Believe it or not, Silent Hill was sort of ground-breaking for its visuals at the time it came out. Like how people were impressed by the make up and suits in the original Planet Of The Apes. It was a simpler time, unused to the shiny HD graphics we have nowadays. Silent Hill, meanwhile, was amongst the first fully-rendered 3-D games Konami had released at the time. Metal Gear Solid beat it to the punch by a year or so, but Silent Hill too was operating at a higher level than anything most developers had put out before. Technically an open world environment, traversing the streets of Silent Hill required a level of processing power that the Playstation didn't really have. That ever-present fog that blankets the city, adding to the oppressive atmosphere and concealing oncoming horrors, heightening the tension? That was because, without it, you'd see the parts of the level the game hadn't rendered yet. It'd just be blank space. The mist was all about covering for low draw distances. And yet, it became a staple of the series - even when it wasn't necessary.