Original concept of Silent Hill 3

Heather finds out why it's true that you shouldn't talk to strangers. Or look in mirrors, quite honestly.

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Jonipoon
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Original concept of Silent Hill 3

Post by Jonipoon »

(Disclaimer: Just like with most old translated interviews from Team Silent members, they should always be taken with a pinch of salt.)

Source: https://www.silenthillmemories.net/crea ... rld_en.htm

In the early stages of development of the third game, the idea was to make another stand-alone story that followed in the footsteps of Silent Hill 2 by focusing on a damaged human being summoned to the town for a specific reason. Eventually, this idea was cut since they didn't want to make a SH2 clone. Interestingly enough, this interview source has been used by several pretentious SH2 fanatics to look down upon SH3 and argue that "it could've been so much better if Team Silent had decided to stay true to its original idea of continuing the personal hell concept, blah blah blah". I find it ironic that those people are defending a concept that was disliked by the actual developers for being too derivative of the second game.

Nevertheless, it's still interesting to imagine what such a version of Silent Hill 3 would've looked like. While there's certaintly very little information to go on, one would expect the themes around childbirth and teenage pregnancy to be carried over. Heather would obviously be a nobody character completely unrelated to the plot of SH1, and her reason for being summoned to Silent Hill could be something related to either child abuse (done by herself to her child), the premature death of her child, or a miscarriage - all of which would be something she denies has ever happend (in true SH2 fashion, sigh). Eventually, she would of course accept the truth and deal with the consequences before either being punished for her sins or inflicting retribution (as she sees fit). For example, if her miscarriage was caused by someone punching her in the stomach it would be fitting for her to seek revenge for that. Even for Silent Hill however, that's pretty heavy, but I could see it working if done well.

How do you think? Personally I'm perfectly fine with how Silent Hill 3 turned out however.
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phantomess
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Re: Original concept of Silent Hill 3

Post by phantomess »

Wow. I didn't know it was supposed to be something different and standalone. I'm happy with SH3 as a SH1 sequel (despite what they did to Harry), and it did a fantastic job in the scare department. It has the most nightmarish sequences in the series IMO.

I don't really get the impression from the interview that the original story was related to SH3's/Heather's themes. (Could have been, though.) I'm intrigued that they mentioned their original plan would have been the darkest story and may not have been approved by the ratings boards. Definitely piques my curiosity.
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Re: Original concept of Silent Hill 3

Post by Herr Shaun »

It's hard to say - in such an alternate reality we'd probably be used to the idea by now. I'd want them to have kept the references to other games in the series intact (eg. the Wish House article, Douglas' "missing persons case" remark).

Although our SH3 is a little hamfisted, I wouldn't part with it for anything.
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Re: Original concept of Silent Hill 3

Post by Jonipoon »

phantomess wrote: 17 Oct 2022I don't really get the impression from the interview that the original story was related to SH3's/Heather's themes. (Could have been, though.) I'm intrigued that they mentioned their original plan would have been the darkest story and may not have been approved by the ratings boards. Definitely piques my curiosity.
I actually wrote a short story pitch a few years ago about how such a version of SH3 would unfold, given they would stick with most of Heather's themes. The premise was like this:

Heather Gibbons is a young woman that gets called to Silent Hill. After waking up from a nightmare in her motel room, we learn that she's looking for her kidnapped son. The inner monologue reads like this while she's laying on the bed watching the fan in the ceiling spin around:

"Do I know what I'm doing? Do I even realize how dangerous this is? I guess not. But if I tell the police, they'll kill Aaron. They'll kill my son. Those bastards... They took my little Aaron and expect me to pay such a large ransom. I don't have that kind of money. So this is my only chance. I know that my son is here somewhere, in this town. I must find him."

The player is not told from the start that Heather is actually just 17 years old, but several clues are dropped throughout the game. For example, in the motel room it's possible to read a newspaper titled "Riverdale Local" that includes the following three headlines: "Red Lions advance to semis", "Runaway teen still missing", and "Construction of new parking garage halted".

During Heather's exploration of the town, she will occasionally run into a boy that shares an eerie resemblance to her son and even acknowledges that his name is Aaron. However, he doesn't seem to recognize Heather and refuses to call her his mother, instead finding her scary and will always run away. Heather is initially heartbroken by this, but will gradually begin to scold "Aaron" as she becomes more and more furious.

It is later revaled that Heather has a complicated relationship with her father, strongly implying that she has been sexually abused by him for years. Combined with her Otherworld being filled with shocking imagery of fetuses, menstruation and sex organs, the player will finally learn that Heather had a forced abortion as a result of her abuse. The little boy she's been following around the town was never real, but a manifestation of what she'd imagine her son would look like.


I think it's a little bit on the nose, and while it shares many similarities with SH2 that's kind of the point.
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Re: Original concept of Silent Hill 3

Post by Burning Man »

What makes the linked interview "salty" is that Ito later confirmed that Silent Hill 3 was originally going to be a rail-shooter. A lot of time and resources were presumably wasted on that vision, and the team was short on time to finish the actual product. If there was an initial draft of the scenario, it's not clear how much effort was put into it.

A main character as a teenage girl was conceived later, though. The initial considerations for the main character was an old person and a middle-aged woman, with the developer personally having a preference for a "strong mother"-type as in the "V.I. Warshawski" books. They decided to go with a teenage girl after taking into consideration that the main character would need to be fighting monsters. It's not clear if childbirth would have still been a main theme with the initial considerations, but "teenage pregnancy" wouldn't have worked.
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Re: Original concept of Silent Hill 3

Post by Jonipoon »

Team Silent members contradicting each other? I've never heard that one before... Although to be fair, Ito seems to be the only one giving continuous Twitter updates to this very day.

But yes, I do remember that Silent Hill 3 was originally conceived as a rail shooter. I've used that argument before to counter people who won't shut up about The Room originally not being conceived as a Silent Hill game.

We might never know any precise details about the whole concept or "what could've been", but it's fun to speculate. "Old man" sounds like an early concept for Douglas Cartland, which also fits the theme of private detectives in the world of V. I. Warshawski. Though I think what's interesting is not actually the woman protagonist's age, but rather the game eventually being re-pitched as a sequel to SH1. If that didn't happen, who's to say they still would've kept the woman's age as middle-aged, or change it to a teenager for gameplay purposes which in turn would affect the themes.

The point is more about if this version of SH3 would've been more similar to SH2 in terms of how the town calls out to people with darkness in their heart. As I've stated before, I'm not very fond of the rehearsal of SH2's themes. But if that's the SH3 we got, perhaps it would've been different enough to work on its own without being a carbon copy of SH2.
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