// KOTAKU — GAMING
The Story Behind Silent Hill: Downpour And Its Haunting Take On Psychological Horror
interviewKonamiSilent HillSilent Hill: DownpourTomm Hulett
Every few years, I play through my favorite Silent Hill games. Silent Hill 2 is the best and the remake is equally excellent. But there’s also another game in the series that has really grown on me, and that’s Silent Hill: Downpour. I wrote about the game a couple years back and how it changed up the formula by making you the monster. Playing through the game again earlier this year, I felt the same sense of haunting awe. Downpour, which came out in 2012, follows Murphy Pendleton’s tragic journey through Silent Hill. But he’s not the only one wandering its streets.
I wanted to know more about the game’s development and spoke with Tomm Hulett online. He was senior associate producer and writer at Konami on Downpour.
The game’s inception came shortly after Hulett had finished work on Silent Hill: Origins and Homecoming. He was “very determined to make an ‘authentic’ Silent Hill that could “meet fan expectations and prove the West could create a proper Silent Hill. All the parties obviously had a variety of ideas, so we tried to focus on the ones that felt true to Silent Hill, like keeping things atmospheric or telling little mini-stories such as the side quests, and then avoiding things that felt less true to the franchise.”
In pursuing that goal, he developed a list of pitches for Downpour. “We wanted the ‘pitch’ to be very clear with a strong hook. SH2 famously has one of the best hooks of all time (man receives letter from his dead wife). SH4 has another strong hook. We wanted something that was clear and concise, and carries through the entire game.” Everyone felt that the idea of a “convict ending up in Silent Hill” was the strongest of them. From there, a lot of discussion happened about “why Murphy was in prison, why he was in Silent Hill, and so on, ultimately resulting in the Murphy that was featured in the game.”
Murphy Pendleton might be a convict, but in some ways, he has one of the most sympathetic stories in the series. The tragedy behind what happens to his child drives him to extreme acts, but he’s still wracked with guilt by his actions. What’s so fascinating is that what he’s actually guilty of depends on the player’s actions, dramatically affecting the ending.
In Downpour, there are moments where Murphy is given a choice on how to interact with players. For example, Anne is about to fall. Does Murphy help or ignore her? Regardless of which you choose, Anne falls, which made me wonder why the choice was even given to the player. Hulett flipped this idea around. “These were ways to understand how the player viewed Murphy. What kind of guy is this criminal? Players have pointed out your choices don’t change the events (ie. Anne falls either way) but that wasn’t really the point.” So those decisions weren’t so much about the actual act, but our perception of who Murphy was. It’s a subtle point, but also a creepy one in that we’re also participating in Silent Hill’s journey. This is something I also loved in Shattered Memories, where your answers to the psychiatrist actually affect the way the city of Silent Hill looks. I’m glad to see it return, even if in a different form.
Vatra Games, the game studio based out of the Czech Republic, developed Downpour and brought their own unique take on the series. Hulett told me, “I’ve worked for a lot of Japanese companies so collaborations in that direction feel natural at this point, and obviously working with other American teams or even British teams are not so different. But Eastern Europe has its own quirks and things that none of us were used to, so it was a learning experience! But I do think Vatra’s own flavor gives the game an identity. This is another thing you can see as new SH’s come out from different international teams. It’s very interesting.
“Konami is very collaborative with its developers (which I’ve now experienced from the other side – everyone play Contra: Operation Galuga!), so there is