SPOILER ALERT: This feature will discuss Silent Hill 3’s plot and ending.
Silent Hill is a series with a great deal of complex meaning behind many of its entries (well, except for Downpour). Many of these games deal with timely topics that still hold relevance in modern, deep-seated issues. Which is why among the Silent Hill revival, I hope that we reach a point where Silent Hill 3, a game more relevant today than ever, gets some form of comeback.
Silent Hill 3 isn’t your traditional horror game. It might have those artfully game-controlled camera angles, tank controls, and smothering atmosphere, but it’s also a game about achieving agency over yourself (a somewhat optimistic polar opposite to Silent Hill 2, then). Heather Mason isn’t being punished for misdeeds like Downpour’s Murphy Pendleton or some casual bystander with the worst luck like Heather’s father Harry Mason from Silent Hill 1. Neither is Heather a passive participant whose reasons for being in the town are as mercurial as James Sunderland’s. Instead, Heather is a victim fighting to defend herself against oppression put upon her by hostile forces.
From the moment Silent Hill 3 starts, it’s fixated on Heather’s lack of control. Her nightmare sees her run over by a rollercoaster with no way out. When she’s at the mall, our teenage heroine is accosted by an older gentleman, Douglas Cartland, while on her own. She only ends up crossing paths with monstrosities by slipping behind the storefronts to evade him. All this is on top of her existing teenage struggles – outright saying she doesn’t feel like the girl she sees staring back at her in the bathroom mirror.
Unfortunately, her attempts to escape Cartland put her in the path of Claudia Wolf and her army of twisted abominations. One of the last members of a dying cult, Claudia is obsessed with Heather, her ‘power’, and Heather’s origins. At the same time, Heather encounters the first of several painful episodes. Little does Heather know that she’s a reborn psychic, Alessia Gillespie, adopted by Harry Mason at the end of Silent Hill 1, and that she’s pregnant with Claudia’s ‘god’. I guarantee you, that’s the easiest way to summarize the sheer amount of metaphysics going on in Silent Hill 3.
Claudia is both aspiring to succeed where her predecessors failed and seeking revenge against the Mason family. She hires Cartland to find Heather and Harry, killing Harry and luring Heather out to Silent Hill. Claudia’s Order is dying, mostly made up of the town’s abominations rather than believers. Her closest associate, Vincent, has turned to nihilism while pretending to still be a believer.
Now, more than ever, Silent Hill 3’s story is worth retelling.
Like Heather, Claudia is surrounded by men who she can’t ever fully trust. Vincent plays both of the women off against each other, while Cartland struggles to do the right thing as he’s easily misled. Harry, even if purely an off-screen character, lies to his daughter in a fruitless attempt to protect her from her past.
The monstrosities lurking about are often towering, overpowering opponents or slithering, slippery adversaries. Despite Heather receiving a substantive arsenal of weapons over the course of Silent Hill 3, she’s always just closing the gap to balance things out in her favor. The struggle is as inescapable as the unwanted pregnancy forced upon Heather, where through some dark metaphysical woo-woo she became the bearer of the cult’s god. A pregnancy that results in a traumatic, transformative birth into a twisted, malignant being. Yet Claudia is hell-bent on forcing Heather to go through with it.
This is what defines each of them. Claudia was raised to constantly conform to a patriarchal, dogmatic society, and she passes that traumatic existence onto others. She is both victim and victimizer wrapped into a bundle of pain. Her misery of internalized misogyny drives her blindly – any time her actions are questioned, she claims they are the work of “God” even though she doesn’t truly know what god she worships.
Claudia thinks that the world can only be reborn by a messiah with bloody hands, lost in delusions to justify her own self-hatred. In her mind, it’s the world’s fault she’s suffered so, not the religion she was brought up in. That broken argument is her constantly unraveling justification, doubling down harder and harder until she has nothing left to give.
By contrast, though Heather is purely a victim, she actively chooses to push back against threats thrown at her. She picks up the gun when cornered by a monster, learning to wield her small armory as the game rolls on. She convinces Cartland to help her, seeks justice for her father’s murder, and even Vincent doesn’t stand in her way. Throughout her journey, Heather is cautious yet compassionate – able to discern between when to be street-wise or kind.
When Heather is confronted by the twisted visage of her past life, she refuses to give in, fighting the version of her tainted by the town. She rejects the dogma of the Order manifested in her twisted reflection, able to turn any attacks it wields against it. Once she’s overcome herself, that’s when she enters the far worse hell: Claudia’s church.
All of this culminates in a climactic moment so simple, somber, and, well, a bit gross, where Heather is able to abort the demonic god from her stomach. It’s a ghastly, inhuman thing, yet in her desperation, Claudia takes it on, only to be twisted into a horrific entity that Heather has to put down. By choosing to save herself, Heather almost prevented the cult’s god from arising, and only by making her misery permanent did Claudia ensure it would climb out of whatever nightmare it came from.
In the end, Claudia’s plight is pitiable. Like many raised in toxic environments, she was worn down and molded against her will by hostile forces purely out to exploit her. Whatever fight she might’ve put up, or whomever she might’ve become – all of that was taken away from her, and she almost took it away from Heather. Instead, Heather triumphs over the oppressive forces thrown at her by asserting total agency over her beliefs, body, and mind.
It’s easily one of the heaviest, most uncomfortable narratives a game could’ve explored. Themes of abortion and forced pregnancy, coming of age as a teenage girl in a society that’s often so predatory, and how religion can be twisted to hurt so many. All this while keeping a stance that’s defined yet leaves room for conversation and interpretation.
For instance, even though Vincent professes to be a true believer, he outright tells Heather that what Claudia’s doing doesn’t align with his own beliefs, and he’s even willing to admit that the Order thinks God could just as easily be the Devil. In a quagmire of hatred and bigotry, it’s not hard to see how they might seem interchangeable. That’s an incredible amount of nuance, especially given how hesitant most games would be about any of these topics.
Given the state of the world today, especially in certain countries, this makes Silent Hill 3 all the more relevant. I understand the commercial appeal of Silent Hill 2, but if Konami is serious about striking while the iron is hot, then it should really have Silent Hill 3 in its sights. Hopefully, if Silent Hill 2’s remake fares well enough, they’ll finally do that, and introduce Heather’s story to a whole new generation of horror fans. Now, more than ever, Silent Hill 3’s story is worth retelling.
