A quick plot summary:
This is a direct sequel to the original game, instead of playing as Harry Mason we play as Heather Mason his adopted daughter from the end of the first. It’s also set 17 years later, so quite a lot has changed since we last saw Harry run off with a new babby.
Review of mechanics:
Silent hill 3 maintains the ability to switch between good controls (tank controls) and cringe controls (2d) much like SH2. So no change between SH 2 and 3 in this regard which is a good thing!
Also the difficulty selection is the same, combat and riddles have their own difficulty sliders so if you suck at combat you can choose easy while still making the riddles harder. Which is also very cool. Anyway, the riddles on hard mode are ridiculous and one particular notorious puzzle ‘The Shakespeare Puzzle’ requires you to already be familiar with the stories present in each of Shakespeares tragedies then sort them in an order which matches the riddle. Imagine picking this game up from the videostore as a twelve year old and accidentally putting the riddle difficulty on hard.
Heather can quote Macbeth, though she considers Romeo and Juliet "sentimental slop". I thought this was kinda funny.
Me thoughts on the game
Unlike the previous two protagonists, Heather tends to actually emote. Showing fear, joy, sadness, angst and so on. She feels like much more of a character because of this, and no doubt the late ps2 graphics help with making her feel like more of a person than Harry from the first game where he is just a bunch of polygons slapped together.
Another way in which Heather should be relatable to people is that she does not put her hand into dirty caca filled toilets in search of keys, or jump down holes, go through dark holes in the wall for the sake of exploration. Instead of investigating her psyche like Silent Hill 2, her fears are explored through her interactions with a handful of other characters, monsters again, and some events that occur in the game. Like her dad being murdered lol. it’s a hard knock life.
I thought a lot of the enemy encounters were so weird, like the pendulum enemies barely seem to come close to Heather and most enemies were quite easy to avoid by just running around them. Which isn’t very different from the rest of the game, however there were some difficulty spikes during the boss fights. I thought in particular the shadow of Alessa boss fight was quite hard as she would swing in some weird patterns. Also the designs for the bosses were cool, particularly Victor in the basement of the hospital. I also thought that Valtiel being an asset rip of Pyramid head but without the helmet was kinda funny. It’s clear that the devs were not provided enough time to fully deisgn and render whole new environments for the entirety of the game along with new monsters without some limitations.
But yeah, I felt like the riddles and combat throughout were handled about how I expected given the previous entry. The level design was intuitive I thought, as progress throughout the game is definitely more linear than the first game, similar to the second. I really liked the aesthetics throughout, that theme park and its mascot were incredibly creepy. Also the spaces we traverse through like the mall, the subway station, the apartments, and the town of Silent Hill are just incredibly liminal and creepy. I love settings which should be bustling being completely empty. Being alone in an open space is always so uncanny. The only sounds being those coming from weird monsters is great.
My favorite monster design in SH3
The two images above depict The Closer, which is a reoccuring monster that you see throughout the game. There seems to be a tendency for monsters within Silent Hill 3 to be far more imposing, and masculine in appearance than those that featured in Silent Hill 2. Seeing as the closer is the first monster to make an appearance in this game it also felt a bit weird choosing it as my favorite, but it’s tall, it’s imposing, it looks weird and it doesn’t seem to react in the way you’d expect it to.
It’s “face” is just a pair of lips which sort of rotate which looks kinda gross in action. Aside from that their arms look like sacks of meat or something which they use to lunge at Heather throughout the game. The combination of how they look and how they react to being hit or hurt creates this unease which doesn’t change throughout the game.
I guess I sorta have to show what I mean about some of the other monsters being large/masculine so here’s two others that come to mind.
Don’t have much to say about this one, they are just really imposing figures that tend to block paths. Someone was interpreting their name as having some meaning but I don’t put much stock into that theory. Basically they were suggesting that Insane cancers were meant to be a reflection of how the town of silent hill is being corrupted by the cult or something. Maybe there’s something to it, but they have to be a reflection of Heather/Alessa/Cheryls fears in some way. I guess it could be Alessa’s fear of the cult being manifested?
Valtiel’s kinda interesting too, he doesn’t really interact with Heather at all throughout the game but shows up a few times throughout the game in the background usually torturing nurses that look a little like Lisa Garland from the first game. During some game over scenes, he is seen dragging Heather through hallways and this is some kind of meta commentary about how the saving and loading works. Heather is being ressurected somehow.
My favorite scene in SH3
My favorite song off the soundtrack
I just think this is a great Ambient track. Especially once the piano kicks in. I think the sort of melancholy tones with the shifting and spinning effects in the back are really relaxing. The piano gets a little tense due to the tempo change but it really makes for a nice kinda frenetic change. In game it’s excellent. Really sets this kinda dingy 2000s tone. It’s got a weird voice clip from Claudia at the end where she’s telling Heather she will give birth to god lol.
All the other songs on the soundtrack are great too but I thought this was a nice ambient piece. The vocal tracks are 2000s alt rock, sort of sad girl type songs. I think the best way to explain this is just to put up another track, so that’s what I’ll do. Maybe this should be my favorite ambient track and my favorite vocal track. Anyway, this is my favorite vocal track:
It’s pretty good, very angsty.
Some little things I thought were interesting
Hiroyuki Owaku also wrote a prequel comic (only released in Japan) called "Cage of Cradle," where Lisa tried to put Alessa(Who is also Heather and Cheryl) out of her misery and Valtiel (That monster further up this post) killed her to protect God shortly before SH1. Without much context this sounds like absolute nonsense. So I will have to re explain the events of SH1 a little to explain what is going on here.
Alessa, Dahlia Gillespies daughter was hospitalised prior to the events of SH1 and during this time the oly nurse that actually cared about her as a person rather than some vessel for god was Lisa Garland. In typical Rosemary’s baby fashion, Lisa is not able to help Alessa by euthanising her and is instead caught Valtiel who kills her to protect God.
Oh also I love the Borley Haunted Mansion level, apologies for the quality
Some interpretation of the story/events
I thought the most obvious interpretation of the themes within the game were specifically about Heather being a teenage girl. She’s 17 in the game and I thought it was interesting that not only is she assailed by these weird monsters that are imposing and often masculine (at least in comparison to those featured in Silent Hill 2). The monsters tend to be taller or just generally larger than Heather. Also the nurses in this game have faces, whereas in the Silent Hill 2, they had their faces covered.
Silent Hill 3 in terms of both design of the monsters, as well as just how the game plays out is a coming of age story for a teenage girl. Along with all the fears that a teenage girl would normally have, in addition to those that Alessa experienced throughout the first Silent hill. Fear of nurses, large dogs, fire, worms, and snakes.
Continuing on the idea of teenage girl fears, the very first interaction Heather has is with a man called Douglas, who she finds unpleasant which sets the tone for a lot of later male interactions. Vincent similarly is this extremely untrustworthy guy, who looks like he means no harm but also manipulates the truth throughout the story. There’s also this guy, Stanley Coleman, who writes Heather a bunch of love letters which are a little disturbing during the hospital level.
I think some of the best parts of Silent Hill 2 and 3 come from the delivery of the dialogue. Douglas feels so awkward and genuine in his delivery, which makes him so charming. He’s just some bumbling old guy trying to do the right thing and failing. Also just some great lines like “dead people don’t cry” or “I’m fifty something years old.” What a tragic feller. Also his first appearance doesn’t exactly warm Heather to him at all.
The more we learn about him throughout the game, the less he appears as a threat obviously. Instead he’s just a confused man hired by some particularly nasty people, but unlike Kaufman from the first game he is not at all self serving and is instead quite altruistic with a guilty conscience. After a certain event in the game, he decides to assist Heather rather than Claudia (The current cult leader).
I love this guy, I think the way the game handles abject loss and loneliness really helps sell this character. His son made the mistake of robbing a bank and consequently got shot and killed by a police officer, leading to his feelings of guilt for being a poor father. In some sense I feel like this resembles the fate of Heather’s father, Harry, due to Claudia accusing him of kidnapping Heather. Claudia has Harry murdered, which I interpret as being some kind of mirror for Douglas’ own son. Maybe reading a little too much into it there idk.
Vincent has this great line which really shows how underhanded he is. Essentially Heather throughout the game has been shooting, stabbing, whacking whatever monsters she comes across and then this Vincent feller comes along and says this “They look like monsters to you?” Which, of course makes Heather think twice about her own mental condition. Are they really monsters we’ve been dispatching throughout the game?
We never get to meet Stanley unfortunately? Perhaps it’s for the best. But I think by this point you must understand that every guy that Heather comes across throughout Silent Hill 3 is quite intimidating or weird in some way, not to say that the one woman she comes across is any better. Claudia is very weird but it’s a different kind of weird, the delulu cult leader kinda way.
In some sense, the plot of Silent Hill 3 has far less to analyse than Silent Hill 2 as it’s pretty simple. Douglas attempts to abduct Heather, Heather runs away, weird monsters appear, her dad is murdered, then she goes back to Silent Hill to seek revenge? Sorta. I guess the reveal at the end is that she has been carrying a satan fetus thing since the start. Basically, the premise is that the cult wants Heather to give birth to “god” which is really just some demon, probably satan lol. Anyway, Heather luckily has a special ampoule which very helpfully allows her to vomit the fetus up. Claudia is very upset by this turn of events and figures the only way to save god is by swallowing the fetus up to then give birth to god herself. Weird.
Maybe in some way this was part of the inspiration for P.T. and Death Stranding. You know “Norman reedus and the funky fetus” sorta thing.
Anyway, I liked the story despite how simple it was. Heather being a somewhat normal teenager is actually very sweet. Something about having a parental figure that cares about her as opposed to Alessa’s mother who only wanted to use her as a tool for her cult. Good parents make cool kids? That’s the moral of the story.
There’s not really that much to interpret from the levels, it’s more about the interactions as you’d expect I suppose. It’s like shrek 1 in a way, less ogres though.
I think that’s most if not all I wanted to say about the game.