Earlier this month, the great David Lynch passed away. The news has made waves throughout the film and TV landscape; his influence as an auteur filmmaker can be felt in nearly every facet of the industry. However, I want to delve into the lesser-known but equally monumental influence Lynch has had across the gaming landscape over the years.
To get the big one out of the way, Silent Hill 2 is, considered by many, the quintessential Lynchian experience, with an unrivalled translation of his horror and environments so industrial you could swear the game is an Eraserhead spinoff.
What’s been confirmed by the game’s director Masashi Tsuboyama is that early iterations of Silent Hill 2’s story were inspired directly by the 1997 film Lost Highway, something obvious upon seeing the game’s central twist. But aspects of other Lynch stories like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive can also be clearly seen within the narrative of the game, particularly concerning ideas of parallel characters, and ones who have their true natures revealed throughout the narrative.
While Silent Hill 2 does take inspiration from Lynch’s iconic Twin Peaks, there is another survival horror game where its very existence relies on the nineties show; Alan Wake 2. One of the game directors, Sam Lake, can be seen countless times talking about how deeply the show, and Lynch’s other works, inspired the game. The town of Brightfalls may very well be renamed to Twin Peaks and little would change with its cast of curious characters, bizarre occult and love of coffee, and while the characters of Saga and Dale Cooper are very much different, their positions as FBI agents who come to rural towns share an undeniable resemblance. Connecting them also is their ability to enter their minds, with the key gameplay associated with Saga’s ‘Mind Palace’ being similar to Cooper’s ‘Red Room,’ albeit a bit less metaphorical. The keyway that Alan Wake 2 adapts Lynch’s style, however, is the game’s ability to juggle tones just like Twin Peaks, balancing comedic absurdity with cryptic investigations and downright horror all in an instant.
But the buck doesn’t stop there. The creators of Alan Wake 2, Remedy Entertainment, showcase more inspiration from Lynch in their other games, namely Control. This game in particular seems to translate the director’s common use of the neo-noir genre with a focus again on the worlds of the FBI and detective sphere. Control also differs from our other two entries with it being in the action-adventure genre of games with the protagonist’s reality-altering powers, leading to bizarre combat that feels like a Lynchian blockbuster. Aside from this, there are also little inspirations, like the mundane yet unsettling environments of the Oldest House and the often heavily edited voices of various characters.
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Much like Control’s ability to show how Lynch’s influence has gone outside of just the survival horror genre, The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening equally demonstrates that even genres like high fantasy are affected. Links Awakening is again a time where the inspiration is more direct than other games, with one of the developers of the game, Takashi Tezuka, stating in an interview “At the time, Twin Peaks was rather popular. The drama was all about a small number of characters in a small town. So I wanted to make something like that, while it would be small enough in scope to easily understand, it would have deep and distinctive characteristics.” Another key directorial motif that the game possesses is the focus on dreams and dream-like aesthetics, a concept that Lynch defined with his frequent use of it.
To finish this article nothing seems more fitting than a quote from the man himself; “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.”