The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Beyond this point be Silent Hill: Shattered Memories spoilers. The plot is, by far, the best part of the game, and though I’m sure there are a variety of changes if you get a different psychological profile than I did, the main plot will probably be the same. You’ll be sad if you spoil it for yourself. Play the game first if you’re interested.

Spoilarz from here on in. Here we go.

I thought about this game’s plot more than I have any game in a long time. Hell, I actually had a nightmare about it, woke up, picked up my phone, and then was nervous because your cell phone played so much into the game. Granted, I’m probably a wuss, but the game does a spectacular job of creating psychological horror. I love it.

One of the ways I think it is most effective in doing this is telling you, straight out, that what you do affects what the game thinks of you. Now, I know that, if I dug right down, I could make a chart or whatever of the factors it looks at to affect your ending. But that’s no fun, and plus, I didn’t look up the chart that someone inevitably made. It really made me think about my decisions. I started by just answering things truthfully, but I soon realized that there are things I would normally do that I wasn’t doing because it was a video game. So I started worrying about and doing those, too, to make sure the game read me right.
The best example I have of this is at the high school. There is a chemical closet there. Opening it reveals nothing of interest inside, but there is a big sticker on the back of the closet saying “CLOSE AFTER USE.” Closing isn’t just hitting a button. You have to use the Wiimote to grab and close the door. It’s kind of tedious. I almost left because, as a gamer, there were no useful items, it was useless. But then I started thinking: what is the game going to think of me if I don’t close the door? I would in real life. I actually turned back around and closed the door.
This is how the game really got me going. It wasn’t the running about bits. Those were just frustrating. It was the idea that the game was watching what I did, and that everything I did was going to have some significance. It’s smoke and mirrors, sure, but it made it a ton more fun.

The other main thing that really got me involved with the game were how well the characters were animated. Granted, they were mostly cutscenes, but they moved in very realistic ways and had very realistic expressions. The Voice of the Agency, aka The Psychologist was especially well-done. I mean, everyone was a little uncanny valley, but Silent Hill has always been using that for effect, and not by accident, so I had no problem with it.

Plot-wise, I felt like it tied itself up very well. The video that’s the menu screen made complete sense by the end of the game, and the part that I assume is affected by your psychological profile, the section after that on the tape, is a really cool way to make your decisions matter without completely destroying the main plot. All the subtle changes, or what I thought were certainly changes based on the extremely sexy way my game was going, were also completely cool. I think they did a good job at making that matter without having to go overboard and make X number of games.

I’ll admit I was surprised that it was Cheryl that was in therapy. Granted, it makes complete sense, and I don’t know why I didn’t catch it before the ending. I knew it didn’t make much sense for Harry to be in therapy, seeing as how things were progressing. It also didn’t really make sense for it to be completely disconnected to the storyline and it actually be the player being analyzed, which is how I treated it the whole time. If it was out of the game, I feel like the Psychologist would have been treating the player a lot less… creepier.
Still, I think it really drove home what was happening having it that way. Learning it was Cheryl, and that the whole game was probably a metaphor for her dealing with the loss of her father, really put much more context onto a lot of the game’s events. For example, when you play paparazzi at the school, and end up taking a picture of Cheryl in the shower really takes on a bit more oomph, outside of just being creepy in general, once you put it in that context. It makes clearer the odd connections Cheryl was making between sex (and not even real sex, but more… porno sex) and affection for her father she was making because of the tape. Without the Cheryl context, it was making Harry seem like a horrible person. After that he seemed… like a misguided person, and certainly not flawless. He was obviously cheating on his wife and was pretty obsessed with fucking. But he was more of… a guy, instead of a monster. After Silent Hill 2, which was my favorite game in the series before this one (and probably still is, though this is a close second. I liked the two with the strongest plots. Are you surprised?), I was expecting a revelation that Harry had done something awful. Harry has nothing on James. He’s just a kind of bad father. James is pretty clearly a murderer. Heh.

Honestly, I liked that. I liked that it wasn’t some gruesome, horrible thing. I liked that the real reason behind the whole game was something so mundane. It actually makes it that much more disturbing, because once you figure out what the game actually is, things are plausible. Granted, there is an element of supernatural there, but the key events? Completely possible. It makes it stay with you longer. You really feel like you understand Cheryl, even though you only see her on screen for like… a minute or two. By playing through the game, you kind of experience what she’s going through via metaphor. It works beautifully.

The plot is a success. A complete success, in my opinion. I hope future Silent Hill games get made, and I hope they play off of this one. I have no idea if the game was a success or not. I kind of bet it wasn’t, especially since it was not on any “current gen” systems where people who care about the Silent Hill name would think about buying it. But it was so good. Much better than what I played of Homecoming. The plot made me forget all the mechanical missteps I talked about in the last post, and they could fix them in a sequel.

I do hope it happens. Tomm, make it happen!