Gaming industry veterans and creators of the popular franchises Resident Evil and Silent Hill recently sat down to discuss their respective legacies, touching on various topics such as their least favorite horror tropes. These series are two of the most iconic in both gaming and horror, as evidenced by each franchise’s dedicated fans producing unique content like 2D Resident Evil art and extensive theories.
It’s impossible to talk about horror in video games without mentioning Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Both of these franchises have been around for decades and have remained firmly planted in the minds of gamers throughout several console generations. Resident Evil is still going quite strong, with last year’s Resident Evil: Village setting the stage for the next chapter of the franchise. Silent Hill has been a little quieter over the past decade, especially following the controversial Konami-Kojima split and the cancellation of Silent Hills. Nevertheless, the series has an extremely strong following and many fans are excited to see what comes next. Silent Hill has also influenced many modern video games– something that it shares with Resident Evil. Both franchises have also spawned a number of film adaptations, though the reception of these films has been mixed to say the least.
Shinji Mikami and Keiichiro Toyama, the minds behind Resident Evil and Silent Hill, respectively, sat down for a chat that was shared on the Bokeh Game Studio YouTube channel. At one point, the duo touches on their inspirations for the franchises, with Mikami noting that he was interested in exploring the occult. This led the pair to discuss what they consider to be the worst tropes in horror, a list that included characters making short-sighted decisions and putting themselves into situations of unnecessary risk.
Resident Evil and Silent Hill are notorious for being very frightening, with locations like Silent Hill‘s Midwich Elementary still scaring players to this day. As such, it makes sense that the creators of these two franchises would have some critical words to say about clichés in horror cinema. These comments could even make fans speculate about what the two have to say about the Resident Eviland Silent Hill movies.
The comments made by Toyama and Mikami about horror tropes shine a light on what makes horror games so unique. Both these creators express feelings of frustration when watching characters in a film make what they consider unintelligent decisions; in a video game, the player usually has control over the decisions that characters make, so this type of frustration is avoidable. Horror in video games will continue to evolve as the electronic medium grows, but the design philosophies laid out in Silent Hill and Resident Evil are sure to play major roles in this development.
