Siren came out in North America in 2004. It tells the story of a group of people becoming trapped in a small Japanese village called Hanuda. It follows their separate journeys as they struggle to figure out what’s going on and how to survive.
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| Cozy night-time scene. |
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| The Link Navigator eventually becomes a sort of “stage selection” screen for the player. |
Stealth is a key factor in most stages. Siren’s most famous game mechanic is called “Sightjacking.” Players are able to see through the eyes of other characters in the level, including any companions that may be with them as well as the enemies present. It’s assumed that players will spend a fair amount of time watching the enemies’ behavior and positioning to strategize how to complete the mission. It’s still surprising that other games didn’t embrace this mechanic. To my knowledge, only one recent title borrowed it: Atama.
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| Sightjacking is always from a first-person perspective. |
The common enemy found in the game are called “shibito” (屍人, “corpse person”). They cannot be killed and after being incapacitated will always regenerate. Careful conservation of ammunition is required in stages where characters are fortunate enough to have firearms.
Shibito don’t remain static over the course of Siren. They slowly transform from humanoid undead into bizarre creatures that behave more like animals, including dogs, spiders, and flying insects. The creature design is easily a highlight.
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| The sounds these ones make is off-putting. |
Siren's English-language release came after Silent Hill 2 and 3. Players would have likely been familiar with the mechanics of the SH series. Once players become accustomed to the combat mechanics in the SH series, it’s unlikely that they’ll actually get a game over. The combat in Siren feels different. The cast of characters are far more fragile. Plus, the enemies’ attacks are less predictable; they can alternate between strong attacks and fast jabs, much like the player can.
Despite these challenges, the nature of Siren's short levels means that re-doing a stage shouldn’t feel like a major setback. Replaying the stages is key to progression. Most stages have more than one objective and only one objective can be completed at a time. A stage is not truly cleared until both objectives are done.
Even still, I recall feeling disappointed when forced to play a stage over after spending twenty minutes carefully navigating through the environment. It’s tricky balancing difficulty, tension, and fun. In some ways, Siren chose to emphasize the first two at the sacrifice of the last one.
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| It’s rare to get the drop on the shibito. |
The story’s pacing is slow at first. With such a large cast, it takes time to get to know the characters and their connection to the village. Telling the story out of chronological order serves to make players feel the same bewilderment that the characters do. Something strange and dangerous is happening in Hanuda. We can’t help but empathize with the characters’ struggle to stay alive.
One element of Siren that may be difficult to discern is how true to life it is. Specifically, it captures many subtle elements of Japanese society and rural life that might not be readily obvious to folks who haven’t lived in Japan. Let’s look at some examples.
Appearance means a whole lot in Japan. We’re talking about how someone presents themselves: what clothes they wear and what that means to the people around them. When people see someone wearing a particular uniform, they tend to expect certain behaviors. (This phenomenon is likely true regardless of location, but seems to be more pronounced in Japan.) It’s alarming when patrol officer Ishida chases Suda Kyoya with gun drawn. At this point, Ishida isn’t a shibito. He’s likely drunk and may even be trying to keep Kyoya from speaking about the town’s secret ceremonies. Ishida’s behavior does not match his uniform.
Another character at odds with his profession is Miyata Shiro. He wears the stereotypical lab coat associated with his medical profession. Similar to Ishida above, Shiro’s murderous behavior does not match his uniform.
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| The facial technology used in Siren still looks pretty good even twenty years later. |
Takeuchi Tamon wears his suit in an unconventional fashion for an academic; his style almost suggests a yakuza. Even
his profile in the game’s manual calls him a “maverick” in academia. It’s suggested that Tamon has spent much of his life trying to uncover answers to the mysterious earthquake that destroyed his home in Hanuda 27 years prior to the events in the game. Perhaps his outfit is merely to reflect his monomaniacal obsession.
Tamon’s possession of a pistol is surprising because they are illegal in
Japan. Shimura Akira, on the other hand, has a gun license that we find in one of the stages. Akira’s rifle is a Murata Type 22,
a real weapon that was developed during the Meiji period.
On the topic of clothing, there are some small details that are easy to miss:
- Some of the shibito are wearing farming garb and wielding sickles. These outfits are common to rural Japan.
- Onda Mina’s white nurse’s uniform is still very much the norm for nurses in rural Japan.
The look of Hanuda village is also realistic. The cafeteria resembles a real small town restaurant, including the menus being posted on the wall. The houses, while out-dated, look authentic. There are even buildings made with corrugated metal. Players may want to spend a little time exploring the virtual streets of a random Japanese village just to see how accurate Siren is. I’m sure some readers are thinking “I know all this!” but it’s definitely an element of the game that went over my head when I first played it many years ago.
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| Akira is easily the most well-armed character for most of the game. |
Part of what hindered me from playing Siren back when I first bought it was its difficulty; I never even made it to the game’s most notoriously challenging timed missions. I also found its story to be obtuse. Instead of making me intrigued, it served only to frustrate.
There’s one other factor that made it tough to play: Siren is a genuinely scary game. Or at least I found it to be particularly intimidating at the time. The shibito were the stuff of nightmares. I was used to zombies in other video games, but these weren’t the typical slow-moving shotgun fodder. There’s also a sense of all-encompassing dread throughout Siren. It feels apocalyptic. In many ways, the story is a tragedy. Siren achieves something uniquely terrifying in the survival horror genre.
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| Players collect artifacts throughout the stages like this one. There are 100 total in the game and all need to be collected to see the ending. |
I still wish that we had the option to listen to the Japanese voices with English subtitles. The English dubbing is fine, but any translation/localization will necessarily make compromises and potentially miss subtle nuances. Including both audio tracks on a single PS2 disc may have proven impossible or too expensive.
I never parted with my original PS2 copy. I’m glad I held onto it. It’s unfortunate that the PlayStation 4 port didn’t offer any quality of life improvements (say, for example, save states).
It’s taken me many years to realize how much I appreciate what Siren accomplished. It’s one of the more brooding and dark survival horror games that’s ever been made.