Silent Hill 3

Silent Hill 3 is a survival horror game developed by Team Silent, and published by Konami for the Sony PlayStation 2. It is the third installment in the Silent Hill survival horror series and is a direct sequel to the first Silent Hill game. It was released in Japan on July 3, 2003, and in North America on August 6, 2003, and was ported to the PC later that year.

Set seventeen years after the events of Silent Hill in which Harry Mason defeats the god of the town cult and is given a baby girl to care for, Silent Hill 3 focuses on Heather, a teenage girl who finds herself being drawn into Silent Hill's alternate reality. She discovers that the cult plans to use her to birth their god, and becomes caught in a conflict within the cult.

Silent Hill 3 was mostly well received by critics, especially in its presentation, including the environments, graphics and audio, as well as the overall horror elements and themes that are continued from past installments.

Gameplay
Gameplay in Silent Hill 3 resembles closely that of its two predecessors, the three main gameplay elements being combat, exploration, and puzzle solving. Combat, as exploration, takes place in third-person view, with the player able to equip weapons found throughout the game. Heather may also block and perform side-step maneuvers to avoid enemies. Weapons that can be acquired include a shotgun, sub-machine gun, a maul and even a katana. As a new addition to the items list, players can also acquire beef jerky at various points in the game, which can be laid down on the floor in order to distract various monsters, particularly the dog-like creatures. As a series staple, the flashlight and radio return, the latter of which crackles when monsters are in proximity, but which may be turned off if the player so chooses.

Players can set the difficulty of both the combat and puzzle elements of the game separately, with easy, medium and hard being offered in both cases. In the case of the puzzle difficulties there is a large difference between medium and hard; one of the early puzzles on the medium setting requires only simple pattern recognition, whilst the hard version of the same puzzle requires considerable knowledge of five Shakespeare plays to complete. The game also features unlockable weapons and costumes that increase replayability.

Setting
Silent Hill 3 is set in the fictional universe of the Silent Hill series. Seventeen years before the start of Silent Hill 3, Harry Mason defeated a god brought forth by the resident cult of Silent Hill and at the ending, was given a baby girl to care for.

Characters
The protagonist and playable character of Silent Hill 3 is Heather, the teenaged adopted daughter of Harry Mason. Claudia Wolf, the cult's priestess who plans to bring about a paradise on Earth, serves as the game's antagonist. As Heather attempts to unravel the reasons why the cult of Silent Hill is pursuing her, she encounters a private investigator named Douglas Cartland; Vincent, a member of the cult who detests Claudia; and Leonard Wolf, Claudia's abusive father.

Story
After a brief nightmare, Heather awakens at a restaurant in a shopping mall. Before she can leave the mall, Douglas Cartland confronts her, claiming to have information about her past. Heather evades him, but upon reentering the mall, discovers it is mostly abandoned except for monsters. She encounters Claudia, who speaks cryptically about Heather's fate. Heather suddenly collapses in severe pain, but having recovered when Claudia leaves, uses an elevator, and finds herself in the Otherworld version of the mall — similar to the original mall, but dark, decaying and full of the monsters. After defeating a giant worm creature, she finds herself in the original shopping mall and runs into Douglas, who apologizes and confesses that Claudia had hired him to find her. Heather leaves him in the mall and resolves to take the subway home.

After traveling through the subway and an office building, Heather finally arrives back home. There she discovers her father has been killed by a monster under Claudia's orders out of revenge and to "fill [Heather's] heart with hatred". After further cryptic messages as to Heather's role in the proceedings, Claudia leaves her to fight the monster, telling her that she will be waiting for her in Silent Hill.

Heather subsequently resolves to go to Silent Hill, intent on killing Claudia. She meets with Douglas in her apartment and accepts his offer to drive her there. On the journey there, Douglas explains that Vincent left him a message, telling them to look for a man named Leonard, whilst Heather reads a memo left by her father before his death, which briefly recounts the events of Silent Hill, and reveals that she is the baby girl that was left to Harry Mason (her adoptive father) at the conclusion of the first game, after he destroyed the god birthed by Alessa Gillespie. Claudia seeks Heather to birth the cult's god, since Heather—the girl given to Harry, now grown up—is in fact a reincarnation of Alessa.

Upon arriving in Silent Hill, which is once more abandoned and shrouded in fog, Heather checks Brookhaven Hospital for Leonard. Shortly after entering the hospital, she discovers a ringing telephone in an abandoned room and answers it. The caller eventually reveals that he is Claudia's father, Leonard. He disapproves of Claudia's actions to rebirth the god, like Heather, and initially agrees to help her, offering the use of an artifact later identified as the "Seal of Metatron". When the two meet, however, Leonard, who takes the form of a monster, tries to kill Heather after discovering she is not a member of the cult. Heather subsequently defeats him.

Returning from the hospital, she meets Vincent who directs her to a church via the Amusement Park, purportedly at Douglas' request. Upon Heather's arrival at the amusement park, she finds herself back in the Otherworld, identical to her nightmare at the start of the game, but this time manages to find a key to halt the roller coaster long enough to jump off safely. She later finds Douglas, wounded after an encounter with Claudia but still alive. Leaving him behind at his request, she faces the ghost of her dark half in a duel on a spinning carousel. She finally reaches the Church and confronts Claudia with Vincent nearby, but at the final confrontation Claudia stabs him to death, and dismisses the Seal of Metatron he had planned to use as useless.

Heather collapses in pain under the pressure of holding the god inside her, the anger and hatred she holds towards Claudia only intensifying it, and begins to turn blood-red all over. Heather vomits out the fetal god after she swallows the tablet within the pendant that her father had given her. Horrified, Claudia pushes Heather before she can stomp on the fetus, picks it up, and swallows it, only to die in the process of birthing it; Heather then fights and defeats the god, which is only partly-formed owing to its premature birth.

Three endings appear in the game. The Normal ending, which is the only ending available on the first play-through of the game, sees Heather and Douglas survive and Heather ostensibly returning to a normal life. The Possessed ending, appearing after a scored game with more than 4,000 points obtained, shows that Douglas has been murdered, apparently by Heather, now under the influence of the still-living god. This ending is achieved through killing over 100 enemies on normal or hard mode on an additional play-through. Finally, the Revenge ending, accessible by certain game requirements, sees the return of the "UFO" endings of the previous games, where Heather complains to her seemingly alien father, Harry, who promptly flies a group of spaceships to Silent Hill, blowing it up.

Development
Development for Silent Hill 3 began after the release of Silent Hill 2, and was carried out almost simultaneously with development of another Silent Hill title that was intended to explore a different direction for the franchise and not be part of the main, numbered series; known as Room 302, this game would eventually become integrated into the main series as Silent Hill 4: The Room. The development team for this iteration was smaller than that working on Silent Hill 2, with around 40 people working on the game, made up of the core team from the second title and some newcomers.

Like all Silent Hill games, one of Silent Hill 3's influences is the film Jacob's Ladder; one of the Subway platforms is named Bergen Street Station, the station Jacob was inquiring about at the beginning of the film. The developers also cited horror writer Stephen King as another of their influences.

Character design
Much like the previous installments, Silent Hill 3 also incorporates references drawn from real life actors and actresses. As the only female protagonist of the series, the creators originally named Heather "Helen", but it was dubbed too old-fashioned and was changed. It was later decided that the character would be named after voice actress Heather Morris who lent her talents to the video game's protagonist. Heather was modeled after French actresses/singers Charlotte Gainsbourg and Vanessa Paradis in several rough sketches.

Douglas Cartland's name came from American actor Douglas Fairbanks. The developers stated that his name "just seemed to suit him" and that there was no true connection to his namesake. During the sketching process, his character was modeled after actors Giancarlo Giannini and Ian Holm. It was noted that even during the concept designs that Cartland was designed as a middle-aged detective.

Claudia Wolf's character was considered the most difficult to design. Early sketches revealed that the creators wanted to dress her like a holy woman in various robes, and at one point she had a shaved head covered entirely with tattoos. Eventually, the creators decided to make her appear like an average woman, modelling her on Julianne Moore, and then removing her eyebrows, so that the "normal" appearance was slightly skewed. She was first named "Christie", but it was deemed too "cute" and the character was eventually named after actress Claudia Cardinale.

Vincent's name originated from actor Vincent Gallo in connection with his unshaven look. Early designs were based on actor Ethan Hawke and focused on capturing a look of "derangement and moodiness."

Audio
The original soundtrack for Silent Hill 3, composed by Akira Yamaoka, was released in Japan on July 16, 2003 and in North America on August 6, 2004. The song "You're Not Here", used in the game's introduction sequence, was included in the PS2 port of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme. It is also included in the Silent Hill Experience UMD media pack and is featured during the closing credits of the Silent Hill movie released in 2006. The game's soundtrack is notable as the first using vocals prominently. Most of the vocalized tracks are performed by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (credited as Melissa Williamson). The end credits song "Hometown" is voiced by Joe Romersa.

Reception
Silent Hill 3 received positive reviews, garnering an 83.79% rating at Game Rankings for the PlayStation 2 version, and a 70.42% rating for the PC version. Its Metacritic rating for the PlayStation 2 version is 85/100, whilst the PC version has a rating of 72/100. The PC version fared less well than the PlayStation 2 version, with some PC reviewers drawing unfavourable comparisons of the game's combat and gameplay to other combat-based games found on the PC platform, whilst others highlighted some technical issues, such as poor gamepad support.

Positive reactions were given to the general horror and atmosphere of the game, including "truly horrifying sections" whilst it "packs some genuine scares" and "the feeling of eeriness and doom is almost overwhelming". The story told as part of the atmosphere was also received positively, making for a "satisfying, coherent sequel", although its status as such meant that "it may be a little tough to follow for people who haven't played the first game", despite "a laudable effort to help people catch up". In addition, the graphics, audio and general high production values were all credited with adding positively to the atmosphere.

Negative criticism largely stemmed from the lack of any innovations in gameplay; the game "doesn't do anything major that the series hasn't done before", "does little in term of innovation" and "doesn't offer much beyond the other titles in the series". Also criticised was the game's camera and control system which, despite having been improved from previous games, was described as "awkward, disorienting, and motion sickness-inducing". Some criticism also stemmed from the length of the game, as it "can be easily beaten in a handful of hours".

Silent Hill 3 sold over 300,000 copies by November 2003. The game also topped sales charts in Japan upon its release.