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It's not like they're bad, it's just not the super complex high-class writing that people want it to be, either.
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Sep 26, 2018 09:13
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I think left alone Silent Hill is an alternate dimension that does reflect the psychology of the inhabitants. Note that normally only those with deep feelings of guilt and personal pain and allowed to enter. Alyssa’s godlike power was so great it brought others that would not normally be able to enter the true silent hill (like harry). Heather does not have that ability. As for The being growing inside Heather consider if it did win. I’m certain it would have just become a tool of silent hill like Valtiel. The only god in silent hill is Silent Hill. That monster baby would not have become “the god of silent hill” those are concepts of the cultists and silent hill reflects that desire but doesn’t have to follow it. Silent Hill is an entity unto itself and can only be slightly influenced but never controlled. The town itself is its own special type of entity so my theory goes.
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Sep 26, 2018 09:23
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At this point i've still never played a silent hill game and i'm worried playing one will make me argue about it like this. If I ever entered silent hill i'd be chased by goons talking about silent hill.
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Sep 26, 2018 09:53
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The real Silent Hill Cult starts here.
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Sep 26, 2018 10:02
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I forget the video I watched one time but some dude went through, step by step all the little details in the Prison level in Silent Hill 2 and it's just staggering how much detail, how many little things they did to really make that a memorable experience in the game. Silent Hill 2 is an astounding piece of work in almost every drat aspect. Needs more foreskins though.
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Sep 26, 2018 10:57
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too bad you forgot it. I want to watch a silent hill retrospective that doesn't get like... weird and worshippy.
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Sep 26, 2018 11:04
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If I wasn't in work I'd try and dog it up. A search string of "Silent Hill Prison Best Level" might yield results. I recall it was about an hour long? I'll be honest... I was pissed as a fart when I watched it. But he does stuff like point out that when you enter the visitation booths from the visitors side the camera is free and pans around, but when you enter from the prisoner side it's locked in place at a very tight angle. Stuff like that. Great stuff.
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Sep 26, 2018 11:51
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Drunken Baker posted:when you enter the visitation booths from the visitors side the camera is free and pans around, but when you enter from the prisoner side it's locked in place at a very tight angle.
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Sep 26, 2018 11:57
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Drunken Baker posted:If I wasn't in work I'd try and dog it up. A search string of "Silent Hill Prison Best Level" might yield results. I recall it was about an hour long? I'll be honest... I was pissed as a fart when I watched it. But he does stuff like point out that when you enter the visitation booths from the visitors side the camera is free and pans around, but when you enter from the prisoner side it's locked in place at a very tight angle. Stuff like that. Great stuff. You're probably thinking of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGypYyDkC8o
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Sep 26, 2018 12:09
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I remember the only thing I truly disliked in Her Story was the tacked on twist ending, which neither served toward nor detracted from the main plot. Otherwise it seemed like some ok writing?
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Sep 26, 2018 12:13
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Tired Moritz posted:too bad you forgot it. I want to watch a silent hill retrospective that doesn't get like... weird and worshippy. Digital Foundry’s SH2 retrospective is great.
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Sep 26, 2018 12:32
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Discendo Vox posted:That's nonsense. Several elements of other characters' emotional states are explicitly influencing the environment. Typically only in areas where they themselves are immediately present, and even their situations are just used to bolster James' own - Eddie's violence and Angela's retribution are drawing parallels to James euthanizing his wife out of frustration. This hits its peak with the Abstract Daddies, which are straight-up incorporated into James' environment because Angela calls out her father's abuse as a mirror of James' abuses against his wife. "Solipsistic" is a fair description of the plot. Mr. Fortitude posted:The town punishing Angela would be sickening as an idea, what she did was entirely justifiable. Angela had the most legitimate grievance out of anyone in the cast and I agree that the town is just reflecting the characters' own neuroses back in their faces (evidenced further by it just giving Eddie more and more people to kill consequence-free because he's finding this whole murderin' business a real hoot) but to call "murdering your entire family and then killing yourself" justifiable is sort of a hard sell, regardless of context. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 13:22
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Oxxidation posted:Angela had the most legitimate grievance out of anyone in the cast and I agree that the town is just reflecting the characters' own neuroses back in their faces (evidenced further by it just giving Eddie more and more people to kill consequence-free because he's finding this whole murderin' business a real hoot) but to call "murdering your entire family and then killing yourself" justifiable is sort of a hard sell, regardless of context.
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Sep 26, 2018 13:41
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Too Shy Guy posted:I think that's why the first Silent Hill has always been my favorite, because Harry is just some guy caught up in something unspeakable. It's not his psyche manifesting things, he's not part of some dumb prophecy (there is a dumb prophecy but he's tangential to it), he's just a random dude who wants to do the right thing by his daughter and nearly gets destroyed for it. That's classic cosmic horror, normal people encountering grand, unexplainable things that are existential threats just by their scale.
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Sep 26, 2018 15:19
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Oxxidation posted:Angela had the most legitimate grievance out of anyone in the cast and I agree that the town is just reflecting the characters' own neuroses back in their faces (evidenced further by it just giving Eddie more and more people to kill consequence-free because he's finding this whole murderin' business a real hoot) but to call "murdering your entire family and then killing yourself" justifiable is sort of a hard sell, regardless of context. Yeah but what we see of Angela's version is that it's primarily tormenting her with imagery of her own abuse. That's why the idea that it's punishing her for her sins, or being some sort of extreme therapist, is ridiculous. Also if Born From a Wish is anything (uggg), then it's not really passively reflecting but actively creating scenarios to gently caress with anyone inside of it. Which makes sense, given how the whole thing came to be. James is only permitted to leave when he's bought into the Maria thing, when he's come to terms with what he did to Mary and can't really be screwed with any more, or when he's going to go kill himself. He's really only permitted to leave when there's nothing left to do to him. Drunken Baker posted:If I wasn't in work I'd try and dog it up. A search string of "Silent Hill Prison Best Level" might yield results. I recall it was about an hour long? I'll be honest... I was pissed as a fart when I watched it. But he does stuff like point out that when you enter the visitation booths from the visitors side the camera is free and pans around, but when you enter from the prisoner side it's locked in place at a very tight angle. Stuff like that. Great stuff. The prison's real good, although I might be the only person that the wax handle puzzle immediately made sense for. Or the picking at the walls in the well. edit: apropos of nothing, Brookhaven suuuuuuuuuuuucks.
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Sep 26, 2018 15:24
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Halloween Jack posted:I hate to be a pedant, but...actually, I love being a pedant. Anyway, Silent Hill really isn't cosmic horror. The town and the supernatural forces behind it may be vast and unknowable, but so is Satan in any old Satanic cult movie. The difference is that Satan's motivations are, more or less, understandable. They're knowable. He wants souls, wants to corrupt mortals, that sort of thing. Like yeah he's all-evil and a powerful entity and all that jazz, but his motivations are real. Silent Hill, the town, is unknown. It's a place of unknown power, or unknown reason, where the rules of the world don't apply, and no one knows why it exists, how it exists, or why it does what it does. Like, is it punishing people? Or is it simply making their inner destructive feeling real? Is there a reason to it? Or is it just like a bug zapper that draws the damaged and wounded towards it, unthinking and uncaring?
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Sep 26, 2018 15:25
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No matter what the Book of Lost Memories says, it's clear to me that the god in Silent Hill 1 was meant to literally be Samael / Satan. It fits much better with the game being a pastiche of Western occult horror film tropes. The cult as reimagined in 3 is much more "Japanese" feeling for lack of a better way of putting it. Like, the cult in 1 feels like it belongs in "The Devil's Rain," and in 3 it feels like it belongs in "Fatal Frame."
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Sep 26, 2018 15:29
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Morpheus posted:The difference is that Satan's motivations are, more or less, understandable. They're knowable. He wants souls, wants to corrupt mortals, that sort of thing. Like yeah he's all-evil and a powerful entity and all that jazz, but his motivations are real. It exists because Alessa was a psychic child who was tortured by a turbo cult who wanted her to give birth to a god so furious it would wipe the world clean of everyone and everything but them. There's some vague gesticulation to maybe some supernatural poo poo going on prior to the cult, but there's really nothing to think the Otherworld was active prior to Incubus's re/birth. They're christo-satanists. edit: Like only SH2 involves main characters who had done anything wrong (or "wrong" in Angela's case). Harry just picked up the wrong kid at the side of a road once, and Heather had the misfortune of being that kid. Henry just happened to be part of some psycho killer's plot. Town's got no problem loving with anyone it can get its hands on, it just needs them to get there. TGLT fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 15:31
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Morpheus posted:Silent Hill, the town, is unknown. It's a place of unknown power, or unknown reason, where the rules of the world don't apply, and no one knows why it exists, how it exists, or why it does what it does. It's possible that the supernatural entities behind Silent Hill aren't hostile, aren't invested in the people who come to Silent Hill at all, aren't any better able to understand humans than humans are to understand them, or aren't even real thinking entities at all. Silent Hill is a liminal space where reality doesn't work the way it's "supposed to," like the titular planet in Solaris and the Zone in Roadside Picnic. Both of those novels are about a failure to communicate with an alien intelligence--and, debatably, false consciousness in the declining Soviet Union.
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Sep 26, 2018 15:49
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Silent Hill isn't cosmic horror simply as a matter of scale. In cosmic horror, the Great Old Ones "fall through the void between worlds when the stars are right" and irresistibly conquer anything they touch as a matter of course. Everything that happens in Silent Hill, on the other hand, is fairly localized, affects only bare handfuls of people and is both easily influenced, caused or resisted by a plucky hero or two. Bonaventure posted:No matter what the Book of Lost Memories says, it's clear to me that the god in Silent Hill 1 was meant to literally be Samael / Satan. It fits much better with the game being a pastiche of Western occult horror film tropes. The cult as reimagined in 3 is much more "Japanese" feeling for lack of a better way of putting it. Like, the cult in 1 feels like it belongs in "The Devil's Rain," and in 3 it feels like it belongs in "Fatal Frame."
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Sep 26, 2018 15:54
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Cardiovorax posted:You know, coming to think of it, the basic plot concept is really close to that of the movie Rosemary's Baby. If the Red God wasn't intended to be Satan, it's certainly easily possible to read her like that anyway. I mean the Red God is presumably the same god they tried to have Alessa give birth to, and that turned into a Baphomet looking motherfucker called Incubus so y'know.
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Sep 26, 2018 15:57
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Too Shy Guy posted:I think that's why the first Silent Hill has always been my favorite, because Harry is just some guy caught up in something unspeakable. It's not his psyche manifesting things, he's not part of some dumb prophecy (there is a dumb prophecy but he's tangential to it), he's just a random dude who wants to do the right thing by his daughter and nearly gets destroyed for it. That's classic cosmic horror, normal people encountering grand, unexplainable things that are existential threats just by their scale. Yeah, I'd agree with all of this. Also I think Silent Hill 2 was a better game because it was designed and made better, not because the increased focus on James made it better.
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Sep 26, 2018 15:58
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TGLT posted:I mean the Red God is presumably the same god they tried to have Alessa give birth to, and that turned into a Baphomet looking motherfucker called Incubus so y'know.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:01
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Cardiovorax posted:Silent Hill isn't cosmic horror simply as a matter of scale. In cosmic horror, the Great Old Ones "fall through the void between worlds when the stars are right" and irresistibly conquer anything they touch as a matter of course. Everything that happens in Silent Hill, on the other hand, is fairly localized, affects only bare handfuls of people and is both easily influenced, caused or resisted by a plucky hero or two.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:05
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Halloween Jack posted:Cosmic horror isn't a matter of stakes. "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" is mainly the hallucinations of a poor man dying in an asylum. "The Colour Out of Space" is set on a farm. All I'm saying is, Silent Hill as a setting is too earthly and rooted in human experience for that. Dead Space is better cosmic horror on the conceptual level, even if the games are just fun but shallow zombie shooters in practice.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:12
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The God bosses in silent hill are always, constituted as a projection of their worshippers' beliefs about them. Different versions, names and appearances for these God beings vary based on whose beliefs and thoughts they originate from. The SH1 boss is either an angelic figure (if the ceremony proceeds according to the cult's plan) or a demon (if it fails). The God of 3 has Alessa's face because Claudia created it. The only potential exception is Valtiel. Word of god on that character is that a bunch of other cult behaviors and activities, including the appearance of Pyramid Head's robes, were originally based on Valtiel. We don't have as clear an explanation of that figure's role, origin, or importance, or if its origins are rooted in even earlier beliefs. Part of what makes these depictions complicated, and, in my opinion, the crux element of what makes silent hill interesting versus its thousand imitators, is that the monsters, the environment, aren't just one person's beliefs. There's crossover, there's subjectivity, and there's distortion. There is no "core" and no entirely consistent set of rules that can be used. James sees Angela's flames, but the appearance of Pyramid Head appears to be sourced elsewhere. If the player is literally just tunneling into their own psyche, well, that's the very most limited, constrained narrative option available. Silent Hill as a corrupted or twisted gestalt is infinitely more rewarding narratively.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:33
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Cardiovorax posted:All I'm saying is, Silent Hill as a setting is too earthly and rooted in human experience for that. Dead Space is better cosmic horror on the conceptual level, even if the games are just fun but shallow zombie shooters in practice.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:39
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Discendo Vox posted:The God bosses in silent hill are always, constituted as a projection of their worshippers' beliefs about them. Different versions, names and appearances for these God beings vary based on whose beliefs and thoughts they originate from. The SH1 boss is either an angelic figure (if the ceremony proceeds according to the cult's plan) or a demon (if it fails). That's not correct. The angelic figure is Incubator, which is Alessa reformed after Cheryl is brought to her. Incubus is ejected from Incubator when she gets hit with the Aglaophotis, and after the Incubus boss fight Alessa/Incubator helps Harry escape and hands over Heather. Incubus is the only god in that fight, although Alessa/Incubator is god-like.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:44
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Really my biggest gripe with Silent Hill 2 was that the monsters outside of Pyramid Head weren't particularly scary. Once you've seen one puke monster you've seen the next 300 puke monsters. The first game's little knife children put that poo poo to shame.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:44
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Skyscraper posted:Dead Space is a bunch of creepy dead body hijacking aliens, and Silent Hill is potentially an entire dimension of nightmares. Silent Hill, on the other hand, by default kind of happens specifically and more or less only in Silent Hill and to people immediately connected to the place. You don't have to agree, though, it's just how I would draw the line.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:46
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Cardiovorax posted:The "brethren moons" could have been a corpse-centric Great Old One and no one would have batted an eye, seriously. They're at least as good at it as Mordiggian the Grave Worm, and that one is right out of Clark Ashton Smith. The setting has basically all the hallmarks of traditional cosmic horror stories: alien and superhuman intelligences, strange artifacts that have no clear origin, mind-fuckery that turns people into crazy cultists, and events that even if they do not take place on an interstellar scale in each individual story are at least connected to it setting-wise. Not really? I mean, they're aliens, with a kind of strange and unpleasant life cycle, but they're fundamentally knowable, they use technology to mind control people.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:53
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Silent Hill was more bad than good.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:55
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We can all agree that Silent Hill as a series has had an incredible identity crisis since the second game, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the "premise" of its horror is similarly confused and inconsistent. Even within the first game we have appeals to the pseudo-Lovecraftian "The Mist," the idea of a child creating a nightmare world, the visual aesthetic of the psychological horror of Jacob's Ladder, and the explicit occult / satanic tradition of Western magical and occult traditions (how many key items are given Hebrew names in this game). It's always been a gumbo.
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Sep 26, 2018 16:59
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it's a fun anthology series 
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Sep 26, 2018 17:02
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Skyscraper posted:Not really? I mean, they're aliens, with a kind of strange and unpleasant life cycle, but they're fundamentally knowable, they use technology to mind control people.
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Sep 26, 2018 17:12
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Cardiovorax posted:A lot of Lovecraft's original Cthulhu Mythos was perfectly "knowable" in the sense of being easy to accurately sum in a handful of words like that. "Eldritch" was one of his favourite words, but it didn't start to mean "mind-breakingly incomprehensible to humans" until long after him. Yeah, I've heard there are other authors in this genre who have written other things after Lovecraft's death in 1937.
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Sep 26, 2018 18:05
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Skyscraper posted:Yeah, I've heard there are other authors in this genre who have written other things after Lovecraft's death in 1937. proof?
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Sep 26, 2018 18:37
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Bogart posted:proof? I have nothing, only rumors and innuendos.
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Sep 26, 2018 18:42
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As somene who collects Lovecraftian fiction, I can absolutely attest that there's a lot of it.Cardiovorax posted:All I'm saying is, Silent Hill as a setting is too earthly and rooted in human experience for that. Dead Space is better cosmic horror on the conceptual level, even if the games are just fun but shallow zombie shooters in practice.
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Sep 26, 2018 18:43
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 23:47 |
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I see what y'all are saying about Silent Hill, but what about Siren? I feel like the source of the curse there would be right at home as the reveal in a Lovecraft short story.
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Sep 26, 2018 19:04
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