"We're catching the beauty within": Silent Hill legend Akira Yamaoka says horror isn't as important to the franchise as "emotional complexity"

The man Akira Yamaoka is as much a part of Silent Hill as its ashen sky or molten fog. Ever since Konami released its first Silent Hill game in 1999, the composer has made dark ambient music for nearly the entire franchise – including its new movie, as we note in our Return to Silent Hill review – that is unnervingly gorgeous. That's the goal, he tells GamesRadar+.

"Silent Hill, to me – it's not just about the fear and anxiety. There are many elements that the franchise has, that Silent Hill has," Yamaoka tells me through an interpreter. "It's our emotions when we see something beautiful, and we feel, 'Oh, wow. This is very beautiful.'"

My favorite moment of Return to Silent Hill inspires this muscle-deep sensation of awe that Yamaoka is describing; while I'm introduced to another one of director Christophe Gans' pained abominations, the new Yamaoka song "Moth Mary" begins to play.

It interpolates music the composer wrote for Silent Hill 2 in 2001, the waterfall mist of tears that is "The Day of Night." "Moth Mary" grounds some of that other song's airiness with a marshmallow-soft piano melody and vocals that sound like a bittersweet farewell. It makes me want to both recoil from the Silent Hill monster on the screen and kiss my kitten on the head, tell him I love him.

"That emotional reaction is very important in the world of Silent Hill, but it's not so much of a simple, one-directional emotion," Yamaoka observes. "Our emotion is much more complex. Sometimes we see something, and it has certain elements that make us feel fear, and we feel anxiety.

"But within that experience, somehow, we're catching the beauty within."

Experience Yamaoka's complicated music in many of the best Silent Hill games of all time, ranked.