Simon Ordell is the protagonist and only playable character of SILENT HILL: Townfall. Store copy across every official channel uses the same line: Simon "is called back to the island of St. Amelia to 'put things right', encountering a town lying quiet beneath a heavy fog, seemingly abandoned but not at rest." The entire game is played through his eyes.
The Summons
Two things bring Simon back. A letter asks him to return to St. Amelia, and a phone call makes the same request out loud. The caller tells him to come back to the town and put some things to rest, says other people need to hear it from him, and closes with "We can make this right." The speaker is not identified in the trailer's caption track, so the voice on the call should not be attributed to any named character yet.
Arrival
How Simon reaches the island is left deliberately unclear. In the section shown to press, one moment he appears to be drifting toward the dock aboard a boat, and the next he bursts out of the water and pulls himself ashore as if he has just woken there. He does not recognise St. Amelia. Konami's own copy states he wakes with an IV bag and a medical wristband carrying his name, and previewers described the IV line still taped into his arm and hand, with the cannula in his left arm.
Accounts of the press build describe him as amnesiac at the start, which is sharper than the first-party wording that St. Amelia "is not a place he recognizes." McKellan has said the IV is narrative rather than set dressing: "everything in the game has some relevance. Nothing is there just because or to fill a void."
The Wristband
The hospital bracelet is legible in trailer footage and gives the only hard biographical details published so far.
Field | Value |
|---|---|
Name | SIMON ORDELL |
Date of birth | 15/10/59, read as 15 October 1959 in the game's UK setting |
Blood type | A+ |
A birth date of October 1959 puts Simon at 37 years old by the autumn of 1996.
How He Is Written
Simon rarely speaks aloud. His inner monologue is unspoken and rendered on screen in his own handwriting, with short lines such as "there's no answer." McKellan has described the tone he was aiming for as an intelligent thriller, closer to prestige television than to a conventional horror script.
Red and black run through the game's palette, and McKellan has said the pairing is not only a striking one: "as you progress through the game, players will discover that these two colors hold a deeply symbolic and vital significance for our protagonist, Simon."
Looking for Zoe
After answering a ringing pay phone in the empty town square, Simon is pushed to find Zoe, a nurse at the local family clinic. Following her trail through her apartment, the clinic, a pharmacy and a coworker's flat is what structures the opening hours. First-party material is explicit that Zoe "is not someone he has encountered before," and Simon does not know who she is when he starts looking. A photograph of Simon himself turns up in Zoe's house, which is the concrete evidence that some connection exists. Nothing published states what that connection is, and several outlets have guessed at one; those guesses contradict the primary source and are not recorded here.
Another Figure
McKellan has confirmed that a third principal character exists, seen at the beginning of the game: "Zoe's story is with Simon, and Simon's story is with our other character we see at the beginning. They're all deeply connected, but they don't really know how or why." No name has been published for this character, and no source connects them to any other figure in the opening.
A vault door bearing the name Ordell appears in the reveal trailer, cutting to a door labelled 204. Both are visible in the footage; what either means has not been explained.
Appearance
The Deluxe Edition includes "Simon's Outfit: Alternate," which Konami describes as a skin that applies to the protagonist in-game. See Editions and Pre-Order Bonuses for what each edition contains.