...::: Silent Hill Heaven v2.1~php :::...

..::Feb 21st 2003

'Silent Hill 3' (PS2) Preview

"Totally messed-up." "Foul." "Vile." "Just wrong." "Jacked in a major way." In a normal, sane world, these are not the words game designers want to be hearing from the lips of their prospective customers, but the deeply troubled town of Silent Hill has never cared much for the sane, normal world. On this week's "Extended Play," "Silent Hill" producer Akira Yamaoka and art director Masahiro Ito give us a sneak peek at the third installment of what some consider to be the most chilling, disturbing experience the videogaming world has to offer.

To 'Hill' in a shopping basket

"Ordinary situations may become drastic in the blink of an eye." This is how the designers (via English translator) sum up the "Silent Hill 3" experience, and a casual glance at any given screen shot of gore-streaked corridors and unidentifiable creatures with too many limbs or mouths will confirm that things are indeed pretty drastic. "Silent Hill 3" introduces a new protagonist who is both the youngest and the first female lead the series has offered. That is, if you don't count the small bonus game included in the Xbox version of "Silent Hill 2."

Heather is the typical girl-next-door type. With her freckles and slightly weary expression, she continues the "Silent Hill" tradition of giving us everyday, real people we can believe in and identify with. She's not some supercop or elite soldier sent to Silent Hill on monster mop-up duty. Indeed, getting her to become a participant in "Silent Hill 3" isn't easy. All she wants to do is go shopping at the mall, but then her life takes a very wrong turn. That's all we know at this point, and the designers seem happy to keep it that way. "Heather, the new main character, works with a detective. In the course of the game, you will meet up with the mysterious woman Claudia," Ito said. "And those are the only characters we can talk about right now."

This mortal coil

Here are some things we do know. "Silent Hill 3" will have "a lot more blood" than its two-and-a-half predecessors (remember that Xbox version). The startling new graphics engine allows for flesh-covered walls that appear to pulse. The texture of the walls can shift, and the walls can even appear to bleed. Ito says that this third installment goes "back to its roots," with more direct references "to the occult" and to the town itself.

While the first "Silent Hill" game played heavily on these elements and the second eschewed them in favor of a more brooding, internalized horror tale, "Silent Hill 3" will pay particular attention to the town's history and to a variety of physical locations. Ito says it emphasizes a "broader range of places to go," and he makes mention of sewers and the shopping mall where the game begins. Some released screen shots seem to suggest that players will return to visually enhanced versions of locations seen in the first game, such as Silent Hill's dark, rotting amusement park, which is probably the last place on earth you'd want to try the cotton candy and hot dogs.

We got the gun

Another new addition sure to please players is at least one automatic or semiautomatic weapon, as Heather is seen wielding some species of submachine gun. In still another demo, there appears to be some form of flame-based weapon, which will not only clean out the town's, ah, resident evil, but will also help brighten up the foggy darkness! One thing seems obvious: If the preponderance of fog in "Silent Hill 2" is a tool to hide draw-distance issues, it's now used purely for dramatic reasons. The new graphics engine allows for a hideous (literally) amount of onscreen detail. Playing a session of "Silent Hill 3" is like being exposed to clips from movies such as "Jacob's Ladder." It's the pale, oily, wobbly horrors moving in and out of the shadows at breakneck speed that set the tone.

The terrible uncertainty of the thing described

Perhaps one of the most startling revelations of "Silent Hill 3" is that it employs vocals in its audio track. For the first time, vocals are included in a song (other than the opening theme), and you'll also hear voices during gameplay. Yamaoka tells us that, for example, a woman's voice can be distorted and made to undulate in the background, which is a much more human touch than the previous industrial-based aural style of the first two games. "Apologies to the Dolby Labs 5.1 sound system, because we created our own," Yamaoka said while delivering the "Silent Hill 3" preview to journalists inside the screening room of Dolby Labs. "We want people to hear sounds from behind and above." Konami will be bundling the official 65-minute "Silent Hill 3" soundtrack CD with the game.

One final update is that the designers want to emphasize greater freedom of action for the player. As with most of the gameplay specifics, they remain quite secretive, but they gave us the example involving, of all things, beef jerky. It's the kind of thing a player might keep in his (or hers, in SH3's case) inventory as a health-boost item. But what if you didn't eat it? What if you found some other use for it that would open up new opportunities in gameplay? Indeed, what if you let someone else eat it? Someone else or something else?

At one point during the abomination-ridden, blood-splattered preview demo, one of the visiting reporters raised his hand and asked, "What flavor is the beef jerky?" The designers smiled. "We prefer to leave that to your imagination." The diseased, haunted history of Silent Hill will infect your PlayStation 2 soon. Conserve your ammo, watch the dark corners, and be careful of what you eat.

You can expect to return to "Silent Hill" by spring 2003.

By Chris Hudak - TechTV