Pyramid Head and Death Of The Author | Is Silent Hill Lore Broken?
One of the things that comes up daily in Silent Hill fan communities across the internet is the universal hatred of Silent Hill: Homecoming. Bizarrely, it seems like most people feel like the follow up, Downpour, is the superior game...they obviously haven’t watched my review. Anyway, I have been lurking forums and facebook groups getting into often heated debates with these Silent Hill cultists in the hopes I could have them answer the simple question: what makes Homecoming a bad game? I have to say, I’m not particularly satisfied with the results. The second most common critique is that the combat is bad and yeah, that’s actually a valid argument.
Homecoming has a pretty weird combat system that relies heavily on a clunky dodge move with extremely poor visual and haptic feedback to let the player know they are doing it right. It makes fighting an unsatisfying affair, however let’s be real, it’s not as if the prior Japanese developed Silent Hill games were famed for their satisfying combat. At the very least Homecoming tried to do something different and if you give it enough of a chance the dodge mechanic becomes easier to deal with. I think the main problem is that the inclusion of such a mechanic does not bode well for the horror aspects of Silent Hill and Homecoming definitely feels as if it’s forcing the player into a lot more combat with the monsters when you might otherwise have run away in the other games. But what is the number one complaint about Silent Hill: Homecoming I have come across time and time again when speaking to fans? That is the topic I want to discuss in this video. The complaint is….that PYRAMID HEAD IS IN THE GAME! =O
Do I even believe that Pyramid Head should be in Homecoming? No, I personally would not have included him, if only because the original monster designs in Homecoming are phenomenal and do not get the credit they deserve. The team could have easily come up with an equally iconic baddie that followed you through the game, but I’d agree with the common theory that Konami wanted to capitalise on the already established fan favourite. However in terms of the argument that his inclusion makes Homecoming a bad game? Well, I asked several fans why Pyramid Head’s inclusion makes the game objectively worse, most people believe that it goes completely contrary to Silent Hill lore. Again, I pressed further for concrete evidence and examples from Silent Hill 2 that Pyramid Head is exclusive to the character of James. The fans I questioned gave one unanimous conclusion: because Masahiro Ito said it on twitter. =O
Masahiro Ito is the artist who worked on creature designs for the first few games and from what I can gather from his wikipedia and online presence, has been on the dole ever since. (I mean technically he’s a freelance artist but I said I was a musician when I was unemployed so it’s the same difference.) Either way, the guy is part of the old guard of Japanese game development who have well and truly forgotten what made their games good in the previous decades. He may have designed Pyramid Head, but I sure as hel don’t trust him to understand the first thing about the lore of Pyramid Head presented to the player in Silent Hill 2, a game that the majority of developers nowadays would look at and say “this is not what our audience wants, how boring...now let’s make a Silent Hill Battle Royale game, and while we’re at it, let’s get Pyramid Head put in Fortnite.”
Even ignoring my misgivings about Ito, I subscribe to the philosophical concept ‘Death of the Author.’ You probably know what that is already but I didn’t until recently so I’ll briefly explain. Coined in an essay by literary critic Roland Barthes, Death of the Author is the idea that once a creative work has entered the realm of popular culture, the author’s intention for the work is no longer relevant. Whatever the author, artist, developer, musician intended whilst creating, well the person who views their work might have different interpretations or emotions evoked from that piece of art and that’s not really a bad thing. Barthes argues this is especially important when critiquing creative works as thinking about intent, at least if it’s subconsciously or dishonestly, introduces a clear bias, one that is irrelevant to the quality of the work itself. This philosophy is held also by such people as David Lynch, one of my favourite directors, who goes so far as to refuse to give his opinions on his own work or respond to fan questions or theories because he believes that would ruin the fun of fans actually thinking for themselves. This is the main reason when people have fed me this “because Masahiro Ito said so” line I’ve responded by pointing out how much of a bullshit non-argument that is.
Death of the author applies perfectly to the inclusion of Pyramid Head in Silent Hill Homecoming because for the life of me, I cannot find anything in Silent Hill 2 that outright tells the player that Pyramid Head is something that only James could see and my discussions on the forums didn’t produce any such evidence either.
That’s not to say an argument can’t be made, there are a couple of things in the game that can be considered indications that Pyramid Head is exclusive to Silent Hill 2 and the character of James. The main premise of Silent Hill as a whole is that the town has a supernatural power to manifest elements of the unconscious mind. Obviously this means that Pyramid Head manifested from James’s subconscious, inspired by the ‘Misty Days’ painting in the historical society building that stuck with his as a memory of time spent with his wife. On the other hand there is nothing to suggest that once something has been manifested in Silent Hill that it remains exclusive to one person or that others in the town cannot see it. In fact, the lore of other Silent Hill games proves the opposite to be true, as Harry, Heather and Henry all encounter manifestations of Alessa’s and Walter’s subconscious, not only their own. The existence of the Misty Days painting and other symbolism related to the Silent Hill cult, such as Walter’s recollection of “the red devil” and his Pyramid shaped hood, suggest that similar figures to Pyramid Head could be manifest, if not the same.
Masahiro Ito himself has stated that Silent Hill plays a role in the appearance of the creatures within it and that the town can manifest them for different people. This is just one of many contradictions from Ito on the subject, he also planned for a cancelled Silent Hill game to begin with a scene featuring Pyramid Head and Valtiel which would have gone against his insistence that Pyramid Head was a figment of James’s imagination and dispute the theory that Pyramid Head IS Valtiel but just how James sees him.
The idea that Pyramid Head exists as a manifestation of James’s guilt and need for punishment is, of course, completely justified in Silent Hill 2’s lore. James even states this outright in the final showdown with the two spear-wielding Pyramid Heads. So with that in mind, what is it that I believe justifies his appearance in Silent Hill: Homecoming? Well if you’re asking that, you obviously haven’t paid much attention to the story and themes of the game. A lot of people criticise Homecoming for trying to rip off Silent Hill 2’s story and yes, one particular point of Alex’s story is strikingly similar to James’s. Perhaps they don’t realise that this very point is also a justification for Pyramid Head’s appearance as guilt and regret are the number one themes of this game, not only for the main character but almost the entire supporting cast who are perhaps even more important and, in my opinion, elevate the story of Homecoming massively. Each one bears tremendous guilt for the actions they took as part of the Silent Hill cult and in the end, it is Alex’s father who Pyramid Head is hunting. As a member of the order he will have been familiar with the Misty Days painting and the red hooded robes of the priests and the fact that Pyramid Head previously manifested as a symbol of guilt and punishment only goes to bolster the idea that the town of Silent Hill itself chose to bring back Pyramid Head.
Of course, if you hang on the subjective words of Masahiro Ito more than your objective experiences of playing the games, then it was Konami’s marketing team that brought Pyramid Head back or maybe he’ll change his mind one day and say Pyramid Head is Valtiel or that the UFO ending is canon. That is the danger of hanging on the words of the author, because it’s more fun to imagine how or why Pyramid Head appeared than to accept the real reason he existed in the first place, the only true, objective reason: that he looked cool. I prefer to look at the contents of the games for answers and I think the Silent Hill fanbase would be far better off subscribing to the concept of death of the author.