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A long-running series of PlayStation survival horror games. Pretty much a rival to the [[Resident Evil]] series, Silent Hill has a reputation for focusing on creepy backgrounds, "fearful mystery" (you never know too much about what the FUCK is going on, hence, scares, since you can't put anything into proper context) and psychological introspection, as opposed to RE's focus on creepy monsters, gore and jump scares. Silent Hill also differs from Resident Evil in that it focuses heavily on evasion rather than combat. Indeed, one game even makes fighting too much a cause for you to get the ''bad ending''. Combat is still mandatory at some points, but routinely difficult and clumsy, making running a much better option.

Yeah, this is vidya stuff, but this series is ''da shit'' if you want to run a horror campaign. [[D20 Modern]], [[Dungeons & Dragons]], [[World of Darkness]]... hell, even [[Ravenloft]] and [[Call of Cthulhu]] DMs could pick up a few interesting tips for designing creepy locales, stories, mood setting motifs... Even the creatures from this game could be lifted and re-used to great effect.

Interesting to note: [http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2014/03/04/Silent-Hill-is-about-cult.aspx the original quartet of games rely heavily on a theme of the occult and of cultic horror]. The first and third games directly involve the player being forced to confront a cult that is directly involved with - if not responsible for - the madness plaguing Silent Hill, and in particular its attempts to force the birth of its dark messiah into the world. The second and fourth instead having you taking the role of a character who has unwittingly been caught up in the cult's influence; James in ''SH2'' is attacked by monsters because of what the cult did to Silent Hill back in the first game, and in one ending directly joins the cult to achieve his goal, whilst Henry in ''SH4: The Room'' has the misfortune of moving into the room of a crazed, undead cultist and being ensnared in his ritual magic. Most of the games after the original quartet drop the machinations of "The Order" and just present Silent Hill as a generic "bad place", which doesn't necessarily do it any favors.

==General Themes/Lore==
{{Stub}}
Though each game deals with fairly different characters and reasons for them being there, the series overall has a general thesis that plays out no matter the actual story and events of each game. There's also a general explanation for the story found in the documents in each game taken against each other which provides more detail than just surreal psychological things happening because it enables the story to happen. 

Most games deal with victimization and victimhood, with most characters being either a victim or victimizer (sometimes both, and not always obvious) who is dealing with that trauma. Characters with power or privilege hearing those who were silenced or buried/forgotten by society also factors in quite often. Characters are usually suffering in silence in the outside world and lash out once they are in the town, their resentment and proclivity to violence factoring into what Silent Hill shapes for them. 

The mythology for the town itself starts with the Native American tribes who knew the place as a spiritual one where visions appeared in the mist that came off Toluca lake. Along with the broader plot of one game, secondary plots in several others, and implications of some documents its implied the lake is the source of the town magic. With European colonization came the unnamed Cult, which began in the old world and is generally shown bearing symbols of Catholicism but entirely divorced from Abrahamic beliefs. 

According to the Cult history begins with humans already existing in a timeless place with violence but no death. A man and woman created a female God, portrayed with red hair and clothing, by offering a reed and serpent to the sun. This god created time as well as a day/night cycle and death. She then created other gods and angels to help her create a "paradise" but exhausted herself and died before she could begin. According to the Cult they follow her directions which will help humanity resurrect her to bring about the apocalypse and bring about the paradise. Along with the myth are various and largely unknown sects, a system of judgement and salvation which seems at odds with what the origin myth states and is fittingly largely only paid lip service to by its leaders. 

Various events from vanishing ships to Civil War prisons with high mortality rate begin stacking mass human death and suffering into the town history. 

Whether or not there is actual truth to the religion is irrelevant. According to documents in the games the Cult purchased artifacts from around the world, with one in particular being the Flauros. The Flauros is a 4-sided object connected to demons, communing with the supernatural, and psychic powers, though in real life Flauros is the name of a demon from multiple books around the subject of demonology including 'Ars Goetia' who can allegedly be summoned to provide any knowledge (including subjects like the plans of the divine and anything that has or will happen) though additional steps and spellwork is needed to force him to tell the truth, and even harm other demons plus is associated with things such as fire and mirrors. In general most of the Cult activities and rituals follow these themes.

At some point the Cult began manufacturing a drug called PTV made from a flower called White Claudia that grows only along the banks of Toluca Lake which they used to control others and generally fund themselves. Notably substances made from White Claudia are shown to be holy and combat the effects of the "magic" of the town purging possession, contamination, and monstrous creatures from the bodies of others. They also founded an orphanage while taking over an abandoned water treatment facility, the former to churn out new Order members and the latter as a means of imprisoning and disposing of any difficult children (it should be noted the water prison was only seen as a warped memory of a child abused there and the real version of it is unknown). 

By the time of the first game the Cult has become proficient summoning real demons, have a large population of people controlled either by belief or addiction, have substantial enough funds for embezzlement to occur, have inspired a second cult that has to conduct human sacrifice to protect themselves from them, and have at least two plans in place to bring their god (or at least demons brainwashed into thinking it is their god) into the world. The town itself has spiritual occurrences, but does not yet have its noteworthy other dimensional sides which originate from the events of Origins and Silent Hill 1. 

==Monsters==
Unlike [[Resident Evil]] or [[Parasite Eve]], Silent Hill is a psychological horror series rooted in occultism. As a result, each game has its own unique array of creepy-crawlies to evade and battle, though there are a few that have made such an impact that subsequent games have tried to include them.

In general, monsters in Silent Hill are manifestations of the psyche, born from the mind of a character currently lost in the fog-shrouded town. This may or may not be the protagonist.

Because of its themes, Silent Hill's monsters are brimming with symbolism, and it's very ambiguous where they come from or even how "real" they are. It's implied perspectives of monsters can shift depending on who is looking at them; in SH2, there's a character who literally cannot see the monsters and so will leave James to their mercy (further un-endearing an already insufferable brat to most players). In another title, a character directly says to the protagonist "Monsters? They look like monsters to you?" This has led to the theory that your characters may actually be killing ordinary people and animals whilst mistaking them for creatures.

==Silent Hill 1==
Harry Mason, a widowed author, is at his wits' end. His adopted daughter, Cheryl, has been having recurring nightmares about a town named Silent Hill. Driven to desperation, he finally decides to take her there and see if they can find the cause behind her nightmares. A mysterious figure causes his car to crash, and when he regains consciousness, his little girl is missing. Determined to find her, he sets off to explore the town, wandering through eerie, fog-shrouded streets and evading twisted monsters. All the while, he becomes more and more involved with a mysterious cult that lurks behind everything...

This is generally remembered as a bit more of a fun romp than something inspirational like most first games are in popular series, for a few reasons: many of the series' staple tropes and monsters were not established yet, it's more or less a self contained story if left on its own, and most importantly because 2 blew it clean out of the water. The biggest thing was that everything could be explained by bad cult magic and the town was more a setting for the evil that went down as opposed to the mythical, malignant, thinking force seen in later games. This isn't to say that it was a bad game; in fact, it's quite a good game, but most fans started with its sequel.

The monsters in this game are all born from the mind of Alessa Gillespie, and relate to her life and opinions in some way, shape or form.

'''Air Screamers''' are distorted half-human pterodactyls, which apparently were created from Alessa's fascination with an illustration in a copy of one of her favorite books: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World". Their Other World counterpart, the '''Night Flutters''', can be distinguished by their larger size, more humanoid head, and the writhing tangle of worms that has overgrown/replaced their head. It's unclear what they represent, but they have been linked by fans to Alessa's loathing of worms, to symbolism of change and deterioration, or even to Harry's own fear that he may be losing his mind as a result of wandering in Silent Hill.

The '''Bloodsucker''' is an invincible puzzle-boss that resembles a three-headed giant leech the size of a man, which must be evaded or distracted. Whilst obviously based on Alessa's revulsion for slimy, squirmy, wriggly things, it could also be a symbolic representation of Dahlia's selfish obsession with making Alessa "give birth to God", or a metaphor for how both Harry and Alessa have been pulled into the darkness of Silent Hill against their wishes.

'''Creepers''' are foot-long carnivorous and highly aggressive insects resembling distorted cockroaches, born from Alessa's phobia of bugs.

'''Grey Children''', which resemble disfigured, sepulchral children wielding knives, which are widely assumed to represent Alessa's negative view of the kids from her school, who constantly tormented and mocked her. They are only found in the North American (NTSC) version of the game, which means the NA players got the uncensored version for once!

'''Mumblers''' a hunched, distorted figures vaguely resembling teddy bears made of rotten meat with knives taped to their forearms, are drawn from illustrations of [[imp]]s and [[goblin]]s in the books Alessa read growing up. Whilst present in both the NTSC and PAL versions of the game, European and Japanese gamers got plenty sick of them, as they took over the roles of the Grey Children in the censored cut.

'''Stalkers''' and '''Larval Stalkers''' resemble translucent, near-invisible versions of the Grey Children. Larvel Stalkers are harmless, and believed to represent  Alessa's feelings of being invisible from her outcast status and neglect. Stalkers are capable of killing Harry, and may symbolize the rage born from the feelings of loss and powerlessness that created their Larval counterparts.

'''Groaners''' are the most common enemy in the Fog World, and resemble decaying, hairless, starving greyhounds. They were born from Alessa's fear of dogs and possibly her own self-loathing of her burned body. In the Other World, they are replaced by '''Wormheads''', which are larger, bulkier, and have twisted mats of worms for their heads. As with the Night Flutters, nobody's quite sure what the worms are supposed to symbolize.

'''Hanged Scratchers''' are crawling but quick-moving creatures found in the sewers of Silent Hill, with features that meld elements of human, reptile and insect. They may symbolize Alessa's fear of bugs, or her love of dragons in fairytales, or even by a symbolic representation of the Order's propensity for kidnapping young girls.

The '''Parasite''' is a body-controlling organism found in Silent Hill's hospital. Whilst never fought directly, it is fought controlling otherworldly echoes of hospital staff - the '''Puppet Nurses''' and '''Puppet Doctors'''. It's widely believed that this "family" of monsters was born out of Alessa's feelings of being parasitized by the God growing in her womb, and/or her resentment at the Order and the medical staff it forced to keep her alive and in pain.

'''Rompers''' are powerful, fast-moving humanoid beasts resembling demonic apes, accepted as emobdying Alessa's hatred and resentment of the adults who controlled her life.

'''Split Head''' is the first of the game's bosses; a giant, mutated lizard whose head splits apart vertically to form an enormous mouth. This creature was created from Alessa's fascination with a fairytale she read.

'''Twinfeeler''' is a giant, malformed moth caterpillar that subsequently transforms into a giant mutant moth called the '''Floatstinger'''. Both are fought separately as bosses, and obviously connect to Alessa's fear of bugs, though each has deeper symbolic meaning than that.

'''The Incubator''' and '''The Incubus''' are the two potential final bosses of the game, depending on if the player has achieved the good or bad ending. The Incubator resembles a beatific woman in glowing white robes who hurls lightning. The Incubus resembles a half-rotted winged humanoid goat. Both are connected to Alessa's view on God, and specifically the God of the Order.

==Silent Hill 2==
James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife Mary, begging him to come to Silent Hill, where they had vacationed. Naturally, James immediately follows to investigate what's happening and how he got such a letter. After all, Mary has been ''dead for three years''...

Regarded as the best entry in the series by far, this is the game that single-handedly made Silent Hill a well known and respected survival horror franchise. It invented many of the staples in the series such as enemies being metaphoric representations of personal fears and hangups, a protagonist who must face the harsh truth of their actions, and Silent Hill being a ''genius loci'', an almost living, breathing creature who sucks in people from the outside in order to confront them about the crimes they committed. While many claim it's overrated, it generally comes down to how deeply you look into the game. If you just burn through it you'll find it a poorly designed, spooky haunted house of a game with some memetically bad voice acting. If you like to look into the symbolism of the world and meanings behind actions and designs, then this game will blow your mind.

In fact, there are fans who argue that this psychological horror, whilst done masterfully, has led directly to the franchise's downfall; post-SH4 games have tried to clumsily ape the symbolism and psychological horror of Silent Hill 2, but failed to provide any hint as to why this is happening. This straying from the series' roots, combined with standard flaws like bad dubs, clunky controls and nonsensical plots, have caused the infamous sequel rot. 

As of October 2022, Konami has officially announced a remake of Silent Hill 2 which looks slick as hell. It's being developed by Bloober Team, who are famous for horror walking simulators like Layers of Fear and Observer, which has caused a [[Skub|calm and reasoned debate]] in the fanbase over whether they're the right people for the job. Hilariously enough, during the reveal livestream the presenters mentioned that the company's been discussing this remake for the past three years, which suggests that the Konami execs looked up from their mounds of coke and pachinko machines long enough to notice the boatload of cash Capcom made off the Resident Evil 2 remake and decided they wanted in on that action. 

==Silent Hill 3==
Heather Mason thought that she was done with Silent Hill and the mad cult that lurks within. But when her dad, Harry Mason, is spirited away, she cannot leave him in their clutches and she returns to confront the darkness within the fog-shrouded town.

More of a love letter to the first game while keeping aspects of the second, it's generally accepted as the second best. If you liked the second or the first you'll like this. If you liked both you'll love this.

==Silent Hill 4: The Room==
Henry Townshend thought that Room 302 of the South Ashfield Heights apartment complex was a nice enough place to live. Until the day he woke up and the door was chained shut, trapping him inside the apartment, unable to make contact with the outside world in any way, shape or form. And then a hole in the wall opened up, leading him to twisted, nightmarish versions of places throughout his hometown of Silent Hill. See, turns out Henry's room used to belong to Walter Sullivan, a serial killing lunatic occultist with a mother complex the size of an apartment building and a ''really'' bad case of anthropomorphizing. And he wants his room - or, rather, his '''mother''' back...

This is the black sheep of the family. A few find it quirky and neat but most despise the game, in no small part thanks to the game symbolizing a turning point for the franchise suddenly making good Silent Hill games a rarity. Despite rumors that the game wasn't originally meant to be a Silent Hill title, it was [http://www.silenthillmemories.net/creators/interviews/2004.08.31_tsuboyama_yamaoka_boomtown_en.htm confirmed] that the game was always intended to be a Silent Hill game, at least as a spinoff.

The main point of contention is that it introduced the idea of the "evil" from Silent Hill leaking into other cities. People are split on this concept. It IS more terrifying to think that what happens in Silent Hill could suddenly happen anywhere or everywhere, but your view might change depending on how you see the town. If you see the mind behind the town as some Cthulhu-style monster who loves seeing people suffer while giving an evil laugh then you probably like the idea. If you think it's some neutral force that brings people in to help them get over their problems and move on, even if it puts their lives in danger, then you would find the "evil" spreading to be out of character. It differs from person to person.

For what it's worth, it does actually make consistent internal sense with lore established in the first and third game that "Silent Hill's" monsters and otherworldly nature are significantly affected by the rituals of the Order, which Walter Sullivan belonged to before he got caught as a serial killer and danced the hemp fandango.

==Silent Hill Origins==
Seven years before the events of the first game, a wandering vagrant named Travis Grady saves a badly burned girl from a burning house, only to pass out and wake up in a twisted, nightmarish city called Silent Hill.

Generally seen as a good, quirky side story and talked about rather positively. Detractors will mention that it's pretty forgettable, especially the protagonist despite him appearing in later games.

==Silent Hill Homecoming==
Alex Shepherd, a Special Forces soldier who has been discharged from the hospital and sent home after being wounded in battle, arrives in his hometown of Shepherd's Glen and finds that all is not right with the world: the town is covered in fog, people (including his younger brother Josh) are disappearing, his father has left to look for his brother, and his mother is catatonic. The dark forces of Silent Hill soon infect the town proper, transforming it into a nightmarish otherworld where Alex must struggle to survive against hordes of monsters and waves of increasingly obtuse symbolism... as well as a group of mysterious cultists who seem to bear a grudge against him.

It was released so the movie could have something to run along with and it reeks of a tie-in game. Not terrible, but certainly below average when compared to the rest of the series; many consider the gameplay to be boring and/or uncharacteristically combat focused, the combat mechanics are awkward, and the story is, even for a Silent Hill game, often held up as being illogical and hard to follow.

For what it's worth, its storyline improves a lot when you realise it's a throwback to the first four games, both in the underlying theme of "you're a bystander caught up in the horrors of Silent Hill" and in approach of letting you piece together the true story after you've played the game, rather than making it all straight-forward. In fact, it's the last game to make any reference to the existence of The Order, the cult who were heavily to blame for everything in Silent Hill being so crazy in the first four games.

==Silent Hill: Shattered Memories==
A reimagining of the first game that ends up being framed as a result of psychotherapy that Heather Mason is undergoing. No cult exists, the entire game is played as Harry Mason in a wintry version of Silent Hill, which is still lived in like any other normal town...when not in the Otherworld of the game where a disaster movie style mass freeze has occurred. In the Otherworld, Harry has to run from pale naked humanoids intent on freezing him to death. The game tracks your actions, like how much you press the button to call for your daughter and what kinds of things you stop to look at to determine the progression of the story, what the monsters look like, and the ending. The game is only canon to itself, and is not intended to be part of the main series. 

Another rather liked side game built up like a good movie reboot, keeping the same story and cast but with a new spin on things. If you like alternate world stories or just like to see the first game done differently, give it a shot. Those who don't like it point out that it feels more like a mystery than horror game and doesn't mesh well with the other games, which is probably why it didn't receive a sequel.

==Silent Hill Downpour==
During a routine transfer to a new prison, the bus transporting prisoner Murphy Pendleton  crashes and leaves him a free man. With a security officer from the transport on his tail, Murphy - desperate for an escape route and shelter from the ever-worsening weather - follows a worn-down road through the woods and into the world's least desirable holiday destination ever: the rain-drenched, monster-infested city known as Silent Hill.

Seen as the middle of the road, not bad but pretty forgettable. Did some things right, did some things wrong, can be fun at times and boring in others. Calls back to Silent Hill 2 by having little connection to the other games besides the town itself and is a story focused on its characters and their personal demons.

==Silent Hills==
Originally introduced as an Indie-looking demo simply called "P.T.", the player is stuck in a hallway of a house which leads to a small concrete room. The player continually walks this same hall and room over and over and over, the exit always leading back to the beginning with some small changes...plus the ghost of a grinning woman with an eye gouged out, and a bloody fetus that sometimes wails or speaks in the voice of an adult male. 
Players cannot interact with anything other than through looking at things, and the game became a massive scavenger hunt of a community online trying to figure out what to do to progress such as looking at shreds of paper to restore their original photograph form, or entering a doorway then waiting five seconds for a phone to ring. Do something wrong or be too slow and the ghost kills you with a jumpscare. 
The story revealed is that someone killed their cheating wife and unborn baby, and someone was unable to save their wife and unborn baby. Which, if either, you are is unclear. 
At the end of a long and complex path, the front door is finally open. Exiting the house begins a cutscene where Norman Reedus of ''Walking Dead'' fame is revealed to be the model for your character, then the "P.T." title becomes "Silent Hills: Playable Teaser". 

The genius marketing campaign generated MASSIVE interest, only enhanced when it was announced that it was being directed by Hideo Kojima, with involvement from famed horror director and designer Guillermo del Toro as well as Japanese horror legend Junji Ito. The game was to be called Silent Hills and would be a complete return to Silent Hill 2 style psychological horror and symbolism from an unconnected protagonist. Then...[[Meme|#fuckkonami]] happened. Konami pulled a series of [[Games Workshop]] tier business decisions by allowing an expose revealing their '''horrible''' business practices and treatment of employees to come to light, and publicly fired and insulted Kojima, one of the most popular men in the video game industry, despite still using his name to sell his last game for them. They then chose to leave all of their many beloved franchises dead by announcing that from that point onwards, Konami would only be making pachinko and cellphone games. Yes, this really all happened...del Toro was left so disappointed by the process that he said he would never work in an industry as toxic as video games again. 
Konami attempted to hide from the massive backlash by trying to bury P.T. (which had quite the opposite effect), with del Toro and Reedus eventually confirming it was canceled since Konami wouldn't. It was pulled from the market, leaving any memory card with it installed as a VERY valuable collector's item. Fans attempted to make spiritual successors, which were mostly either bad cash grabs or canceled as well in development. Reedus, del Toro, and Hideo Kojima were all so bummed out by this that they got together to make another video game, ''Death Stranding''. 

So ended Silent Hills and, so it seemed at the time, the entire Silent Hill franchise for good. 

In May 2022, however, a Twitter rando posted some screenshots of a first-person horror game which he claimed were from a new SH project in development. These screenshots immediately got nailed with a copyright claim, suggesting there might be something to the rumors. The next month, the director of the first SH movie gave an interview in which he stated that Konami was planning on relaunching the series with new games, along with a possible remake of SH2 and a reboot movie which he's writing and directing. It remains to be seen if Konami has truly pulled its head out of its ass, but perhaps we'll get to visit that town from our restless dreams once again...

==The Return==

In October 2022, Konami confirmed the rumors and leaks with a livestream presentation that announced a Silent Hill 2 remake and no less than ''three'' new games--Silent Hill Townfall, Silent Hill Ascension, and Silent Hill f--along with a new sequel movie and just a shitload of merch for diehard fans and weebs to blow their money on. 

𝆑 is the next mainline game and is set in rural Japan in the 1960s; it's being written by the guy behind the ''When They Cry'' horror-mystery visual novel series and apparently features psychedelic body-horror fungus with implications that it revolves around, or involves, trauma from the bombing of Hiroshima and radiation. Ascension is some kind of interactive show/game hybrid that claims it will permanently shape the series canon based on the decisions that players make. JJ Abrams is involved, so expect lens flare and derivative plotting. Townfall is...well, we don't know much yet, but it sounds like it might be about the "death" of Silent Hill.

==Silent Hill Comics==
[[File:SH Comic Page.JPG|right|250px]]
Silent Hill had multiple comic runs from IDW Publishing, like the other survival horror games of the era. Likewise, they are largely seen as non-canon. 

Particular criticism is the sketchy artstyle and chaotic panel layout, which was intended to give a feeling of unease but unfortunately made it hard to tell what was going on when one of the Picasso-esque faces of a main character was not shown. This can probably be attributed to the fact that IDW got the artist from ''30 Days of Night'' to do the first two issues, and then everyone who followed him just did what he was doing even when it didn't work. The stories were also disjointed and featured things such as the ghost of a little girl who speaks like a South Park character, a bus full of cheerleaders with guns shooting monsters, a stoner artist lured by the town to paint its surreal nature in order to spread its influence which monsters posed for when he needed models, and a "chosen one" exorcist teenage girl. 

Each series can be taken as its own thing and judged on its own merits, but as a whole are left unmentioned in continuity.

==Silent Hill Movies==
The first movie followed most of the plot of the first game, although with Dahlia split between an insane cult leader and an insane broken homeless woman who are sisters while good Cheryl and evil Cheryl (renamed Sharon for no apparent reason) were far more separate entities. In the ending, evil Cheryl/Sharon takes control of the town Dark World to torture and kill the inhabitants of Silent Hill involved in her sacrifice while good Cheryl/Sharon is trapped in the fog of the Otherworld, which extends worldwide now as the protagonist is able to return home in another dimension from the one her husband exists in. The sequel starts to follow the plot of Silent Hill 3, but instead veers off the rails like a Uwe Boll movie into a disaster of a plot with too many screwups to list in a brief manner. 

Although the first movie was a grade above arguably all other video game movies ever produced, it was hindered by executive decisions like making the protagonist a woman because "the audience can't relate to a father searching for his missing daughter like they would a mother in the same situation", making Alessa's trauma partially come from being raped by the elementary school janitor, reusing all the monsters from Silent Hill 2 without any symbolic meaning because they were more iconic, and a single ambiguous ending. 
The sequel was a desperate cash grab, made in 3D which was underused and had an extremely limited budget to maximize profit off the trust in quality the first movie had inspired among the community. It attempted to mix the fad of movies like Hunger Games and Twilight to create a faux-dramatic and awkward teenage romance rebellion plot and also cast Kit Harington in a blatant attempt to piggyback off his rising ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones]]'' fame. Most of the visual effects were in the trailer, leaving the audience with a long and very badly paced movie.

As mentioned previously, there is now a sequel movie on the way from the same director who made the first one, so hopefully he can elevate the material a bit above what we got in ''Revelations''. 

==/tg/ Material==
Some enterprising Storytellers put together a fan source-book for running Silent Hill games under the 1st edition New [[World of Darkness]] mechanics, which you can find here: http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/pdf/NWOD/Silent_Hill.pdf

[[Category: Video Games]]