Silent Hill
North American box art
Developer(s)	Konami Team Silent
Publisher(s)	Konami
Designer(s)	Keiichiro Toyama
Composer(s)	Akira Yamaoka
Series	Silent Hill
Platform(s)	PlayStation
Release date(s)	NA January 31, 1999 JPN March 4, 1999 EUR August 1, 1999
Genre(s)	Survival horror Psychological horror
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ELSPA: 15+ ESRB: M (Mature) SELL: 16+ USK: 18+
Media	CD-ROM
Input methods	Gamepad

Silent Hill is a survival horror video game, the first in the eponymous series. It was released exclusively on the Sony PlayStation, in North America on January 31, 1999, Japan on March 4, 1999, and in Europe on August 1, 1999. The game opens with protagonist Harry Mason taking his daughter, Cheryl, to the resort town of Silent Hill for a vacation. On the journey to the town, Harry crashes his car avoiding a figure on the road, and wakes to find his daughter missing, and the town deserted and enveloped in fog. The game then follows Harry's journey through the town and his attempts to find and rescue his daughter, as well as his uncovering of the many secrets the town holds.

The first game in the series, it received a strong critical reception and went on to generate multiple sequels, including the third entry in the series, which was a direct sequel to the events of this title, as well as a prequel title. Strong sales saw the game being included in the Greatest Hits and Platinum range of budget titles. A film adaptation, whose storyline was based heavily on this game, as well as incorporating elements from many other games in the series, was released theatrically on April 21, 2006.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to safely guide the player character, Harry Mason, through the dilapidated town of Silent Hill. A major threat to Harry's survival are the hostile creatures wandering along the streets and inside buildings. Another problem is poor visibility; Harry will almost always be surrounded by thick fog or darkness. He locates a pocket-size flashlight early in the game, but the light beam only illuminates for a few feet.¹ For this reason, sound plays a large role in Silent Hill's gameplay, as the player will often be alerted to the noises enemies make, rather than the actual sight of them.¹ Harry keeps a radio with him after picking it up in the 5to2 cafe (a staple of the series) which alerts him to the presence of creatures by emitting static, allowing him to detect hostiles before they can ambush him. The third obstacle to Harry's success is his own fragility; being an ordinary man, he cannot sustain many blows from enemies, and will gasp for breath when he has sprinted for a large distance.¹

Harry takes aim at an unseen monster

A map of "Old Silent Hill", the first area visited in the game

Silent Hill is typically shown from a third-person perspective. In pre-scripted areas, the camera occasionally switches to other angles for dramatic or disorienting effect. Because Silent Hill does not feature a heads-up display, the player's current status is determined by a portrait of Harry in the pause screen. If Harry's picture is framed in green, his health is at maximum. If the image is red, then Harry is wounded and will die if he suffers further damage.

In order to navigate through a given area, Harry needs to locate a map, which is collected like any other item. Once found, the player can switch to the map screen at any time. The map interface is stylistically similar to a tourist map. Whenever Harry encounters a point of interest, he will automatically highlight it on the map with a red pen. Maps can be read while outdoors only if Harry has the flashlight turned "On". Otherwise, he will be unable to cue up the map in any place with an absence of light (as is the case in most areas).

Navigating through Silent Hill frequently requires finding keys or solving riddles to progress. The player regularly faces bosses in each area. Harry defends himself with a number of weapons, including a steel pipe, an axe, a pistol, a sawed-off shotgun, and a hunting rifle.

Plot

Many of Silent Hill's environments are enveloped in fog or total darkness

See also: List of Silent Hill characters and List of Silent Hill monsters

The game's opening cinematic depicts Harry Mason and his daughter, Cheryl, driving at night to the resort town of Silent Hill for a vacation. A police officer on a motorbike drives past his jeep, but moments later, Harry spots the same motorbike lying unattended by the side of the road. Not long after, the jeep crashes when Harry swerves to avoid hitting a girl, who seems to have been standing in the road. Regaining consciousness and discovering Cheryl is missing, he sets off to find her in the foggy streets of Silent Hill;² following what appears to be Cheryl in the distance,³ he finds himself in an alleyway that transforms at the sound of an air raid siren into a hellish version of the alleyway, covered in blood, rust, and with a body tied to the metal railings. After being ambushed and seemingly overcome by pale, child-like monsters, he awakens in a cafe,⁴ with the world returned to its foggy state, and meets Cybil Bennett, the police officer whose motorbike they passed earlier.⁵

Cybil leaves to find help, but not before giving Harry a pistol;⁶ in the cafe, he finds items including a radio that begins emitting static whenever monsters are nearby; indeed, his first encounter comes after hearing the static for the first time, and after downing the flying creature that attacks soon after, he decides to take it with him.⁷ Going back to the alley he visited earlier, which this time remains in its normal state, he finds a note from Cheryl's sketchbook, which suggests she is at the school.⁸ On his way there, he finds roads blocked off or seemingly dropped off into chasms, whilst day changes to night suddenly, and snow begins to fall out of season.⁹¹⁰

At the school, Harry ventures through monster-ridden classrooms, and begins to solve puzzles, culminating in finding a passageway behind a clock-tower; as he walks through it, the air-raid siren sounds again, and he finds himself once more in a nightmare version of the same school he has ventured through.¹¹ Despite hearing Cheryl's cries on a telephone, he fails to find her, and his search culminates in a battle against a lizard-like monster in the distorted basement; defeating it, he catches a glimpse of the girl he nearly crashed into in his jeep before the world returns to normal.¹² Hearing a church bell, he follows the sound to the Balkan church, where he meets Dahlia Gillespie, who gives cryptic warnings about what is to come before exiting, leaving an artifact, the Flauros, for him, and telling him to visit the hospital.¹³

Upon arriving at the hospital, Harry hears gunshots and meets another survivor inside an examination room; the gun-wielding man is Michael Kaufmann, a doctor who works at the hospital, and is just as bewildered as Harry about their circumstances.¹⁰ With Kaufmann leaving, Harry takes to searching the hospital and, having found several floors locked out, returns to the elevator to find a mysterious new button indicating a fourth floor. On this floor, the siren sounds once more, and Harry finds himself in the alternate hospital, as in the school before. Continuing his search in the dark and nightmarish world, Harry finds Lisa Garland, a nurse who appears to be just as lost as he is.¹⁴ Fortunately, she knows a great deal about the history of the town, as well as Dahlia Gillespie. However, before he can get any tangible answers, Harry is transported back to the normal hospital and is confronted by Dahlia again, who tells him that darkness is devouring the town, and that the symbol he has seen, the "mark of Samael", must not be completed.¹⁵

Travelling to an antiques store, he meets Cybil, who has no knowledge of the alternate reality,¹⁶ but who claims to have seen a girl walking on thin air towards the lake.¹⁷ Noticing marks on the floor next to a large cabinet, Harry pushes it aside to find a corridor behind it and, going in alone, sees an altar with candles which suddenly light up in his presence.¹⁸ Cybil follows him after he does not respond to her calls, but he is not there. He awakens to find himself back in the nightmare hospital with Lisa by his side, who claims he must have had a nightmare; she imparts information about how to get to the lake, but she appears scared and disoriented, and rather than travel with Harry, remarks that she feels she's "not supposed to leave".¹⁹ Making it through the infested sewers, Harry reaches the resort area, where the player may optionally save Dr Kaufmann, and ultimately learn more about his connection to the local cult.

On his way to the lake, the Otherworld nightmare takes over the town completely. Harry and Cybil regroup inside a boat at the docks, where Dalia informs him that mark of Samael will seal the town in the abyss once it is completed. Harry heads to the lighthouse and Cybil to the amusement park, hoping to stop the completion of the Mark. Cybil is attacked by an unseen assailant, and Harry arrives at the top of the inside of the lighthouse, the floor of which is covered in the Mark, just in time to see the young girl departing. Heading to the amusement park himself, Harry fights a now possessed Cybil, and if the player has obtained Aglaophotis from the hospital, Cybil may be saved; if not, Harry is forced to kill her. Once Cybil has either been saved or killed, the young girl shows up again, presumably to complete the Mark. However, Harry confronts her and unknowingly uses the Flauros to disable the girl's powers.

Just as the girl's powers are broken, Dahlia appears, and reveals that she has masterminded Harry's entire quest, as only he would have been able to get close to the girl, who is in fact Alessa Gillespie, Dahlia's daughter. With Alessa's powers out of control, Dahlia quickly uses her own powers to escape and capture Alessa. Harry wakes in a distorted version of the hospital, where different parts of town now interconnect; this area is known simply as "Nowhere". Finding Lisa, she explains that, after having visited the basement, she has come to realise she too is actually a monster, and begins to transform when blood runs down her face; Harry exits quickly enough to escape her grasp, and re-entering the room, finds her gone. Her diary, which is found on the floor of the same room, explains that she was the nurse that attended to Alessa.

In the Nowhere version of Dahlia's home, Harry finds Dahlia, Alessa, Cybil and Kaufmann, as well as a figure wrapped in bandages in a wheelchair. If the player's actions mean Cybil is still alive, she confronts Dahlia, who reveals that the crest Alessa was using throughout the town was not the Mark of Samael, but the Seal of Metatron, which she was using to stop the cult's god from being born. Despite Cybil's best attempt, she is no match for Dahlia, and she is quickly knocked unconscious by Dahlia's powers. Harry steps in to fight, demanding that Dahlia return Cheryl to him. She reveals that Harry has seen Cheryl throughout his entire adventure; that the girl sitting on the floor in front of him is Cheryl. Cheryl was really a part of Alessa's soul, and upon returning to Silent Hill, she slowly assumed Alessa's 14-year-old form, without the burns. The real Alessa is the person wrapped in bandages. In order to summon her god to Earth, Dahlia sacrificed her daughter to fire, and trapped her in a nightmare to nurture the demon, whilst Lisa tended to her. However, a part of Alessa's soul escaped and became Cheryl.

Now that the two parts of the soul are together, they join to become the "Incubator", the mother of god. Then, depending on whether or not Kaufmann obtained Aglaophotis, he will appear and use it to exorcise the Incubator. If he does, Dahlia's god will be born prematurely, and Harry will be forced to fight him. If not, he will have to fight Incubator. Either way, the creature quickly kills Dahlia before turning its attention to Harry.

Four normal endings are available, depending on whether Harry saves Kaufmann and Cybil. The Bad ending is received if neither Kaufmann nor Cybil are saved; Alessa births the god and appears as a beautiful young woman in white robes, who kills Dahlia before turning on Harry. After Harry kills her, Cheryl's voice emanates from the body, and thanks Harry for freeing her and saying goodbye. He falls to his knees, and the game cuts to Harry's corpse lying dead in his crashed jeep. The Bad+ ending is similar to the Bad ending, but as Harry has saved Cybil, she runs towards him to convince him to flee the balls of fire that now rain down from above as the Otherworld collapses. In a state of shock, Harry remains frozen, and they are both consumed. In the Good ending, Harry saves Kaufmann but kills Cybil, and Kaufmann appears in the ending to throw aglaophotis at Alessa, exorcising the god from her body. It now appears as a giant, winged demon, which kills Dahlia before turning on Harry. Having destroyed this form, Alessa transfers her soul into a new baby, giving it to Harry and opening a portal through which he travels to escape. Kaufmann tries to follow, but Lisa appears and drags him down into the depths below. The Good+ ending is similar, but as Harry has saved Cybil, both escape with the new baby.

The final UFO ending is an Easter egg in which Harry finds a channelling stone which can be used at certain points in the game. If done correctly, this summons a fleet of UFOs; the aliens stun Harry and drag him onto one of their UFOs and fly away. The UFO ending has been carried over to several of the game's entries, including Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Homecoming.

Development

The "Grey Child" monster went through between two (NTSC) and three (PAL) design changes before it was finally approved by censors. The North American (NTSC) edition of the game featured "Child #2 ' " (read “Child number two prime”), not "Child #3" as stated in the following link.²⁰ Originally a faceless, humanoid monster which resembled a nude child, it was deemed too graphic for audiences, particularly in a game which forces the player to kill them. In the PAL release of Silent Hill, the Grey Children do not appear at all, instead being replaced by "Mumblers".

Silent Hill Play Novel

In 2001, a radically altered version of Silent Hill was released for the Game Boy Advance. Entitled Silent Hill Play Novel, this version was a choose your own adventure styled digital graphic novel. The game contained a retelling of the original game's story through text based gameplay, with the player occasionally being confronted with questions concerning what direction to take their character as well as the puzzles which were a major part of the original game's gameplay. After completing the game once the player also has the option of playing as Cybil in a second scenario, with a third made available for download once the second scenario has been completed.²¹ An unofficial English translation of a portion of the game exists, but it is only a brief demo of the game and the project seems stagnant.²²

When the game was exhibited, western critics were unimpressed by the game, and criticized the lack of any soundtrack as severely detracting to the "horror" factor of the game.²¹²³ It was never released outside Japan.²⁴

Influences and references

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Silent Hill alludes to a wide amount of real world items. Team Silent were avid film, literature, music and art fans. As well as referencing their favorites they also used them unsparingly in creating the plot and atmosphere of the game; which they wanted to be distinctly western.

• The work of filmmakers David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Dario Argento, Roman Polanski, Alfred Hitchcock and Alejandro Jodorowsky as well as films such as The Exorcist III, The Wizard of Oz and Village of the Damned, were all influential in different increments.²⁵

• In character names, the surname of Lisa Garland is taken from the actress Judy Garland, Cheryl Mason's first name is based on Twin Peaks’s actress Sheryl Lee, Michael Kaufmann is a combination of Troma Studios producers' Lloyd Kaufmann and Michael Herz and both Alessa (originally named Asia) and Dahlia (originally named Daria) are names derived from relatives (daughter and former wife respectively) of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento. ²⁶

• On the side of a garage door near the gas station is painted in blood, Near the gas station is a garage door with the word "REDRUM" painted on it in reference to The Shining.²⁷

• Every street in the town is named after a writer of horror, science fiction or thriller fiction.²⁸ In the residential area of Old Silent Hill the streets take their names from Jack Finney, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Ira Levin, Richard Bachman and James Ellroy. In the business district of Central Silent Hill: Carl Sagan, Dean R. Koontz, Michael Crichton, Colin Wilson and Dan Simmons. And in the resort area of South Park and Lake Side John Sandford and Kit Craig are referenced.

• Some of the creatures and puzzles were named or designed with the books Alessa was fond of in mind, such as The Lost World²⁹ and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.³⁰

• The names originally intended for the characters of Harry and Cheryl were "Humbert" and "Dolores," the narrator and title character of Lolita. The American staff altered the names, feeling that what this suggested was inappropriate.³¹

• In manga, the works of Daijiro Morohoshi and Junji Ito have been influences.³²

• Other admitted influences include the work of Robert R. McCammon, Kōbō Abe, Masako Bando and Kunio Yanagita.³³

Reception

Silent Hill received a strong critical reception, gaining an 86 out of 100 and 84% aggregate at ratings sites Metacritic and Game Rankings, respectively.³⁹⁴⁰ Reviewers for Gamespot and IGN were impressed by the game's suspenseful, atmospheric approach to horror in contrast to the established action-based "making you jump" approach credited to the Resident Evil games, rating the game at 8.2 and 9 out of 10 respectively.¹³⁶ Edge Magazine had a similarly favorable reception for the game at 8 out of 10.^{citation needed}

Sales of the game were apparently strong enough to gain Silent Hill a place in the American PlayStation Greatest Hits budget releases.⁴¹ The sales threshold for inclusion in this label was originally 150,000 units sold, but by 2002 this had been increased to 250,000.⁴²⁴³

A 2005 article by GameSpy listing the best PlayStation games listed Silent Hill as the 15th best game produced for the console.⁴⁴ A similar list by IGN in 2000 listed it as the 14th best PlayStation game.⁴⁵

Gametrailers.com ranked it as No. 1 in their top 10 scariest games of all time countdown.

Music

Cover for Silent Hill Original Soundtracks

The original soundtrack for Silent Hill, composed by Akira Yamaoka, was released in Japan on March 5, 1999 and its catalogue number is KICA-7950. Track 41, "Esperándote", was composed by Rika Muranaka.

References

External links

• Official Silent Hill USA Forum
• Silent Hill at GameSpot
• Silent Hill OST at MusicBrainz
• Silent Hill at MusicBrainz
• Silent Hill at MobyGames
• Translated Memories
• Silent Hill at GameFAQs
• Silent Hill: Play Novel game images
• Official site Masahiro Ito design monster of Silent Hill