Mary's (actual) age

[The Adversary]

This question was posed on Reddit the other day, and it's something I (surprisingly to me) hadn't thought of before.

The characters' ages are all listed in Lost Memories: Silent Hill Chronicle:

James — 29
Mary — 25
Laura — 8
Angela — 19
Eddie — 23

The question: Is Mary's age taking into consideration that she allegedly died three years ago (at the age of 25)?, or was she 25 when she actually did die? Because for all intents and purposes, we're supposed to believe Mary died three years prior, so her age would have stopped at 25.

I'm inclined to think she was 25 at the time of her figurative death, when she first became ill and her transformation began, and then died three years later right before the game begins, at the age of 28.

The conflict in this theory is that Maria's age is also listed as 25. However, that could feasibly be interpreted as the age when Maria was modeled after Mary, before she became ill and progressively disfigured.

Or I could easily be reading too much into it for the sake of reading too much into things. Just thought I'd address.

The Donkey-Headed Adversary of Humanity opens the discussion—

[Jonipoon]

Mary's figurative death is taking place inside James' mind, but that list from Lost Memories: Silent Hill Chronicle is taking into account all of the characters' ages. For your theory to work, the list has to be based on James' perspective but James doesn't know or need to know the ages of Angela and Eddie.

Forgive me for being so utterly boring this time around, but I don't think that there is that much to it. The list is probably just a way of letting players get some more information about the cast. I believe that Mary passed away at the age of 25. If the three-year gap serves to romanticize James' feelings for Mary before her illness, it's possible that the problems first arose when she was 22 years old.

[The Adversary]

The theory doesn’t need James’ perspective at all. It needs the author’s willingness to show what the audience knows vs. what it ultimately finds out.

We know when Mary died. We know how long she suffered. But we don’t know how old she was at either point. And my argument is that we know the writers never wanted us to know she died a couple days before the game began—we were all told she died three years ago. So her presumed death three years ago would be when she was 25, yet we know she lived for a whole three more years.

[Burning Man]

I'm inclined to think she was 25 at the time of her figurative death, when she first became ill and her transformation began, and then died three years later right before the game begins, at the age of 28.

The conflict in this theory is that Maria's age is also listed as 25. However, that could feasibly be interpreted as the age when Maria was modeled after Mary, before she became ill and progressively disfigured.

I agree with this take. Mary's figurative death at 25.

Maria's age may be listed as 25 in the book, but the original now-defunct Japanese Konami SH2 website does put a (?) after listing her age as 25 years old.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070807124 ... /home.html

The same website lists Mary as 25 but also states she passed away three years ago. I don't think they intended to say that Mary would have been 25 if she were alive.

[The Adversary]

>I don't think they intended to say that Mary would have been 25 if she were alive.<
Precisely. This is why I brought it up. It doesn't really change anything in the story, though it's something to think about—and still tragic.