Why I Love: Head Turn [Silent Hill 2]
‘Why I Love’ is a series of lessons I’ve learned from my favorite game mechanics.
In filmmaking, diegesis refers to the things that exist within the world of the movie. Things like the characters, the props, and the sound effects are diegetic. This is unlike the orchestral BGM or the title card which are both non-diegetic, meaning they exist within the movie but not within the movie’s world. Video games have the same concept. We have characters and we have BGM, but we also have things like tutorials and menus. How we choose to express these elements in our games — diegetic vs. non-diegetic — have a direct effect on the player’s experience.
Let’s work with a problem that many video games face: how should the game signal that something is interactable?
Button prompts like shown above are fairly common. They not only act as a signal, but they also remind the player which button it is they need to press. Hitman 2, for instance in the picture, goes a step further to tell the player what they’re interacting with (garage door) and what will happen when they do (close). As a game that focuses more on puzzle than action, they do this in order to avoid slips. This non-diegetic solution works great for the experience Hitman 2 is trying to create, but button prompts by their nature can take players out of the world and remind them that they are playing a game. Something that Silent Hill 2 tries to avoid.
But before I go into Silent Hill 2, there is a very similar game in the same genre that offers its own solution. In Resident Evil 2, whether it’s through a technical limitation or not (I have no idea), items that the player can pick up stand out from the background:
It’s sort of like when you watch animation, and you can tell which book is going to be picked from a bookshelf. Because these items stand out, players are able to spot them more easily in the environment. RE2 even adds a glint effect for key items (required for progression) that sparkles every so often:
It’s an interesting gray area where the signal could be both diegetic and non-diegetic. Silent Hill 2, however, doesn’t do any of this. Look at this example and try to guess what’s interactable:
Is it the watering can? The markers? The first-aid kit? Since this is a survival horror game, you might’ve guessed that it’s the first-aid kit, and you’d be right. But notice how much more it blends into the background than the green herbs in RE2. Instead of using prompts or obvious visual differences, SH2 uses James (the player character) to signal what’s interactable:
What I appreciate most is how seamless this mechanic is. For one, the camera and control systems in SH2 require the player to keep an eye on James because navigation is tied towards his orientation and not the camera’s orientation (tank controls!). So, naturally, the player will notice when James turns to look at something. And second, people tend to look where other people look. It’s a technique that filmmakers use to draw the viewer’s attention around the screen. This encourages the player to try to see what James is looking at. It’s a totally diegetic solution to the interactable signal problem.
Lesson: Design towards an experience.
Silent Hill 2 is a game that creates atmosphere. Not the literal fog that’s everywhere in Silent Hill, but the emotional experience of the player. This is something that SH2 is very deliberate about. It wants you to feel the tension and the suspense. It wants you to become fully immersed in the town and make you feel like you’re the one walking around in it. There is no HUD or button prompts to pull you out of that experience. The game wants it to be just you, James, and Silent Hill. With nothing in between.
