All things Silent Hill

[Todinho]

Turn back while you still can the horror of Homecoming is nothing a man should be forced to see!

[Cass]

So I heard on the podcast that people were confused by the story. I can post a plot summary when I get home (gleaned from having to much time and not enough to do surfing GameFAQ plot analyses aged 13) if anyone would find it interesting?

[Todinho]

Do it I can barely remember the plot today and im sure everyone who got confused by the story would find use in it especially since this connects to SH3!

[arry_g]

I'm a little surprised that there is confusion regarding the plot, I always thought it was quite easy to follow (especially compared to Resident Evil). Maybe there is some complexity in it that I never 'got' or maybe I picked up on it when I was younger because I spent all of my spare time at school on GameFAQs so I could still feel close to the games even when I was not playing them. Either way, post it Cass! It may help those who do struggle and it will confirm for me whether I did keep up or if I'm missing something that other people latched onto and got confused about.

[Cass]

So I'm not saying that any of the following is perfect, but here's what I remember from having spent too much of my youth browsing plot analyses on GameFAQs:

Spoiler: show

WAY IN THE PAST: Before colonisation, Native Americans inhabited the land on which Silent Hill now stands, conducting various rituals and invoking various powers, which will become more relevant in Silent Hill 2. Upon colonisation, the indigenous people were wiped out and settlers established the hamlet which would become Silent Hill. These settlers were members of what would become The Order - devil worshippers, basically, drawn to this specific site by the presence of White Claudia, a herb with potent hallucinogenic properties unique to the area of Silent Hill. Aglaophotis is also used in these times, to rid the body of evil spirits.

SLIGHTLY IN THE PAST: Silent Hill grew and grew but, in so doing, the influence of the cult dwindled. As Silent Hill began to prosper as a tourist destination, most residents began to either distance themselves from the cult, or abandon it entirely, preferring economic prosperity to (what had come to be seen as) superstition. This angers Dahlia, who is the latest in a long line of The Order's leaders. She is further displeased by, but complicit in, the "abuse" of White Claudia, which Dr Kaufmann (possibly another, more jaded cult elder) has refined and turned into PTV, a hallucinogenic drug, which he sells to the tourists. This both helps fund the cult and makes Kaufmann a pretty penny.

Dahlia hatches a plan to restore power to the cult, and recruits Kaufmann to her side. She ritually conceives a child (possibly with Kaufmann, blech) destined to be the vessel for her demonic master Samael. This child is Alessa - Alessa manifests powerful psychic abilities even as a young child, but proves to be difficult for Dahlia to control. Dahlia's solution for this is to trap Alessa in a house and burn her alive - the agony this puts Alessa through serves the handy dual purpose of incapacitating her (she is kept alive almost entirely through her dark connection to Samael) and and providing her with the rage and pain needed to incubate the soul of a demon. Dahlia recruits Kaufmann into faking her death certificate (to avoid arousing suspicion) and caring for her. Kaufmann achieves this by hiding her in the hospital basement and blackmailing Lisa Garland into looking after her. Lisa is hopelessly addicted to PTV and Kaufmann controls the only supply - she is unable to refuse, but deeply traumatised by having to care for Alessa's destroyed body ("Why? Why is this child still alive?").

Alessa however maintains some consciousness of this and, in an attempt to save her own soul, manifests the purest parts of it in the form of a baby, and uses her power to place the baby on the side of the road on the way out of town. This baby is found by Harry Mason and his wife, who adopt her and name her Cheryl. Harry's wife dies shortly after.

THE GAME: Cheryl and Harry decide to revisit Silent Hill, which Cheryl has a strange longing for and which Harry remembers as a pleasant tourist resort where he found his little girl. On the way, however, he sees the manifestation of Alessa at the town borders, swerves to avoid her, and crashes.

In returning to the town borders, Cheryl and Alessa are now reunited, and the newly whole Alessa is Not Happy. Suddenly more coherent (but no less agonised or insane) her powers take over the town. Some residents and most of the tourists have already been driven away by manifestations of her power - those that are left are subsumed into Alessa's nightmare and made into monsters, including Lisa - although, possibly as a reward for having cared for her, or possibly to use her as a tool, Alessa allows Lisa to keep her appearance and personality.

Other batshit stuff happens. Snow falls in the "normal" world, and a thick mist descends. Various buildings connected to Alessa become twisted (the school which she attended, the hospital in which she was held prisoner, etc). Reality takes a holiday. Alessa, newly empowered, breaks free from her cell and uses monsters to hunt down the objects of her revenge - Dahlia, Kaufmann - while at the same time avoiding direct contact with them, since both have been searching for ways to subdue her (Dahlia's Flauros, Kaufmann's Aglaophotis). Dahlia evades Alessa's monsters with difficulty and recruits Harry into searching for Alessa (which he was unwittingly doing anyway), giving him the Flauros and counting on Alessa's fond memories of him (as Cheryl) to allow him to get close enough to use it.

Alessa becomes aware of this, and attempts to stop her father from finding her - first by using Lisa, who implores Harry to stay with her in Alessa's nightmare world, then by parasitising Cybil and using her against him - but she cannot bring herself to do him any lasting harm in either case. Finally Harry confronts Alessa with the Flauros - an artifact imbued with the power of the angel Metatron, used to subdue Samael - at which point Dahlia reveals herself to be the villain. Like you hadn't already guessed.

The Flauros causes Alessa to be defeated, and her nightmare spirals out of control. Dahlia absconds with Alessa. Lisa's dawning realisation of her own nature causes her to be fully subsumed into the nightmare world. Harry tracks down Alessa and Dahlia only to find that he's too late. Dahlia completes her ritual and summons the full force of Samael into Alessa, who manifests as a glowing goddess figure of bright light. Dahlia exults that she has created a god who is completely under her control, and how nothing can possibly go wrong. Alessa promptly murders her.

BAD/BAD+ ENDINGS: If you didn't investigate Kaufmann, Harry is forced to kill the Goddess Alessa. The BAD+ ending occurs if you saved Cybil at the amusement park, which means she's around to bitchslap some sense into Harry, who is nearly catatonic after killing his own daughter, and they leave as the place falls down around them. In the BAD ending, she's not around, so Harry allows the place to fall in on top of him. The whole thing is revealed to be Harry's hallucination as he lays dying from the car crash at the beginning of the game. This is a terrible ending.

GOOD/GOOD+ ENDINGS: If you did investigate Kaufmann, you discovered his links to the drug trade in Silent Hill and found his hidden stash of Aglaophotis. At the end, after Goddess Alessa has manifested, Kaufmann appears and uses the Aglaophotis to expel Samael from Alessa's body, which you then fight. Alessa is mortally wounded by Samael's expulsion, but uses her newfound clarity and peace of mind to thank her father and create another daughter for him, as she created Cheryl. The place then begins to fall down around them, and Harry, his new daughter, and Cybil (if you saved her at the amusement park) all barely escape with their lives. Kaufmann also tries to escape, but is dragged down to Hell by a vengeful, zombified Lisa, in probably the most satisfying moment in video game history.

The "GOOD" ending (investigating Kaufmann, the expulsion of Samael, Harry escaping with the baby but NOT with Cybil) is considered canon for Silent Hill 3.

DISCLAIMER: While I believe the above to be mostly true, it's been a million years (at least) since I played through Silent Hill, and there are probably holes or plot points I've missed. This is basically my understanding of it though.

[ratsoalbion]

Our next podcast recording is Silent Hill 2.

Please get your posts regarding the game and what it means to you in before Saturday 29th November for potential inclusion.

[sonuckles]

Man, I just have to say this volume's schedule is pretty cool. I'm amped for these 'casts.

Anyway, for me Silent Hill 2 is easily one of my favorite games of all time.

I'm sure anything I have to say about the gameplay, or the technical aspects of the game will be said in the podcast, and given the sexual undertones of the game, I'll try to stay as clean as possible with this writing. I don't want to re-tread any ground everyone here on the forums or the guys on the podcast will travel. I will say I absolutely loved the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack over the cacophony of noise that was the original Silent Hill soundtrack. What I do want to talk about is the amazing way in which this game tied into the first one, further establishing the rules of the world- something that I think wasn't fully addressed in the podcast.

And a major spoiler warning goes here for SH1 and 2...

Spoiler: show

Silent Hill was about a town that was twisted by evil rituals done on Alessa Gillespie. The popular opinion is that these rituals caused the reality of the town to shift into her tortured nightmares- hence the nightmare school, the bloody hospital, and the horror-filled fair. Every major location that featured a boss tied to some place that Alessa would logically have been. And it also makes sense that due to her odd nature, she was tormented by the other kids, nurses, doctors, etc. When Harry enters the town, he's basically entering Alessa's dream world. So when he kills the demon, he's also causing the dream world to vanish.

Now, for Silent Hill 2, the town was still amplifying nightmares into the real world, but this time it was amplifying the internal struggles of the people in the world as opposed to just one person. You can see this very clearly happen during the fights with the Doorman and with Eddie.

Doorman is the manifestation of Angela's sexually abusive father (hence his appearance as 2 figures on a bed), and her view of Silent Hill is a pulsating, quivering hellish place that is constantly on fire (which I believe is a callback to her potentially burning her house down after killing her father).

With Eddie, it's a little less clear how he sees the town. The most we get to see is a butcher's freezer during his boss fight. It's safe to assume Eddie's view of the town is a rather violent butcher-shop where everything is just a slab of meat.

It's no wonder why James sees the town as a worn-down wasteland. He's been carrying the burden of his wife's murder for so long, that he's tired. Every enemy he sees points to some sort of male-centric dominating aggression. Pyramid Head alone seems to represent his constant feeling of overwhelming guilt and need for punishment. Even when you think you've gotten rid of him, he comes back with more Pyramid Heads in toe. Every area James wanders through is abandoned or hollowed out. The hotel at the end has suffered fire damage and is now an empty husk.

I greatly appreciate the style of horror that Team Silent achieved. Where Silent Hill 1 and 3 feature blood-soaked hallways, demonic babies with knives, and bunny rabbits with bloody mouths, Silent Hill 2 delights in elemental rust and decay. You're going to see far less blood and bone, and far more property damage due to water and fire. The game also focuses less on physical pain and torture, and relies more on emotional. Every character has suffered some trauma, and the hell they live through in Silent Hill reflects that. Silent Hill 2 is almost an analog for Dante's Inferno. By the end of the game, you feel less disgusted and horrified than you do sad for the characters and their emotional scars. I'd say the sadness goes triple for poor Angela and her constantly burning hell.

Another cool thing that got pointed out to me was how the letter begins to change towards the end of the game. Upon killing Eddie, the first actual human that James kills in the game, if you open your inventory, you will find that the letter has turned into a blank piece of paper. Once you find out the truth of what James did in the hotel, if you look at the letter, you find out that there never even was a piece of paper to begin with.

The last major thing I want to address is the endings. I found it fascinating that of the 4 serious endings all relate to one of the 4 female characters in the game (Maria, Laura, Angela, and Mary). Maria's ending sees James leaving town with Maria, who begins to show signs of Mary's illness. Mary's ending features James attempting to revive his dead wife through the same dark magic that ruined the town in the first place. These two endings show that James hasn't learned his lesson at all, and will be forever forced to repeat the trauma. In Angela's ending, James finally comes to the conclusion that the only escape is death, so he drives his car into the lake. The way to get that ending is to constantly look at Angela's knife, and hear every piece of condemning dialog towards the end of the game. The only "good" ending is Laura's. James finally lets go of his guilt and anger about Mary's death, and takes Laura home to raise her as his own, mirroring the ending to Silent Hill 1.

While the plot to Silent Hill 2 can be very confusing, I really like how the game is so open to interpretation and deconstruction. The internet is full of websites trying to figure out what every enemy, stage, and character represents. There's just so much more texture to the story of Silent Hill 2 than there was in the first game.

My only real disappointment with the game comes from the side story featured in the Xbox director's cut. The side-story "Born From A Wish" really doesn't add much to the story. I found it to be rather disappointing after the mind-blowing finale to the core game.

I still love Silent Hill 2, and hold it in high regard. I still try to play it once a year around Halloween, and have gotten to the point where I can beat it in under 4 hours. As someone who has a huge backlog and rarely replays games, that's the highest praise I can give to a game. It's absolutely worth playing over and over again.

[Solm]

Looking forward to this next podcast. I bought the first Silent Hill but never got very far. I've only played R.E. 2. Now that was a scarey game. I would be interested to know in terms of scarey how scarey is it? Is it better than RE series?

[sonuckles]

Looking forward to this next podcast. I bought the first Silent Hill but never got very far. I've only played R.E. 2. Now that was a scarey game. I would be interested to know in terms of scarey how scarey is it? Is it better than RE series?

Well, Solm, it kind of depends on what kind of horror you like. Where Resident Evil tends to stress you out with no-win situations (like being chased by the invincible Tyrant) and endless jump scares, Silent Hill often focuses on making you feel an overwhelming sense of dread. You won't want to enter a room because it's dark and you can hear something awful moving around in there. The majority of the scaring in Silent Hill comes from your own head and less from the things that are chasing you. I think later entries in the series do a little more to create the kind of scares that Resident Evil manages, but just be prepared to be weirded out more by what you see.

A good way to think about it is that Resident Evil is like a good episode of The Walking Dead where Silent Hill is a good episode of Twin Peaks. Both are scary, but one is more practical horror (read: zombies) and one is far less (read: nightmare dwarves speaking in reverse).

If you're really interested in the series, but you're not sure if that kind of horror is for you, I'd recommend trying either Silent Hill 3 or Silent Hill: Homecoming first. They are a little more traditionally scary than the first two entries in the series. Make sure if you play 3 to read a synopsis of the original Silent Hill first. The first game was just clunky and hard to manage, so it's not very recommended.

[Todinho]

Dont play Homecoming!Starting with 3 is fine but just dont try Homecoming trust me you'll only find horror there and not the kind you're looking for! Now on to trying,and failing, to give my thoughts on SH2
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The opening to Sillent hill 2 is something I'll never forget,It starts with a creepy man looking at the mirror of a creepy bathroom while a even creppier music plays in the background you then leave said bathroom and James starts his monologue about a letter he recieved while a very melancholic version of the theme promise plays.It may not sound like much but this scene perfectly captures the game for me,from that moment the mood is set and you know you're in for something different than your usual videogame.

While I defined Sillent Hill 1 as "opressive" I think Sillent Hill 2 is better described as "unsettling" the horror in this games will rarely make you jump but instead it will make constantly look behind your shoulder and ask yourself if you really wanna keep playing.The way the game gets under your skin so easily is by using a technique few games try called "subtlety",nothing in this game is overblown or thrown in your face this was what made the story so memorable,the monsters so disturbing and the music so fitting.
The game prefers to rely on its details and symbolism,and oh my how this game loves symbolism,to clue the player in to what's really going in the story and not much else since the few characters you meet all seem to be unreliable to say the least and a conversation with them can sometimes be more unnerving then any monster.
The other thing this game does perfectly is handling it's multiple endings because despite giving no clue as to what you have to do to get them no ending feels cheap and all are fitting conclusions to the story depending on the way you played the game.

If the game has any big flaw is probably the voice acting that while fine at the time nowadays sticks out like a sore tumb and even worse is seeing that somehow the new voice acting from the HD version ends up being worse than the original!If you can get over the VO though Sillent Hill 2 is still a masterpiece more than 10 years after it's release with a story,music and horror approach that hasnt aged a day and a game I recommend to all lovers of storytelling in games to play.

[The_reviewist]

Like many people, I lost my Silent Hill virginity to Silent Hill 2, rather than the original game. I was introduced to it one dark and spooking evening in 2005 by my Playstation 2 owning girlfriend of the time. I was uttely captivated by the dismal foggy world presented to me, and the strange shambling melted and contorted creatures that seemed to vanish in the fog. In the end, I only played as far as the hotel, where the leggy mannequins and pyramid head made their first appearance, as the relationship and thus my access to the game both ceased. But this at least spurred me into buying my own PS2, and beginning the series from the start, which either coincidentally or manifestly ensured that my love affair with Silent Hill was mode permanent than any romantic liaison I've had since.

As I'm sure is a common enough sentiment, Silent Hill 2 is for me one of the greatest games ever created. It's perfect balance of, gnawing under your skin horror, uncomfortable eeriness and twisted but still sound logic combined with gaming mechanics which are just imperfect enough to make sure it's always a challenge without feeling unfair.

The story is also an undeniably brilliant stroke of simplicity. Whilst Silent Hill 1 tried to throw everything from Jacob's Ladder to The Mist and a whole host of complicated but unclear story threads into the mix giving way to a convoluted and largely best ignored, storyline; Silent Hill 2 tells a clear and simple story with a very slow reveal, and simply piles on layers of psychological horror and subtle clueing imagery from the opening moments of James staring into the mirror, to his final confrontation with whichever incarnation of his object of affection the player has unlocked. The game began to truly amaze me around the midpoint where the converging stories of the secondary human characters, Laura, Eddie and Angela, with each of their individual stories hinting at some darker aspect hidden beneath the simple tale of a man searching for his dead wife. The beauty of James Sutherland's journey is that it's ultimately a simple unreliable narrator story with an M.R. James like final reveal, but draped in suggestive psychological archetypes and realised in aesthetics that are drawn from sources as varied as the sculptures of Hans Bellmer and the painted works of Francis Bacon.

Another aspect of the game which also impressed me to no end, was the implementation of the alternate endings. Drawing on tiny player interactions and innocuous seeming inventory items, the game's judging of the player's feelings for Mary and Maria, leading to various end narratives was a masterstroke. One which hasn't been repeated in nearly enough games since. It's simply a masterpiece, and one that should have been played by anyone interested in game design at least once.

Of course it's not without flaws, some of the pacing is a little lax, a couple of the puzzles seem a tad daft, and of course, the voice acting is mediocre at best. Still, this doesn't change the fact that it stands head and shoulders above pretty much any other horror game ever made, and easily remains the best silent hill game ever made.

[ThatGirl]

Silent Hill 2 (SH2) is not the first SH game that I've played, but it is one of my favorites. It's tied for top place with SH: Shattered Memories in my heart, I thought Shattered Memories was a really great interpretation of the original game that was a little less scary but a lot more heartbreaking of a story. Back to SH2:
I bought the game on day one, I was stoked ever since reading a preview about it in PSM (01) where they gushed over how compelling and scary it was. What intrigued me the most was that the 2nd game followed a completely (semi) unrelated story and character. Harry was gone, and you were now following James Sunderland, who has received a letter from his wife asking him to meet with her at their 'special place'. Since he believed her to be dead for the last 3 years since she had passed from a fatal disease, it set the tone for the dark and sad story that followed.
I loved the games puzzles, but it was the story that grabbed me and still has me thinking about it all these years later.


As I played through the game I thought about a lot of things. The troubled characters that you came across cause me to question who James really was, and why he was there. What had he been doing those last 3 years? Was he the one that was really dead, and maybe he didn't know it? Was Maria's outfit based on one worn by Christina Aguilera? (Christina Aguliera's middle name is Maria BTW). Why were you being chased by this giant pyramid headed monster? Who was made even more terrifying by him going after other monsters in the game. He was the thing that the things I was afraid of were afraid of. Everything was dark, and grim, and scary.

My whole shhh was flipped upside down by the time I had gotten to the hotel portion of the game. I wasn't playing the tortured hero who couldn't let go of his long dead wife. I was playing the person who had just killed her. She didn't die 3 years prior, she had just gotten sick then. He was repressing the memory of smothering her with a pillow, there was never any letter.
I immediately replayed the game to play closer attention, and to make sure there was nothing missed. SH2 is a real mind frak.

[arry_g]

Oh dammit! Forgot to post here and now it is too late, oh well.

[SnakeyDavid]

Silent Hill 2 was absolutely wonderful. I've only played it once, in my cramped dorm during my first year of uni, and the memories of wading through the fog, the grime and the blood have never quite left me.

I love the atmosphere. As with the best horror, it's about sadness as much as the physical threats the characters face. I won't delve into the story or the symbolism, but I love that there is real depth there. It's a human tale, about one man's loss and guilt. The normality of it makes it so much more relatable than the satanic silliness the series occasionally veers into. I'm sure the dialogue and voice acting might be rough if I was to go back, but it was effective at the time. The score however, is still a masterpiece, an arhythmic collage of off-kilter noise which never ceases to unsettle or enthrall.

The gameplay's compelling too. The combat is messy, like it should be, and at times gruellingly cathartic. The monster design is brilliant, evoking a disgust and a strange sympathy. Their asymmetric poses and erratic movement are brilliantly evocative; they look in pain, just shambling about, aimless. That line from Guiellmo del toro about a good monster being one you can imagine in repose is practically a cliche now, but it's still true, and SH2's monsters perfectly capture it.

Perhaps best is the map. Exploring in SH2 feels like a pleasing articulation and inversion of metrovania style play. Where the map in metroid expands to show your progress, Silent Hill's contracts inwards, the red scrawls denoting the locked doors and barriers the town is throwing at you. Your struggle is played out across that map; you feel constantly lost, but are always funnelled elegantly down the right way. It's a wonderful piece of design, that both directs you, while creating an illusion a larger world: what's behind all those locked doors?

I don't want to know.

[SnakeyDavid]

Bugger. Got this in late. Poo.

[ratsoalbion]

Aye, great post too. Watch those deadlines people!

[aidopotato]

yeah too late for the podcast too- but criminy, what a game. still get shivers just listening to the soundtrack, and haven't (after all these years) summoned up the balls to replay it. shant see its like again.

[SnakeyDavid]

Well, pretty much everything there still applies. exchange dorm for filthy uni-house, and the fact that this one does veer into satanic silliness.

Despite being weaker overall, SH3 perhaps had more iconic scares than 2 though. The mirror scene in particular is a brilliantly composed, elongated scare that comes to mind whenever the series or survival horror in general is brought up. And the audio direction is as masterful as ever. Overall, It's more predictable than SH2 and a bit more cliched in some of its scares and settings, but it's still a brilliantly effective and atmospheric horror. I had a satisfyingly traumatic time playing it.

[Todinho]

So I started replaying Silent Hill 3 and I just got to a part that remided me why Hearther is my favorite character in the whole series XD

Spoiler: show

So you are in this bathroom and there's a clogged toilet there at this point you are in the otherworld so everything is more gross and there's a prompt to unclog the toilet,I click it she kneels to do it and than quickly turns around faces the camera and starts saying how gross and stupid this is asking the player what kinda of person he/she is to try and make her do that XD it`s great and a nice way to poke fun at Silent hill 2 and horror tropes,love this kinda of thing

Also Im already lost and have no idea what to do next,I really hadnt comeback to this game for awhile.

[aidopotato]

SH3 is probably doomed to be remembered as the 2nd best game in the series forever; though I still found plenty positive about it. Graphically and mechanically it's tighter than what has come before, and many of its scares and standout moments are up there with the series' best (the mirror room in the church for example).
It remains a foreboding game without having the horribly bleak core of 2, and manages to tie in closely to the plot of 1 without being as daft. Both of these benefits are largely down to Heather, who remains up there with my very favourite female protagonists. Relatable, realistic and funny; she's easily the best lead in a SH game.
Sure it strikes an odd tone, and the story doesn't unsettle or hold up to analysis like SH2, but it's every bit as memorable and still exemplifies what made the series so appealing. I even like the song