Silent Hill: Origins

• 1. Introduction

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  Silent Hill: Origins opens on a lonely road, where trucker Travis Grady swerves to avoid hitting a girl who is not really there. She turns out to be a spirit tied to a real child named Alessa, and following her leads Travis to a house already on fire. He pulls her out, loses consciousness, and wakes inside the fog-bound town of Silent Hill with one goal: find out if she survived. Answering that question means digging up childhood memories Travis has spent years trying to forget.

  Origins is the fifth entry in the Silent Hill series and a prequel to the game that started it all in 1999. Making it was its own ordeal. The studio that pitched the project was not the studio that finished it. Its script also went through a rewrite under serious time pressure before release.

  What forced that overhaul? Why does this entry change the way Travis fights compared to the games before it? And why did critics who admired its faithfulness to the original also complain that it added almost nothing new?

• 2. A Town Split In Two

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  A flashlight in Travis's hand points toward the nearest usable item, while a portable radio crackles with static whenever a monster is near. The game favors a third-person perspective but switches to fixed camera angles at points throughout the town. Much of the exploration alternates between the ordinary town and its darker, dilapidated counterpart, known as the Other World. There, players hunt for the keys and items a given riddle demands. In the theater, for instance, raising a prop on the physical stage produces a matching change once the story shifts into the Other World. Solving a riddle typically leads to a confrontation with a boss, and defeating it opens a new area of the town. Finishing the game unlocks special items or alternate outfits for Travis, tied to whatever accomplishments a player racks up along the way.

  Fists are also an option, marking the first time a Silent Hill game has allowed unarmed combat. Beyond his hands, Travis gathers firearms, melee weapons, and one-shot items meant for close combat; the last two categories break after use. One-shot items can drop early monsters quickly, but using them leaves Travis exposed to fast enemies or anything that attacks from range. Origins also introduces a grapple system: a quick time event triggers whenever a monster grabs him. Escaping it leaves neither Travis nor the monster harmed. There is no on-screen health bar. Travis's condition only shows up in the inventory screen. When it turns critical, the edges of the screen throb red and his heartbeat becomes audible.

  That heartbeat is the only warning Travis gets before facing what his own mind has kept hidden.

• 3. Travis Grady's Buried Past

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  A fog-bound small town in the northeastern United States is where Origins unfolds, several years before the first Silent Hill game. The Other World most often takes the shape of the town itself. It pulls its victims into delusions built from symbols buried in their own unconscious. Travis himself is a trucker haunted by nightmares and a troubled past.

  Four characters return from the original game. Alessa Gillespie is a young girl with supernatural powers of her own. Lisa Garland is a licensed practical nurse battling a drug addiction who dreams of being an actress instead. Michael Kaufmann is the physician who supplies Lisa with those illegal drugs. And Dahlia Gillespie, Alessa's mother, belongs to a cult intent on bringing its malevolent god into the world.

  Alessa had already been immolated in a ritual meant to impregnate her with the cult's god. Travis finds her at the burning house and pulls her free. Chasing his own memories, Travis eventually confronts monstrous versions of his parents. His mother had been committed to a mental institution after trying to kill him. His father killed himself rather than live with the guilt of having her committed. Along the way he also kills the Butcher, a monster that has been slaughtering other monsters in the town. Following Alessa's silent spirit further, Travis collects the pieces of an unidentified pyramid-shaped object. He assembles them into the Flauros, an artifact that traps a demon and can amplify thought. Alessa uses the completed Flauros to boost her own powers. That breaks the spell her mother had used to hold her abilities in check. Dahlia then reveals the cult's plan to use Alessa to birth its god before leaving to take part in the ritual herself. At the ritual grounds, Travis finds Kaufmann and other cult members gathered around Alessa's burned body. Kaufmann incapacitates him, but Travis still manages to defeat the demon and seal it inside the Flauros in a dream-like state.

  Origins offers three different endings, each less dependent on player choices than in other games in the series. In the Good ending, Alessa uses the Flauros to create a baby carrying half of her soul, halting the ritual. Her spirit then carries the infant to the edge of town before Travis drives away. A closing exchange reveals that Harry Mason, the protagonist of the first Silent Hill game, and his wife find and adopt the baby. They name her Cheryl. Dahlia and Kaufmann, meanwhile, plot a spell to pull the rest of Alessa's soul back to Silent Hill, setting up the original game's events. In the Bad ending, Travis wakes up strapped to a gurney and is injected with an unknown substance. He suffers convulsions and visions in which he kills two people and briefly takes the Butcher's form. A third, joke ending sends Travis off in a UFO with an alien and a dog, still looking for his missing truck.

  Reaching any of those three endings depended on a production that very nearly did not resemble the finished game at all.

• 4. From Los Angeles To Portsmouth

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  At E3 2006, Climax Group's Los Angeles studio announced Origins as a game in development. It took over from Konami's own Team Silent, who had built every previous installment. Early previews showed a camera modeled on Resident Evil 4 rather than the series' usual third-person view. They also put more emphasis on action and combat than earlier games had. At that stage, Travis carried six weapons, split evenly between melee weapons and firearms. The build also added a laser sight for his pistol and the option to barricade rooms. The game was expected to ship in late 2006.

  Problems with the game's engine led Climax to shut down its Los Angeles studio entirely. The company also cited what it called 'a confused high-level vision for the game.' The project moved to Climax Action, the company's studio in the United Kingdom. The stated goal was delivering 'a tighter, more focused game that will provide fans with the experience they want... a Silent Hill experience.' The release date slipped from winter 2006 to the third or fourth quarter of 2007.

  The build that the UK team inherited had been shaped into a dark comedy inspired by the American TV series Scrubs. Konami agreed to let the team change direction, as long as it stayed within the existing budget and schedule. Writer Sam Barlow rewrote the script, monsters, and level design within a single week. The team deliberately echoed the atmosphere and gameplay of the original Silent Hill. Its monsters, for example, behave more aggressively than those in other installments, as a throwback to that first game. Later previews reflected those changes, and video game journalists responded well to the more familiar direction.

  On the 19th of August 2007, a demo of the game leaked onto internet download sites. Climax quickly denied it was the source of the leak.

  Origins reached the PlayStation Portable in North America on the 6th of November 2007. It arrived in Europe on the 16th of November and in Australia on the 29th. It arrived in Japan on the 6th of December, carrying the alternate title Silent Hill Zero. Konami confirmed a PlayStation 2 port was in development on the 22nd of January 2008. That port arrived in North America on the 5th of March 2008. It reached the United Kingdom on the 16th of May and Australia on the 23rd of May. It reached the PlayStation Network in Europe on the 28th of April 2014.

  Waiting behind every one of those release dates was a soundtrack still to come.

• 5. Yamaoka's Prequel Score

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  Composer Akira Yamaoka, who had scored every previous Silent Hill game, returned to write the music for Origins. The score was released in Japan on the 25th of January 2008 under the title Silent Hill Zero Original Soundtracks, through Konami Music Entertainment, Inc. As Origins is a prequel, Yamaoka wanted its music to carry the atmosphere of the very first game. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn sang on four of the tracks, with lyrics written by Joe Romersa. All three had already worked together on the score for the series' fourth installment in 2004.

  That soundtrack would soon face the same critics already forming opinions about everything else in the game.

• 6. Same Ingredients, Familiar Fog

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  A Metacritic aggregate score of 78 out of 100 greeted Origins' original release on the PSP. GameDaily wrote that the game 'impressively brings all the elements we love about the Silent Hill franchise to a portable format that works wonderfully.' Shane Bettenhausen of 1UP.com called it 'predictable, conventional, and a little bit short, not to mention ill-suited for brief pick-up-and-play sessions on the bus.' Still, he welcomed an original, console-quality game on the PSP. Kristan Reed of Eurogamer described Climax's attention to the first three games' ingredients as 'basically an unapologetic homage to them.' Game Informer credited the story with adding to the series' mythos. But it warned that 'the game has fallen into something like a rut in most other areas' that less devoted fans would not forgive.

  Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot found the premise unoriginal and unsuspenseful, which he felt weakened Travis as a protagonist. He still credited the game with giving fans new material to analyze. Mat Keller of PALGN wrote that the game's 'blatantly obvious' subtext failed to land the way earlier installments' subtext had. 1UP.com pointed to heavy foreshadowing and predictable twists, while crediting the game for filling in the series' backstory. Wesley Yin-Poole of VideoGamer.com took the opposite view, calling the storyline 'engrossing.'

  Where critics agreed far less was on how the game looked and played.

• 7. Reviewers Divided On The Details

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  IGN's Jeff Haynes praised the art direction. He wrote: 'From the cluttered and junk strewn locations to the rusty, chaos filled doppelgangers of the alternate dimensions, everything feels like it's been stripped from one of the other titles and shrunk down to the handheld.' Reviewers broadly praised the graphics, monster designs, detailed environments, and atmosphere, though some felt the character models needed more detail.

  Reactions to the gameplay itself ranged from 'immersive' and 'intriguing' to simply formulaic. Critics generally found the puzzles challenging and well-designed. The game's short duration drew complaints, as did the spacing of its save points and its lack of checkpoints. GameSpot opened its review by declaring that 'this old fog needs to learn some new tricks.' The review went on to call Origins 'an entirely conventional adventure that relies on eight-year-old franchise hallmarks at the expense of anything truly new.' Some reviewers also flagged camera problems, particularly in tight corridors.

  GameSpy's David Chapman felt Origins made Travis too powerful, thanks to how readily available its weapons were. Other reviewers disagreed, arguing that breakable melee weapons and other factors nudged players toward avoiding combat altogether. The new quick time events were not well liked either; reviewers felt they added nothing worthwhile to the game. The soundtrack fared better, frequently singled out as frightening and central to the game's appeal. The PlayStation Official Magazine UK wrote that 'despite its small-screen setting, Origins even manages a few genuine scares, mostly thanks to the first-rate sound: this should only be played through headphones.'

  None of those verdicts accounted for the separate port that would reach the PlayStation 2 a few months later.

• 8. A Rockier Port

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  A Metacritic score of 70 out of 100, categorized as 'mixed or average reviews,' met the PlayStation 2 port of Origins. Reviewers judged its graphics inferior to both the original PSP release and other PS2 entries in the series. A GameZone reviewer disagreed in part, writing that despite some technical issues, the port's visuals still sufficed. Critics also pointed to the port's lack of manual camera control. They noted its missing mini-map or overall map for the more difficult areas, and the absence of any new bonus material.

  On the game's own packaging, the title still reads Silent Hill: 0rigins, its O swapped for a zero, a small detail no review ever mentioned.