Silent Hill 4: The Room

Silent Hill 4: The Room
Developers: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, Konami Software Shanghai (Windows/Xbox) Publisher: Konami Platforms: PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox Released in JP: June 17, 2004 (PS2) Released in US: September 7, 2004 Released in EU: September 17, 2004 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused items. This game has unused text.

This article has just been started and needs the article basics added. Help us out and add them.

To do: Investigate whether or not entering the iwa_teststage.bin room is possible. Also, see if it is possible to spawn TEST00. Unused Eileen animations for when she's in her bedroom through the peephole (such as her eating a burger), including an unused haunting. Verify if every animation used in the attached video is indeed unused (and see if there are any more). Subtitles point towards there possibly being unused dialogue (more notably, Eileen has some quotes that may be unused). Apparently, there are some unused sounds in the files. More unused models and animations are apparently in the files. Unused debug features. More unused textures (enemy_cell_textures.bin has a very small texture of a man - is it ever used?). Version differences, e.g. PC and Xbox versions are missing graphical effects. PC version also misses some hauntings.

Silent Hill 4: The Room follows Henry Townshend, an everyman who becomes trapped in his apartment and must find a way to escape.

Unused Items

There are a few leftover items in the game that have no use in the final game. Due to the fact that they have art assets and a localized description already implemented, it is likely that these were cut late in development. If you hack them into your inventory, they cannot be actually be used anywhere.

Channeling Stone	Dirty Stone
Stone imbued with a strange power.	It's a filthy stone, covered in dirt and dust.

Obtaining These Items

One of these items likely would have come from the toilet in your apartment. When interacting with the toilet in the final game, the following messages will appear:

There's something in the toilet...
Should I grab it?

I'm not brave enough to do it...

It is not known what item would have been retrieved from the toilet, but it would make sense if the Dirty Stone was the item that would have been pulled out, due to it coming out of a toilet and all.

The Channeling Stone seems to have been planned to be obtainable by washing the Dirty Stone. Both items have the same oval shape, and the following string can be found near the strings relating to the Channeling Stone:

You washed the Dirty Stone.

Unused Text

English Dummy Messages

There are a few dummy strings in message_common.bin that reference a generic item. This may have been used early in development before any items were actually added to the game as a way to test the item system.

english dummy message
It is full and an item cannot be taken.

english dummy message
The item was taken.

english dummy message
Is an item taken?

Sample.bin

There is a file called Sample.bin that was presumably used to test the .bin file format. In it, it contains three unused strings.

GOEGOEGOEGOE

NAENAE

SILENT HILL 4

Unused Models

Henry

In the file anm_test.bin, there exists an earlier version of Henry's player model. His face is much more "cartoony" and less realistic, and his normal blue shirt has been replaced with a Brown jacket and green undershirt. He is also wearing a belt with a yellow belt buckle.

In-game.

Through model swapping, it is possible to replace Henry's normal player model with this earlier version. Henry's final animations fit correctly over the early model and they share the same skeleton, so it is possible this change was made later on in development.

Spiral Staircase Scenery

Unused models with animations that resemble the scenery for the spiral staircase areas, depicting some rather strange and grotesque visuals. There are many empty enclosures present in these areas and the models are located within the spiral staircase's files, suggesting that these models may have been used as non-interactive decorations at some point before being removed, possibly for censorship reasons.

Remnants of UFO Ending

Silent Hill 4 was originally planned to have a UFO ending. This is evident by the following leftover string which would have been used to show that the player has achieved the ending in their savegame.

U.F.O.

It is likely that the cut items above were used to obtain the U.F.O. ending due to how U.F.O. endings were triggered in previous Silent Hill entries.

Test Enemy

The file param.bin contains the list of all enemy names in the game and presumably controls other parameters about them. In this file, there seems to be a test enemy still included.

TEST00

This enemy does not appear during normal gameplay, however it may still be possible to spawn it in.

Anime Textures

In the em_test.bin file, there exist two textures of some characters from adult visual novel Moekan as the last two textures in the file. These are never displayed in-game, so it is unknown why they are included, but they include mipmaps.

Texture 0x39	Texture 0x40

Unused Animations

Room 302

Eileen has a few animations that appear to be unused. Notably, one of the animations seems to resemble some of the game's haunting sequences, in which she twitches in front of the peephole while making gasping noises.

Cutscenes

To do: Only the basics have been put here - Are there any contextual clues for what this was for, and is it actually unused?

A short unused cutscene.