Interview with Dan Birlew (Hell Descent)

Date published: 2010.11.13
Source: Hell Descent

HD: I thought I remember you mentioning in an interview years ago that you did talk to the original team and they gave you some inside information. Is it common that if there’s going to be an official plot guide published what’s written would be checked over by original authors?

First off let me say that I haven’t played most of these games in years or talked about them, so in a way it’s nice to see that someone still acknowledges my contributions to the discussion, more than 10 years later. Second, please allow me to add some context to this discussion that is sorely lacking. The first plot guide for the first game was written just a few weeks after it was released. I felt like it was a great game that ended in too many vagaries; not too many for me to piece together some framework for myself, but vague enough that most people probably weren’t going to get it or would give up in frustration. I felt like there were enough references within the game that I could piece together what happened based on that. But of course, complicating matters, was the fact that there were four endings. Five, if you count that hilarious UFO ending. As far as the “real plot” went, I didn’t.

After I put the plot guide out there, I started getting some questions: “Where did you get all this? Who told you this is right?” I would explain to people how I was following references to outside media (Stephen King, Twin Peaks, Japanese horror movies, etc.). But people often wouldn’t get that either. So I rewrote the plot guide for better organization, and before I published it I started contacting Konami. I shared a few emails and phone calls with a guy in marketing. Because that’s who I could get on the phone. They don’t exactly connect you to Hiroyuki Owaku just cause you’re on the phone. And this guy couldn’t really answer my story questions either, but what he was able to confirm is that the game was intended to be “open to interpretation.”

The other thing that we now understand about the Silent Hill series is that the developers originally intended it to be vague so that we would wonder about the meanings and interpretations. In marketing that’s called “maintaining your built-in audience” (for sequel games). Of course, they weren’t telling us that they would eventually reveal the meaning behind the games years later. I still have my personal opinions about the way Konami handled this.

So here I was, desperately trying to keep the people who played Silent Hill from hating it. That was my only intent and motivation for writing the first plot guide. And yeah, the guide attempted to tie it all together from some very frayed strings.

When the second game came out, I was lucky enough to be assigned to write the official strategy guide for the game published by BradyGames. The licensing agreement with Konami gave me the ability to ask questions about the game that the R&D team were supposed to answer. If I asked about Silent Hill 2, we got an answer back right away. If I asked about the first game, my email was forwarded to someone in Kyoto who replied with rather stoic answers. I no longer have these replies so I can’t quote, but they were along the lines of “this has nothing to do with the first game, our focus is the new game” or “the focus should be the current project”. Very clinical and corporate. I honestly had very few questions about SH2 just because it seemed very clear in interpretation (apart from a few things that are meant to be inferred) and didn’t really have a whole lot to do with the first game. My plot guide chapter was removed from the guide to conserve page count, so I asked and received permission to post it online after the guide’s street date.

When I was assigned to Silent Hill 3 and started playing it, I was honestly relieved that the game attempted to answer some questions left open by Silent Hill 1. I can only guess that was their motivation the entire time; that the first game was left open ended in order to sell a subsequent game. I wrote up a plot guide as usual and submitted it with the rest of my text. While I’m not sure what person exactly read through the guide, employees at Konami Japan did indeed read through the entire text and make corrections. That includes the plot guide, which I remember came back with heavy edits and even a few requests for rewrites. They made a few points a lot more vague than I would have liked, but I was still happy to finally have it be a part of the guide.

At that point I had a decision to make: revise the SH1 plot guide? After talking it over with several close friends and fellow SH fans, the resounding opinion was that it wasn’t worthwhile. SH3 explains what happens in SH1. Was it the explanation I put forward? Not exactly, but SH3 provided new information that I could have never guessed in a million years, things that changed the interpretation completely. So in the end, I decided to put a warning at the beginning of the file so that the reader would understand the context in which that guide was written. If that context is ignored, I cannot help if the reader misinterprets or disagrees with theories that Konami themselves proved false with their 3rd game.

HD: I agree with this somewhat but there are times (especially in SH1 and SH2) where things are open to interpretation like the nature of Angela’s abuse. What do you think, isn’t the series meant to be open like this at least in the earlier games? I was hoping you could expand more on what you mentioned in your twitter message that you stopped doing plot guides with SH3 because it explained the first 2 games and that the real joy of the initial Silent Hill games was their openness to interpretation (which the sequels ruined….)

Haha! Well if I said “ruined” I didn’t really mean it that way. You have to be more concise than you’d like on Twitter. But Silent Hill 3 certainly shut down the interpretation factory that was running full steam ahead on messageboards at the time. It was the explanation we “should” have been waiting for, but no one ever told us or indicated that an explanation was forthcoming. Perhaps they themselves didn’t know they would be explaining everything so soon? Who knows. So myself and actually a couple of other people put ourselves on the line to try and explain what we could about these games by tying together relative plot elements to come up with something to keep people happy with the games. We liked them, and we wanted other people to like them too. With the SH3 plot guide, the main reason that it made it into the strategy guide is that we wanted to provide some kind of summary of the first game so that people who hadn’t played it could understand all the references in Silent Hill 3. Can you imagine playing SH3 without playing SH1 first??? That could drive a person to rage. So while I enjoyed that period where we didn’t know what was going on but it was fun to speculate, I was glad to get an official explanation and move on with my life. Kinda like what just happened with Lost on TV: we have an explanation, although some of it we still have to piece together for ourselves. That’s what set Silent Hill apart as a video game in those early days. Frankly, judging by the most recent games, they may have explained it all too soon!

HD: I was just wondering if Konami had a hand in this plot guide in the SH3 guide. What did you use as sources? Game evidence or information directly from the creators? Did Konami have the final word in the end?

Like I mentioned above, they did indeed review the guide and approve everything that was said therein. They deleted some of the things I said, but I believe that was to make the interpretation more correct, not to keep things hidden. My only source for the information I put into the plot guides came from the games themselves. And yes, Konami made the final edits to the guide, with the exceptions of a few things I was asked to rewrite in order to meet approval. But in those cases, I’m always told how I’m wrong if I’m wrong, so the printed version is right.

HD: When this guide was written you didn’t have the hindsight of conversations with the creators you’ve had now, it was your fan explanation to help many of the confused gamers. What do you think of some of your old theories? Are you surprised current Silent Hill game writers like Sam Barlow and the director of the movie have used it as a plot basis for their own works? Has the original Team confirmed for your that some of your plot guide was correct? If not, have you ever given thought of going back and re tooling your old SH1 and Sh2 plot guides for new fans of the series with the info you know now? What are your thoughts on TRSHE analysis of your past plot guides?

Like I indicated above, the plot guide remains unedited from the time we didn’t have any answers. And now we have all the answers. Perhaps I should have rewritten it so that the information was correct, but then that would have meant deleting about 70% of the text. What then would have been the point of republishing it?

I don’t understand why it is believed that the creators of the Silent Hill movie used any of my writing as a basis for their movie. I think when you watch that movie it’s meant to be a different experience than the game. Almost like reading the Cliff’s Notes for a Stephen King novel; why, oh why wouldn’t you just read the novel? I own the movie on DVD and… no, I can say without doubt that if the movie creators had read my analysis of the game and gone solely by that, they wouldn’t have made the same movie. They expressly set out to make something different, by taking apart the game story and coming up with something recognizable but different, and wholly self-contained. Something they could tie up neatly in 1:45 or however long the movie runs.

No one from Team Silent (if that’s what you mean) has stated that my plot guide was correct, but after the explanation given in Silent Hill 3 I was happy to learn that I was certainly on the right path. I also acknowledge (and have always acknowledged) that some of it was wrong. But again, new information and interpretations were introduced in Silent Hill 3 that were missing in SH1: I doubt I could have ever gotten it completely right. But I wanted to try with the motive of spreading enjoyment of the game. I don’t see the point of going back to rewrite the old guides because nowadays, people can play the games and understand what they mean. The explanation’s all in there, if they just play SH1 and SH3.

Regarding the videos, if they really said the things you indicate herein then it sounds like they are heavily misinformed. Which could have been avoided by emailing me prior to airing them.