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Garrand
Dec 28, 2012

Rhino, you did this to me!

Blue Nation posted:

I can't speak for the filthy toilet digging, but where I live its pretty common for mothers to keep bits of the umbilical cord of their children, my mother has mine and my brother's wrapped in cotton among her sewing supplies.

:stonk:

Bah, new page.

I was watching a couple videos comparing the different voice actors. James' definitely sounds off. Just too deep. It's hard to tell if it's just being used to original James or not, but I'm not a fan.

VoidBurger posted:

Laura: And Laura was awful because it was some adult woman putting on a little girl voice and that almost ALWAYS sounds like poo poo to me. Laura was played by a real little girl in the original, and she was a terrible actress too, but I'll take a bad child actor over a good adult actor putting on a babyvoice a lot of the time.

I didn't think Laura was so quite so bad. After your post I thought it might have been the woman who did the Rugrats' phil and lil voices and who has voiced a million other children that are grating as hell but the one they got wasn't so bad.

Garrand fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Feb 8, 2015

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Ars Arcanum
Jan 20, 2005

Best friends make the best weapons

Blue Nation posted:

I can't speak for the filthy toilet digging, but where I live its pretty common for mothers to keep bits of the umbilical cord of their children, my mother has mine and my brother's wrapped in cotton among her sewing supplies.

But the umbilical cord James' dad kept wasn't from his kids, it was from the baby he found abandoned in one of the apartments. He didn't adopt the kid or anything, either. So it's kind of :gonk: that he kept it.

ThatPazuzu
Sep 8, 2011

I'm so depressed, I can't even blink.

Ars Arcanum posted:

But the umbilical cord James' dad kept wasn't from his kids, it was from the baby he found abandoned in one of the apartments. He didn't adopt the kid or anything, either. So it's kind of :gonk: that he kept it.

According to the Silent Hill wiki, it might be genetic.

quote:

Frank, like his son, has some questionable actions, such as keeping an umbilical cord from a stranger in his room for 34 years. Likewise, his son is willing to grab a wallet inside a filthy toilet and not wash his hands.

Bored
Jul 26, 2007

Dude, ix-nay on the oice-vay.
Silent Hill's creepy white van dealership does quite well.


fake edit: So happy to see a voidburger let's play silent hill. Pretty much the only let's plays I watch all the way through. Even though voidburger has a lovely speaking voice, I prefer the text commentary for some reason. Probably because it doesn't detract from the game.

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
I assumed in the attract video that Eddie and Laura being outside the overlook van inferred that it was Eddie's van and that he took Laura to Silent Hill, perhaps as a hitchhiker.

VoidBurger
Jul 18, 2008

A leap into the void.
The burger in space.

Choco1980 posted:

But the final nail is if in the labyrinth you equip his knife and turn off your flashlight--the monsters run from you. Pyramid Head is James.
No argument here that Pyramidhead is some form of James, but I also have never seen this happen. The thing about the Lying Figs in the labyrinth is that most of them follow a path through the maze anyway. James walks so slowly with the Great Knife, I could easily see someone inferring that the monsters are "running away" from him, when in fact James is just being too slow to influence their patrol route in the maze (having the flashlight off would make it even more difficult for the monsters to notice you and change their predetermined walking path, as well.)

Choco1980 posted:

I assumed in the attract video that Eddie and Laura being outside the overlook van inferred that it was Eddie's van and that he took Laura to Silent Hill, perhaps as a hitchhiker.
Makes sense for the first chunk of the game, but not the later chunk. How does Laura get to the hotel if Eddie was her main mode of transportation? :crossarms: Eddie dies before that point in the game.

I like to think she has some parent or guardian helping her travel around looking for her friend, but James can't see them because they're not important to his story like Laura is. "What's a little girl like you doing here, anyway?" and she replies "Huh? Are you blind or something?" Which at least means that everything is probably completely normal to her eyes, but furthermore, can imply that perhaps she has normal-world methods of getting around Silent Hill.

Then again, Silent Hill could just be zapping her around the place and keeping her safe because while SH has a beef with James, it has no beef with Laura, but somehow "knows" that she's very important for his punishment. Thus, the town facilitates her travels while also not conjuring monsters to gently caress her up.

DialTheDude
Jan 12, 2014

PORK RICE BOWLS

Lipstick Apathy
I thought Laura just walked around town on her own. She had no problem running to a hospital and back. Just assumed she ran the long road to the hotel, past the Historical building, which is why we don't see her for a long stretch of the game. :shrug:

Accordion Man
Nov 7, 2012


Buglord
We also really can't take the game's distances that seriously, I mean it says Brahms, the town established to be the next town over to Silent Hill in 1, is 200 miles away.

Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Feb 8, 2015

VoidBurger
Jul 18, 2008

A leap into the void.
The burger in space.

Accordion Man posted:

We also really can't take the game's distances that seriously, I mean it says Brahms, the town established to be the next town over to Silent Hill in 1, is 200 miles away.
Haha, this is exactly what Bob and I were talking about in the video about this being annoying. :) You can hand-wave everything because we can't trust Silent Hill to have any constants because it's too weird there. It gets annoying that so many things can be explained by "Well what if it's just cuz the town is just weird?"

Gnome de plume
Sep 5, 2006

Hell.
Fucking.
Yes.
Any time you see something like that, a wizard the town did it.

DeathChicken
Jul 9, 2012

Nonsense. I have not yet begun to defile myself.

Later on James ends up jumping down like a mile's worth of holes, goes through a door and is back up on ground level where he started. Things like 'common sense' don't really apply when it comes to distance in this town.

Faerie Fortune
Nov 14, 2004

This is a good place to ask actually; I've played and enjoyed Silent Hill 2 but I've only ever watched the first one through LPs and as a result, I don't really understand exactly what happened. I know its not important for SH2 all that much but you guys all seem like knowledgeable folk on the subject so is there somewhere where I can read exactly what the gently caress was going on in that game? I've tried to look before but a lot of it is full of impenetrable theorycrafting and references to things that I just don't know but am still expected to.

So yeah, does anyone know where I can read a clear, no-bullshit explanation of what exactly happened in that game?

Accordion Man
Nov 7, 2012


Buglord

Faerie Fortune posted:

This is a good place to ask actually; I've played and enjoyed Silent Hill 2 but I've only ever watched the first one through LPs and as a result, I don't really understand exactly what happened. I know its not important for SH2 all that much but you guys all seem like knowledgeable folk on the subject so is there somewhere where I can read exactly what the gently caress was going on in that game? I've tried to look before but a lot of it is full of impenetrable theorycrafting and references to things that I just don't know but am still expected to.

So yeah, does anyone know where I can read a clear, no-bullshit explanation of what exactly happened in that game?
The cult sought to create what they perceived as God through the supernatural power of the town. One of the cult leaders, Dahlia Gillespie, had a daughter, Alessa, who had psychic powers making her more in tune with the powers of the town. Alessa was constantly persecuted due to her powers despite her being a nice kid that just wanted to be loved. Dahlia and the cult eventually decided to use Alessa as a sacrifice in order to create God. Dahlia then proceeded to burn down their family home with Alessa trapped inside in order to bring about the sacrifice. Alessa survived, but she was horrifically burned to the point of being totally bedridden.(It's never explained how she survives in 1, but Origins has trucker Travis Grady save her). Due to this traumatic event and magical shenanigans Alessa's consciousness split into two, creating Cheryl. Cheryl was found and adopted by the Masons. Alessa was put into the basement of Alchemilla Hospital, where she stayed for nearly a decade in endless agony. About ten years later, Harry decides to take Cheryl to return to Silent Hill on vacation (Cheryl is also subconsciously drawn to the town as well). poo poo goes down and they're separated. As Harry bumbles around, inadvertently helping Dahlia at trying another shot at making God, Alessa's use her influence on the town to try and kill Harry. It all comes to a head when Harry fights the God and going off the canon ending he is successful in stopping it. Alessa dies during the ritual (It's also assumed that Cheryl died too) but as one final action she creates Heather as her last reincarnation.

Aishlinn
Mar 31, 2011

This might hurt a bit..


Faerie Fortune posted:

This is a good place to ask actually; I've played and enjoyed Silent Hill 2 but I've only ever watched the first one through LPs and as a result, I don't really understand exactly what happened. I know its not important for SH2 all that much but you guys all seem like knowledgeable folk on the subject so is there somewhere where I can read exactly what the gently caress was going on in that game? I've tried to look before but a lot of it is full of impenetrable theorycrafting and references to things that I just don't know but am still expected to.

So yeah, does anyone know where I can read a clear, no-bullshit explanation of what exactly happened in that game?

Voidburger did a good video let's play, and From Earth did a very, VERY silly screenshot let's play


Both are worth giving a look.

There's also a Blind Let's play of it on the archives as well, which you may enjoy, seeing as that's sorta your own let's play thing at the moment.

Stalins Moustache
Dec 31, 2012

~~**I'm Italian!**~~
So I've not looked at any other post in this thread because I've never played Silent Hill 2 and I only know a little bit of the story and what the monsters could imply (Like unsatisfied sexual needs from his ill wife or something), but other than that I know nothing. My question was more about the new Silent Hills game coming out. Have you tried the P.T, Voidburger? And what do you hope for in a new Silent Hill game?

Edit: Wow the 2nd Silent Hill movie is great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujVuhm1-_AI

Stalins Moustache fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Feb 9, 2015

VoidBurger
Jul 18, 2008

A leap into the void.
The burger in space.

Stalins Moustache posted:

Have you tried the P.T, Voidburger? And what do you hope for in a new Silent Hill game?
I haven't physically played it myself cause I would've broken the controller from dropping it in fear probably, lol. I watched my boyfriend play it while we jumped into each others' arms, screaming. It's incredibly tense and terrifying. I can't really stomach it, it's so stressful. I respect the hell out of it though, it's incredibly successful at what it set out to do.

I hope the new Silent Hills is done as an anthology, that would be awesome. Shorter games with different writers, directors, and actors, kinda like The Twilight Zone, y'know? I think that would be effin' awesome. I really want Junji Ito to be involved too, I'm in love with that guy's storytelling and art style, his only huge weakness is that he doesn't know how to properly end any of his stories.

Antistar01
Oct 20, 2013
Toilets have come up a bit lately in both threads, so; there's definitely a reason why toilets are a recurring thing in the SH games. Notably in SH2, the game starts in a public toilet, and of course there's James' infamous toilet-diving scene later on.


VoidBurger posted:

Haha, this is exactly what Bob and I were talking about in the video about this being annoying. :) You can hand-wave everything because we can't trust Silent Hill to have any constants because it's too weird there. It gets annoying that so many things can be explained by "Well what if it's just cuz the town is just weird?"

The "town being weird"/"game being symbolic" seems fair enough. I mean from memory there's the bit later on where you start in the historical society, go down an impossibly long stairway, jump down a "bottomless" hole, then another one, then another one, ending up in a prison which is possibly under a lake? Then you wander out the door and you're on the lake shore. It seems more concerned with symbolism than with making perfect sense all the time (which is fine).

The road sign for Brahms is probably just an oversight though, yeah. :v:


Edit: Ugh, that movie. In SH2, Pyramid Head is a manifestation of James' guilt and whatnot. In Revelations, there's no James, so Pyramid Head is a manifestation of the desires of those weird SH fans who find him attractive.

Antistar01 fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Feb 9, 2015

Arcade Rabbit
Nov 11, 2013

I've never really been bothered with Pyramid Head being in the movies. I know what he's meant to represent in regards to James, but who says the monsters can't be repurposed? I mean there's a boss in this game that is very specific to one of the characters, but we see that thing as a regular enemy soon after. Lying Figures were in Origins, and nurses are all over the place. Plus the movies are explicitly a separate continuity, so who cares? If fans wanted him in there, why not put him in there? Plus there's a picture in the Silent Hill Historical society about PH, and I think he's referenced in The Room so he's not literally just a figment of James' psyche. He specifically created him from something he had seen while in the town, not that he realized it.

VoidBurger
Jul 18, 2008

A leap into the void.
The burger in space.
Re: People saying "James goes down a billion holes and ends up at ground level so the town just does weird things with distances": The thing is, that's James. I'm talking about Laura who, so far as we can tell, is NOT being affected by Silent Hill in any way, besides being important to James' story and therefore she's able to interact with James and not see monsters. All of Laura's movement makes sense in the game until the jump across the lake. She starts in the apartment, ends up on a wall in the alley behind the apartment, walks only a few blocks away to the Bowling Alley, leaves the bowling alley, cuts behind Heaven's Night and ends up in the hospital right near there. Then she's gone for a huge chunk of the game until we see her in the hotel across the lake. It's a long enough gap that I think it's mildly plausible that she could have an unseen chaperone to drive her there. Or heck, maybe she took a bus, lol. Or perhaps the boat launch across the lake is actually functioning in the "real world." Bottom line: Who the heck knows? :/

Re: Pyramidhead chat: My complaint isn't so much that PH is exclusive to James, as it's been evidenced that Silent Hill can and DOES recycle monsters (ie: Closers from SH3 are the same as Mandarins in SH2), but that reusing PH so much lessens the impact of him. The dude just isn't scary anymore because he's been so overused!

WaltherFeng
May 15, 2013

50 thousand people used to live here. Now, it's the Mushroom Kingdom.

VoidBurger posted:

I haven't physically played it myself cause I would've broken the controller from dropping it in fear probably, lol. I watched my boyfriend play it while we jumped into each others' arms, screaming. It's incredibly tense and terrifying. I can't really stomach it, it's so stressful. I respect the hell out of it though, it's incredibly successful at what it set out to do.

I hope the new Silent Hills is done as an anthology, that would be awesome. Shorter games with different writers, directors, and actors, kinda like The Twilight Zone, y'know? I think that would be effin' awesome. I really want Junji Ito to be involved too, I'm in love with that guy's storytelling and art style, his only huge weakness is that he doesn't know how to properly end any of his stories.

P.T was scary as hell. I think it a lot of it has to do with how it plays around with your expectations. We literally spent hours wandering around with my friend trying to figure out what to do and then out of nowhere the game gives you practically a heart attack without any warning. It felt like the developers knew exactly what the player would try to do.

P.T is all about going through the same hallway with minor variations and puzzles over and over again. During the final section of the game you get stuck in an endless loop if you don't solve a very complex puzzle. Since the game intentionally gives you a false sense of progression by introducing minor variations to the hallway, you keep going through it over and over until the game scares you shitless with one of the most terrifying jump scares I've ever seen. And this can be after hours of nothing actually happening.

WaltherFeng fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Feb 9, 2015

Wordnumber
Jan 13, 2015
Laura says that she's "tired of walking" in the Hotel, so I think she probably just ran around the lake. I suppose she could mean around the Hotel or just in general though. She also seems to leave the hotel to look for Mary's final letter, so she may have dropped it on the way.

Also I think she may be seeing an abandoned Silent Hill like everyone else, albeit one without monsters, because I don't see how else she would have gotten into any of the places she winds up. There are a few scenes she's a part of that don't really make sense if Laura is seeing a normal Silent Hill, like the key scene in the apartments. The bars seem like an unnatural installation, and Laura still seems to see them the same way James does. That said James could just be really loving crazy, but that's really the same as saying "Silent Hill is just weird."

Wordnumber fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Feb 9, 2015

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I don't believe Laura is in the "real world" during the game. I think it's suggested that the Lakeview Hotel has burned down since James was last in Silent Hill (through the drawing you find in one of the prison cells and the weird message you can find on the water heater in the hotel if you do some backtracking), yet Laura appears to be in the same pristine-looking hotel James is when they meet. If anything, Laura is probably in a harmless otherworld.

VoidBurger
Jul 18, 2008

A leap into the void.
The burger in space.

Sir Ilpalazzo posted:

I don't believe Laura is in the "real world" during the game. I think it's suggested that the Lakeview Hotel has burned down since James was last in Silent Hill (through the drawing you find in one of the prison cells and the weird message you can find on the water heater in the hotel if you do some backtracking), yet Laura appears to be in the same pristine-looking hotel James is when they meet. If anything, Laura is probably in a harmless otherworld.
This is a good point because the piano she scares James with would have totally been busted as hell in the real world too, since the whole hotel is a goddamn mess. :o

Wordnumber posted:

like the key scene in the apartments. The bars seem like an unnatural installation, and Laura still seems to see them the same way James does.
This is also a really good point, aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Wow, non-yelling, non-condescending discussion is changing my mind about things I thought about Silent Hill 2! Why can't the fandom be as civil as this thread? Lol

DeathChicken
Jul 9, 2012

Nonsense. I have not yet begun to defile myself.

Now let us discuss how I really liked Shattered Memories, thought Silent Hill 4 was underrated in spite of some big what the hell were you thinking gameplay decisions, and thought Origins would have been okay if they hadn't stuffed it full of what the hell were you thinking QTE monsters. I am the King of Wrongheaded Silent Hill Thinking.

Accordion Man
Nov 7, 2012


Buglord

DeathChicken posted:

Now let us discuss how I really liked Shattered Memories, thought Silent Hill 4 was underrated in spite of some big what the hell were you thinking gameplay decisions, and thought Origins would have been okay if they hadn't stuffed it full of what the hell were you thinking QTE monsters. I am the King of Wrongheaded Silent Hill Thinking.
I think SM is the best post original trilogy game. Its got its problems but it has some really nice highs and it and Alpha Protocol feel like the precursors to the modern style of adventure games. I think 4 is the second worst, it has some really neat ideas, but they don't execute them that well and the last half is such a slog. I personally think Origins is solid though, considering how little time Climax had to make it and the fact that it was forced to be a prequel it could have been much worse.

tlarn
Mar 1, 2013

You see,
God doesn't help little frogs.

He helps people like me.
I still say Shattered Memories should be referred to as Silent Hill On Ice.

Extra Tasty
Aug 5, 2014

Sexy Dahlia as Cinderella~

Garrand
Dec 28, 2012

Rhino, you did this to me!

You know what? There's one part of SM that still confuses me. During one confrontation with young Dahlia, Harry asks her if she knows his daughter. She says she knows of her. But, you know, Dahlia is Cheryl's mother, so young Dahlia wouldn't/shouldn't know about her. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

DumbRodent
Jan 15, 2013

Heart Thumping Field Trip
BIG PANIC?
I also liked Shattered Memories :shobon:

The Filthy Bathroom of James Sunderland's Soul is the only real way to begin his story. You see he is disgusted by his reflection just like he is disgusted by the reflective screen of the television when he watches the I'm happy about this thread. It'll be nice seeing you play a Silent Hill game you both actually enjoy! And I'll never get enough SH2 theory chatter.

e: I never noticed how far away Brahms apparently is in SH2. It doesn't really add up but it might just be TS trying to enforce how isolated and separated from any other reality James' personal Silent Hill is in a really obvious way? The "next town over" is somewhere you can't reach. You couldn't leave if you wanted to and you sure can't turn back- James lost that choice a long time ago.
Okay that's kind of on the nose but I'm rusty dammit.

DumbRodent fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Feb 9, 2015

dotchan
Feb 28, 2008

I wanna get a Super Saiyan Mohawk when I grow up! :swoon:
Disclaimer: These are my impressions from watching Zoidburger play the game.

Good things about Shattered Memories:
- Harry sounds like an actual concerned father, as opposed to a Voice Actor Trying Too Hard.
- For that matter, most of the characters are really well fleshed out (well, I did think Dr. K to be ridiculously unprofessional, but given the ending reveal his behavior kind of makes sense)
- The first time you get attacked is a pants-wetting experience, especially since you have no means of defending yourself.

Bad things about Shattered Memories:
- The puzzles were all way too simple; there needed to be multiple levels of difficulty
- Eventually the monsters just end up being annoying, since you either 1) QTE to shove them off or 2) get Zerg rushed and have to restart from the checkpoint
- For a game that hyped the ability to "play the player", there were very few meaningful choices in the game, and getting the endings also boiled down to "look at X things Y times"

AsteriskAsterisk
Sep 18, 2010
I know this is pretty late and tangential, but I wanted to maybe try to justify the narrow road at the beginning a bit, but not in terms of narrative; more of a meta explanation. Basically, in Japan, roads tend to be pretty narrow, and even though I'm sure they did US location scouting for the game, they might have gone with their own idea of small, rural roads because it might feel a little more intuitively natural for Japanese audiences. I spent a lot of time in rural Japan, up in the mountains, and the roads there, which were for two-way traffic that included large trucks hauling lumber and stuff, got almost to one-lane territory, and often had no guard rail along the cliff edge. There was also a lot of construction on the hills along these roads, which often narrowed them further. They were also extremely winding, with many sharp turns that were totally blind except for traffic mirrors.

Walking along roads in a lot of other places in Japan is sometimes pretty harrowing, too, because there's just about zero shoulder and no sidewalk, like roads between buildings in cities and towns that seem more or less like alleyways, but are intended for both car and pedestrian traffic (and two-way car traffic at that!). It's not unusual for people on foot and bike to get clipped by mirrors when drivers or pedestrians are not paying attention or are just being aggressive. But yeah, generally, many roads outside cities that aren't major or highway are pretty narrow.

But, uh, yeah. I typed a lot of words about a pretty insignificant thing. I am looking forward to future videos! Please forgive me.

Garrand
Dec 28, 2012

Rhino, you did this to me!

dotchan posted:

Disclaimer: These are my impressions from watching Zoidburger play the game.

Good things about Shattered Memories:
- Harry sounds like an actual concerned father, as opposed to a Voice Actor Trying Too Hard.
- For that matter, most of the characters are really well fleshed out (well, I did think Dr. K to be ridiculously unprofessional, but given the ending reveal his behavior kind of makes sense)
- The first time you get attacked is a pants-wetting experience, especially since you have no means of defending yourself.

Bad things about Shattered Memories:
- The puzzles were all way too simple; there needed to be multiple levels of difficulty
- Eventually the monsters just end up being annoying, since you either 1) QTE to shove them off or 2) get Zerg rushed and have to restart from the checkpoint
- For a game that hyped the ability to "play the player", there were very few meaningful choices in the game, and getting the endings also boiled down to "look at X things Y times"

In my personal opinion, I think the single biggest flaw was the otherworld chase parts. Running blindly through a maze of corridors while being constantly chased is the antithesis of fun. Whether they added combat or made it more amnesia like with the ability to sneak around or something, anything, would have made it better. All the changes and psychology stuff was cute and a nice topping to add some replayability if the game had some more, well, playability.

Dr. K was so ridiculously over the top I don't even know what to say about him. Even given the reveal he was hilariously unprofessional. I thought the rest of the characters (well, maybe not Dahlia) were pretty fleshed out even if some of it didn't make sense (the Prom Queen whose name I can't remember refusing to believe that Harry's 7 year old daughter was not in fact a high school graduate.)

fake e:

AsteriskAsterisk posted:

I know this is pretty late and tangential, but I wanted to maybe try to justify the narrow road at the beginning a bit, but not in terms of narrative; more of a meta explanation. Basically, in Japan, roads tend to be pretty narrow, and even though I'm sure they did US location scouting for the game, they might have gone with their own idea of small, rural roads because it might feel a little more intuitively natural for Japanese audiences. I spent a lot of time in rural Japan, up in the mountains, and the roads there, which were for two-way traffic that included large trucks hauling lumber and stuff, got almost to one-lane territory, and often had no guard rail along the cliff edge. There was also a lot of construction on the hills along these roads, which often narrowed them further. They were also extremely winding, with many sharp turns that were totally blind except for traffic mirrors.

Walking along roads in a lot of other places in Japan is sometimes pretty harrowing, too, because there's just about zero shoulder and no sidewalk, like roads between buildings in cities and towns that seem more or less like alleyways, but are intended for both car and pedestrian traffic (and two-way car traffic at that!). It's not unusual for people on foot and bike to get clipped by mirrors when drivers or pedestrians are not paying attention or are just being aggressive. But yeah, generally, many roads outside cities that aren't major or highway are pretty narrow.

But, uh, yeah. I typed a lot of words about a pretty insignificant thing. I am looking forward to future videos! Please forgive me.

Getting another perspective on things is never insignificant.

WaltherFeng
May 15, 2013

50 thousand people used to live here. Now, it's the Mushroom Kingdom.

Sir Ilpalazzo posted:

Laura is probably in a harmless otherworld.

This is a subject that has not been explored enough in the SH canon. Is the harmless SH like a fantasy wonderland with stuffed animals and candy?

Ars Arcanum
Jan 20, 2005

Best friends make the best weapons

Garrand posted:

In my personal opinion, I think the single biggest flaw was the otherworld chase parts. Running blindly through a maze of corridors while being constantly chased is the antithesis of fun. Whether they added combat or made it more amnesia like with the ability to sneak around or something, anything, would have made it better. All the changes and psychology stuff was cute and a nice topping to add some replayability if the game had some more, well, playability.

I agree completely. It might not have been so bad if there weren't alternate routes throughout the chase parts too. I played the game with a friend, and I had to literally read instructions off a walkthrough for him in order to get through the sections without it taking ten or twenty minutes and dying repeatedly every drat time. Also, there's tons of cool stuff to look at during those sections, but you can't because you're too busy running and trying to keep the monsters off you.

WaltherFeng posted:

This is a subject that has not been explored enough in the SH canon. Is the harmless SH like a fantasy wonderland with stuffed animals and candy?

I tend to think Laura's Silent Hill probably looks the way Mary described it to her and in the photos she said Mary showed her (a beautiful, peaceful place with no threats, so Laura feels comfortable pausing to draw cats on a wall and whatnot). Maybe with an added layer of niceness through an eight-year-old's eyes (hence the "Are you blind or something?" comment).

dotchan
Feb 28, 2008

I wanna get a Super Saiyan Mohawk when I grow up! :swoon:

Garrand posted:

Dr. K was so ridiculously over the top I don't even know what to say about him. Even given the reveal he was hilariously unprofessional.

I thought his prior-to-reveal behavior was just Cheryl being a supremely Unreliable Narrator - of course she'd see Dr. K as hostile, passive-aggressive, and unprofessional, he's trying to work through her lifetime subscription of issues. (Because otherwise what psychiatrist would be keeping bottles of alcohol in the office where he holds therapy sessions and drinking in front of his patients?)

Garrand
Dec 28, 2012

Rhino, you did this to me!

I'm pretty certain we've already spoilered ShatMemz, but for people who haven't seen it and are interested for some ungodly reason you should totally go watch VB's LP of it.

I'm pretty certain that the Dr. K parts are the frame story and not meant to just be taking place in her mind. On another note, I was perusing the silent hill wiki and found out that Cheryl's full name from SM is Cheryl Heather Mason. I just found that funny and a little dumb.

And apparently I like the phrase I'm pretty certain.

Maybe it's just cause I'm Pretty.

Kaboom Dragoon
May 7, 2010

The greatest of feasts

Ars Arcanum posted:


I tend to think Laura's Silent Hill probably looks the way Mary described it to her and in the photos she said Mary showed her (a beautiful, peaceful place with no threats, so Laura feels comfortable pausing to draw cats on a wall and whatnot). Maybe with an added layer of niceness through an eight-year-old's eyes (hence the "Are you blind or something?" comment).

There was one theory I remember reading that said that, according to some religions, children below the age of 9-10 are considered 'innocent', or at least incapable of properly sinning. So the town can't actively hurt her because she's 'pure'. There's no dirt on her, because there's no dirt to have, so she's left wandering around an empty, but otherwise harmless town.

SorataYuy
Jul 17, 2014

That... didn't even make sense.

Garrand posted:

You know what? There's one part of SM that still confuses me. During one confrontation with young Dahlia, Harry asks her if she knows his daughter. She says she knows of her. But, you know, Dahlia is Cheryl's mother, so young Dahlia wouldn't/shouldn't know about her. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

There's a school of thought on the ShatMemz game plot that actually tried to address this, and the game as a whole.

Idea: The entirety of ShatMemz is taking place in the mind of Harry, as he is dying in the Bad ending of Silent Hill 1, and Dahlia is somehow using the powers of the town and the Otherworld to make Cheryl share in the this hallucination, so that she'll see Dahlia as a "Good mother who just couldn't work things out with her father", and thus, Cheryl/Alessa will stop fighting her and give her what she wants ("reconciliation" in the delusion, Birth of the "God" in reality.) In this theory/idea about the game, Harry running around searching for Cheryl is both the dying Harry's wish given power by the town and Otherworld, and Cheryl's mind fighting back against Dahlia's attempts to brainwash and coerce her. So in this line of thought, young Dahlia saying that can very well be the "core"/real Dahlia making a slip-up.

In another train of thought, it's entirely possible that the "young" Dahlia we meet in ShatMemz is A. Harry having some hallucinations as he's interacting with other people, or even B. another fragment of a memory, conjured up by whatever weirdness going on in Cheryl's head. After seeing older!Dahlia, it's pretty probable that Cheryl prefers to remember her mother in this way, and so in her head, the two are all jumbled up together (thus, young!Dahlia having knowledge she shouldn't. And talking in odd ways, since Cheryl's head is a messed-up place.) Like she would rather remember her father having some "hot young thing" for his lover/companion/*insert your favorite term for booty call here* rather than the tired, defeated-by-life person that Dahlia has become when memory!Harry meets her.

King Vidiot
Feb 17, 2007

You think you can take me at Satan's Hollow? Go 'head on!

Sir Ilpalazzo posted:

I don't believe Laura is in the "real world" during the game. I think it's suggested that the Lakeview Hotel has burned down since James was last in Silent Hill (through the drawing you find in one of the prison cells and the weird message you can find on the water heater in the hotel if you do some backtracking), yet Laura appears to be in the same pristine-looking hotel James is when they meet. If anything, Laura is probably in a harmless otherworld.

I recall plenty of characters reacting to the geometry of the Otherworld town, but not all of them see monsters or see the same monsters. The Otherworld seems like a place that swallows up and envelopes anybody who enters the town, but it only really torments or tries to kill people who are already psychologically troubled and have guilts or regrets. It's Purgatory for innocent people and Hell for people with sin.

Also I guess it's occasionally Hell for people who get too close to people with sin, or if someone's trying to act counter to the town's desires (like Harry, and Cybil when she gets caught up with Harry's... problems).

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DeathChicken
Jul 9, 2012

Nonsense. I have not yet begun to defile myself.

Which reminds me of how Lisa in SH1 wound up with the interesting punishment of being stuck in a single room getting to dwell on what she did with no way to leave. I've seen it postulated that Alessa was keeping Lisa from becoming a nurse monster via sticking her there, but maybe Alessa just didn't appreciate being stuck in that situation so she decided to share it.

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