Silent Hill 4 playthrough pt. 9: wrap-up
Mar. 22nd, 2015 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigozealThere's something about Silent Hill 4 that's gotten into my blood. It missteps gravely in some areas - missteps to a degree that none of its predecessors do - but the things it gets right speak to me, and there's depth, and a certain daring, well-crafted originality, in the things it does well. Foremost among these are the themes it addresses, stuff that games (and media in general) don't typically touch, but which Silent Hill 4 handles well: the anonymity of city life, the difficulty of making connections with other people - the impossibility of relating to each other, and the sad sense of inevitability that the Walter Sullivans of the world are where it's all gonna end up. It's pretty well encapsulated in Henry's key scene with Cynthia as she dies: they're as physically close as two people can get, she's in his arms, emotionally unguarded and open and dying, and yet there's this gulf between them: though he wants to, he can't effectively comfort her, or save her, and in the end, her reality is not his - they are each alone. (This is underlined, for once, by Henry's strange lack of affect - he reaches, but can go only so far - and the mournful backdrop of Room of Angel, which overall concerns different material but cuts to the heart of the situation in key phrases: "You lie silent here before me/your tears, they mean nothing to me/the wind, howling at the window...there's nothing you can do...") Henry will eventually find a way through his isolation through Eileen (and it's intriguing to observe how the hospital scene in the Escape ending mirrors Cynthia's death in its staging to reflect this). But the game's depiction and understanding of pervasive, society-based loneliness is genuine and hits home in the way that, say, SH2's understanding of the complex feelings generated in families during a long illness is (and that is high praise).
Beyond that: SH4's perhaps the best-paced of the games storywise. Its serial-murder mystery is a good, creepy hook, and its slow reveal of Henry's role as he's drawn further into the proceedings, his evolution from puzzled bystander to the primary (and, as it turns out, long-standing) focus of Walter's attentions, is smart. It has a slew of terrific moments of horrific realization, with implications that are genuinely disturbing for their significance to the larger story: the peephole scare during Apartment World and the revelation of Walter's true location are two of the best story beats in the series. It uses the concept of the room extremely well - its metamorphosis from relative safe haven to a space to be approached with caution; its use of voyeurism with the windows & hole into Eileen's room & peephole to comment on Henry's self-imposed isolation, and how the ultimate revelation with the whereabouts of Walter and how it affects how he sees Henry turns the tables on that; the significant scares in the room and how they incorporate the first-person perspective (the peephole scare; the moments of dread in the second half as you stand in the corridor outside the bedroom, listening for signs of hauntings since you're unable to see them outright). I also liked how the game dealt with puzzles this time around; instead of lots of combination locks or collecting tiles, they hinge a lot on remembering and using the resources Henry has in his room, and they feel fresher and more organic as a result.
It has strong side characters like Richard Braintree and Frank Sunderland. I also appreciated how dealing with Walter and ending his rampage is very much the product of a group effort: the mercy of Frank Sunderland for an orphaned infant leading to the preservation of the umbiblical cord; Richard Braintree sputtering clues and warnings with his last breaths even as he's being electrocuted; Joseph Schreiber's extensive guidance from beyond the grave; Eileen's physical help and her insight into Walter's mindset & motivations through her possessions. I very much like the last level, and I do ultimately, despite its frustrations, like the final battle, which requires thinking and more finesse than just shooting blindly as you do in SH1 & 2 yet is not insurmountably difficult.
The marks against Silent Hill 4 boil down to two, but they're significant. The first is that, though it should have three strong central characters, the game muffs up their characterization & development and doesn't get them quite where they need to go. Henry is meant to be awkward and introverted, but he's wiped so clean of emotions that he's a blank slate. Eileen should be Henry and the game's one link to humanity, yet the merciless play mechanics don't allow you to partner with her as you should. Walter needs to be a figure of sympathy and terror, someone to be pitied yet struck down, and while the game gets this balancing act right in the first half, the second half spends too much time exclusively at one extreme or the other. You can clearly see what the writers wanted to do with the cast, and the ideas are excellent, but they're botched in execution, which is a crying shame. As it stands, the characters are better-realized in some of the fan works out there than they are in their actual game.
The second is the hellish constraint of resource management in the second half, which leads to endless repeating of levels and a tension that's joyless and punishing instead of energizing like in good horror. Worse, it stifles the themes of the game, most seriously with Eileen's role in the proceedings. I don't know how Silent Hill got so fixated in its later installments (meaning, 3 & 4) on the idea that delivering hardcore gameplay difficulty was critical to its success - 2's the easiest, and yet it's clearly the best one - but the cheap difficulty is highly detrimental to the gameplay and story experience here.
The story is also unsatisfyingly nebulous in certain aspects that I outlined in the "questions" post. In SH2, for example, there are initially enigmatic elements - unexplained things in the environment James runs across or weird ways certain characters behave - but they all snap into place by the end. SH4 has explanations that get like 90% of the way, but there are these loose ends that don't quite fit into place. The construction of the story isn't as neat or satisfying as it is in SH2.
This leads back to the point I mentioned at the start of this piece: Silent Hill 4 is strongly flawed in ways that the other three games aren't. SH3, for example - which is, for my money, the least of the games - makes some bad decisions, but it has a professional polish throughout; its missteps aren't (save for the broken puzzles on Hard mode) products of designer inattentiveness. SH4, on the other hand, has a few aspects that just seem messy, like someone ran out of time to make them better. This perhaps is a product of SH4 being very ambitious: it's doing several new things for the series with the combat and the first-person perspective of the room, and it wants to tell a murder mystery, and explore unusual themes, and weave Walter's psyche into its Otherworlds, and offer repeating environments that change drastically when you come across them the second time due to changes in your situation and equipment, and do involved stuff with the resource management systems. It's a mess in some ways as a result, but I ultimately prefer it to something like 3 that's polished but really not ambitious or daring at all.
Like I've said, Silent Hill 4 isn't a universal success - in fact, as you can gather from reading my posts, it outright made me want to tear my hair out at times - but the parts it got right linger. It's a flawed game, but it's one to which I'd like to return.
Detritus:
- Despite the awesomeness of Frank Sunderland, I will reiterate that the game needs to shut up whenever it tries to be besties with SH2.
- While I do, upon consideration, have to consider "Escape" the true ending, I do appreciate the nasty suggestion that maybe, just maybe, Walter, the forgotten little orphan, may have ended up king of the hill (and Otherworld) after all the cult's machinations, and that all the resurrect God/restore Paradise on Earth business only served to get Walter his Mom back (after a fashion).
- I'm still struck by how, while you're playing the game, it seems like there's almost no music save for thhe songs. That said: I've been listening to TokyoBrando's 100% soundtrack for the game more than any other of his Silent Hill 100% OSTs. It seems there were a lot of tracks that are genuinely inspired by the game's mood & aesthetic but where Yamaoka couldn't find a place to include them.
- Finally: after not being allowed to contribute much in his own game, I'm glad we learn here that Douglas got to do something, and something big at that. Dismantling the cult is a pretty redemptive legacy.
And that, at long last, is it for Silent Hill 4! I'll be back with a quick wrap-up of the series in general.
.
Beyond that: SH4's perhaps the best-paced of the games storywise. Its serial-murder mystery is a good, creepy hook, and its slow reveal of Henry's role as he's drawn further into the proceedings, his evolution from puzzled bystander to the primary (and, as it turns out, long-standing) focus of Walter's attentions, is smart. It has a slew of terrific moments of horrific realization, with implications that are genuinely disturbing for their significance to the larger story: the peephole scare during Apartment World and the revelation of Walter's true location are two of the best story beats in the series. It uses the concept of the room extremely well - its metamorphosis from relative safe haven to a space to be approached with caution; its use of voyeurism with the windows & hole into Eileen's room & peephole to comment on Henry's self-imposed isolation, and how the ultimate revelation with the whereabouts of Walter and how it affects how he sees Henry turns the tables on that; the significant scares in the room and how they incorporate the first-person perspective (the peephole scare; the moments of dread in the second half as you stand in the corridor outside the bedroom, listening for signs of hauntings since you're unable to see them outright). I also liked how the game dealt with puzzles this time around; instead of lots of combination locks or collecting tiles, they hinge a lot on remembering and using the resources Henry has in his room, and they feel fresher and more organic as a result.
It has strong side characters like Richard Braintree and Frank Sunderland. I also appreciated how dealing with Walter and ending his rampage is very much the product of a group effort: the mercy of Frank Sunderland for an orphaned infant leading to the preservation of the umbiblical cord; Richard Braintree sputtering clues and warnings with his last breaths even as he's being electrocuted; Joseph Schreiber's extensive guidance from beyond the grave; Eileen's physical help and her insight into Walter's mindset & motivations through her possessions. I very much like the last level, and I do ultimately, despite its frustrations, like the final battle, which requires thinking and more finesse than just shooting blindly as you do in SH1 & 2 yet is not insurmountably difficult.
The marks against Silent Hill 4 boil down to two, but they're significant. The first is that, though it should have three strong central characters, the game muffs up their characterization & development and doesn't get them quite where they need to go. Henry is meant to be awkward and introverted, but he's wiped so clean of emotions that he's a blank slate. Eileen should be Henry and the game's one link to humanity, yet the merciless play mechanics don't allow you to partner with her as you should. Walter needs to be a figure of sympathy and terror, someone to be pitied yet struck down, and while the game gets this balancing act right in the first half, the second half spends too much time exclusively at one extreme or the other. You can clearly see what the writers wanted to do with the cast, and the ideas are excellent, but they're botched in execution, which is a crying shame. As it stands, the characters are better-realized in some of the fan works out there than they are in their actual game.
The second is the hellish constraint of resource management in the second half, which leads to endless repeating of levels and a tension that's joyless and punishing instead of energizing like in good horror. Worse, it stifles the themes of the game, most seriously with Eileen's role in the proceedings. I don't know how Silent Hill got so fixated in its later installments (meaning, 3 & 4) on the idea that delivering hardcore gameplay difficulty was critical to its success - 2's the easiest, and yet it's clearly the best one - but the cheap difficulty is highly detrimental to the gameplay and story experience here.
The story is also unsatisfyingly nebulous in certain aspects that I outlined in the "questions" post. In SH2, for example, there are initially enigmatic elements - unexplained things in the environment James runs across or weird ways certain characters behave - but they all snap into place by the end. SH4 has explanations that get like 90% of the way, but there are these loose ends that don't quite fit into place. The construction of the story isn't as neat or satisfying as it is in SH2.
This leads back to the point I mentioned at the start of this piece: Silent Hill 4 is strongly flawed in ways that the other three games aren't. SH3, for example - which is, for my money, the least of the games - makes some bad decisions, but it has a professional polish throughout; its missteps aren't (save for the broken puzzles on Hard mode) products of designer inattentiveness. SH4, on the other hand, has a few aspects that just seem messy, like someone ran out of time to make them better. This perhaps is a product of SH4 being very ambitious: it's doing several new things for the series with the combat and the first-person perspective of the room, and it wants to tell a murder mystery, and explore unusual themes, and weave Walter's psyche into its Otherworlds, and offer repeating environments that change drastically when you come across them the second time due to changes in your situation and equipment, and do involved stuff with the resource management systems. It's a mess in some ways as a result, but I ultimately prefer it to something like 3 that's polished but really not ambitious or daring at all.
Like I've said, Silent Hill 4 isn't a universal success - in fact, as you can gather from reading my posts, it outright made me want to tear my hair out at times - but the parts it got right linger. It's a flawed game, but it's one to which I'd like to return.
Detritus:
- Despite the awesomeness of Frank Sunderland, I will reiterate that the game needs to shut up whenever it tries to be besties with SH2.
- While I do, upon consideration, have to consider "Escape" the true ending, I do appreciate the nasty suggestion that maybe, just maybe, Walter, the forgotten little orphan, may have ended up king of the hill (and Otherworld) after all the cult's machinations, and that all the resurrect God/restore Paradise on Earth business only served to get Walter his Mom back (after a fashion).
- I'm still struck by how, while you're playing the game, it seems like there's almost no music save for thhe songs. That said: I've been listening to TokyoBrando's 100% soundtrack for the game more than any other of his Silent Hill 100% OSTs. It seems there were a lot of tracks that are genuinely inspired by the game's mood & aesthetic but where Yamaoka couldn't find a place to include them.
- Finally: after not being allowed to contribute much in his own game, I'm glad we learn here that Douglas got to do something, and something big at that. Dismantling the cult is a pretty redemptive legacy.
And that, at long last, is it for Silent Hill 4! I'll be back with a quick wrap-up of the series in general.
.
