Official Silent Hill 3 site opens

Konami has opened its official site for Silent Hill 3. The site is designed much like a minigame. Each section of the site is represented as a room in a horror mansion, and the visitor must uncover passwords to advance to other areas. Not all the sections of the site were available as of this writing.

According to the site, Silent Hill 3 will consist of a normal world and a dark-side world. The normal world is relatively close to the usual world that everyone lives in, while the dark-side world is a nightmarish world full of gore. The main character, Heather, will go back and forth between the two worlds in the game. The site also revealed that there will be six key figures in the game, two of which have not been revealed yet.

Silent Hill 3's graphics engine programmer, Norihito Hatakeda, comments on the site that the main focus in creating the graphics for Silent Hill 2 was to explore the limits in using lights and shadows in a game. In creating the graphics for Silent Hill 3, the focus has been on finding ways to express more of the distinct fear and madness that the series is known for, which he believed was lacking in Silent Hill 2.

Silent Hill 3 is scheduled for release on July 3 in Japan.