Which ending was the REAL ending?

[SilentWren]

I feel like there's three of us in three separate conversations.

There isn't any way that any of us can say what James would decide one way or the other. We're all imprinting our own ideas onto him.

[mikefile]

The Otherworld's purpose, for James, is to keep him alive long enough that he finds a reason to want to keep living. This is its purpose because it is what James wants, it doesn't require a sentient town (and I firmly believe it is not sentient). He has decided to kill himself but it is not a thing to which he's 100% committed.

James feels a whole bunch of mashed up feelings- guilt, justification, frustration, loneliness, emptiness, etc.. EACH of these take an equal role for the Otherworld's appearence.

However, for the sake of simplifying things, let's narrow it down to James' will to live and his suicide wish. If you say James was not entirely sure about suicide in the first place and then the Otherworld triggered itself because it was what JAMES wants, how can you say with certainty that finding a reason to live is the Otherworld's only purpose?

As far as I know the Otherworld proposes a huge amount of symbolical elements that manifest his Eros and Thanatos instincts. A large number of mosters and happenings that are supposed to show him the causes and consequences of life and death.

So, if he chooses to drown himself with his dead wife, how can you say he learned nothing? He got rid of every doubt. He cleared his mind of any ambiguities and chose the option that suited him the best.

To sum up, what I'm saying is that in the beginning, James finds himself in a kind of limbo. He wants to commit suicide, but he's not completely sure. A thousand of previously mentioned feelings and conflictive emotions dictate the outcome. And there are too many, and they are too ambiguous and confusing. That's when the Otherworlds intervenes, to make him reflect about himself, what he really wants, what he really fears and what he keeps rejecting. The Otherworld's purpose is not about making him live. It's about making him choose. Only then, in the end, will he be able to choose a proper option. Either it's life, either it's death, but in each case, he makes an optimal decision, because the precursory that was in the way is gone now.

[WelcomeToNowhere]

I don't see this ordeal in Silent Hill as any kind of redemption or a reason to keep on living, or to not go on living, either. It all comes across to me as less of any kind of judgement,but instead just showing him who he really is. Who he is, and what he forgot. The town isn't forcing any kind of judgements on him, but it is forcing him to see the truth; what he does with this truth is all up to him.

As for Maria, she definitely resents her position of being little more than a replacement goldfish, something Jimmy picked up from the store when his last one died. She has memories that aren't hers, feels unwarranted love for a man she's never met before, and is generally fate's bitch. Who's to say she wouldn't eventually snap from the stress of being an imaginary friend brought to life, and smother HIM to death with a pillow?

[alone in the town]

James feels a whole bunch of mashed up feelings- guilt, justification, frustration, loneliness, emptiness, etc.. EACH of these take an equal role for the Otherworld's appearence.

I'm more concerned about the Otherworld's trigger rather than it's appearance.

However, for the sake of simplifying things, let's narrow it down to James' will to live and his suicide wish. If you say James was not entirely sure about suicide in the first place and then the Otherworld triggered itself because it was what JAMES wants, how can you say with certainty that finding a reason to live is the Otherworld's only purpose?

I don't think he had doubts until he got there and had to actually do it. I like the idea that the Otherworld is triggered by a strong and sudden crisis rather than wishy-washy fence sitting. I think if James had legitimate doubts about what he was doing before that, he probably wouldn't have gone through with going at all.

So, if he chooses to drown himself with his dead wife, how can you say he learned nothing? He got rid of every doubt. He cleared his mind of any ambiguities and chose the option that suited him the best.

He probably does learn something. The problem is, what's the point of learning anything if you kill yourself afterwards? Knowledge is as useless to a dead man as a glass of water is to a drowning man. The overall outcome would have been no different if he'd shot himself at home or plowed into a brick wall halfway to town.

The problem isn't what is or is not learned in In Water. The problem is that his subsequent suicide makes it all meaningless. To him, at least.

The Otherworld's purpose is not about making him live. It's about making him choose. Only then, in the end, will he be able to choose a proper option. Either it's life, either it's death, but in each case, he makes an optimal decision, because the precursory that was in the way is gone now.

What I am saying is not that its about making him live, but giving him a chance to live, because without the intervention of the Otherworld, his death was probably pretty certain.

That's why I consider the guilt and everything else to be secondary elements. Whether he lives or dies is the most important thing right away. If he kills himself at the start, the guilt and recriminations are never addressed, because they are no longer of any importance.

[mikefile]

I'm more concerned about the Otherworld's trigger rather than it's appearance.

Well.. that's what I'm saying.

I think if James had legitimate doubts about what he was doing before that, he probably wouldn't have gone through with going at all.

Not necessarily. Many people who prepare themselves to commit suicide and are already on the rooftop, or with the gun pointed to their head or in Silent Hill, had previously doubts but thought they could ignore them, and then freeze at the spot. That is probably a part of the two sided reason why the Otherworld intervened in James' case.

Knowledge is as useless to a dead man as a glass of water is to a drowning man. The overall outcome would have been no different if he'd shot himself at home or plowed into a brick wall halfway to town.

But he didn't. He didn't shoot himself. He didn't plow into a brick. He wasn't fully committed. He had DOUBTS and was UNCERTAIN. That was the whole appeal to the Otherworld. You said it yourself, the Otherworld did not trigger itself because a sentient force of the town wanted it, but rather, got triggered because of James wanting it. Your reasoning can also be inverted as James' incapability to kill himself, thus making the In-Water ending as the optimal ending in which he finally took his life.

What I am saying is not that its about making him live, but giving him a chance to live, because without the intervention of the Otherworld, his death was probably pretty certain.

As his withdrawal, too. The chances of him running down in the lake or changing his mind are a 50-50 shot, as not a sufficient amount of concrete evidence is given except for him coming to town and trying to commit suicide.

[alone in the town]

Not necessarily. Many people who prepare themselves to commit suicide and are already on the rooftop, or with the gun pointed to their head or in Silent Hill, had previously doubts but thought they could ignore them, and then freeze at the spot. That is probably a part of the two sided reason why the Otherworld intervened in James' case.

I dispute this in James' case because, for him, it isn't just a simple matter of killing himself. He does not, at least at the start of the game, really have many options. He clearly has no will to live, but if he decided not to die, any attempt he made to continue living by that point would almost certainly end in failure. He is not like most potential suicides because even though he has not yet ended his own life, he has already passed a major point of no return: He killed his wife. In doing so, he has already effectively killed himself, in the sense that there's no way he could ever hope to resume his former life. His only options would be to die, to turn himself in, to run until he was either captured or killed, or (probably) just lose his mind altogether. Given the obviously poor state of his mental health, how long do you really think he could have lasted if he got back in his car at the beginning of the game and kept on driving?

That's why I strongly disbelieve he had any real doubt about killing himself, and that the trigger was a sudden, desperate and totally irrational mental rebellion against his own self-destruction. James is way past the point of having anything like coherent doubts. Doubts only work if there are plausible alternatives. All of James' alternatives at the start are almost certainly worse.

But he didn't. He didn't shoot himself. He didn't plow into a brick. He wasn't fully committed. He had DOUBTS and was UNCERTAIN. That was the whole appeal to the Otherworld. You said it yourself, the Otherworld did not trigger itself because a sentient force of the town wanted it, but rather, got triggered because of James wanting it. Your reasoning can also be inverted as James' incapability to kill himself, thus making the In-Water ending as the optimal ending in which he finally took his life.

That reasoning falls flat, though, when his adventure requires him to avoid being killed by monsters and traps for roughly an entire day without rest. He has to work very hard to stay alive long enough to finally kill himself. This implies that he is trying to find some way around death, but is so disillusioned that the idea of Maria and Rebirth's supernatural alternatives simply do not appeal, and he lacks the willpower to face life and continue with it. In Water, plain and simple, is James giving up and choosing the least difficult option. I can't find it in myself to call the coward's way out 'optimal'.

As his withdrawal, too. The chances of him running down in the lake or changing his mind are a 50-50 shot, as not a sufficient amount of concrete evidence is given except for him coming to town and trying to commit suicide.

I think there is more than enough evidence to suggest that the likelihood of his suicide, assuming no Otherworldly intervention, is close to certain. Because, if he doesn't kill himself, whatever may happen to him afterwards is almost just as certain to be more painful and more difficult. James is not going to call off suicide because he suddenly realized he had something to live for, because he clearly does not.

[mikefile]

He clearly has no will to live, but if he decided not to die, any attempt he made to continue living by that point would almost certainly end in failure.

The problem here is that, if he hadn't had any will to live, there would be no need for the Otherworld. For starters, we know for a fact that the Otherworld responds to rather high-leveled emotional turmoils, and by simply basing James' Otherworld on the fact that its only purpose is to continue living, contests the fact that James was completely devoted to die.

That's why I strongly disbelieve he had any real doubt about killing himself, and that the trigger was a sudden, desperate and totally irrational mental rebellion against his own self-destruction.

To concretize the last reasoning, if the Otherworld's basis is an enormous hope-giving engine that encircles James' mind around life displays, the trigger must be on the same level; that is, if the Otherworld's function is to make him survive, then there must be a powerful enough will that triggered it. Judging by your argument, the spark is too small to induce such a big fire. For a powerful Otherworld that dictates a will to live there must be a powerful enough will that triggers it (subconscious or not).

Moreover, even if that wasn't true, the optimality-conditioning still falls into water (like James), as automatically the Otherworld's purpose became getting rid of that 'irrational mental rebellion'.

That reasoning falls flat, though, when his adventure requires him to avoid being killed by monsters and traps for roughly an entire day without rest. He has to work very hard to stay alive long enough to finally kill himself.

That's one way of looking into it. The Otherworld's modus operandi proposes so many insights about death and suicide that are equivalent to the ones implying life and survival (which is, by the way, another reason why the Otherworld's purpose can't be purely based on showing him a way to live). The fact that he keeps surviving it and falling into his own grave, literally said, is implicative of the wonderful way to finish it all, without needing to concern about an irrational rebellion that keeps him away from simply pulling the trigger.

I can't find it in myself to call the coward's way out 'optimal'.

And running away with a mere mental fabrication is not? I'm sorry. You lost me. What does being a coward have to do with this argument.

[WelcomeToNowhere]

^See, here's the thing about your argument that I don't agree with: it's based on the idea that the town cares whether or not he lives or dies. It doesn't. It's a haunted town, not fully sentient or in posession of any kind of morals or emotions. It's not there to make him love, or live, or even to kill him--it's there to show him the truth. If he should choose to reject the truth, then it's on his head. Whether it be by suicidal action or an escapist fantasy life with an unreal lover, he could decide to reject reality and fall off into a dreamworld. Or, he could embrace real life and reemerge with the care of a little girl as his new mission in life. Or he could take a third option and try to revive Mary, with whatever consequences that will result in. Again, I'm pretty sure that ending would just conclude with either Maria's return, or a homicidal Pet Sematary-esque creature that happens to look like the late Mrs. Shepherd-Sunderland.

[Dr. Robotnik]

If the town is completely apathetic as to whether or not James accepts the truth, why the implication that Maria will suffer the fate of Mary? If the town is "okay" with James accepting delusion, why suggest that the delusion will be broken?

Granted, Maria's cough and James' response could be interpreted a couple different ways. If you're feeling particularly optimistic, you could argue James telling her to do something about it is him saying, "We're not going through this shit again". But general consensus is that ending implies repetition of the events leading up to it.

[AuraTwilight]

Most people who go into delusion and run away from their problems tend to repeat them entirely through their own fault. That doesn't change just because your delusions are real.

[mikefile]

See, here's the thing about your argument that I don't agree with: it's based on the idea that the town cares whether or not he lives or dies. It doesn't. It's a haunted town, not fully sentient or in posession of any kind of morals or emotions. It's not there to make him love, or live, or even to kill him--it's there to show him the truth.

I don't know whether you were addressing to Ryantology, but that's practically the premise of my argument. However, I must note that that's not where the issue stands.

It's about the extrapolation of its propositum. The goal comes from James. Whether it's accepting or dismissing life, it's irrelevant. Because the final outcome will be only one, that is the truth- the one James chooses. And it won't leave him unchanged.

If the town is completely apathetic as to whether or not James accepts the truth, why the implication that Maria will suffer the fate of Mary? If the town is "okay" with James accepting delusion, why suggest that the delusion will be broken?

The one that does the 'suggesting' is James himself. The town did not grant him a "perfect" construction because a small part of him actually is still not completely accepting the illusion that was supposed to be a carefree and happy prosperity.

[Dr. Robotnik]

If guilt was the primary reason he wanted to kill himself, he should end up not wanting to die, because he has faced his guilt and gotten more absolution than would otherwise ever be possible

I'm not a hardcore "In Water" fanboy, but I think it's worth playing devil's advocate on.

Absolution from others doesn't equal absolution in your own mind. I've felt similarly. I'm not saying guilt is necessarily a huge factor in James' possible suicide, because that's not what the dialogue tells us ("Without you, Mary…I've got nothing."). I'm saying people, and characters like James, will do what they will, not what one thinks they should.

Ok, so James just saying "fuck it all" is less depressing than James being so deluded that he keeps Maria as a pet wife? I think which ending is the least optimal is too subjective. Depending on how you look at it, all the endings have the potential to turn out horrific.

If having Maria around gives him happiness and a sense of purpose, isn't that better than being dead? Even if the whole thing is an illusion?

Maybe the objective observer disapproves, but I'm more concerned with what James might feel.

I could apply similar logic to the "In Water" ending. If James valued Mary's presence so much that life without her would be hell, if the rest of his life would only be spent waiting for death so he could be with her again, who are you to say what's the "coward's way out", and what's not?

[SilentWren]

[quote="Dr. Robotnik"If James valued Mary's presence so much that life without her would be hell, if the rest of his life would only be spent waiting for death so he could be with her again, who are you to say what's the "coward's way out", and what's not?[/quote]

Yeah, what you said. He doesn't even necessarily have to be waiting to be with her again, either. He could have the mindset of "I did this terrible thing. I'm accepting it. I think I'll drive my car into the lake now."

I mean, ok, nobody really wants their protagonist to commit suicide. But I think all the endings (except Dog & UFO) have their own good & bad points, and they all reveal something about James. I don't think any one is more valid than the others.

[alone in the town]

To clarify my point, I don't believe In Water is invalid. I believe the story sets it up to be the equivalent of the first game's Bad ending, not just because the protagonist doesn't survive in either scenario, but both endings render all that came before them irrelevant to the protagonist.

The most interesting lesson is wasted on a dead man. For Harry, he can't help that, he's doomed already. James is given an opportunity for redemption but fails to attain it because of a lack of moral fiber.

This does not mean that the story is irrelevant for the player. That's an entirely different argument. It is in this that In Water has intrinsic value. For James, it is a waste of time. You can argue he must sort out his mental shit before he can do it. I argue that he doesn't have to do anything because everything in Silent Hill is trying to kill him. If he happened to get killed by a nurse in Brookhaven, the end result for James is precisely the same as if his magical flying car launched itself into the lake, even if it lacks the symbolic beauty.

Now, you may wish to introduce the possibility that James enters the afterlife at the end, but this entails a trio of enormous assumptions:

1: An afterlife exists.
2: James has reason to believe it exists.
3: James has reason to believe he will find happiness in it.

And, though I accept these as nominal possibilities, I fail to see any compelling reason to believe any of these things, much less all three, are true.

[Dr. Robotnik]

Fair enough. I personally find that certain "shoot the shaggy dog" or "downer ending" stories can be quite entertaining (Funny Games, No Country for Old Men), but I do see your point about James' lack of progress as a character, though I think it can add to the game, rather than take away from it.

[SilentWren]

Yeah. James doesn't have to believe in an afterlife to end this one. He just has to be willing to accept that forgiving himself for killing Mary is the last thing he'll ever do. Easy peasy.

[mikefile]

Getting killed before the end and willingly commiting suicide are not the same thing. It's not about symbolic beauty, either. Although the Otherworld being an insentient procedural force, it does not have to make objectively sense to us. Although we seem to perceive the futility of the In-Water ending, it does not mean James does it. And that's what matters. The Otherworld (i.e. James) does not calculate whether dying before the "preordained" finish line is the same as concluding everything at the actual end. Before the journey, there were various conflictive motives wandering through James' mind. The Otherworld's purpose was to solve the motives that will permit James making his final decision. And if anything, getting killed by a monster is the futile ending because James simply dies, not yet clarifying his thoughts, whether it serves him dead or not.

As much as it regards afterlife, I don't think it is of any importance to the plot. If James believes in it, he'll kill himself thinking he's gonna find happiness there. On the other side, if he doesn't, he'll do it as well, as he has no reason to live.

[Excision & Datsik]

Well, I have no mood to join in this heated discussion going on here. And I don't know if anyone else said it. But the Silent Hill 2 official novel

PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:

ends with the In Water ending. So I kinda think that is the real one. But I wish Leave was the one. I'm not entirely fond of In Water.

[AuraTwilight]

We know. The novel contradicts the game on multiple accounts so it's not exactly a source of canonical information.

[WelcomeToNowhere]

Besides, I think it's safe to assume that James believes in an afterlife. In Bar Neely's, he sees a message painted on the wall that went something like "If you really want to see Mary, then you should just die." It wouldn't be saying that if it didn't mean anything to him, you know?

And as for the rationale behind driving his car into the lake, he's probably not really expecting to go to heaven with her, as the other half of the message points out: "But you might be heading to a different place than Mary, James." Just about everything that happens to James in Silent Hill is pulled from his conscious or unconscious mind, barring outside influences like Angela or Eddie, so deep down inside of him, I think Jimmy probably knows he's not going to truly be redeemed for his actions. Otherwise, the writing on the wall wouldn't be telling him he's going to hell, now would it?