The Silent Hill series has proceeded to become one of the most inventive and influential works of art of all time, helping shape video games and horror as a genre. Even to those who have not been able to play the games, considering the more expensive market value of the original games, Silent Hill has made itself an unshakeable presence to anyone who has any room in their heart for video games.
Even early on as a fantastical horror, the games have utilized specific elements and techniques to ensure their notoriety and effect as horror games that also suggest the importance of lore, context, psychology, design, and other facets that have continued to frighten players and inspire works today.
10 The PT Clones
PT, directed by Hideo Kojima, was created as a demo for Silent Hills as it was released oh-so quietly and mysteriously on the PlayStation Store all the way back in 2014. Its release was sneaky and its gameplay even sneakier as it forced players to question everything about the game, what it meant, and how to play it to make any progress. The entire history of the game stands as an incredible event that caused players to connect to beat one of the scariest virtual experiences they would ever lead, which is why Silent Hills was heartbreakingly canceled. The demo inspired many indie games afterward to try and evoke even a little bit of the terror that it ensued.
9 The Possibilities of Alternate Endings
Konami and the Silent Hill team always took the liberty to give the player multiple endings based on certain choices they made in-game. These endings always ranged from "bad" to "good," often numbering around 3-6 different endings involving new cutscenes.
While this isn't necessarily a new mechanic amongst fellow games such as Indigo Prophecy, this continued to inspire horror and non-horror games to play with the idea of letting the player's actions have more weighty consequences. They also are notorious for their "joke" endings, usually involving aliens and a Shiba Inu.
8 Horrifying Sound Design
Silent Hill is unabashedly cinematic and inspired by cinematic works. Most notably, the games take a lot of inspiration from David Lynch and Twin Peaks. One of the elements that they take inspiration in is the use of sound design to insight horror and make the atmosphere eerier. The calls of oncoming monsters to strange sounds surrounding the playable character that go unexplained make the experience all the more immersive.
7 "Otherworld" Plot Device
Much like The Black Lodge in Twin Peaks, Silent Hill uses its duality to its advantage as it forces players to seek out more about the lore and try to dig up more details. The mystery behind the Otherworld also leaves players to see the monstrosities as coming from another realm, a device and mechanic that would continue to influence horror games and even film. The Medium is an example of playing with dual realms to stay in tune with the character's reality and ground the horror.
6 Complex Female Characters
While there's plenty of everyman characters and protagonists to be found in the games (and can be confused with each other), Silent Hill has an even more impressive range of female characters, both heroes and villains. Heather, the independent and loyal protagonist of Silent Hill 3, is one of the bravest characters to front the series and the most notable as her design and personality is unique in a way that feels more real to the viewer.
Alessa Gillespie is the core of Silent Hill, the reason it exists, and the most powerful character in the entire series seeing as how her powers lead to the opening of the Otherworld. Additionally, Lisa in PT is one of the most formidable, mysterious, and terrifying villains in a video game of all time.
5 Monster/Creature Designs
Some of what Silent Hill is most famous for are the faces of its horror: the monsters, the creatures, and the ghosts are all terrifying and would scare the living daylight out of anyone if they saw those things trying to come after them. Thanks to the inspired designs, the series has helped create and inspire horrors to come afterward. The presence of antagonists such as Pyramid Head, Abstract Daddy, Lisa, and the Nurses are still unavoidably beloved to this day. Pyramid Head is even featured in Dead By Daylight.
4 Use of Soundtrack
Akira Yamaoka's is some of the greatest and most notorious soundtracks in the vein of horror video games. His combination of alt-rock, dark ambient, and industrial genres to compose unique and memorable themes for the series has concluded with those themes being some of the most notorious and noticeable of all time. They're grand and are much of the reason why much of the game is so scary and atmospheric, other than the visuals. His music has helped influence the way video games use soundtrack today to support an emotional core.
3 Careful Usage of Jumpscares
Silent Hill actually isn't the hugest proprietor of the jumpscare, which leads people to believe that its horror is a little more accessible. While jump scares are utilized, they aren't the most important way to present their horror. Nonetheless, when they do happen, it makes them that much scarier as it is rare to really be jump scared in gameplay.
That being said, that mechanic has made video game devs realize that jumpscares aren't everything, or really, the only real way to serve scares. From there, if they're going to do a jumpscare, it has to be deserved. The Lisa jumpscare in PT and Pyramid Head jumpscares in Silent Hill 2 are some of the greatest and most deserved jumpscares of all time.
2 Importance of Atmosphere
If there's one thing that was different about Silent Hill right off the bat, it was the fog. Because the graphics back in the day were so early, developers added the fog to make the atmosphere more intimidating and scarier, leading to the games evolving more and more when creating a daunting environment. The camera angles also threw players off guard and gave the games a more cinematic edge, inspiring games after it to play more with angles and atmosphere to better immerse the player.
1 Pioneering Psychological Horror in Video Games
The main thing that set Silent Hill apart from most other games was its unique use of horror as a way to understand the psychology of its characters more deeply. Much how films use dream sequences and surrealism to look inside a character's psyche to see their goals, wants, and fears, Silent Hill used the horror of the monsters and environment to reflect the emotional core of the games. This strategy and mechanic led players and future devs to realize just how important design is in understanding the subtext, emotional connections, and implications of the games.
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