With the unveiling of Silent Hill f’s debut trailer last week came plenty of new information about the newest installment to the long-running horror series. We found out that the M-rated game will have a female protagonist, seemingly a student, and will also be the first Silent Hill game set in Japan. There’s still a lot we don’t know, and there are reasons to wonder whether it will live up to expectations, but I have a good feeling about this one.
This is partly because the game’s writer, Ryukishi07, was explicit about his motivations in a recent Silent Hill Transmission. Best known for his critically acclaimed When They Cry series of visual novels (especially Higurashi When They Cry, a very well-known work of Japanese horror writing), Ryukishi07 said that, “Up until now, I have played every Silent Hill game, and one thing I noticed is that many of the female characters are put through a great deal of suffering throughout their lives, which is why I thought if this game is going to have a female protagonist, then I want her to be able to make her own decisions for better or for worse amid her struggles. I don’t want her to be pulled along by the story, but to find her own answers.”
Silent Hill Has Long Explored Gender Politics
There are plenty of firsts in Silent Hill f. Obviously, it’s not set in Silent Hill, or in the United States at all. But at the same time, the spirit of the game described in this Transmission feels very Silent Hill.
Silent Hill 2 is considered by many to be one of the best written video games of all time and an example of ‘video games as art’. While that’s incredibly reductive of the medium – I’m not getting into that debate right now, I simply do not have the time – Silent Hill has provided analysts and critics ample material to tear apart and analyse.
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You don’t have to look very hard to see what Ryukishi07 was talking about. Silent Hill 2, while telling its story through the eyes of a man, is very much a game about the horrors of womanhood. If Silent Hill is a representation of James’ desires and guilt, then it follows logically that his misogyny is what colours the women we see through his eyes and throughout his time in Silent Hill.
Scholars and critics have written in depth about Maria’s presence as wish fulfillment for James, a representation of how women are objectified and sexualised. Laura reflects how women are forced to inherit the male gaze, and even when they fight it, can’t push back in any meaningful way. Angela is a whole, tragic can of worms. The whole game is full of violent sexual imagery, but framed in a way that is clearly terrifying. It is critical of men and the roles they play in subjugating women across global society.
Silent Hill 3 is also heavily gendered in its narrative and characters. The first game with a female protagonist, it follows Heather, a young woman who is used by multiple people for their own means. Her body is literally being used as a vessel to birth a new god against her wishes, and her forcing an abortion acts as the game’s climax. It touches on body dysmorphia, an astonishingly common consequence of women being pressured from young ages to fit beauty standards and bear children they simply do not want.
Silent Hill f Will Give Women Agency
While the series has generally been very sympathetic to women and their collective pain and trauma, there is a reading that it also thrives on the suffering of women. It uses gendered body horror and women’s stories as tools for development of male characters. I think this argument is reductive, perhaps even uncharitable, but Ryukishi07 has a point – these women aren’t really given agency. Their stories are more or less set in stone, even Heather’s, whose tale can be impacted mostly by a single decision and how many enemies she kills.
How will Silent Hill f’s protagonist be given agency? We don’t really know yet. Perhaps we’re more likely to see this manifest in the game’s narrative, in how she’ll be responsible for her own fate instead of being a victim of the way others treat her. That’s certainly a way for a character to be given more agency without the mechanics of the game having to change.
I’m not convinced that this will mean the series is going to see a mechanical change that allows its protagonist to make decisions that impact the narrative, since this isn’t a feature we’ve seen before, but the game’s synopsis does say, “This is a tale about a beautiful yet terrifying choice”. Does she make this choice, or do we?
Either way, while I can’t say I’ll be playing the game – I’m a notorious baby when it comes to horror, especially survival horror – I’m very interested to see how it all plays out. There’s been a lot of emphasis on how Silent Hill f will be a uniquely Japanese installment, in its storytelling, setting, and even music, and a game that delves into the uniquely Japanese nuances of gender would be fascinating to see, especially one that’s given us so many interesting exploration of women’s issues in the past.
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Neobards Entertainment