Silent Hill is
a survival horror franchise. It is video games, movies and comic books. Its
style is ambient and its themes emotional, psychological and sexual. The first
game, the beginning of the franchise, was inspired by Shadow over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft and Twin Peaks, among other things. The second game, the one that
defined the franchise, was especially inspired by Twin Peaks.
I love Silent Hill.
I loved Twin Peaks before playing,
watching and reading Silent Hill. I
write books and illustrate the covers. Much of my work is inspired by these two
franchises.
My favorite Silent
Hill is the games. The second game is inarguably the best… but my personal
favorite is the first. My second favorite is typically hated by Silent Hill fans: Homecoming.
I love everything hated by those who hate Silent Hill: Homecoming. The protagonist
is an excellent fighter rather than a normal person fighting desperately as a
normal person. The Nurses are ubiquitous and highly sexualized.
People argue that Silent
Hill is horror, so playing a warrior is inappropriate. They argue that the
sexualized Nurses introduced in the second game were as they were symbolically,
thus, without context in Homecoming.
The monsters must represent the psychology of the
protagonist? What did the Numb Bodies or the Insane Cancers of Silent Hill 3 represent? What about the
Split Heads, Mumblers and Air Screamers of the first game?
The protagonist must be a normal person? SPOILER
ALERT: The protagonist of Homecoming was born and raised in a sect of the
mysterious religion of Silent Hill. His family was charged with hunting and
killing monsters that wandered into the real world from the Otherworld. His being
a proficient warrior is given context appropriate to the lore!
Another complaint about Homecoming is that it is Western. Silent Hill is Japanese, though set in the United States of
America. Japan already made four games. The franchise already has its Japanese
flavor. What is so insufferably wrong about an American company making a game
set in America?
The only thing I disliked about Silent Hill: Homecoming is that you cannot get the “good” ending
unless you euthanize your mother. Other than that, the final act was much
better than they were in previous games. There is a villain and the villainy
makes grim sense. As strange as the universe is, it was wonderfully humanized.