The REAL Hotel?

James got a letter. From a dead person. Oh dear.

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King MGO
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The REAL Hotel?

Post by King MGO »

Okay, so, I'm just wondering, what is the real hotel like???
Neither of the ones he visits can be the real one...

The first, not burnt one can't be real, because of the drawing of the hotel burning down in the prison suggest that Lake View Hotel did indeed burn down.
However, it can't be the burnt down version that James sees. There are teleporting doors, the staircase has a wall at the bottom (fires don't exactly create walls), and the lobby is highly altered.

So, that raises the question: What does the hotel REALLY look like?
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AuraTwilight
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by AuraTwilight »

It's basically like the burnt one minus the supernatural stuff. The hotel burned down at some point after James and Mary last visited it. It probably isn't still standing, since it's been atleast a year or so, but if it is, well...
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Oddish
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by Oddish »

It needn't be either. When dealing with Silent Hill, you must think four-dimensionally. Silent Hill, as far as I can tell, exists on three known levels:

L: The normal, populated town, devoid of monsters or threats.
B1: The misty, deserted town with moderate monster presence.
B2: The dark, rusty, "nightmare" town with increased monster presence.

Since James presumably only encounters the hotel while on levels B1 and B2, he does not necessarily see what it looks like on the L level. Maybe it's been razed and replaced by a Happy Burger, maybe it's still an uninhabitable burnt shell, or maybe it's been rebuilt and modernized.
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Jonipoon
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by Jonipoon »

>Since James presumably only encounters the hotel while on levels B1 and B2, he does not necessarily see what it looks like on the L level.
Correction: James never encounters anything in the game on the L level.

In fact, none of the games feature the normal, populated town of Silent Hill. We've seen Heather's town and South Ashfield, and despite the fact that the video footage of Mary in the hotel is presumably footage from the normal, populated town - we only get to see the hotel room and not a single actual street view.

The hotel, as James see it most of the time, decayed/rotten/wet is just James's imagining of what he thinks the hotel looks like after it was burnt down.
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Oddish
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by Oddish »

QUOTE: Correction: James never encounters anything in the game on the L level.

True. That's one mind-bending thing about Silent Hill, the fact that it's a four-dimensional place. When James is encountering Maria in the park on B1, the park is full of people on level L, looking at the water or sailing or walking their dogs (with plastic bags sticking out of their pockets). While Pyramid Head is raping the crap out of those mannequin monsters in the kitchen on B1, on level L some homemaker is taking a pan of fresh-baked mac and cheese out of the oven. And while James is down on B2, examining that obsidian goblet and wondering if he should head down that long downward staircase, some tour guide is pointing out Silent Hill's history to a bunch of bored third-graders on a field trip. It messes with your head.
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HeartlessBastard
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by HeartlessBastard »

Well...
This discussion has become pointless in a quite short amount of time, eh?
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Oddish
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by Oddish »

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, Heartless. Just like everyone else here.
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LastGunslinger
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by LastGunslinger »

Well, here's another way to look at it; what do you mean by "real?"

I think the typical interpretation is what the general, unaffected population perceives the hotel to be at the time James is perceiving it; we don't really know what that is. It could be partially burned down and condemned, it could be a vacant lot, or it could be a brand new hotel built on the foundations of the original, or something else entirely.

But what if the "real" hotel isn't just the common present perception of it, but the amalgamation of its physicality, its history, the many people who occupied it, the thoughts and emotions projected upon it? It probably isn't possible for one person to perceive the totality of its reality at any given point, from that point of view, maybe what James perceives is closer to the "real" hotel than what the average person sees.
“The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror."
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Oddish
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by Oddish »

Interesting thought. However, if we make reality a subjective concept, it becomes an irrelevant one: everyone perceives the universe a little differently.

Besides, if a man is born color-blind, he might not be able to imagine color, but the jeans he is wearing are still blue.
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LastGunslinger
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Re: The REAL Hotel?

Post by LastGunslinger »

I think the entire point of Silent Hill is that reality is subjective, in that no one perceives reality with the same information, and the trauma suffered by a person in "common" reality can be easily overlooked without a way to show it to someone.

To bring it back on topic, you can look at the "real" Lakeside Hotel and, if you see what most people see, it's just a building, nothing special. But a lot happened there to James and Mary, a lot of which James isn't prepared to deal with all at once, so aspects of the truth of what happened there come to him little by little, first by clues, then by the video tape, and finally the hotel we see by the end of the game--not exactly real by most people's standards, but nonetheless true to his buried memories and feelings. What occurred there was real, and its impact on James--once he remembers--is also real.
“The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror."
--Thomas Ligotti
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