Silent Hill Heaven

James doesn't seem to care much of what he's doing in some parts of the game for example:

-The Lying Figure didn't seem to surprise him much
-He put his arm in the hole of the apartment and he got bitten eventually he still inserted his arm into hole
-Putting his hand in the filthy toilet water just to get a wallet
-Jumping into holes recklessly

I'm not saying that silent hill 2 or James sucked i'm just saying isn't it weird he has almost no emotions?

I think he's just more concerned about finding Mary. That and he might be a little depressed. Understandable given the circumstances. Your examples are really just small and unimportant to James when it comes to his overall story and motives. He does show emotion when it's important. For example, the Pyramid Head fight near the end.

Soulless-Shadow wrote:I think he's just more concerned about finding Mary. That and he might be a little depressed. Understandable given the circumstances. Your examples are really just small and unimportant to James when it comes to his overall story and motives. He does show emotion when it's important. For example, the Pyramid Head fight near the end.

I can agree with that, but some of those instances are annoying when they do not respond realistically. At least with the lying figure, I was hoping for more of a reaction.

Pyramid Head15 wrote: I can agree with that, but some of those instances are annoying when they do not respond realistically. At least with the lying figure, I was hoping for more of a reaction.

I agree. I like it better in games if the character reacts to meeting something like that for the first time, but due to whatever reasons (cost, time, whatever) they don't add such cut scenes.

He's so blinded by the letter and wanting to find Mary. However, I seem to recall the lying figure startling him, and he hesitated to get the wallet out of the toilet (although he's still crazy to do it anyway). And the holes, he didn't have anywhere else to go anyway, so why not jump in? I was a little surprised that he didn't get hurt at all jumping into 5 holes, but it's a game.

Considering what he did a few hours before coming to town, he's probably incredibly shell-shocked.

I like him emotionless... I would really hate him, if he was as full of emotions as that boy (Dennis? I dont know, me and my wife call him "Wanker") from Clocktower 3
But seriously. His calm face is somethink like prediction of his own death (in the water). It is making atmosphere - mostly at the beginning of the game - dreamlike.

You would think though that after seeing a monster for the first time there would be more of a reaction

Don't hate just because you don't share the same extra curricular activities as others!

I was a great "hole-faller" in high school. My team won silver at district!

AuraTwilight wrote:Considering what he did a few hours before coming to town, he's probably incredibly shell-shocked.

I know really, you tend to forget that the game took place only within a few hours, He is probably scared out of his freaking mind. Along with the fact he seems pretty depressed and only cares about finding mary.

I wanted more emotion out of Henry, truth be told.
I know he was going through a lot and trying to protect Eileen, but he just....never....said....hardly.....anything.

James wasn't ALL emotionless. At least he yelled at Eddie for eating pizza and such. The most emotion that he showed for Maria (directed at her) was during the behind-the-bars scene. I thought that was odd. The rest of the time, it seemed like she was the focus of the scene. "ANYWAYS?!"

I always found James' to have the most emotion over nearly any other character in the series. His voice was always morose, broken. You could tell he was suffering even if you didn't know exactly why. There were certain parts were he wasn't as emotionally charged as I would've been, but I always blamed that more on shock. Things like jumping down a hole, figuring you are going to die, then finding yourself able to get up and walk around.

Good ol' Silent Hill. Puts everyone in the constant what-the-fuck/how-the-fuck state of mind.

I'm actually really glad that he doesn't react to most of the things in the game.


I know that for the most part it is a matter of budget, recording actors, animating, and all that stuff you would normally put as the reason. I almost want to believe that part of it is the developers respecting their own work enough to let you decide for yourself how you should be feeling. If James was emoting at every single monster or bizarre experience, we wouldn't really have our own dread, but the one given to us. It just seems much more shallow and less memorable that way. *cough**homecoming**cough*

I really hate when movies or tv shows tell the viewer how they should feel. It's frustrating and makes me feel like they don't trust their own work enough to let you make a choice, so they tell us themselves.


Big Spoilers for Watchmen below
For example, recently, I just read through all of Watchmen, and I decided to look up some movie clips on youtube to see if it would be worth watching. I decided I wasn't going to be watching the movie, afterwards.

Well, you could always argue that his flat, affectless (aka emotionless) speech patterns are indicative of one of the more common symptoms of OMG NEW THEORY JAMES HAS SCHIZOPHRENIA!!!

Honestly, I thought he was wonderful. He's clearly become numbed to everything around him, since he's been so deeply traumatized after killing Mary that he's all but completely forgotten he did it. Given those circumstances, the acting was especially superb.

It's like Claudia's missing eyebrows, or Eddie's off-center eye: it's one of those subtle details that's slightly off, but you just can't put your finger on why it disturbs you so much.

I'm not trying to say anything bad about Silent Hill games - it's obvious by the simple fact that I'm on this site that I enjoy them - but Konami seems to have a really lazy team when it comes to designing the mental design of characters. They almost always seem to lack emotion, or not display the "correct" emotions.

I know there's no "correct" way to express emotions necessarily, but there are certainly strange ways. Most of what I've seen in Silent Hill games are strange.

SilentWren wrote:I wanted more emotion out of Henry, truth be told.
I know he was going through a lot and trying to protect Eileen, but he just....never....said....hardly.....anything.

James wasn't ALL emotionless. At least he yelled at Eddie for eating pizza and such. The most emotion that he showed for Maria (directed at her) was during the behind-the-bars scene. I thought that was odd. The rest of the time, it seemed like she was the focus of the scene. "ANYWAYS?!"

You got a point at least James doesn't have a stupid catchphrase like Henry...What the hell?
Henry really pisses me off

AuraTwilight wrote:Considering what he did a few hours before coming to town, he's probably incredibly shell-shocked.

That's probably the best explanation there is, but still. He probably hadn't seen such creatures right before his eyes before...he was just kind of like "oh...that's weird. I'll just beat it with a wooden plank, and hope that's the last of them."

But I guess

I'm surprised that we've made it this far into the thread without someone using this observation to justify their stance that IN WATER IS THE CANAN ENDING LOL. We're making progress!

I think that for a long time the things that James is seeing don't entirely feel real to him and that's part of why he's numb to them. Think of the Lying Figures, the mannequins, Pyramid Head, they're supposed to represent things in his mind that he doesn't yet himself understand, so he wouldn't be looking at these things the right way, it's almost like they aren't fully there. Like shadows, creepy but not dangerous. Just because were seeing what James is seeing doesn't mean were thinking and feeling what he is.

Besides, the enemies in SH2 are so easy how COULD he be freaked out LOL.

Seriously though, once the Hotel switches over to Nightmare World we see what it really is, a flooded burnt out shell. That's because James has seen what's really inside him and what he's done, and that's why we get a scene with lots of emotion soon:

"Leave her alone! Leave us both the hell alone!" (Maria screams) "AUUUUUGHHHHH!!!" (I really love this part by the way.)

When James falls to his knees that's when he's accepted what's happening to him in the town and has decided to fight back against his redemption. "Needed someone to punish me... but that's all over now." He fights back against his punishers, the Pyramid Heads, and they get that he's sorry and kill themselves (the only way they can die, if James realizes that punishing himself won't help anyone, at this part James is getting rid of his punishes and stopping hurting himself so that he can move on, like Mary in the Leave ending wants him too.)

Soo yeah, James has plenty of emotion. Most of the time you have to look at the story itself to see it though, not in the way he reacts to things, sortof like Alessa in SH1.

alone in the town wrote:I'm surprised that we've made it this far into the thread without someone using this observation to justify their stance that IN WATER IS THE CANAN ENDING LOL. We're making progress!

This. I lol'd.