Silent Hill: Simulation of Cruelty - Part 3: The Final Act: Gamplay as Pure, Primal and Divine

Previously: Part 1, Part 2

As anyone who has played through a Silent Hill game will tell you, the endings aren't the most satisfying. They all basically say, "The game is over." The inclusion of multiple endings and the joke alien endings further confirm that the ending cinema is just presenting a new status quo, and that this new status quo is not very important to the over all message of the game. The game's narrative qualities should not be judged based on the ending alone. The (rotten) meat of the game is gameplay, and the story surrounding that gameplay. Heather's search for identity in Silent Hill 3, Henry's struggle for freedom in Silent Hill 4, and James' need for love in Silent Hill 2 all are active while the player is active. When the game is over and the final boss is killed, the game can no longer express anything to the player. Although the action leads to an eventual end, the journey is what is important in discerning theme and meaning. The literature of the game should be taken more as a drama and not like a novel.

The player benefits in playing a game with a heightened sense of immersion, arguably greater than theater can accomplish. The player gets to partake in a simulation of cruelty. With the tools given by the developers, a person is able to experience the emotions of the character first hand. Heather's fear, anger, and disgust of who she is can be translated directly to the player through the gameplay. The game is crafted in a manner so the actions and elements within it will replicate the pain of the character. On top of this, Silent Hill destroys the psychology of emotion, and takes it to the pure, primal, and divine.

The structure of the game forces a player to act within their primal nature. The key objective of Silent Hill is survival. The player is constantly put in a position of fight or flight. The limited health and accuracy of the control makes staying to fight a difficult option. Fleeing is also hampered by tight hallways, fast enemies, and a difficult control scheme. The objects you gain while playing are crucial to your survival. There is no collection of coins or rings for bonus points like in other games.
The actions themselves are also of a more primal nature for most of the game is spent using simple melee weapons, like a rusty pipe. Bullets are rare, and are not necessary in defeating the monsters. The action of physically beating something to death with a simple tool conjures images and feelings of base instincts—it is also undoubtedly you that is doing the killing., it is your force, your muscle. This deepens the immersion for the player, for they can not distance themselves from the violence with a gun. If a gun is used, however, a physical element is still placed in. Once an enemy reaches low health, it falls to the ground and cries out and convulses in death throes. In order to finish it off, the player must crush it with their foot. This violence is more intense than in most games. It is clear that you are killing something that is living, something that bleeds, and will remain after it is dead. The monsters are not mere targets to get points, and defeating them is not a way to show off how skilled a player you are. They are undefined living creatures that you have to kill to survive. Accentuating the violence draws your attention to it. You cannot overlook the bleeding stump with legs on it, or a nurse with no face as it writhes on the floor. This is exactly the type of image and act that Artaud calls for: a pure act of violence that forces you to focus on the thought behind it.

The breakdown of psychology furthers the player’s ascension. What you are killing is never explained. The horrific surrounding are never defined either. Attempts are made through the game, but are always ambiguous. At one point, Heather is horrified to find out that the things she sees as monsters might actually be people. The hell worlds that the characters fall in and out of are never defined as either a real space or something their minds create. The games are abstract, and they induce fear. This abstraction releases the player from culture and brings them into a space within themselves. They have to define for themselves the pulsing and glowing red hallway, or a table with bloody sheets that runs like a dog. That definition will be based in an emotional response, rather than what is in their day to day lives. The player's mind is therefore beyond the physical world, and through this they can reach the divine.

The Silent Hill series has borrowed many conventions of survival horror games that were established by Resident Evil. However, the ultimate goals behind the two are completely different. Resident Evil takes conventions from action and horror movies. Silent Hill's horrors hold more meaning than quick fun shocks and gross outs. There is substance in its images and these are connected to either the character's struggle or the overall themes of the game. For instance, the overarching story of Silent Hill always holds a religious element to it. Whether you are fighting a cult, being chosen to give birth to God, or tying to stop the 21 Sacraments, Silent Hill has forced players to explore that of which is not of our world. It surrounds the gamer with violence: from puzzles that give a description of a killer eating a face so that you can figure the code of the number pad in order to open a door, to carrying items that are as gruesome, like a plastic bag you filled with blood from the cut throat of a hanging corpse. In this world of violence a person is forced to leave their everyday lives, and in their work to survive, they are raised to a pure primal state like the one Artaud describes. Perhaps when they leave the space of the game, the player will have a greater understanding of the meaning of violence, so that they will never side with it.

Silent Hill: Simulation of Cruelty – Part 2: A Link to the Divine

Previously: Silent Hill: Simulation of Cruelty – Part 1: An Introduction to Theatre of Cruelty

Can a game capture the primal force that Artaud speaks of? Artaud was very specific in the fact that only theater could achieve this. It might not be possible, but compared to theater, it can be said that video games are the closest medium for this to be achieved in, and the Silent Hill games are the closest representation of that possibility. The main connection between the two is Artaud's concept of gesture. Games are the only other art form, that when played, will never be the same twice because no matter how many times you play through a game, the moment to moment actions are based on human reaction and thought. It can be as simple as the way in which the main character walks down a hallway. In a movie or novel, the main character will always walk down the hall in the same way, but this rigidity does not exist in games. There is the chance for creation based on the individual player. The power of gesture was very important to Artaud. The fluidity of theater can capture life. Video games can capture that fluidity, and take it further.

In Theater of Cruelty, the actor takes the role of a shaman for the audience. The actor is the audience's link to the divine. In video games you are the actor, because the game will not move forward unless the player takes action. Video games therefore place the user in a distinctive position: they are both part of the story and the audience. It is their action that will make the game unique through every movement, giving a more natural flow to the art, pulling it closer to the divine. The question becomes: is the player the shaman or the avatar? I don't feel that the player has enough freedom to remove themselves from the place of audience. There are some games that give the player freedom that make him or her the storyteller, but in Silent Hill the actions that you can partake in are limited and specific. You can only use predetermined objects, follow the story in a set course of events, and although the camera is adjustable, you can only see what is within its range of movements. Therefore, the creators crafted a specific experience that a player can have--which forces the player to act in the way they want--but the player is still given enough freedom so that actions can be slightly different every time they are performed. In this sense the avatar is the shaman to the player. The lack of freedom to zoom the camera up to a bird's eye view, or pick up any object onscreen limits the responsibility of the player to tell the relatively linear story. The choice of this story element was already selected for the player. Such as when an obstacle arises, like having to beat screaming, bleeding carousel horses until they die, the player will interpret this as an event in the character's (in this case, Heather, from Silent Hill 3) journey. In this way the user is just unveiling the story. The game is therefore created to have an effect on the player, not the other way around. This ultimately places the player in a position to be freed from their everyday life so that they can rise to a higher plain.

Next: Taking it a step further: immersion and cruelty.

Silent Hill: Simulation of Cruelty - Part 1: An Introduction to Theatre of Cruelty

Horror games have been a top selling genre of video games for over a decade. They have taught us the value of conserving ammo in a zombie outbreak, and to always leave room in your inventory for the unexpected health item or bloody rusty key. One survival horror game series, however, has tried to teach us more. The Silent Hill series has consistently pushed its players beyond normal shock and excitement. The series uses horror as a tool for an expression of an idea, instead of just thrilling its audience. In this sense, Silent Hill moves into the realm of art. Art feeds from artistic ideas of the past, and video games are no different. The Silent Hill games are an extension of the concepts found in Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty, for the ultimate goal of the games is to lift the player out of reality to a place of primal forces.

Artaud developed his Theater of Cruelty in the 1930's in response to art and the declining soul of humanity. He believed that art had lost its purpose in society—that it should not be a part of any high culture, but rather used as a means for "the world of the gods" to enter in us. Totemism inspired him to look at art as a way to release forces that hasten communication with the divine. In ancient cultures, performances done by shaman were used to entrance the viewer and take them to a higher plane. He felt that the loss of these rituals in society caused great pain and destruction. To Artaud, theater could save humanity because it is "capable of recovering within ourselves those energies which ultimately create order and increase the value of life." Theater is not confined to any one language because it is based on live actions, or as he puts it, "gesture." The gesture of theater can "reverb" in a person, which allows him or her to take the attitudes behind the gesture within themselves. Each performance is unique, which allows it to recreate the natural rhythms of life, in any circumstance.

Theater of Cruelty was created so that the brutality of the world could be shown to us, so that we can see that the sky can fall. He felt that violent images gave a person the sense of the supernatural which would therefore raise us out of our culture. Take, for example, walking on the street with a group of people, and then suddenly witnessing a child getting hit by a bus. In the initial moment everyone in the group would be lifted out of their culture and everyday life, and taken to a primal place. The violent images in Theatre of Cruelty focus on the violent thought behind the act. To emphasize this: the thought and not the act will show violence's true nature, making it impossible for the audience to embrace violence or war. The thought behind the violence will be seen as useless and can therefore redirect humanity to peace.

Next: How the Silent Hill series fits in with all of this.