Last year, one of gaming’s (that is video games) oldest genres saw a revival. My two favourite games of the year, the RE4 Remake and Alan Wake II, fall into the genre, and it would seem the Game Awards would seem to agree (excluding Baldur's Gate 3). And it’s not a phenomenon contained to 2023 either. RE has been producing remakes of 2 and 3 since 2019, alongside two new mainline entries in the franchise since 2017. There are talks of the upcoming Silent Hill 2 Remake alongside a handful of other projects, reviving hopes of the P.T. Silent Hills era, and a remake of Alone in the Dark for this year.
The genre I’m speaking of is survival horror, a video game form that traces its roots back to at least the early 80s with adventure games and various chillers; however, the genre didn’t solidify until the 90s in the wake of Sweet Home (inspired by the Kurosawa movie), Alone in the Dark, Clock Tower, and Horror Soft oddities like Waxworks and Elvira: Mistress of Darkness. Out of the formula of these games--notably the fixed camera angles, ‘tank controls’ (meaning the movement of a tank or large vehicle, id est up is forward, down is back), 3d polygon models, isolated locale, and pre-rendered backgrounds--the market opened up to a series which would standardise all of these into a nearly-infallible formula. That series was Resident Evil.
It’s hard to overstate the impact Sweet Home had on Resident Evil (1996) and the impact that game would have on the entire medium. Originally, Resident Evil was meant to be a remake of Sweet Home, taking the same isolated manor location, cast of playable characters, and zombie/monster encounters and just adding a little more to the story. However, the game was so well received that Capcom decided to make a sequel. The style of RE 1 and 2 would basically serve as the blueprint for survival horror at large and would a year later inspire another game: Silent Hill. Konami’s own spin on the survival horror formula would turn out to be equally important, with the cult elements of the 1999 game perhaps inspiring the story of RE4, and the second entry in the series mastering the psychological aspect of the genre, as well as perfecting the forever-following antagonist introduced by Clock Tower and the Tyrant X and Nemesis in RE 2 and 3.
Every game in the genre since then, despite introducing their own innovations (look at Alan Wake II for an excellent example), more or less continued the same formula. RE took a more axion approach and then eventually returned to try and innovate in 7 and 8 (although those arguably borrowed from Soma and Outlast) and Silent Hill continued with the same idea until it became derivative of itself (look at Homecoming). In the years since many other games tried to build on the idea. Alan Wake was meta. F.E.A.R brought in first-person. Outlast gave us night vision. Soma went fully existential (nothing super new to the genre). In the end though, they were all living off the life of Resident Evil (96)--which itself was a piecemeal of Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark.
So, what makes all these games so special? Is it the atmosphere? The monster? The sense of accomplishment when you manage to survive? Is it the puzzles? The intricately woven maps? I introduce all these rhetorical questions to answer them with a single word: yes. All of these elements contribute to the brilliance of this genre, though none greater than its possibility for brilliant thematic storytelling. To illustrate my point, I want to thematically examine my three favourite series of the genre, those being RE, Silent Hill, and Alan Wake, and understand what elements of the genre mold allow them to tell interesting and nuanced stories, oftentimes despite a lack of technological ability.
Resident Evil
Resident Evil has always been a series that emphasises the survival aspect. From the first game onwards, you control essential axion heroes in the form of S.T.A.R.S. officers, police officers, secret agents, and eventually just some guy (Ethan Winters). Despite the power fantasy, the games never make you feel safe. The enemies are near impossible to overcome. In the first game, killing an infected zombie permanently involved traveling all over the map to get a gas container and to set the monster on fire before it got up again, and that wasn’t worth the effort. In fact, a staple of many early survival horror games (before the RE4 switch) involved running from the monsters, not fighting them.
The story of the entire franchise has been variable, but I’d like to focus on the early games in this thematic understanding, that is 1-5, though many of these ideas are also applicable onwards.
The story of the first three main entry games focuses on the impact of the Umbrella Corporation, a company which has developed a handful of infexions which create the games’ iconic monsters (B.O.W.s) as well as the zombies. Thematically, it’s a fairly standard anti-capitalist arc, concerning the danger of powerful corporations, especially in the second and third game when it’s made clear they essentially control Raccoon City. It also addresses the problem of military contract companies, such as Lockheed Martin, and their unmitigated profiting off of death and destruction in the form of financed wars and imperialism, and how the current system encourages such companies to exist and thrive, creating a feedback loop of horror.
The games deal with corporate espionage (in Ada Wong and early Albert Wesker), the corruption of symbols of good (Brian Irons, Major Krauser, Jill in 5), the cult-like emergence of religious institutions (Saddler), the abuse of power of aristocrats (Salazar), and more. For a game series about goofy axion heroes killing zombies, it can certainly pack a hidden punch. 5 even dealt with eugenics and the emergence of neo-nazis, not so subtly.
When 7 was released in 2017, it once again shook things up. The blockbuster drab style of 6 had essentially killed the franchise and everyone was getting a little tired of Leon, Chris, Jill, and others killing zombies or zombie adjacent hordes with a loss of thematic substance.
To say 7 doesn’t feel like a RE game would be an understatement. It trades in the third-person for a first-person camera alongside a brand new protagonist and almost entirely disconnected story (in the same way RE2 had). The game changed intent as well, dropping the axion influence and going with a style more akin to Outlast, while drawing from classic horror films such as The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
It was a bold choice, and in a lot of ways it paid off--though, to me and many others, it didn’t feel like a RE game (similar to how P.T. didn’t ‘feel’ like a Silent Hill game). So, what was missing that took away that essence or at least lessened it? Was it just the camera? In a lot of ways, 7 is more similar to RE1 than to RE4 onwards. It deals with true, isolated horror in a complex and well designed area. It has puzzles and loads of backtracking. There are monsters who will ruthlessly pursue you, but for the most part the game operates on an omnipresent dread. Not to mention it’s genuinely scary. So, what’s missing?
At that point in the series, fans were so immersed in the axion style of 4, 5, and 6, that returning to genuine horror and with a non-special protagonist like Ethan Winters felt completely foreign; however, it was the right move, and the game’s direct sequel, RE8 The Village, proved this even more.
Though Village feels more like a RE title, it still uses many of the same tricks of 7 as well as a continuation of that story. What makes 8 feel more authentic is the fact it’s almost a remake of RE4 before the RE4 remake. You’re in an isolated European village fighting off villagers who have become monsters. There’s a castle where an aristocratic lord rules over. There is a cult wielding a virus/spore/fungus/mold that gives the infected superhuman mutations. There's a merchant who just shows up anywhere. The gargoyles of the castle essential replace the bugs. The Del Lago redo. And someone close to you (or someone you’ve been hired to retrieve) has been kidnapped.
Now, sure, there are just as many differences as similarities between 8 and 4; however, I think the return to formula in some capacity, as well as more axion oriented design helped to make the series feel like itself again, regardless of how masterful 7 was on its own.
But what are the themes of 7 and 8? Surprisingly, they are very different from those of the series prior. 7 and 8 mostly focus on family, specifically lost family, something that’s much more in the realm of Silent Hill--and perhaps another factor as to why the games feel so drastically different.
Both games address loss, coming to terms with the changing of people you know, guilt over inaxion, the loyalty that comes along with family, and even Soma territories of ‘what makes us human’.
Despite differences, both games continue to employ the classic RE trend of using minimalist thematic signifiers to convey a myriad of messaging, or at least allow for enough room to interpret--something shared by many other genre entries like The Evil Within, F.E.A.R., Parasite Eve, Amnesia, and Condemned.
The standout elements of RE from this standpoint is its ability to blend anti-corporate nuanced themes with engaging, fearful, fun, campy gameplay which help, much like the Souls games, to embed the themes subconsciously into the gameplay--something mastered by Silent Hill. Zombies, typically in media, are empty shells that can symbolise anything, though they often take on the form of a Romero mindless consumer, something that pairs well with the laughably evil Umbrella. There is no specific parallel between the RE monsters and the protagonist (unlike Silent Hill), though there is obviously a connexion between the two. Jill and Nemesis share a literal and symbolic bond, in that the tyrant serves as a reminder of the past, an inability to let go or escape, in a way P.T.S.D., whereas Mr. X, Leon, and Claire share the bond of the present, an inability to come to terms with the decay of the world and an inability to escape the situation. Mr. X is the tyrant of Raccoon City’s destruxion.
Silent Hill
If RE was about messages and terror on a macro level, systemically, in Hollywood flavour, then Silent Hill is all about the personal journey--and not just of the protagonists, but of the side characters, and of the player themselves.
The first Silent Hill was released the same year as RE3, allowing the game to build on the already existing survival horror formula and to introduce the most iconic location in all gaming (probably).
Silent Hill 1 is a game about Harry Mason, and though not quite as personal as the sequels, it is a game ABOUT Harry Mason. When he crashes his car in the mysterious fog-covered town and loses his daughter Cheryl, he will soon discover that his adopted daughter is the fractured identity of a vessel meant to birth a new god and that his entire life has been leading up to these horrific events.
The first game is horrifying in its fatalism, in the fact that Harry never had a choice, and even though he can have differing endings (Cybil survives, Dahlia is defeated, etc.), there was no way to escape the horror he was forced to live through (and maybe it was just aliens if you get the UFO ending).
The monsters, as would become a staple of the series, also echo Harry’s journey and fears. He is attacked by ravenous malformed children, perhaps showing his fear of fatherhood or his guilt at failing Cheryl. However, from a narrative perspective, the monsters are actually pulled from Alessa’s mind, not Harry’s--which also accounts for the malformed children and other childhood fears like raging dogs and flying horrors.
Silent Hill 1 also features a cult story, hence my theory that it was influential at least in passing on RE4. In Silent Hill though, it is much more explicitly religious. Dahlia and the cult members want to birth a new god, which serves as justification for child abuse, murder, and destruxion of the entire town. Thematically, this can show a handful of things. It falls into the same camp as Lovecraftian weird fixion, where the cult can be seen as a failing of religious fanaticism or as the horror of cosmic indifference/malice in a darker twist on Absurdism. It can show the corruption of well intentioned ideas and can even serve as a loose rebuttal to utilitarianism.
However, Silent Hill is not just about its leads but also the characters you meet along the way, the highlight of this game being Lisa Garland, a nurse who was forced to aid in the abuse of Alessa and tragically meets her end upon releasing she too has been corrupted by the nightmare. Her story shows how good people can be transformed by monstrous causes or be coursed into performing axions they wouldn’t normally as well as the potential consequences. Lisa became a monster, not of her own choice but because she followed orders and remained loyal. She is brought down alongside Kaufman and the cult (making her near-credits revenge the more satisfying).
Silent Hill 2 is the white whale of the series. Aside from being one of my favourite games ever, it boasts even more complexity than the original and pivots the horror from more universalist, in the way of religious institutions, to purely psychological.
The game follows James Sunderland as he arrives in the titular town, having received a letter from his wife who at this point has been dead for three years. From there, it's a journey through his guilt, metaphorically, as he comes to terms with his inability to accept her death at his hands and his refusal to love her during a terminal sickness.
Unlike the looseness of the first game, the symbolism is near one-to-one in this one. The nurses, legs, and mannequins are his sexual frustration or perhaps a suggestion of his infidelity (not confirmed, though also a possible piece to Maria). Some monsters can show his anger. And Pyramid Head is a grotesque blend of the aforementioned sexuality and the self-torture over guilt and regret.
The game’s remaining monsters belong to Angela, another character encountered in the town, who is struggling with suicide and mental illness after being the victim of child abuse and rape. As you can see, the games continue to explore the longlasting consequence of abuse and how the trauma from that can materialise into real monsters; this remains true even for James in a different way.
Each element, the music, atmosphere, visuals, dialogue, all blend together to create this nightmare of regret that introspectively examines what it means to be a human and how to continue living after loss and with guilt and regret. It’s hauntingly beautiful and equally minimalist, nuanced, so as not to push a clear interpretation or message--what I’ve come to call the Shadow of the Colossus minimalism to achieve thematic maximalism.
When Angela is consumed voluntarily by the flames of her hell at the end and James (in a good ending) returns to water able to let go of his grief, the elemental yin-yang of overcoming history shines over one of gaming’s most powerful monologues.
"In my restless dreams,
I see that town.
Silent Hill.
You promised me you'd take me
there again someday.
But you never did.
Well, I'm alone there now...
In our 'special place'...
Waiting for you...
Waiting for you to
come to see me.
But you never do.
And so I wait, wrapped in my
cocoon of pain and loneliness.
I know I've done a terrible
thing to you. Something you'll
never forgive me for.
I wish I could change
that, but I can't.
I feel so pathetic and ugly
laying here, waiting for you...
Every day I stare up at the cracks
in the ceiling and all I can think
about is how unfair it all is...
The doctor came today.
He told me I could go
home for a short stay.
It’s not that I'm getting better.
It’s just that this may be
my last chance...
I think you know what I mean...
Even so, I'm glad to be coming
home. I've missed you terribly.
But I'm afraid, James.
I'm afraid you don't really
want me to come home.
Whenever you come see me,
I can tell how hard it is on you...
I don't know if you
hate me or pity me...
Or maybe I just disgust you...
I'm sorry about that.
When I first learned that
I was going to die, I just
didn't want to accept it.
I was so angry all the time and I
struck out at everyone I loved most.
Especially you, James.
That's why I understand
if you do hate me.
But I want you to
know this, James.
I'll always love you.
Even though our life together had
to end like this, I still wouldn't
trade it for the world. We had
some wonderful years together.
Well, this letter has gone on
too long, so I'll say goodbye.
I told the nurse to give
this to you after I'm gone.
That means that as you read
this, I'm already dead.
I can't tell you to remember me,
but I can't bear for you to
forget me.
These last few years since I
became ill... I'm so sorry for
what I did to you, did to us...
You've given me so much and
I haven't been able to return
a single thing.
That's why I want you to live
for yourself now.
Do what's best for you, James.
James...
You made me happy."
Mary’s letter, a message to her grieving husband, is an emotional car crash, pounding the emotional and intellectual themes into the player and recontextualising the journey to get there.
T he third game in the series, much like in RE, serves as a direct sequel to the events of the first game, following Heather Mason, the baby born out of Cheryl and Alessa’s communion and vessel birth of the incubus. This game continues to have monsters of sexual frustration, but at the same time it couples it with those involving motherhood, taking the child perspective of the first game and reversing the roles. The game also deals with loss and grief in a similar way, having Heather lose her father and eventually accept herself as Cheryl by the game’s ending.
It’s probably the darkest entry in the series, aside from maybe 4, and that darkness plays into the themes, again addressing abuse, pregnancy, lifelong pain, depression, and generational trauma.
The 4th game, the final in the original Konami series, focuses on a random man outside of silent hill, Henry Townshend, who becomes wrapped up in the troubles of renowned serial killer Walter Sullivan when the nightmare world of silent hill begins to invade his apartment.
It’s a strange game, and a complete left turn from the franchise, similar, in a way, to the RE7 approach, especially with its emphasis on horror. The monsters, like much of the story, are actually tied to Walter and his sadistic plot to continue killing in hopes of enacting yet another religious ritual, an idea implanted at an early age by child abuse.
The themes of Silent Hill are undeniably connected to their atmosphere, to the fog drenched streets, endless hallways, nightmare transformed organic buildings, and the sombre scores of Akira Yamaoka. It’s found in the characters, in their traumas, in the monsters they have to face. It’s a game series about cults, about death, but most of all about regret.
Silent hill as a town is a place where everything buried, the id, the ego, nightmares and memories, all surface, all confront you, force you to face those daemons before emerging from the fog a fully formed person. It’s a Jungian series, stalked through the streets by The Shadow, led through clubs by The Anima and The Animus, forced to reconcile with shattered versions of yourself to become truly whole. The fog is the unknown part of ourselves, the repressed instinct, a land occupied by archetypal monsters of the night.
Alan Wake
Remedy’s homage to RE and Silent Hill (not to mention Twin Peaks and Stephen King), despite being metatextual and self aware, is equally concerned with the psychology of Jung and the cosmic battles of Silent Hill. The series, though only boasting two mainline entries, is equally as brilliant as its inspiration.
Alan Wake (the first game) examines the creative process. Through the guise of the Dark Presence (the collective unconsciousness of humanity) and the Dark Place, creative work can be actualised and given the potential to change the world. The game is about the struggle of this process, of coming to terms with that power, and overcoming everything that stops creativity.
Alan is a deeply flawed character. He’s a bad husband, a hack writer, and everything he tries to do somehow backfires on him, but he has the determination to actualise art, the drive to create something no matter how it’s perceived.
Using this framework, the first game examines tropes of the horror genre, blends together ideas, and satires the crime/horror writing which inspired so much of survival horror--making it a unique entry in the genre.
For as brilliant and simple as the first game is, the modern peak of the genre certainly comes in Alan Wake II, which is so innovative that it contains an entire musical and fully produced shortfilm as well as a plethora of complex worldbending mechanics and a story that doublesdown on the cosmic insanity of the first game (while disposing of the Dark Presence’s other the Bright Presence).
If the first game was a cosmic battle between good and bad, and read metatextualy, between pure art and commercial pandering, then the second game is about the Silent Hill 2 combination of Shadow and Anima to complete the self.
For starters, the game features a split protagonist (like RE2), literally showing the separation between the leads. Then, the game’s major villain is revealed to be the game’s hero, which is nothing new for Alan Wake, and shows how the greatest enemy of art and creativity is always the self.
The horror in the Alan Wake series is the horror of inaxion. Unlike the strictly psychological approach of Silent Hill or the blockbuster approach of RE, Alan Wake uses writer’s block (and its actualised cosmic being) as the source of all horror. The zombie-like Taken as roadblocks. The Shadow as an escaped doppelgänger. The archetypes as traps. Alan Wake is a game series about the examination of art, of beauty, of story and how all of these have the power to literally change the world.
Now, the first game is only tangentially related to the survival horror genre, that is, it drops a lot of the trappings of the genre to replace them with more standard shooting game elements. There are no grand puzzles. Very little backtracking. No real silence. Instead, the game is loud and bombastic. You’re fitting bulldozers, attending rock concerts, and surviving bridge collapses. Despite being more inspired by noir and soap operas, Alan Wake also takes the blockbuster approach.
This is something that changes in the sequel. Alan Wake II takes that same energy, keeping with the rock concerts and musicals, and transfers it to the traditional survival horror formula. You have to solve puzzles. You have to make your way through empty areas with haunting atmospheres (though there is still a lot of just the forest). You have to return to earlier places with new tools available. Perhaps most notable about Alan Wake II is that it’s actually scary. Though the first game managed to keep you on edge with a constant barrage of enemies, its sequel relishes in dread and atmosphere meant to make even the safest moments feel dangerous. This is most pronounced in the dark place, where shadows could easily come to life and cut you down and the environment is always changing.
The thematic shift of Alan Wake II is more concerned with how one can escape a loop of bad habits and negative character traits in order to ‘spiral’ towards a better future--at least that’s the journey of Alan; however, we see something very similar in Saga’s final chapter as well, as she must confront all her doubt and failings to once again actualise herself as a real person--almost in the Jungian Silent Hill style.
Being a game series of inspirations, Alan Wake is also great at examining the tropes of the genre and the piece of art which inspired it. It’s happy to break convention and show the strangeness between a RE which has an inhabitant solve a complex puzzle just to use the bathroom. That is why, in a lot of ways, it’s a metaphorical zenith for the genre.
Conclusion
The thesis of this defense got a little lost along the way. The point is, video games as a medium have as much (if not more) potential to be moving pieces of art, and I have found the survival horror genre to be a ripe plantation for these gems to sprout (see Soma). The recent revival of the genre by its heavy hitters and new innovators shows that the commercialisation of the industry hasn’t quite destroyed all potential for new works of art, and hopefully these entries will inspire future developers to take more risks and create the next Alan Wake II, RE4/2, or Silent Hill 2. Because there’s always something worth being afraid of.
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