Masahiro Ito clears up a Silent Hill false impression

Few horror collection in video games are as talked about or mentioned as Silent Hill. And whereas there’s loads of fascinating materials in them, Masahiro Ito wish to make clear one level specifically: that’s snow, not ash, in Silent Hill.

Ito labored as a monster and background designer on the primary Silent Hill, earlier than occurring to be artwork director for Silent Hill 2 and 3. You may marvel why, of all issues, this clarification is vital. Or possibly why it must be clarified in any respect. For that, we’ll must make a journey by means of Silent Hill historical past.

Within the authentic 1999 recreation, white dots pepper the sky outdoors. There’s a clear second in recreation the place, in dialogue, the characters handle that it’s snowing outdoors. Ito posted the precise screenshot, saying he’s “bored with saying that tbh.” Which is comprehensible, as he’s needed to clear this up prior to now, too.

The white dots within the sky within the recreation will not be ash. “It is snowing out.” pic.twitter.com/Sh8DnJfACl

— 伊藤暢達/Masahiro Ito (@adsk4) July 19, 2022

Film magic

So why is there a false impression in any respect? Nicely, Silent Hill would later be tailored into a movie. This film, which premiered in 2006, took some liberties with the supply materials. It mixed items of a number of Silent Hill video games, together with Silent Hill 2‘s infamous Pyramid Head.

The movie additionally took inspiration from actual life. Experiences from the time point out screenwriter Roger Avary took inspiration from the real-life city of Centralia, Pennsylvania. A hearth lit up an underground coal vein in Centralia, making a hazard zone and leaving a ghost city behind.

All that is to say, the city within the Silent Hill movie was affected by smoke and ash resulting from a coal seam fireplace. And in some way this inspiration trickled downstream into the general public information unconscious and have become a repeated false impression that Ito is clearing up.

“Many individuals nonetheless declare that the city of the SH1 (not the movie however the authentic recreation) was impressed by Centralia they usually boast the headcanon is the canon,” Ito writes. “They persistently query me as to the inspiration. That is the explanation for this tweet. I simply tweeted the reality.”

The true Silent Hill

ResetEra consumer Darkknight2149 compiled an exhaustive matter on this, diving into the refutations, and never simply from Ito. There are extra screenshots confirming it’s snow in Silent Hill, and even quotes from Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama concerning the recreation’s inspiration.

In an archived model of a 1999 interview with Toyama from PSM #19, he actively refutes it being primarily based on an actual U.S. city.

PSM: Why did you select a small US city for the setting of the sport? Is there an actual Silent Hill?

Toyama: When you like fashionable horror novels, it could be simple to know, nevertheless it’s the scenario which you could’t miss. On this recreation, the trendy horror novel ambiance was the hook, so we determined to decide on a small U.S. city for the setting. After all, Silent Hill actually doesn’t exist, and we have now not allotted a sure place or time within the recreation. We intentionally didn’t use an precise place, since it’d trigger inconsistency with the actual factor. Nonetheless, with the title Silent Hill, we received a touch from an actual place in Japan.

So, please take heed to the designer and artist that labored on the challenge, and please bear in mind: it’s snow, not ash.