Silent Hill: What I wrote for my assignment on horror video games

    This is what I wrote regarding horror video games, specifically related to the game Silent Hill (1999) and the book Silent Hill: The Terror Engine by Bernard Perron.

    Throughout the entire game, we can see, hear, and infer many classic horror tropes. An overwhelming fog blankets the quiet town, our character walks through and sees someone, but only for a moment before they run away and disappear into the mist. The eerie music keeps us uncomfortable company as we explore an alleyway, seemingly in an attempt to follow the person we saw before. Immediately upon entering the alleyway, we are met with the completely eviscerated carcass of what looks to be a large animal. But with the human imagination, combined with the general atmosphere of the game, we could draw the conclusion that it was not just some wild animal. Then, we find an overturned wheelchair, wheels still spinning with no sign of stopping or even slowing down. Was someone just here? Was it the person we’re following? Or something much worse? The limited details of our surroundings let the imagination run wild and scare itself.

    This is also a common tactic in horror in visual media where the viewer can be left in the quiet to spiral in their own minds before being jolted out of it by a jump-scare. Even in my previous sentence describing the carcass at the entryway of the alley, I left the ending open for the reader to draw their own conclusions of what I mean by “not just a wild animal”. I could mean that it was a domesticated animal, or perhaps even just an accident, but in the context of the game, and in the greater context of the horror genre, one can assume that I meant some horrifying creature or person had done that to another person.

    “Likewise, encountering terrifying monsters, one’s first reaction is not to view them as an algorithm of physical strength points.” (page 5, Bernard Perron)

    In many video games, especially those labeled under “horror” or “action”, the developers use visual stat bars or numbers to display exactly how difficult a fight is going to be. Unfortunately, I find that this all but rips the player out of the story and feeling of the game. In games like Alien: Isolation, the monster uses your own habits and instincts against you to hunt you down, creating an impossibly tense atmosphere and intense feeling of being trapped. Now, if you were to put a big “Lvl. 100” above said monster, that shatters any real fear the player might have. As Perron implies above, in order to truly scare a player, they have to forget that they are in the real world. They have to get lost in the game, in the story, to feel true fear.

    “You are dealing with yourself in an eerie space while desperately trying to survive through the night.” (page 28, Bernard Perron)

    This section of the text reminded me of a line from Emily Dickinson, “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself”. Psychological horror like Silent Hill requires a vulnerability from the player that other horror video games do not. The saturation of action-sequences in horror tends to cover up the real fear that comes from being alone with your thoughts in an unfamiliar environment that is out of your control; and that is exactly what Silent Hill forces the player to do. The player is forced to “deal with” themselves in order to get through the game and complete the story. In video games, fear is also visual. The human mind can come up with horrifying things, but the scariest thing to an audience is their own mind. When one is reading horror or listening to horror, their mind fills in with what the author or speaker leaves out. Only the audience member knows the scariest thing in the world to them, so silence, space, and limited perspective helps visual media to incite the fear that the player’s mind will be especially susceptible to.

    “The true weird tale has something more than a secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread...” (page 30, Bernard Perron quoting H.P. Lovecraft) All good scary stories start with, “it was a dark and stormy night in a cabin somewhere in the woods”. All great scary stories start in your hometown. The more a player thinks they know about the story, the more opportunities the game has to subvert and twist those cliches and tropes into something so unexpected and strange that the player can’t react to it with anything but fear. In some of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, and David Lynch’s as well, they start with something seemingly normal. Seemingly familiar to the average audience. Then, throughout the story, the audience learns that everything is not what it seems. The scariness that comes from seeing something so wrong where it absolutely shouldn’t be is something that Lovecraft and Lynch use to their advantage, and Silent Hill does well too.

    My favourite kinds of horror stories are like that, because they are inherently psychological and surprising; aspects which in themselves can be scary. Even better are ones like Borrasca (a psychological thriller full-cast podcast), where you know something is wrong, but it keeps getting worse until you think you know what the evil must be, something supernatural, something corrupting and not of this world, and it turns out to be awfully human. Somehow, going from familiar to horrifyingly unfamiliar and then back to familiar again is more terrifying than you could imagine.