Idle Thoughts

Still the best survival horror game ever made (★★★★★)

Siren is now more than 20 years old. A new version of it was released this Halloween: it’s basically still the same as the original PS2 version, but with a new emulator compared to the 2016 re-release. Slitterhead, a game made by much of the original Siren team also just came out. In other words, now is as good a time as any to get out some thoughts about Siren.

I’ve long thought of Siren as the best survival horror game of all times. Yeah, you heard that right, nerds, Silent Hill and Resident Evil can go suck an egg! Chris’ Survival Horror Quest still considers it the scariest game of all time. That’s quite an endorsement.

The question I asked myself is: why? What’s so great about Siren? The PS2 era was probably the golden age of survival horror, what would make this one stand out then, to say nothing of now? For a long time I don’t think I could tell exactly why. Let’s have a stab at it now.

Siren was directed by Keiichiro Toyama, the director of the original Silent Hill. Other parts of the team also worked on Silent Hill as well. That’s pretty much the highest pedigree you can have when it comes to a horror game.

According to Siren Maniacs, the game’s official guidebook, an important consideration was to make the game authentically Japanese. Resident Evil and Silent Hill were Japanese-made games trying to pretend to be American, a situation amusingly described by reviewer Tom Chick as « Transpacific awkwardness ». Siren embraced its own cultural background fully, including the character names and the game’s cultural influences, which greatly increases the sense of verisimilitude. You can add to that the unusual decision of basically photographing actors and pasting their faces on the game’s 3D models. It’s like copying a face texture and sticking it on a blank head. It looks a bit odd and kind of janky, but it certainly adds to the overall creepiness of the game. It also makes the characters more relatable. In a way, it is a technical choice that helped the game stand the test of time. Even the best 3D models of today still don’t look any more like a real person than, well, the actual face of a real person.

Let’s get one thing straight: Siren is not a game that “hasn’t aged well”. It’s a very awkward game but, ha, the joke’s on you, it was like that from the start! The game makes some odd design choices even by standards of the early aughts: you need to press X to examine something and then press triangle to pick up the item or interact with it (what is this, a point and click adventure?). The default button setup is odd. Crawling is excruciatingly slow. Joystick sensitivity is way too high. It’s also the kind of game that gives you a map but doesn’t tell you where you are on it.

Siren also has notoriously deadly enemies, the shibito (“dead people”, i.e. zombies, but not quite, more on that later). The rifle-wielding shibito can pick you off from the other side of the map easily. Some have whined about this, but I don’t think it’s a flaw in any way. Enemies, especially the kind armed with firearms, are meant to be obstacles to be avoided or distracted. Siren is much more of a stealth/puzzle game than survival horror. Every level or “scene” is a clockwork relationship of enemy patrols, scripted events and item placements.

Yes, the game is hard, but once you know the exact course of events required to win, a level is only a few minutes long. With precise timing, you can also bypass the stealthy, methodical approach completely, but you have to know what you’re doing. Since each level is mostly self-contained, there’s no need to save your ammo or items. That also means you can’t trivialize the game by stockpiling twenty medkits and three hundred bullets. The only things you need are right in front of you. This is refreshing in a way.

Speaking of hard games, the emulated 2024 release introduced save states and a rewind mechanic. The rewind mechanic strips out all the tension from the game by eliminating all difficulty. It certainly made replaying the game in order to write this a whole lot easier, but this doesn’t quite sit right with me. I get it, save states and rewinding are de rigueur for emulators, but isn’t it for older stuff like NES and SNES? I suppose it just never occurred to me that the PS2 is now “old stuff” as well. Is a day coming when our children will need save states to make playing PS5 games “tolerable”? It’s not like the sense of pacing has changed much since the days of the PS2. The quarter-munching arcade games were already a thing of the past. Save files had already long replaced the password system. “Lives” were gone too and checkpoints were numerous. What I’m getting at is that fans will obsess about the minutest details in a remake, like the delivery of a single voice line and the puffiness of a character’s cheeks. Adding save states to the official emulation of a game is a decision that massively alters its very nature and yet I have a feeling it will raise very little fuss.

Hard games are scarier than easy games. I’ll never say enough times that a good game should make you feel what the game is about through its mechanics. So you want the player to be afraid? There may be body parts splashing all over the place in the game, but you, as a player, have no stake in all this. If the player ever figures out they’re perfectly safe, all you’re left with is a walking sim with jump scares. Clearly, you can’t physically harm the player. The next best thing is putting some of their progress at stake. But dying is frustrating and breaks flow. It’s a tough balancing act. It’s not like the developers of Siren hadn’t thought of this. As I said, levels are hard (the elementary school will give you nightmares), but are only a few minutes long and you can “bank” your progress after each one. In other words, Siren’s difficulty was very deliberately thought out.

Anyway, let’s get back on track. To help the player move stealthily through enemy patrols, Siren introduced “sightjacking”. It is a power that lets you see through the eyes of the other beings in the level, either friend or foe. Despite the fact that it’s a supernatural ability, it is presented thematically through the mundane lens of a television set: the screen turns to white noise and you fiddle with the joystick to “tune in” on different “channels”. The contrast here between the otherworldly and the familiar is interesting in and of itself. Except… I’m realizing now that wiggling an antenna to get the picture right is a cultural reference fewer and fewer people are actually familiar with. Huh.

Sightjacking, from a gameplay, perspective is actually a pretty awkward stealth mechanic. “Tuning in” on the right enemy can be fiddly, and you lose control of your character while doing it. It’s also slow… so said enemy might have stabbed you while you were distracted. But at least you can see yourself from their perspective while you’re getting killed. That’s neat, right?

The upside from a design perspective is that sightjacking has other uses. You can use it to eavesdrop on conversations. The shibito also tend to look at important items in a way that serves as hints. In this way, the enemies of the game act as both the “lock” and the “key” for puzzles. For example, a shibito guards a corridor. If you treat him merely like an enemy, you can run past him, but you’re more than likely to get killed. The intended solution is to distract him by calling a nearby phone, whose number can only be found by sightjacking another distant enemy.

Sightjacking also does wonders for the game’s mood. You can hear the shibito from inside their own head. Some like to taunt you. Some weep to themselves. Some make sounds no human can or should produce. Sightjacking also means that you know where the enemies are, but not who or what they are. The developers of Siren were smart enough to capitalize on this, you can be sure of it.

Great, so you just beat a level, now what? Very early on, you are introduced to the level select screen. It’s a timeline, well, a timetable, really. Each level is at the intersection of a character and a moment. The levels are not presented to you in chronological order, but through a method akin to a match cut. The link between stages is a character, an object or an event. The execution isn’t perfect, but the common denominator is usually there. You’re thrust forward and back in time, from one perspective to another. You alternate between ten playable characters. Some characters start with a weapon, some are faster or have more health. These small changes help define each character. Those that start with a gun can be more gung-ho. On the other hand, if the little girl gets even breathed on by a shibito, it’s game over.

Having the story presented out of sequence is deliberately confusing. It’s clearly meant to obfuscate the plot. That alone can create a sense of unease. But there’s more to it than that. You can get glimpses of things you will do in the future, or rather, of something you will have done in the past.

There’s a definite sense that it’s your job to piece the story together. It doesn’t just apply to the cutscenes either: every mission has a secondary goal. The way to “unlock” the alternate solution to some missions is to have a previous character do something completely random, from their perspective at least. The simplest version is finding a key that the same character will use in another level, or unlocking a door someone else will use. One of the more devious one is to have a character pick up an item, only to die with it and to have it picked up by another character once they turn into a shibito. It’s one of the more nonsensical elements of the game, but the game does provide some decent hints.

The other crucial detail about having a huge cast with multiple levels is this: not everyone makes it. Each character’s fate is a scripted part of the story. In a way, by guiding them to the end of the level, you guide them to their doom. This is, and still is, quite unusual. You are usually the “hero”, right? Horror or not, if you just play well, your character will live, right? Even if they do die, their death is the culmination of the plot, no? Here, it’s not even like games such as Maniac Mansion or Obscure where you basically control an entire Scooby Doo mystery solving team. In Siren, each character has their own private destiny.

The jarring timeline, the austere level select screen, the perspective-hopping… it’s such a weirdly technocratic way to interact with a horror game. Horror games usually like to put you in the thick of it. Siren certainly does: there’s plenty of that while actually playing the levels. But you are not your character, not any one of them. You are not a passive observer either. You are destiny, perhaps. Every character has a role to play and they will play it again and again until they (i.e., you) get it right. Some characters are only meant to die, their true contribution is to put an object somewhere, open a door, so that someone else can carry the torch of the plot.

As for the cast itself, most of the slasher movie clichés are there: the happy-go-lucky hero that risks life and limb for the first pretty girl he meets, the vain woman whose obsession with her looks is her downfall, the 100% death-proof innocent child, the noble parental figure sacrificing themselves for a child, the older man that knows what’s up but kicks the bucket before sharing that knowledge and the dweeby girl that learns to grow a spine through the transformative power of violence (and by taking off her glasses). The characters are still likeable enough that you care for their fates, but it’s not a game that’s heavy on the dialogue. It’s not a game about exploring the “trauma” of its characters, unlike so many game inspired by Silent Hill 2.

That being said, two playable characters are particularly interesting, I think. Spoilers ahead!

Kei Makino is the priest of the local cult, but he’s apparently quite clueless. He’s clearly not the one running the show. He starts out as a wuss, has no weapon and gets two women under his care killed. But then after a fateful encounter with his twin brother Shiro, he suddenly grows a pair and starts wielding explosives and supernatural artifacts to save the day.

Well… the truth is that Kei nevers becomes badass. During that fateful encounter, his brother Shiro Miyata doesn’t commit suicide: he kills his sibling and steals his clothes and identity. The identity theft even applies to the stage select screen. Basically, the game is tricking the player into thinking they’re still playing as Kei. I’ve heard of an unreliable narrator, but not of an unreliable interface.

The two brothers are meant to be polar opposites. Kei wears priestly black, Shiro dons a white doctor’s coat. Shiro Miyata is the real badass. He’s also one stone cold motherfucker. You first get control of him as he wakes up in the forest next to a hole that’s been “dug up from the inside”. What you’re meant to understand from clues is that he’s the one who dug up the hole in the first place… to hide the body of his pregnant mistress Mina Onda. She revived as a shibito and even carries his shovel to attack you with. Shiro even kills Mina’s twin later and performs gruesome experiments on the two of them to prove the shibito are immortal. All three of them… if you consider the state Mina was in. Clearly, Shiro Miyata is completely mad, but he seems to be the kind of hero needed to get things done.

The other most interesting character IMO is Tomoko Maeda. She’s 14 (17 in the US version, presumably to blunt the effect of her fate) and ran away from home because her parents read her diary. Her timing to have a teenage crisis is unfortunate, to say the least. I remember playing Tomoko Maeda’s second level and noticing a major bug: all the enemies were unresponsive. They could spot you, but never attacked. Easy win, right? Ha, stupid designers, you messed this one up big time!

Except… it is intentional. That’s because, tragically, Tomoko is already a shibito, she just doesn’t know it yet. You see, the shibito are not hostile to one another (how much the shibito recognize each other as such is unclear, however). This level is perhaps the most beautiful one of the game: the weird chanting music is now seemingly more angelic, there are auroras in the sky and fireflies flitter about. That’s because this is the way the shibito see the world from their perspective.

Tomoko’s only wish is to go back to her parents, but they see her for what she is and drive her away in fear. She is only reunited with her family by presumably turning them into shibito as well. Her and her parents become the antagonists on a later level, “playing family” in an abandoned house. It’s one of the most stressful levels of the game since you need to weave through their weird habits as you control a defenceless elementary schoolgirl. In that level, Tomoko scribbles endlessly “Together forever” on a table in alien script. Is that a happy ending or what?

We should talk a little bit more about the shibito as well. What makes them such a pain in the butt to deal with and also what makes them so interesting. They are, simply put, the best zombie-type monster ever thought of. A bold claim, I know. Here’s why:

– They are absolutely impervious to violence. If you “kill” them, they go into a prayer position (maybe fetal position?) and start regenerating. You can take them down for a minute or two, but they’ll be right back to unlife after that.

– Unlike zombies, you can’t just commit suicide to escape becoming a shibito. There is no way out. There is no escape from the curse. Every single story character that dies comes back to torment the survivors and they tend to be some of the most dangerous and devious shibito.

– They can still perform human tasks, which they pursue endlessly with furious abandon, like chopping imaginary food or hammering nails. Some remnant of their previous memories, maybe? They certainly can still wield a rifle just fine.

– They can still talk, basically taunting their loved ones into joining them.

– From their perspective, they seem to exist in a state of rapturous ecstasy. They’re having a grand old time, laughing it off… while trying to kill you.

– As time goes on, they evolve (or devolve?). The shibito turn into dog-like things or maggot-like horrors. They grow extra eyes, bizarre appendages. Spider-like shibito keep their original face as a weird vestigial limb hanging behind their new eyes.

– The shibito are constantly working: barricading windows, closing off exits, etc. They’re up to something. They’re building something… a nest, in preparation for the birth of their blasphemous god.

So what’s the deal with the shibito? Why is this even happening? The cutscenes in Siren are quite terse and there isn’t that much dialogue. You’re meant to figure it out yourself. That’s where the archive system comes in. Most survival horror games have pieces of paper lying around to explain the game’s world or as little self-contained scary stories (itchy, tasty, anyone?). Siren approaches this idea by having a dedicated archive screen where every file is numbered. There are exactly 100 files to find and finding all 99 will grant you the last one. The files are in chronological order, so you can usually guess where to find something you’re missing.

The game is very thick with hidden implications and the archive helps untangle some of them. One file in particular is a type of Rosetta stone that lets you understand the secret language of the shibito. However, this “secret” language is English and the symbols are so close to the Latin alphabet that you can basically read the messages outright. Still, it’s a nice plus to have to decode the language of the shibito. One such coded archive file even pointed to a fake urban folklore website on the Internet. In fact, Siren used to have two fake websites to add to the lore of the game.

Other than beating the game, finding all the files is obviously an important objective. You want to know what it’s all about, right? Like the corkboard of a conspiracy theorist, the archive fills up with vague and contradictory information, but it’s all got to be linked, right? The village has been sent back in the past, this has got to be tied to the flood of ’76 from this newspaper clipping, right? Come to think of it, that’s 27 years from the date the game is set in. Here’s a photo of the twins Kei and Makino at birth. The twins are 27 years old, that’s not a coincidence is it? The people of prehistory (Jōmon period) seemed to know about the threat and have created supernatural weaponry to fight it. Did humanity know all along?

Great, so now we’re in the realm of ancient aliens and whatnot. Director Keiichiro Toyama explained that sci-fi magazines were an inspiration when creating the game. I can see why. Siren is set in the realm of dark tourism, bizarre occurrences, red herrings and weird factoids. “What if it’s all true?” Scraps of old sci-fi magazines sit alongside religious scriptures in the archive. In a way, it doesn’t really matter if you interpret the cause as “aliens” or as “strange gods”, but it does gives a vastly different feel. Toyama described his approach like this: “If you undo the tight and tangled balls of yarn in various places, you will eventually discover that it is all just one taught strand; the moment of catharsis.”

So what is Siren about? Here it is, in a nutshell: centuries ago, during a time of great famine, a creature fell from the sky near the village of Hanuda (an alien? a god?). The villagers ate it out of desperation. But the creature was not quite helpless. The titular Siren is actually the scream of a dying god, cursing its tormentors beyond time and space (you’re not supposed to ask why it sounds just like a WW2 air raid siren. It’s just a really cool sound effect, alright?). The creature cursed one woman, Hisako Yao, with immortality, in order for her to do its bidding until it could be resurrected. It also cursed (blessed?) the villagers and their descendants into becoming shibito to serve it as well.

Now I know nothing about Shintoism or Buddhism. From a Christian perspective, however, it’s easy to see this as a twisted amalgam of Christian myths. You have manna from heaven, a divine source of food that comes in a time of famine. Except… they weren’t quite supposed to eat it? From that you get the forbidden fruit, eating something that will curse all future generations. Hisako Yao herself resembles the Wandering Jew, a person “cursed” with immortality for their transgressions against God until the second coming of said God. Then there’s the Eucharist, reaching communion with God by eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Did I mention that everything around the village was replaced by an ocean of blood and drinking it turns you into a shibito… eternal life, at a cost. Did I also mention that “sightjacking”, the ability to see through someone else’s eyes, is the manifestation of all becoming one under the power of the creature from the sky? (The developers wanted the shibito to “detect” the player as well while sightjacking, but it turned out to be too frustrating.)

I find the symbolism behind all of this quite fascinating. In truth, the game was more directly inspired by Japanese tales like that of Yao Bikuni, a nun that lived for centuries after eating the flesh of a mermaid. Then again, most religions tend to present the same kind of stories in different contexts. Taboos and stories about certain foods are universal. The Native Americans have the wendigo: even in a time of famine, eating forbidden (i.e. human) flesh will curse you into becoming a monster. Cannibalism is never a good look, yeah?

Mermaids. Huh. Wait a minute… a siren is both a sea monster that tempts human with its voice (closely related etymologically to the mermaid). A siren is also a type of sound. Siren, the game, is about a siren (the creature) that lures people through a siren (the sound). Wait, was the whole plot of the game hiding in plain sight the whole time? In a single word on the title screen? I’ll be damned.

Siren had a sequel and a reimagining/remake. “Forbidden” Siren 2 is a vastly improved game in terms of graphics, controls and playability, but the new story it introduces doesn’t quite have the charm of the original, as far as I’m concerned. The remake, Siren: Blood Curse, is a retelling of the first game. Sadly, it removes the timetable in favour or just being a linear series of levels. For some unexplainable reason, it also switches most of the characters for Americans stuck in the Japanese town. The cast was also drastically reduced, so characters have to do the job of 2-3 characters from the original. The retelling is interesting in its own right and introduces some new elements, like some trippy visuals and gruesome maggot-like shibito, but I still feel it is inferior to the original.

In the end, what makes Siren good is sheer depth. It’s a very dense game. It has high difficulty and an unusual stealth/puzzle approach with a unique sightjacking mechanic. The use of digitized human faces is creepy right out of the gate. The jarring time and perspective shifts of the timetable keep you on your toes. Its cryptic story rewards digging like few games do. Horror often peters out after it shows its big reveal. Here, even after seeing the final cutscene, there is still a lot left to figure out. And yet, this is a game that had the backing of a big studio. I’m still amazed this game survived the stage of the sales pitch. Heck, half the ideas Siren comes up with no other game has really copied, even twenty years later. There’s still a lot of experimental stuff going on in horror, but it tends to be on the micro scale of itch.io and Youtube fodder. Bigger budget horror has settled on a recipe, either closer to Resident Evil 4 or to walking simulators with a monster to hide from. In other words, Siren is a product from a specific moment in time.