Konami was one of the promoters of the horror genre in video games along with sagas like Alone in the Dark or Resident Evil. We review its beginnings.
PlayStation, the first Sony console, was a system that housed several of the classics that have gone down in history. Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX came out first on that console, just like Tekken or Resident Evil, sagas that are still active today. Konami, then still very committed to video games, designed one of the most successful horror titles in history. This is Silent Hill, a survival horror that ended up becoming a saga and that has continued to receive new deliveries until the generation of PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Then, silence, the same that has been evident with so many other sagas, who hide behind the hill, waiting for their opportunity.
Kojima Productions, the studio directed by Hideo Kojima, teamed up with director Guillermo del Toro and actor Norman Reedus to transfer their terrifying vision to Silent Hills, a frustrated and canceled project that at least left us with the PT demo, now defunct from the PlayStation Store. , although replicated over and over again by fans. All three went on their way with Death Stranding, but that's another story. We go back to the past, the hands of the clock turn in the opposite direction and the calendar goes backwards. Days, weeks, months and years go by. It is winter or summer, depending on the territory, but we are in a specific year: 1999. Twenty-one years are many in the video game industry.
Towards a new conception of terror in video games
Silent Hill celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2019, oddly in the same period that Capcom released Resident Evil 2 Remake, the reimagined version of its classic game. Both titles originally came out a year apart, but deep down, their proposals were quite different. Team Silent led the reins of the saga until its dissolution, after publishing Silent Hill 4: The Room. Within the team, the thinking mind of that First Opera was Keiichiro Toyama, a Konami veteran who put his writing and designer talents at the service of a product as creepy as it was unusual. The director, who later became part of Sony Computer Entertainment, now Sony Interactive Entertainment, has signed video games such as Forbidden Siren or Gravity Rush. But again, back to the cursed town.
There is no doubt that Silent Hill redefined an entire genre, as its psychological focus, setting, and storyline richness paved the way for a deeper set of games within the horror genre. In addition, the studio decided to abandon series B that many other productions had fervently embraced, with the Capcom saga as the maximum representative of it. Resident Evil and Silent Hill maintained certain playable parallels, but both forked their ways in the way of understanding fear.
New version of Resident Evil: The original had pre-rendered graphics.
The game starring Chris Redfield, bet on the scares, while the title of Konami dressed the atmosphere with the music and sounds of Akira Yamaoka. This last aspect is not trivial, because the environments and the polygonal characters, still in that primary era of 3D, needed a plus to generate the feeling of fear. Resident Evil solved it, in part, by betting on pre-rendered scenarios, which drew a much more compact graphic aspect. Silent Hill has aged worse in that regard, but the sound has always pierced the fog of that town to shine its own light. The same happened with the sequels, of course in that case, the visual aspect evolved from the hand of PlayStation 2.
The British newspaper The Guardian aptly traces what separates the two franchises and agrees that beyond the similarities, the differences are profound. Thus, Resident Evil “presents a conventional heroic narrative, with the characters coded unambiguously, as the righteous saviors who must eradicate the evil represented by the zombies and restore the symbolic order. In Silent Hill, originally considered psychological terror, the roles are grayer. " There is more to compare its main characters. Chris Redfield is part of an armed corps, is a qualified professional who knows how to use weapons and is trained to cope in extreme situations. Instead, “Harry Mason is a normal guy, scared and disoriented by the accident: he gets tired after running short distances, and the mechanics of the weapons are rare and imprecise to symbolize that inexperience. This game deliberately takes power away from its protagonist, and through it, the player. ”
Harry Mason, protagonist of Silent Hill
Two different views of the protagonists
The director himself points out: “The main character is not a hero, nor is he an individual with strong convictions. He has and tries to be guided by his values, but he is a normal type. His moves, (…) like catching his breath after a run ”or stumbling“ when climbing the stairs are not too heroic, although after a while it will be easier for the player to project himself on the main character "
George A Romero and Lucio Fulci were the most important influences of Shinji Mikami when it came to building the world and the characters of Resident Evil. The Silent Team opted for a more David Lynch or Dario Argento approach. "Silent Hill is like Twin Peaks, a town of sad cheap restaurants, abandoned parks and sinister gothic hostels," continues Keith Stuart, the journalist for The Guardian. “As in the Argento movies, the game world is full of occult icons and powerful demons waiting to be summoned. At the same time, artist Takayoshi Sato drew influenced by the work of Francis Bacon, whose strange and disturbing portraits of people in a state of metamorphosis clearly inspired the set of amorphous monsters ”that the game presents.
Toyama answered this question in an interview with OPM, despite pointing out other references. “We take Stephen King references for the modern horror atmosphere. We wanted to reproduce the feeling of fear, but also make that feeling real for the player. ” During one of their stays in the United States, coinciding with E3, the team traveled for inspiration. “We spent extra time in Chicago to check some things and take certain pictures. Silent Hill is supposed to nestle in an aquatic area, so we looked for areas near the lakes with the aim of finding inspiration. ”
Keiichiro Toyama, on the left.
Inside Silent Hill's nightmare
A father and daughter travel the highways of deep North America. Suddenly, without warning, a ghostly image materializes in front of the car's moon, something that forces him to fly. It is expensive, since an accident occurs and the man falls into a state of unconsciousness. When he wakes up, he discovers that Cheryl has disappeared. Harry Mason, protagonist of Silent Hill, was desperate because his adoptive daughter, just 7 years old, had fallen into a state of constant sleep, always haunted by bad dreams. In his attempt to seek help, he ends up where he is, with his car stamped and anguish that does not stop. Welcome to Silent Hill, welcome to your worst nightmare.
Harry walks into a mist that may never come out, for it never dissipates. At first he does not suspect what awaits him, but it only takes a few minutes in that infernal place to realize that something is very wrong. The curse hangs over her head and the mystery of her daughter is unraveled with new puzzles. Silent Hill explores the despair of Harry, who feels as abandoned as the town he is in. Without answers, he searches for them on his own, solves puzzles, and escapes the creatures that lurk, sometimes from the shadows; others within a span of his head. The title also represents the fine line between sanity and madness. Is what he lives real or a mere hallucination? Everything is so strange that one of self-doubt pinches himself hoping to wake up somewhere else. At home with his daughter.
As for the beginnings of development, Toyama remembers it in the interview with PlayStation Magazine. “The original concept came from the corporate side of the company: we were told that we should try and make a horror game. At the time, I was asked to work on that project, but I didn't know much about horror titles or about the genre in general, so I started doing my homework. I analyzed the type of terror that people were looking for and enjoying and discovered what was the most popular topic. " He realized that in most cases, stories set in a real world or situation triumphed.
"It would be easy to outline the characterization of Silent Hill if we focus on the two main concepts that we focused on from the beginning," said the director in an old interview with PlayStation Magazine. “One is that the video game was going to have an atmosphere of the 'modern American novel' type, that is,“ a traditional city in the countryside, ”from which all the oddities and mysteries emanate. “Another aspect is the technical aspect. The use of light and dark effects to create a living atmosphere, using polygons. Darkness is the main element of the title, and we've created a whole new light source for it. ”
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories reimagined the classic.
The limitations of the time do not in any way erase the undoubted artistic qualities of the project and what the aesthetics contribute to the atmosphere of the game. But as we said, the sound of Akira Yamaoka is one of the main pillars on which the saga is sustained and has been supported during almost all its chapters. Only Silent Hill Downpour (Xbox 360 and PS3), to date the last of the saga, was left without the mastery of the Japanese musician. “The Sound of Silent Hill: All the information you hear has the power to determine your mind. I did not do this intentionally. The moment you first hear the sounds of the video game, your emotions sink deep into the world of Silent Hill. I suppose you can say that my style is 'Master of Puppets' ”, argued the creative in an interview with the medium Rocket Baby, now extinct.
Yamaoka's ability to create melodies and sounds is based on the everyday, on the manipulation of day-to-day sounds and the use of different tools that everyone has at home: bells, clocks, dripping taps, radios with interference, etc. “There are sound creation tools everywhere, wherever I am, my kitchen included as well. Also, in my case I don't immerse myself in the creative process as an artist who takes a deep breath and places his fingers on the piano. ”
Akira Yamaoka.
Screeching noises, pipe thumps, the radio, indicating the nearby presence of a monster, creatures you hear in the distance but don't see. Also a tango, sung in perfect Spanish and destined for the bad end. All this combined with a macabre aesthetic taste that takes away sanity. This is Silent Hill, a timeless video game that would do well to return, although it should do so with quality guarantees. The one from before, but in a game of today.
