Editorials
[#SilentHill at 20] How ‘Silent Hill’ Made Map-Reading Fun
The way that video-games enable players to navigate fictional worlds – via mini-maps, waypoint markers, or directional arrows – is an undeniably dry topic, as reflected by the lack of mainstream interest in the subject. Not many people are willing to talk about such tedious minutiae, when they could instead be marveling at more attention-grabbing features, like shiny new graphics or dynamic weather effects. Yet make no mistake, this sorely overlooked area is every bit as important as those details, if not more.
Why then, are good examples of gaming cartography so rarely acknowledged? Well, as with clunky user-interfaces or obnoxious loading times, orientation is the kind of thing that pundits only pay attention to when it’s done badly (e.g. the infamous Library mission in Halo: Combat Evolved). Which is somewhat understandable. After all, getting lost is certainly a momentum-killing slog and if you’re unable to decipher where the Hell you’re supposed to be going, then any sense of fun is, of course, going to dissipate.
Bearing that in mind, if poorly communicated geography can hinder an otherwise enjoyable experience, then it’s worth considering if the inverse is possible too. In other words, can a developer’s mastery of direction be so tight that it’s actually one of their greatest assets?
In case this article’s title didn’t make it clear, the answer to that question is a resounding ‘’yes!’’ Solid navigation mechanics are obviously underappreciated in the realm of gaming. Not only are they fundamentally necessary for minimizing player frustration, but they can even be a source of entertainment in their own right. Though that might sound like a bit of a stretch, well-conceived maps can honestly transform the arduous task of wayfinding into an utterly compelling joy.
For evidence of this, look no further than the original Silent Hill releases, which are true exemplars in the field. Each of them thrusts you into overwhelming, Metroidvania-style environments, that demand plenty of backtracking and puzzle-solving to complete. Indeed, tackling any given level here requires you to follow numerous diverging paths, memorize obscure interconnections and collect dozens-upon-dozens of keys. As a result, it can be rather daunting to enter a new location and see all the stuff you’ve yet to accomplish.
In the hands of less capable developers, aimlessly wandering these labyrinthine corridors and dizzying street layouts would probably be an onerous chore. Luckily, Team Silent have an ace hidden up their sleeve. You see, each of these elaborate levels has its own dedicated map, which tends to be the first item you come across. Granted, there’s nothing too special about that in isolation, but what’s so unique here is that you can use these indispensable tools to record your discoveries and visualize where you’ve already been.
Essentially, once you’re in possession of a map, then your character will automatically start to note things down, scribbling over the document itself. For example, inaccessible areas will be crossed out, dead ends will be marked with bold lines, shortcuts will be highlighted, and points of interest will be crudely sketched in red ink. By offering this practical and coherent overview, the developers simplify their formidable-looking environments into something much more manageable.
For my money, it’s the ultimate way of handling geography, as it’s the perfect middle-ground between being too ambiguous and too hand-holding. To expand upon this point, the system is not as outwardly patronizing as giving your audience a massive arrow to follow, nor is it as restrictive as funneling them down a linear pathway. This means that you can provide them with the immersive experience of solving these convoluted and oppressive mazes themselves. But at the same time, it’s not like you’re leaving them completely in the dark, as they’re still getting considerable support.
To get a feel for the system in action, let’s take a look at the opening sequence of Silent Hill 2. Here, you are dropped right into the center of the titular ghost town, with no explicit steer or assistance. All you have is a vague destination and your trusty map. You inevitably run around the place like a headless chicken, chaotically bouncing from obstruction to obstruction. It’s a thoroughly distressing ordeal and you’ll be entirely dependent on the map to get through it. This is presumably what the team we’re going for, as the document is constantly being updated to reflect you’re discoveries, like blocked roads, doors that need specific items to unlock and other landmarks.
From all this signposting, you’ll notice that you are being boxed-in and implicitly shepherded towards a disused apartment block (the game’s first real level and your de facto objective). It’s a clever and resourceful way of using the map to guide players, whilst also letting them believe that they figured it out on their own. Meanwhile, by tracking your progress and marking everywhere that you’ve been, the map also gives you confidence that you haven’t missed anything out. It’s an extra bit of help but, again, one that goes a long way.
On that note, another (possibly unintentional) benefit of Silent Hill’s approach is that it’s innately rewarding from a player-perspective, bestowing even your most insignificant actions with a sense of purpose. For instance, simply checking to confirm that a door is locked will actually be useful here, as it will log this information on the map. Whatever way you slice it, that’s some kind of progress and it means that, wherever you go and whatever you do, you’ll always arming yourself with more knowledge about your surroundings.
Watching the initially blank document get covered in these jottings is thus very satisfying, like you’re ticking off holiday destinations on one of those scratch maps. It’s basically spurring you onwards, reassuring you that you’re not going in circles or wasting your time. That’s quite motivating for a series that built its reputation on an atmosphere of eldritch dread and crushing hopelessness.
All in all, the maps in Silent Hill are more than a mere formality. They’re an integral part of the gameplay, acting as both an invaluable survival tool and a much-needed source of encouragement for the player.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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