10 Incredible Video Game Moments Created By Accident
4. The Fog - Silent Hill
One of the most memorable, most enduring, and most unsettling aspects of the original Silent Hill games was the atmosphere
The creatures were pure nightmare fuel, the sound design eerie in the extreme, but arguably just as haunting to the player was the fog.
The abundance of this dense, grey mist, obscuring from view the source of those creepy-ass noises, added to the oppressive tension of the moment-to-moment gameplay.
Players could not see three feet in front of their noses, and could easily lose their bearings in the foggy streets, helping to differentiate Silent Hill from other notable third person survival horror titles of the day.
Far from being a day-one design decision, however, the heavy, ubiquitous, panic-inducing mist was instead created out of a technological necessity.
Unable to crank enough power out of the original PlayStation to realise their original vision for Silent Hill, the developers instead decided to blanket the game world in dense fog to hide the fact that they could not render the full 360 degree surroundings quickly enough using the available hardware.
Far from being a hindrance, however, the fog proved so popular with players that it was actually kept in for subsequent releases, hardware capabilities notwithstanding.