The Pros and Cons of Silent Hill: Downpour

[S.L.D.T.]

I originally wrote this little screed as a response to a post about Silent Hill: Downpour that I saw on the Silent Hill subreddit, but I figured that I would repost it here to get some more discussion going about the game. Silent Hill: Downpour is a game that I have mixed feelings about. I replayed it with multiple playthroughs about 2 years or so ago now, and that revisiting brought some of its pros and cons into sharper focus for me. I really like the world it builds in terms of expanding the town and introducing us to some interesting new characters. I think that the revelation of Murphy being Anne's "Bogeyman" and the turns that the story took in terms of intertwining the personal traumas of both of those characters makes the central narrative of the game feel fairly well-realized. Mechanically, the game is pretty enjoyable, as well, with the combat feeling much better once you get a feel for the ebb and flow of needing to block and bait out your enemies' attack (it feels kind of Dark Souls-esque, in that regard). The creation of a more sprawling world for the town and the implementation of small side-stories in the form of optional side quests was also a very welcome, engaging touch. However, I feel that the game is betrayed by a handful of key issues: bad side characters, mostly awful monster designs, and a few poorly-written endings.

When thinking of characters, a character doesn't need to have a ton of focus to feel well-integrated into the plot. For example, John Sater fit well into the narrative because, although his source of guilt differed, his actions and fate ultimately act as a reflection of the possible outcomes that could follow from the paths that Anne and Murphy are choosing to follow because of their own personal grief. However, other characters like Bobby Ricks and Howard Blackwood feel very inconsistent because almost nothing is revealed about their backstories within the game itself, and what can be learned about them from outside material (e.g., Silent Hill: Book of Memories, Silent Hill: Downpour - Anne's Story) reveals that the unusual purgatories in which they have been placed deviate significantly from the logic of how we have previously known the town to operate, with their "punishments" making the town feel less like an ambiguous supernatural force and more like a conscious vindictive arbiter. If the inclusion of characters like these was necessary to the plot of the game, more time with them or more DLC content exploring them would have been preferable, and a similar treatment would have even helped to better flesh-out the more well-realized characters like Anne, as well (to me, the fact that we never got an Anne's Story DLC was almost criminal with how well-told that story was and how much it fleshed out many of the side characters).

The quality of the monster design in this game (or lack thereof) mostly speaks for itself, with a few exceptions. The Bogeyman and the Doll were decent, being more or less fresh takes on classic Silent Hill monsters with interesting visual designs and gameplay mechanics tied to them. The Wheelman was excellent, not only being a great design aesthetically but also acting as a perfect reflection of the narrative revelation of what happened to Frank Coleridge and how his fate ties into the stories of both Anne and Murphy. The rest are forgettable at best and outright lazy at worst. The Weeping Bat feels like a very generic movie monster that has no significance psychologically to any of the characters personal struggles, and mostly lacks distinctive features, with a design that doesn't even much reflect their namesake in any way. The Screamers, Prisoner Minions, and Prisoner Juggernauts are incredibly generic, with very little room for symbolism left to the imagination, with all seeming like you could have easily plucked them from budget horror films made in the early 2000s, and none of them being mechanically or visually interesting to encounter or to fight. The Tormented Souls and Wall Corpses are generic Silent Hill designs, also lacking much narrative or symbolic relevance outside of reflecting surface levels themes of confinement; the Void is a mechanical recycling of the scripted Raw Shock encounters from Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and the "Monocle Man" is a plot-irrelevant implementation of a leftover asset from early development (this was more or less confirmed by the developers, if I remember, though feel free to correct me).

Finally, in terms of the endings, only 3 out of the possible 6 really feel consistent with the rest of the story. The Forgiveness and Truth & Justice endings are written to be consistent with the stories that are told for Anne and Murphy, with the former stemming from Anne's decision to overcome her and move past her grief in a healthy way once she has learned the truth and the latter stemming from Anne's alternative decision to continue down a self-destructive path of vengeance (an outcome which is treated as canon by Silent Hill: Downpour - Anne's Story and which is consistent with the lengths she is willing to go to get revenge for her father, as portrayed in that narrative). The Reversal ending - achieved by allowing Anne to kill Murphy in the final battle - is arguably also consistent with the stories of Anne and Murphy, as it shows a sort of fate that would be fitting for Anne had she been successful in achieving her unjustified vengeance against Murphy without ever learning the real truth about what happened to her father. The other endings require you to ignore entire sections and/or subplots within the game or to treat them as if they never happened, and are only possible if many of the events leading up to the game and during the games events are either changed or never happened. The Full Circle ending reveals that Murphy actually did kill Frank Coleridge, which is depicted as a source of immediate regret and trauma for Murphy in the ending itself but which never centers or features meaningfully in any of Murphy's struggles during the game, and which completely removes the narrative drama, irony, and tension underlying Murphy's innocence in the death of Anne's father. However, the Execution ending is a much worse offender, revealing Murphy to be the killer of both Frank Coleridge and his own son, which requires that all of the events related to Patrick Napier never happened. In previous Silent Hill games, the endings may have been highly divergent (particularly the the joke endings), but at least in those games, you could see the alternative endings as reasonable outcomes of the character's alternative decisions and mindsets at different key junctures. They felt consistent with what had been established for the characters, and didn't require that you throw out consideration of most of the game's events to justify them.

I imagine that this piece feels a bit more written on the "con" side of things, but as I said before, there were certainly many aspects of the game that I enjoyed, and I feel that it was and still is a title worth revisiting, warts and all. But what do all of you think? I would be interested to know what stood out to each of you as things that the game did especially well or especially poorly, as well as how each of you feel about the game overall.

[rodox_head]

The monster designs were very lame, save for the Doll and Bogeyman like you said. The prisoners and weeping bat are interesting in concept of playing with the idea of being a helpless and paranoid prisoner, but taken into a baaaad stylistic approach. In contrast, I find the screamer to be very interesting in both design and concept, but the design did not translate to 3d model well at all.

About the endings, I always thought that the execution ending should have been axed all together, and maybe replaced with an ending that plays out like the forgiveness ending, but reveals Murphy and Anne to have died in the bus accident after all. It's hackneyed as all hell, but still better than the alternative.

[firecrest]

The Silent Hill series was going through something of an identity crisis at the time Silent Hill Downpour was being developed. In retrospect, it was the first true "next-gen" Silent Hill game that made decent use of the consoles' features, but isn't remembered very fondly due to its own uncertainty as a Silent Hill game.

I remember many people complaining about Downpour's lack of level direction. Previous entries in the series were rather linear, but did well to direct players to the next area while giving the impression that you were exploring the town. Downpour was more of an open-world game: a trait that was popular at the time and somewhat expected. Players were left to figure out where to go on their own, which unfortunately led to frustration.

A year or so before, Remedy had released Alan Wake which had gone through a development hell itself. The game was originally going to be an open-world adventure with dynamic weather patterns. During the development process, they found out that it was difficult to tell an effective horror/thriller story in an open-world setting. So, Remedy went 180 and decided to go with a more linear design.

Murphy is the first protagonist whose primary focus is to get out of Silent Hill. In that context, it makes sense to play in an open-world. On the other hand, this also necessitates some sort of guide like Howard Blackwood to point you in the right direction.

Speaking of Howard, I think management wanted to have his character as the "new face of Silent Hill." His introduction was through the comic Silent Hill Past Life. Up until that point, fans had been complaining about Pyramid Head and Pyramid Head-like monsters appearing in the games. Howard was created to be an enigmatic individual. Giving him a concrete background or explaining why he knows so much would have defeated that purpose.

[Otherworld]

Downpour seemed to be a step back to the right direction.

Although the story ended up sabotaging itself. I mean, if Murphy was innocent, why was he called?

Anyway, I enjoyed it. But, as always, our friends Konami made sure there was nowhere near the right amount of time to refine the game. The time crunch was probably the reason for how horrible the monsters really were as well.

[Annin_Tofu]

I actually liked that creepy postman, and how he wasn't intimidated by Murphy.

"This mail isn't gonna deliver itself!"

That's a great line. But I think I just wanna appreciate this game more, as it was the last real sequel we ever got.

[Otherworld]

I don't mind the Postman, I just don't think Silent Hill needs such a charcater

[Annin_Tofu]

They probably wanted to put in characters, who act like they are going about their business, despite already being dead. To them, it probably means normality is still possible.

It's like Hellraiser, where you question what's really happening around you.

[Naroon]

I enjoyed the Postman and thought he was one of the better characters introduced into the franchise. Prior games' lore-building already had characters with similar traits to his, like how Ernest Baldwin in SH2: Born From a Wish somehow had full knowledge of both the nature of Maria, as well as James and the crime he committed. And yet, the game makes it a point to establish via heavy implication that Ernest isn't just another product of the Otherworld, since he had a daughter who passed away which led him to going to such an extreme length such as trying to gather items for an occult ritual to try to revive her, something that James can later attempt in his journey. Then there's the various notes characters in the series can find which were left by other beings, who provide near-real time commentary and observations directly about the player characters.

So in that essence, the Postman isn't at all at odds with the concept of Silent Hill, and I'd argue he really couldn't be because nobody from KCET ever listed any do's and don't's about what the town or its energy was capable of being responsible for. Plus it'd just be lame to try to box in what "Silent Hill really is" and things like that which the fandom's elitists have always polluted the fandom with over the past two decades

I agree about the endings that basically require you to believe that large swaths of the game's pre- and concurrent events never happened in order for them to work, it was an unfortunate mishap and more evidence to me at least that Vatra needed/wanted more time to flesh out the game and just weren't given it by Konami, as usual.

I felt that the game's combat is legitimately some of the worst I've ever experienced in a video game in the 25+ years I've been gaming. The idea of it is... sound, I suppose, being that it was inspired by some sort of Souls-esque deliberateness where button mashing results in you getting rekt, but in practice it was just botched so badly. Weapons breaking is already a divisive design choice, and was maligned when SH4 did it in 2004, and it's arguably done worse in Downpour because the weapons just break so damn fast, and unlike Travis in Origins, Murphy's hand to hand game isn't good enough to make up for not having a weapon in your hands. Enemies will frequently and liberally do a whole helping of annoying, awfully-designed game sins, such as stun-locking the player out of nowhere from a distance or up close, frame-trapping the player with Street Fighter-style ultra combos that also serve to bait the player out of blocking for free damage, bobbing and weaving at the speed of light to dodge Murphy's attempted counter-attacks (which unlike Alex in HC, is impossible for Murphy), and spawning right behind the player in groups without making a sound despite the player knowing that there were no enemies anywhere near them just a few seconds ago.

All in all it added up to an incredibly annoying, frustrating experience and made me absolutely loathe the concept of even being in combat at any point in the game. The excuse that the devs and a lot of players give for it isn't valid to me, the idea that "oh, you're playing as an Every Man™ so that means the combat being dogshit is realistic!", which falls flat especially when people bizarrely point to the "original games" as an attempt at reaffirming that belief, which doesn't work because combat in those games was not only a lot smoother and responsive, but wasn't ever clunky enough where it was easy for the player to be overwhelmed by any of the enemy encounters if they were remotely familiar with action games. Heather, an 17 or 18 year old school girl, could carry around an SMG, a shotgun, a katana, and a frickin' mace and use them without much issue, yet people think that is an excuse for badly designed combat? (Not saying SH3's combat was bad here, it was actually the best in the entire series aside from some aspects of Homecoming's.)

SH3 in particular had deeper systems that most players seemingly weren't ever aware of, like the fact that there was an actual stamina mechanic -- by beating the game once you could toggle on an on-screen health and stamina bar that showed this -- and there was also a parry/counter-attack mechanic which made the melee combat flow a bit better and actually sped-up a lot of the fights in the game. Which really made it a shame that the combat in SH4 was such an abysmal shit-heap in comparison.

That's enough rambling from me, that's mostly my thoughts on DP so far and some of the other games I guess lol

[Annin_Tofu]

It felt odd to only face one boss, in the prison. Usually in other games, you were forced to fight something before the town turned to semi-normality again.

I also felt as if there was a lack of enemy types, but the monsters you do encounter, are annoying and always the same kinds. Weeping Bats. Banshees. I don't know what they're called, exactly. The game didn't boast of many types unlike the previous games.

[Otherworld]

It felt odd to only face one boss, in the prison. Usually in other games, you were forced to fight something before the town turned to semi-normality again.

I also felt as if there was a lack of enemy types, but the monsters you do encounter, are annoying and always the same kinds. Weeping Bats. Banshees. I don't know what they're called, exactly. The game didn't boast of many types unlike the previous games.

I always thought if they'd got rid of al the side quests and worked on what was important this game would have turned out much better.