One Crucial Thematic Difference Between “Resident Evil” And “Silent Hill”

Well, continuing my series of articles about horror videogames, I thought that I’d do yet another comparison between “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill”.

This time, I’ll be looking at one crucial thematic difference between the two venerable franchises and how it has a major effect on the style and tone of each franchise. But, first, see if you can spot it?

Here are screenshots from the very first game in each series. Can you spot the thematic difference?

If you answered “One is sci-fi horror and the other is paranormal horror“, then you would be correct. And this is perhaps the most important difference between the two series – in “Resident Evil”, all of the horrors are the product of evil scientific experiments by a faceless corporation. In “Silent Hill”, all of the horrors are the work of mysterious paranormal forces and/or their fanatical worshippers.

When seen together, it’s a fascinating distorted reflection of the two most common types of worldviews – religious and scientific. Although the end result of both of these drastically different thematic backgrounds is “scary places filled with monsters“, the thematic difference still has a surprisingly large effect on the style and atmosphere of each series. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll try to focus more on the very first game in each series.

I’ll start with “Resident Evil”. This game’s scientific themes have a subtle but noticeable effect on the gameplay – since it often feels a bit more “logical” and “rule-based”. Your character has a strictly limited inventory, saving is tightly controlled, the camera angles are strictly fixed, puzzles often involve logical reasoning and the combat system relies on the player keeping their distance from the monsters and precisely aiming realistic modern weapons at them.

The older games in this series get their suspenseful gameplay from these precise limitations and restrictions. Often playing the game is almost a science in its own right, as you will find yourself frequently making logical decisions about what to carry in your inventory or whether you should risk wasting your resources on fighting a particular monster. It is a very cerebral slow-paced game with a lot of “rules” that are used to build suspense.

Likewise, since science is about the discovery of knowledge, the stories of these games are often surprisingly well-explained. Yes, it is often a story about people overstepping the limits of scientific ethics or a stylised criticism of bio-weapons, but there is relatively little mystery in a “Resident Evil” game. As you go through the game you, like a scientist investigating something, uncover more details until you have solved the mystery. This, again, links in perfectly with the game’s sci-fi elements and objective rule-based gameplay.

Now, let’s look at “Silent Hill”. In this game, the horror comes from occult and paranormal forces and this also has a surprising effect on the gameplay – since it feels a bit more mysterious or dream-like in some ways. Your character has an unlimited inventory, you can save as often as you want, the camera can swerve around in a disorientating fashion, puzzles sometimes require imagination/literary comprehension, the combat system changes slightly depending on the weapon (eg: you can move whilst some weapons are raised, but not others) with the game encouraging brutal close-range combat with more generic weapons.

There is a slight element of “haziness” and mystery to the gameplay, with the exact “rules” not feeling as strict or fixed as you might expect. For example, the game includes “hidden” checkpoints before some boss battles – a forgiving feature not really found in the “strict” rule system of older “Resident Evil” games. The first “Silent Hill” game is slightly more about the overall experience and atmosphere than about making the player think logically within a set of rules. Whilst this reduces the suspenseful “survival” elements slightly, it instead builds a subtler, deeper and more unpredictable feeling of dread.

And this is reflected in the game’s story too. Not only is reality itself presented as a malleable thing – with the game world sometimes suddenly changing into a rusty and nightmarish “otherworld” version of itself – but the game’s underlying story is kept at least slightly fragmentary, mysterious and cryptic too. Not knowing literally everything is the entire point. This mystery and lack of solid “rules” creates the feeling of powerful otherworldly forces beyond the limits on human comprehension, in a similar manner to the classic horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Seriously, this game wouldn’t “work” if it fully explained literally all of its story…

So, yes, one thematic difference can have a huge effect on so many subtle elements of how both games are designed. THIS is good game design! Almost everything in an older “Resident Evil” or “Silent Hill” game is consistent with the type of horror that it is using – and serves to emphasise either scientific or paranormal themes. Whilst the two series may have some elements in common, they feel so different to play because the designers have actually paid attention to the themes of their series and found clever ways to subtly work them into the minute-to-minute gameplay.

————————

Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂