Silent Hill: Downpour devs reflect 12 years on: "Stop trying to be Japanese scary, and just be Czech scary"

One man, his guilt, and a foggy town; in many ways, Silent Hill: Downpour finishes our retrospective of this era of Western-developed Silent Hill precisely where Silent Hill 2 started us off. Developed in Brno in the Czech Republic by Vatra Games, Downpour tells the story of Murphy Pendleton, a convicted criminal who ends up on the lam in Silent Hill. Tormented by visions of his past and relentlessly pursued by corrections officer Anne Cunningham, Murphy soon learns that prison is less of a hell than the one he now finds himself in.

Early ideas, such as introducing co-op with Anne or a Fitbit-like heart monitor, shook up the Silent Hill formula. But in the end Silent Hill 2 provided the light the team set out to follow. "From the beginning we knew we wanted to play with the idea of the town itself being the main antagonist," says producer Devin Shatsky.

"I was a huge fan of Silent Hill 2, and it was pretty clear that it was the consensus favourite among fans as well. I believe a big part of that is because – as opposed to the original Silent Hill, where the monsters and environments were real, and everybody can see what's happening – in Silent Hill 2 the town draws upon the psyche of its visitors and ultimately forms alternative versions of itself, which differs depending on the characters."

While the game retains the town's signature fog, it's augmented by a rain that forms the game's namesake. The dynamic heavy showers herald the arrival of more numerous and aggressive monsters. It has a semi-open world structure – optional side-quests lie off the beaten track, while the linear chapters take place in hitherto-unseen areas. These include an abandoned mine, the Devil's Pit, and an impressive building home to the local radio station. It's a very different Silent Hill, informed by the culture of the Czech Republic.

Something new

"In the early versions of the game I saw, it felt like the team were just trying to copy Japanese horror," recalls design director Brian Gomez. 'But when we were in Brno, Tomm and Devin and I would go looking around the town at lunchtime, and it was a beautiful country, but it's also really scary. It's got this Gothic architecture mixed in with Soviet-era concrete brutalism and remnants of a big military-industrial complex from World War 2. I remember having a creative meeting with the team and telling them to stop trying to be Japanese scary, and just be Czech scary. Let's lean into that. So there's bits of Silent Hill: Downpour where it's more closely modelled on the streets of Brno than a town in the midwest US."

Intended as something of a mid-point between Shattered Memories' dodge-and-run activity and Homecoming's more action-oriented approach, Downpour's combat primarily revolves around picking up objects in the environment and using them as makeshift weapons (which are once again breakable). While it all looks good on paper, the system is clunky, and – by the developer's own admission, the weakest gameplay feature in Downpour.

While this is forgivable, given that combat has never been a highlight of Silent Hill, less so are the lacklustre enemies. Compared to the macabre beauty of Masahiro Ito's creations, Downpour's monsters are somewhat uninspired, using straightforwardly humanoid shapes and clichés like gas masks and dolls.

"I don't mean to talk trash about Devin, but you could kind of tell what he was watching in his hotel at night based on the ideas that he brought in the next day," laughs Gomez. "There were inspirations like Walter White from Breaking Bad and Pris from Blade Runner – just these random designs that he kind of imposed on the design team."

Despite these shortcomings, Downpour was a spirited attempt by a small team to take what worked with Silent Hill and do something new and fresh with it. The game would be the last entry in the series for over a decade, barring the lamentably cancelled PT (though the less said about that tragedy, the better).

In the town of Silent Hill, you never know what's quite around the corner. And while all four of these Western-developed titles have been mixed bags, they've kept the town alive, continuing to lay foundations for what Silent Hill can become in the future. Welcome home – you never really left.

This feature originally appeared in PLAY Magazine – which printed its final issue in 2024. Silent Hill: Downpour wasn't the first in the series to jump to HD. "At the time survival horror was changing. 'How action-oriented do we get?'": 16 years on, Tomm Hulett reflects on Silent Hill: Homecoming