Fallout 4’s overworld was always missing something that the other 3D wastelands in the series offered me: a sense of bleakness and danger. There are areas of the map, like the Glowing Sea, that managed to dial up the oppression. But the unforgiving horror mod Whispering Hills makes the whole region eerie and mysterious. And I honestly love that.
My playthrough started the same way as vanilla Fallout 4, with a tableau of mid-Century suburban domestic bliss interrupted by a tense run to Vault 111. But from there, I almost started to think my hard drive was haunted. The post-nuclear world has been reimagined with constant, dense fog and occasional torrential rain that limit your view distance to only a handful of yards.
It reminded me of how Morrowind used its limited view distance to make Vvardenfell feel much bigger than it was, even if at the time it was also a technical necessity. Part of the problem with the Commonwealth overworld in unmodded Fallout 4 is that it’s relatively flat and mostly green, so a lot of it feels very same-y. You can look off into the distance and not see anything so dramatic as the Nevada mountains or Washington DC’s monuments. But when so much of the surrounding area is obscured, these gentle, rolling hills are suddenly quite effective at making my spine tingle.
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The basic premise of Whispering Hills is similar to the base game. Your son Shaun was taken, and you have to find him. But this time, it sounds like he’s been abducted by some kind of cult. I immediately ran into a mysterious man whose daughter had also been taken with a tip to go to the town of Whispering Hills to investigate. The locale itself is modeled on Centralia, PA, which was used as a reference for the live action Silent Hill movie and also happens to fit in quite well with the rural New England aesthetic of Fallout 4.
You won’t be able to simply walk there, however. The first quest sends you to the Dunwich Borers dungeon, which is the site of one of the most memorable horror quests from the base game. And along the way, I could already tell something was very wrong. New enemies taken from and inspired by horror games and internet creepypastas show up alongside the usual raiders and mutants. Particularly upsetting was a towering Sirenhead who seemed to be broadcasting the distressed calls of a child Shaun searching for his mommy and daddy to lure me in.
Fair warning that this is a very tough mod to survive in starting as a fresh character. The enemies hit very hard, and some of them can soak a lot of damage, too. Sirenhead even managed to shrug off a mini nuke and send me running for the hills. I didn’t bother to go progress the main quest long enough to get power armor, but I’d recommend at least levelling up a little bit in the open world before taking on Whispering Hills itself.
Journey to Hell
VATS is also disabled from here on out, with a scrawled note somewhat comedically explaining that the whole game mechanic was part of some kind of mass delusion.
After fighting my way through the usual bandits in Dunwich Borers and unsealing that foreboding chained door, I started to realize just how deep this descent was going to go. The feral ghouls from the vanilla version are replaced by Eyeless Ones with hooks for hands who are completely blind, but don’t care at all about the light sources that serve as a boon in the vanilla quest. And upon reaching what would have been the end of the dungeon in an unmodded world, I was presented with another red door, and a notice that all of my items would be taken away if I entered it.
Things get absolutely terrifying and surreal from here. You can keep your levels and perks, but you don’t gain any XP for killing enemies past the point of no return, and are given only rags and an automatic pistol with a limited amount of ammo to defend yourself. It’s not even nearly enough to kill all the enemies down here, so stealth and running become essential. VATS is also disabled from here on out, with a scrawled note somewhat comedically explaining that the whole game mechanic was part of some kind of mass delusion.
The lighting and sound design in these segments are very effective at selling the idea that we’re not in Massachusetts anymore, with grisly tableaus of hanged cadavers and creepy radio broadcasts insisting you turn around only to see… nothing. The enemies are quite a bit tougher, too. At level four, some of them could kill me in only two hits, with the likes of mumblers and Silent Hill’s horrible nurses joining the cast.
Throughout, themes of parenthood are laid on thick. You might see a rocking cradle in an inaccessible area behind grimy prison bars. Some of the enemies make distorted crying sounds. I haven’t finished the mod’s five chapters yet, but knowing how Silent Hill games tend to play out, it definitely seems like we’re not going to find Shaun as an older man leading a science institute.
And at the deepest part of this charnel house, down a rusty set of stairs, you discover Shaun’s rattle. And that’s when he shows up. Pyramid Head in all his unholy glory will pursue you as you backtrack through the level to escape. I found this section to be particularly punishing, to the point that it’s almost not that fun, at least at low level. But if you manage to make it out, the town of Whispering Hills and its unfolding story are your reward.
Pyramid Head doesn’t just stick to the modded areas. Once you have the rattle in hand, he can randomly appear even if you return to the Commonwealth. The only way to get him to stop pursuing you is to return the rattle to where you found it in the depths of Hell. And unsurprisingly, he doesn’t seem to care much about any kind of laser beam or nuclear weapon you might throw at him. I could at least see Sirenhead’s health going down, slowly. Our polyhedral buddy simply seems immune to all damage, leaving escape as the only recourse.
Overall, I love what Whispering Hills does to the default overworld. I do think some of the linear Hell segments are actually too hard to be scary. The problem is, dying over and over sort of inoculates you to the illusion horror games seek to create, and simply hoping I have enough AP to sprint past enemies I can’t kill without too many of them hitting me feels random and isn’t especially compelling.
But if you’re looking for a spooky Halloween experience that turns a familiar game world into something deeply cursed and wrong, simply exploring the Commonwealth with Whispering Hills’ diabolical changes is worth your time.
