Secondly, the subtitles can also set the mood of the classic “Silent Hill” games very subtly. Still, the larger difference between observations and dialogue makes the budgetary and/or file-space limitations seem a little bit more obvious ( and is perhaps very mildly immersion-breaking too). It comes across more clearly as a character’s thoughts… which makes also sense on an artistic level, given that this series focuses on a more “realistic” atmosphere and non-paranormal sci-fi horror.
Yes, the classic “Resident Evil” games also include observation text whenever you look at anything, but it seems more clearly separate from the dialogue due to the lack of default dialogue subtitles.
This blurring between thought and speech also links in well to the series’ psychological horror elements, where reality itself is often uncertain. This deepens the player’s immersion in the game by subtly making them think that the main character is speaking even when there isn’t any voice-acting ( since I imagine the cost, file space etc… for recording audio for literally ALL of these observations would have been too much) because it looks identical to the dialogue subtitles. Whilst this is obviously good from an accessibility perspective, I’d argue that the default English subtitles also improve these four games in a number of other ways too.įirst of all, all of the non-voiced observations that the main characters can make whenever they examine anything are usually rendered in the same font and style as the dialogue subtitles. Here are examples of subtitled English dialogue in the first four “Silent Hill” games (1999-2004). Yet, whilst the classic “Resident Evil” games seem to ditch the subtitles ( either removing them completely or not activating them by default) in English-language editions, the classic “Silent Hill” games keep English subtitles turned on by default in English-language editions: From everything I’ve seen on Youtube, the original Japanese editions of these games added Japanese subtitles to the English dialogue – presumably to give the impression of watching a Hollywood movie. This was probably – in part – a money-saving thing ( since the US was a larger market for these games), but also probably something of a stylistic choice that helped to emphasise the US settings of these games too. Like with the classic “Resident Evil” games (1996-2004), these games were made in Japan and set in the US – with the only voice-acting recorded for the games being in English. Well, for this article in my series about horror videogames, I thought that I’d look at how the classic “Silent Hill” games (1999-2004) use subtitles.
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