@matana you said yourself you've never even played a silent hill game, let alone the one in question, so you are choosing to blindly allow yourself to agree with a redditor because you're pro-choice. i've gone balls deep into the series and back out again and i can tell you with a certainty that saying silent hill 3 is about rape is completely untrue, and saying it has anything to do with women's rights is like stretching a piece of macaroni over the entire pacific ocean. it has themes of female teenage fear, especially while lacking father or mother figures, but there's so much more packed in there that saying the whole entire game is some metaphor of women's rights is just ridiculous. it's a whole slew of things but it isn't set on delivering any sort of message.

this is like saying "the legend of zelda is a visceral metaphor for feminine power in the face of great patriarchal adversity." especially in breath of the wild, we see that zelda's father puts a lot of pressure on her and she's only able to fight of ganon at the very last moment and does so for 100 years. she's dealing with a lot of problems of not being able to connect to her powers and tries to help out in other ways that her father doesn't approve of, and eventually is able to hold back the calamity anyway when she's the only hope left. but the game (and legend of zelda in general) isn't about pushing some political point. it's about courage, overcoming adversity, the heart of exploration... and then of course all the lore that goes into it.

for silent hill, the first game is much more story-driven, as harry tries to find his daughter who was called back to silent hill he learns more and more about the town and the cult there, until eventually he finds that his daughter was merged with the other half of her soul and is the host for a new god which will basically destroy the earth and in doing so bring everyone eternal joy after suffering. harry kills the god and alessa is reborn into heather. the game is about life, death, and rebirth, as well as the lengths a father will go to in order to protect his child.

silent hill 2 takes a bit of a different turn but it is still necessary to talk about in order to understand silent hill 3. in sh2, james gets a letter from his dead wife, who died of an illness years ago. she says that she's in silent hill waiting for him. again, silent hill has called someone for a particular reason. he goes there and finds other people there with stories of misery and pain, and how they killed someone in order to deal with that pain. he continues searching for his wife and meets a woman that looks exactly like her but more sexualized (even having a similar name, "maria" vs "mary") who accompanies him, as well as a young girl wandering around who doesn't see any of the monsters but knows mary, james' wife. eventually, we find out that james killed his wife due to his own pain and misery of her not being emotionally/sexually available for him due to her illness as well as his pain and misery in seeing her in pain and misery. silent hill has called everyone here to A) punish them for their sin and B) to test their courage to see if they are redeemable, i.e. repentance. they all see different things that the town has chosen to punish/challenge them with and sometimes get glimpses into others' versions of silent hill. the other two characters who had similar stories end up dying, but james (in the good ending) realizes his fault and overcomes his guilt, leaving silent hill with the girl wandering around. silent hill 2 is a game about realizing and overcoming sin and guilt, making yourself into a better person instead of wallowing in self-pity and depression, not giving in to temptation, and also has themes of rebirth of the spirit and walking onto new paths of life.

silent hill 3 is a combination of the two. it continues the story of the first game with heather being harry's daughter, therefore she's alessa, the child that was meant to "birth" god. she's plagued by nightmares and is in general an anxious, stressed out teenager nearing adulthood. she knows nothing about her past or her father's past and, long story short, ends up getting home to see her father has been murdered. she finds out that it was claudia, a member of the cult, and heads to silent hill to enact her revenge. of course, this was claudia's plan all along, because she needed to get heather in silent hill so she could become the host for god. the story unfolds much like silent hill 1, where she learns more about her past and about the town, as well as the cult from other characters and other lore items. where the silent hill 2 aspect creeps in is that the town is tailored to heather, she sees things she is afraid of that dig deep not only into heather's subconscious mind with things such as being alone, having self-image problems, and of course pregnancy and reproduction, but also alessa's, such as being abused and burned alive, not being able to die and constantly being reborn, suicidal thoughts, and horrible experiences with cult members and just general insanity. eventually she overcomes these fears with the help of her father's memory, hearkening back to harry's willpower and courage to save and protect her, and purges the god that was implanted inside of her. in doing this she becomes stronger in spirit than alessa was, and even mentions that she and alessa don't think alike at all. heather is strong willed just like her father and just like james, despite everything horrible that they have been through. this is the strand that ties the games together. yes, silent hill 3 (and 1/origins to a lesser extent which is a whole other topic) deal with themes of maternity and femininity, but it's not the whole entire point of the game or anything.

the message of every silent hill is about having courage and fighting your fears in order to accomplish your goals. the message of some silent hill games is becoming a better person than the sum of your parts, undergoing some sort of redemption or rebirth (james and heather do this throughout their stories and the concept still exists within harry's). the games often have contrasts to the protagonist in this regard and it's clear, at least to me, that it is the highlighted point of the character progression, and is meant to be identifiable to the player even if they aren't a woman, or even if they haven't done something as drastic as killing someone. we have all experienced fear, guilt, suffering, sadness, and silent hill has a sort of cathartic way of expressing that and resolving it as well, whereas most horror games are far simpler in their design and tone, either meant to unravel a crazy story about mutant zombies and government experiments or just scare your pants off.

that's why i kind of take issue to just simplifying a game as complex as silent hill 3 to "it's about women's reproductive rights." heather's not fighting for her rights or anything, she went to silent hill for one purpose and that's to avenge her father at any cost and, later, to deal with the cult before shit hit the fan, which mirrors what her father did in silent hill 1: tried to save her at any cost, and tried to deal with the cult as well. the game obviously has a lot of symbolism when it comes to the aforementioned maternity stuff, but it has so much other fucking symbolism in it of so many other things that go beyond a simple "hurr durr abortion and women's rights!" that saying that's what the game about is completely retarded.