting otherwise entirely dominated by disgust and revulsion. It’s a refreshing change of pace but it brings in its own downfalls when placed in conjunction to the relative weakness of her overall quest. With Silent Hill 3 being a direct sequel to the original title, Heather has the town thrust upon her rather than slowly finding the resolve or reason to push onwards through her manifested nightmares. Harry was driven by the love of his daughter and the unspeakable grief and fear of losing her. James, by a nagging sense of guilt and the impossible hope that his dead wife might, against all reason, welcome him with open arms at the end of his journey. If Heather is eventually given purpose, it’s through simple rage. If she’s given a defining quest, it’s to conclude a tale already neatly concluded back in 1999.
Silent Hill 3, effectively, stumbles along where its predecessors strode, and then something happens that turns your stomach. Something like Heather entering a nondescript room, with little to distinguish it from the dozens of other rooms she’s explored save the abandoned bathtub in the corner, and the full-length mirror adorning the far wall. A quick search turns up nothing of interest, and she’ll make her preparations to leave, before the entire rooms starts to pulse. Sinewy veins slowly creep from the bathtub, snaking discreet trails across the floor, up the walls. Though they never seem to accelerate, never seem to hurry, they coat the room in no time at all, leaving a nervous Heather to gingerly try and step around them, audibly squashing any she’s unable to avoid. It’s a surreal and unsettling moment, but it doesn’t seem to do her any harm. Unless you look at her reflection.
There, Heather’s covered in grasping thin veins. They pulse along with her heartbeat. And the girl’s visibly rotting where she stands. If she stays, she dies.
Though the itinerant horrors clearly lack the menace and underlying symbolism of previous titles, you’re constantly reminded that this is, at heart, very much a Silent Hill title, from the way white noise is prevalent before every encounter, or in how the walls crawl when sirens blare, and reality drops away to reveal misery apparent. To the unsettling genius of Akira Yamaoka’s bizarre musical compositions, joined for the first time (but by no means the last) by haunting vocals from Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. To the ultimate showcase of a world that has no right to exist, and one besieged by obsolete prayers aplenty that it wouldn’t.
Then there’s the subway level, bereft of both imagination and terror. If Heather had a greater purpose to invest in, perhaps this would have been little more than a slight bump in her exploration. But, in all Silent Hill 3’s squandered malevolence, in its inability to supply a real sense of motivating resolve, it’s a chore. It’s the unfortunate hangnail that, perhaps, summarises the overall experience better than it has any right to. Through it, this becomes the first Silent Hill to be little more than ordinary.
And, god help them, it was all downhill from there.
Before I get into why Silent Hill 3 represents the series’ plateauing, I’ll talk about the very worst it has to offer. As a series, Silent Hill is based upon the exhaustive exploration of areas dotted with numerous locked doors and inconvenient obstacles that often require the completion of macabre puzzles to bypass. These are then interjected with horrific monsters lurking around the shadows, prevailing madness dripping from the ceilings and the constant threat of an air siren piercing the mumbling silence, and the walls starting to crawl. Silent Hill locations bathe in insanity and misery, perverting normality to invade that little space behind your eyes and worm their way into your brain. It’s a kind of beautiful suffering; a more artistic and loving version of video game horror, miles apart from zombie dogs smashing through the window for the umpteenth stint. Half the time, you want that next door to open just to see what perversion might happen next. Half the time, you’re secretly glad it’s inoperable because you’re worried about what the locked room might contain.
Strip all of that away. The wonderful sorrow, the gore-stained walls, the horrific conundrums, the stalking atrocities – throw it all aside. What’s effectively left is a confusing series of interlinked rooms with no clear path leading to the exit. You’re left with a befuddling investigation into dark corners, dead ends and mounting disinterest. What’s effectively left is Silent Hill 3’s subway level.
The Subway Stage. Spoilers: nothing ever really happens.
It’s important to ultimately disclaim Silent Hill 3’s awfulness: it’s not a bad game by any stretch (the series decided to save that particular label for the very next title in the franchise) but it does suffer from some deep-set flaws that take problems inherent to Silent Hill as a whole, then magnify them. While the previous titles openly suffered from the same base issues, they successful disguised them behind excellent choices and design. They drove you on with macabre curiosity and powerful narrative. They presented questions and ensured you were inquisitive or appalled enough to track down disconcerting answers. Harry Mason woke up from a car crash, and his daughter was missing; she was out there in the swirling mists somewhere, and he had to find her. James Sunderland received a touching letter from his wife inviting him to visit her at “their special place”. This might have been a Hallmark moment if she hadn’t been dead for a handful of years. Silent Hill 3’s Heather Morris takes a nap in a diner, wakes up, and then there are monsters.
This might be a little unfair on Heather, who manages to be the series’ stand-out protagonist merely by being a teenage girl, and not a morose twenty-something male sulking around the depressing landscapes. As such, she injects an almost immature and rebellious streak to a setting otherwise entirely dominated by disgust and revulsion. It’s a refreshing change of pace but it brings in its own downfalls when placed in conjunction to the relative weakness of her overall quest. With Silent Hill 3 being a direct sequel to the original title, Heather has the town thrust upon her rather than slowly finding the resolve or reason to push onwards through her manifested nightmares. Harry was driven by the love of his daughter and the unspeakable grief and fear of losing her. James, by a nagging sense of guilt and the impossible hope that his dead wife might, against all reason, welcome him with open arms at the end of his journey. If Heather is eventually given purpose, it’s through simple rage. If she’s given a defining quest, it’s to conclude a tale already neatly concluded back in 1999.
Silent Hill 3, effectively, stumbles along where its predecessors strode, and then something happens that turns your stomach. Something like Heather entering a nondescript room, with little to distinguish it from the dozens of other rooms she’s explored save the abandoned bathtub in the corner, and the full-length mirror adorning the far wall. A quick search turns up nothing of interest, and she’ll make her preparations to leave, before the entire rooms starts to pulse. Sinewy veins slowly creep from the bathtub, snaking discreet trails across the floor, up the walls. Though they never seem to accelerate, never seem to hurry, they coat the room in no time at all, leaving a nervous Heather to gingerly try and step around them, audibly squashing any she’s unable to avoid. It’s a surreal and unsettling moment, but it doesn’t seem to do her any harm. Unless you look at her reflection.
There, Heather’s covered in grasping thin veins. They pulse along with her heartbeat. And the girl’s visibly rotting where she stands. If she stays, she dies.
Though the itinerant horrors clearly lack the menace and underlying symbolism of previous titles, you’re constantly reminded that this is, at heart, very much a Silent Hill title, from the way white noise is prevalent before every encounter, or in how the walls crawl when sirens blare, and reality drops away to reveal misery apparent. To the unsettling genius of Akira Yamaoka’s bizarre musical compositions, joined for the first time (but by no means the last) by haunting vocals from Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. To the ultimate showcase of a world that has no right to exist, and one besieged by obsolete prayers aplenty that it wouldn’t.
Then there’s the subway level, bereft of both imagination and terror. If Heather had a greater purpose to invest in, perhaps this would have been little more than a slight bump in her exploration. But, in all Silent Hill 3’s squandered malevolence, in its inability to supply a real sense of motivating resolve, it’s a chore. It’s the unfortunate hangnail that, perhaps, summarises the overall experience better than it has any right to. Through it, this becomes the first Silent Hill to be little more than ordinary.
And, god help them, it was all downhill from there.
