Silent Hill's Diverse Save Points

There are loads of games that I am interested in but haven't had the chance to play myself, whether it's because they don't have a style of gameplay I enjoy or because I do not have access to their hardware, and one of the biggest of these for me is the Silent Hill series.

Although I've never had the chance to play them, I have friends who have and I am very familiar with their stories. One of the first games of the survival horror genre to focus on real psychological horror, the series has remained adored to this day due to its impeccable atmosphere, iconic enemies and characters, and gripping narratives.

(Disclaimer: I am only talking about the original four since… yeah…)

Due to the recent reveal of the Silent Hill 1 remake being in development, I've been thinking back to the original, and in it I noticed something interesting. Despite the games having a relatively unified identity, all of the original four games had very different looks for their save points.

Although it seems pretty obvious, it's something I've never really internalized, especially since other series are extremely consistent with their save points (such as Resident Evil's typewriters which remained until RE5). And this made me notice just how interesting each of the save points used in the series is in their own way!

First off there's the original Silent Hill. The game stars Harry Mason, who goes on a trip to the eponymous town with his daughter, Cheryl, who he promptly loses and spends the entire game going through the town to try and find.

Harry is a writer, and so the save points in the games are represented by bright red notebooks lying around the town, which is a good enough reason for them to be that. There is another aspect of the notebooks that I adored, though, and that perfectly represent another aspect of Harry's personality.

At the very first save point he says: "Someday, someone may experience these bizarre events. Hopefully, they will find my notes useful". This little line already shows how much of a caring person Harry is, even if it's something as small as writing notes that a random person may need to get through the terrible town, he is thinking of others which goes to show his kindness.

The sequel, Silent Hill 2, shifts to a completely different story, this time starring James Sunderland, a clerk who received a letter from his deceased wife telling him to come to Silent Hill.

Unlike Harry, where we can somewhat put ourselves in his own shoes, there is a larger sense of disconnection between the player and James, where it feels more like we're simply spectating his story. The game shows this in multiple ways, but one of the more interesting ones is through its save points. Instead of Silent Hill 1's more diegetic notebooks, Silent Hill 2 has bright red squares intrusively placed on parts of the town.

When James uses them he constantly claims that his head hurts, and in the very first one he says "Looking at this makes me feel like someone's groping around inside my skull….", and when the player actually uses it the background is a close up of his face tinted read, as if it's James directly starring at the square. I've always interpreted this as the spectator (player) starring into James's soul, and this goes on for the whole game, especially as the town reveals its dark secrets.

Silent Hill 3 follows Heather, this is probably the most spoiler-tastic game of the series, so to put it simply, she finds herself trying to take on the cult that is located in the town that she is somehow linked to.

The Order's symbol is known as the "Halo of the Sun", and it also serves as the game's save points where it's intrusively plastered on walls. Similar to Silent Hill 2's, Heather claims to feel pain when she stares at it, and just like with James, an image of Heather's face in the middle of the emblem is the background of the save screen.

This time, I interpret it as a grueling reminder of the power that the cult has over Heather, the very same power she is trying to overcome. Her progress against this is represented as well, as her reactions to the emblem shift from being of pain to disgust.

The final title of the original tetralogy, Silent Hill 4: The Room, instead returns to a similar approach from Silent Hill 1's. The game stars Henry Townsend whose only flaw is living at the wrong place in the wrong time, similar to Harry.

This one is another red notebook, and I don't feel like it holds that much meaning by itself, however it does stand out by being the only save point in the whole game. The main mechanic of the game is the titular room, where Henry lives in and becomes trapped in when the game starts.

He often goes into a nightmare world but when he wakes up he always returns to the room which acts as a safe space (at the start at least), and so he is able to return to the save point throughout the whole game. It doesn't have any connections to Henry as a character, but it does aid the main mechanic of the game!

And that's that! This is just something that I wanted to document that quickly popped into my mind. Even as someone who hasn't actually played the games, I can admire everything this set of creepy games has to offer in terms of symbolism, from its most obvious to its most subtle.