Some 1st playthrough thoughts/questions...

Ten years after the original game and Harry's still searching for his daughter.

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Escapist
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Post by Escapist »

From every theory i've ever read in this forum yours is definitively the best :D
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Post by Jamius88 »

Escapist wrote:From every theory i've ever read in this forum yours is definitively the best :D
Haha for sure. To me this interpretation is more than just plausible (but to each their own ofc ;) )

That's what made the game so interesting for me, you're playing through her memory, as faulty as it is. We all know exactly what happened to Harry when he rescued Cheryl in SH the first time round, now we're going through with the same characters but with a 'broken telephone' sort of story telling, a different lens.

And it IS a re-imagining, but that's doesn't mean its not part of the same story. Re-imagining in that its Harry Mason and SH game, but different details, polluted by the second-hand nature of the re-telling, as well as the effects of memory and time.
lesboctopus wrote:well, after playing the game I think ANYONE can tell that it's a re-imagining and it feels like an entirely new game. that's not the argument here, really. no where in that quote does it say we can't speculate about what kind of connection it may or may not have to the other games. find me a quote that says "The character of Cheryl featured in this game is in no way related to any character in any other Silent Hill game outside of the name," and then I'll be happy.
for sure.
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Post by AuraTwilight »

concrete facts are presented and thrown away in silent hill canon all the time.
No they're not.
again, i respect the most common and logical beliefs that everyone has on the storyline. but i feel like the nature of this game's plot ESPECIALLY leaves a LOT of room for speculation. i don't think it's concrete until a developer CLEARLY states "in this game, harry is cheryl's biological father now," etc.
The two physically resemble each other, and furthermore, Kauffman, who speaks absolute truth and objectivity in the narrative, confirms Cheryl's parentage.
haha. I don't agree with this at all, but I think you can have some fun trying to prove that this Cheryl is Heathet from SH3. After all, is Heather escapes from Silent Hill and is crazy enough to imagine her father in an alternate world, then it could indeed be the same person just mixing up facts from the insanity. lol.

She remember Dahlia as her moher, and Harry as her father. So, she assumes they were married ay one point even though in her real life, they were her parents to two seperate identities.
No way. Heather of SH3 was a strong-willed, confident, mentally healthy girl who went through hell and came out of it with a laugh. There is no way that she would just, for no reason, suddenly snap and become the Cheryl we see in SM, and there's definitely no way she would ever, ever, EVER forget that Claudia killed her father.

Also, where the hell is Douglas, who is implied to have become her guardian in the Normal Ending (and who definitely lived, if Homecoming is canon)? And if she only thinks Dahlia Gillespie became Dahlia Mason, how come in some versions of the ending we see Cheryl and Dahlia hug after leaving the therapist's office together?
[quote="BlackFire2"]I thought he meant the special powers of her vagina.[/quote]
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Post by Dogg Thang »

AuraTwilight wrote:Heather of SH3 was a strong-willed, confident, mentally healthy girl who went through hell and came out of it with a laugh.
Going through what Heather went through, including the death of her father, and coming out of it with a laugh is not indicative of good mental health.

If anything, her reactions by the end of the game would be a good starting point in forming a theory that, like Shattered Memories, the events of Silent Hill 3 were nothing but the delusions of a teenager putting her dead father in the role of victim and herself in this self-important adopted God mother heroine role. All it would have taken was the revelation that she was really a princess to bring it all home.


Heather's insanity aside, starting from Silent Hill 1 and going through the games, then trying to reconcile Shattered Memories would, to me, be fairly impossible (though likely interesting). It may work, however, going backwards, taking Shattered Memories as fact and having Silent Hill 3 and then 1 as earlier takes on the same delusions. Silent Hill 1 being a child's take on it, perhaps early teens. By Silent Hill 3, teenage Cheryl is trying to convince herself she is strong and able to deal with the death of her father, hence the unnatural reactions. Douglas could simply be one of those older men she is sleeping with to fill that void. By Shattered Memories, she has grown up and lost the more fantastical elements of her delusion - demons, cults, etc. Though she still has the drug paranoia (Lisa's death).

But the one thing that breaks that line of thinking would appear to be Kaufmann's presence in SH1. Still, it's interesting to work backwards from Shattered Memories and see just what might represent what.
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Post by lesboctopus »

AuraTwilight wrote:
concrete facts are presented and thrown away in silent hill canon all the time.
No they're not.
I didn't mean the concrete facts given to us by Team Silent and such. those are definitely the things we have to go by. I just meant the "facts" that are presented through the plot of the game that are sometimes twisted by the time it's resolved.

also, in order to accept this theory, one would have to assume the SH3 Possessed ending is canon, and that Homecoming is not.

AuraTwilight wrote: And if she only thinks Dahlia Gillespie became Dahlia Mason, how come in some versions of the ending we see Cheryl and Dahlia hug after leaving the therapist's office together?
this is definitely what kills the theory. but it was fun while it lasted. it definitely made me think of more interesting parallels that I didn't really process when I was treating it in my mind as a stand-alone game.
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Post by Yuki »

lesboctopus wrote:
AuraTwilight wrote:
concrete facts are presented and thrown away in silent hill canon all the time.
No they're not.
I didn't mean the concrete facts given to us by Team Silent and such. those are definitely the things we have to go by. I just meant the "facts" that are presented through the plot of the game that are sometimes twisted by the time it's resolved.

also, in order to accept this theory, one would have to assume the SH3 Possessed ending is canon, and that Homecoming is not.

Except the facts given to us by Kaufmann, as stated before, are complete facts: they are not twisted because Kaufmann is an objective observer who knows the official truth. Anything he states is fact and is not twisted.

Except Homecoming doesn't contradict anything, and is part of the official series; there is no reason to assume it's non-canon, especially when it mentions Douglas living and continues the canon.
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Post by AuraTwilight »

Going through what Heather went through, including the death of her father, and coming out of it with a laugh is not indicative of good mental health.
Yes, it is. She got her grieving out of her system, and then, after seeing something (Harry's ghost for all we know), she's ready to move forward and go into the future with her new companion, Douglas.

At the very least, you can't deny that it's a sign of her strength of heart.
If anything, her reactions by the end of the game would be a good starting point in forming a theory that, like Shattered Memories, the events of Silent Hill 3 were nothing but the delusions of a teenager putting her dead father in the role of victim and herself in this self-important adopted God mother heroine role. All it would have taken was the revelation that she was really a princess to bring it all home.
This would completely and totally contradict every single comment Heather makes about delusions and silly fantasies. "Suffering is a fact of life. You either deal with it, or you can go under. You can stay in your little dream world." "I like the world fine the way it is."
Heather's insanity aside, starting from Silent Hill 1 and going through the games, then trying to reconcile Shattered Memories would, to me, be fairly impossible (though likely interesting). It may work, however, going backwards, taking Shattered Memories as fact and having Silent Hill 3 and then 1 as earlier takes on the same delusions. Silent Hill 1 being a child's take on it, perhaps early teens. By Silent Hill 3, teenage Cheryl is trying to convince herself she is strong and able to deal with the death of her father, hence the unnatural reactions. Douglas could simply be one of those older men she is sleeping with to fill that void. By Shattered Memories, she has grown up and lost the more fantastical elements of her delusion - demons, cults, etc. Though she still has the drug paranoia (Lisa's death).
Why delude that Silent Hill is such a terrible, foreign place, since all of her happy memories are there? Why tell herself that her father isn't actually her father, or admit to Harry's death in SH3? It's not consistent with Cheryl Heather Mason's delusions and character.
Except Homecoming doesn't contradict anything, and is part of the official series; there is no reason to assume it's non-canon
Except that it's silly, over-the-top, derivative, and takes quite a lot of liberties with series meta-physics.

And it's stupid. ^_^

But that's an argument for another thread.
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Post by Yuki »

I admit I've not gotten to play Homecoming yet. But from what I can tell, despite the genericness and over-the-top aspect of it, it doesn't actually contradict anything in the series and therefore can fit into the main timeline easily. That was my point XP
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Post by ww_andi »

This is ridiculous

making up stories to try and fit it in with every other game

even proposing that 1 or 3 is not real

ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

and yes there are facts in each game

Or would you say james maybe didn't kill his fucking wife

and i liked homecoming (watch it aura i might not like you anymore lol)



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Jamius88
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Post by Jamius88 »

To assume right off the bat that 're-imagining' means 'alternate universe' I think is really flawed. I think that making about the Harry + SH story, but it being a different game is fine enough. In this case Heather/Cheryl recounting the stories her father told her.

And I don't buy that Heather has some sort of super human psyche, being totally unfazed by her time in the hell that is SH.

The only real problem I see is with Dahlia, not really sure about that.

(Also, Homecoming was a great game.)
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Post by AuraTwilight »

To assume right off the bat that 're-imagining' means 'alternate universe' I think is really flawed. I think that making about the Harry + SH story, but it being a different game is fine enough. In this case Heather/Cheryl recounting the stories her father told her.
You're right, but Shattered Memories' developers did say it was an alternate universe.
And I don't buy that Heather has some sort of super human psyche, being totally unfazed by her time in the hell that is SH.
No one's saying she was unfazed or that her psyche is super human. She clearly was effected, but she got over it and didn't let it destroy her. Someone has to be able to do so, statistically, and why not the person who CREATED the Otherworld, and has 7 years of constant exposure to it as experience?

Really, when you think of it, Heather's not all that special. James apparently gets over it perfectly fine in the Leave Ending.
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Post by Dogg Thang »

James was clearly mentally unstable and had a lot of stuff to work through. He didn't really laugh his way out of Silent Hill and, if he had, you'd take it as a sign of insanity. Heather in SH3 just feels wrong. I felt like saying to her at the end, "You know your dad's still dead, right?"

I didn't. You know, being a game and all...

Now I know in all likelihood more down to poor writing than anything else. SH3 seemed to have the most one-dimensional characters and plot of any SH game I've played. But, in trying to reconcile how it fits in game-world terms, even ignoring Shattered Memories, it always seemed a bit off to me and Heather's lack of humanity is a big part of that. But then the invention of Claudia always seemed to be drug paranoia made flesh to me, but that's another topic and one I'm sure is well worn here. I may well have discussed it back in the day.

On Heather and her humanity or lack of, I guess she's probably not altogether human anyway, given her origins. Unless you're going from Shattered Memories and working backwards.
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Post by Yuki »

Dogg Thang wrote:James was clearly mentally unstable and had a lot of stuff to work through. He didn't really laugh his way out of Silent Hill and, if he had, you'd take it as a sign of insanity. Heather in SH3 just feels wrong. I felt like saying to her at the end, "You know your dad's still dead, right?"

I didn't. You know, being a game and all...

Now I know in all likelihood more down to poor writing than anything else. SH3 seemed to have the most one-dimensional characters and plot of any SH game I've played. But, in trying to reconcile how it fits in game-world terms, even ignoring Shattered Memories, it always seemed a bit off to me and Heather's lack of humanity is a big part of that. But then the invention of Claudia always seemed to be drug paranoia made flesh to me, but that's another topic and one I'm sure is well worn here. I may well have discussed it back in the day.

On Heather and her humanity or lack of, I guess she's probably not altogether human anyway, given her origins. Unless you're going from Shattered Memories and working backwards.
James didn't laugh it off, but he didn't let it consume him in that ending, either. Heather had time to process everything, and she's probably somewhat desensitized due to having to move to avoid the Order.
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Post by AuraTwilight »

James was clearly mentally unstable and had a lot of stuff to work through. He didn't really laugh his way out of Silent Hill and, if he had, you'd take it as a sign of insanity. Heather in SH3 just feels wrong. I felt like saying to her at the end, "You know your dad's still dead, right?"
James is a murderer, this is his only experience with the supernatural, and he had no goddamn idea of what was actually going on.

Heather is perfectly innocent, has dealt with the supernatural for all of her 30+ years of life, and has a better metaphysical understanding of what's going on in Silent Hill than any other character in the series. And she was crying and tearful until she sees something the player doesn't, THEN she's perky. She could've seen Harry going to heaven, for all we know.
Now I know in all likelihood more down to poor writing than anything else. SH3 seemed to have the most one-dimensional characters and plot of any SH game I've played.
I'm taking that as a confession that you've never played Silent Hill 4 or Origins. ^_^
But, in trying to reconcile how it fits in game-world terms, even ignoring Shattered Memories, it always seemed a bit off to me and Heather's lack of humanity is a big part of that. But then the invention of Claudia always seemed to be drug paranoia made flesh to me, but that's another topic and one I'm sure is well worn here. I may well have discussed it back in the day.

On Heather and her humanity or lack of, I guess she's probably not altogether human anyway, given her origins. Unless you're going from Shattered Memories and working backwards.
I don't see what's so inhuman about Heather. Not every human who experiences tragic or traumatic events is a snivvelling wussy bitch.

You have to remember that she was raised by Harry MOTHERFUCKING Mason, biggest badass in the universe who took down a goddamn God and probably told her how to ninja-judo-omnislash bitches when she was seven.
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Post by Dogg Thang »

You know, I never quite saw Harry as Harry MOTHERFUCKING Mason, badass. He never seemed the type. Though, if he had an underground lair where he trained some sort of demon-hunting covert army, that might throw SH3 in a whole different light for me.

And, yes, I've played SH4 and Origins. Though I wasn't paying all that much attention when I played Origins... something about a trucker... and meat... no, can't quite remember.
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Post by Yuki »

Dogg Thang wrote:You know, I never quite saw Harry as Harry MOTHERFUCKING Mason, badass. He never seemed the type. Though, if he had an underground lair where he trained some sort of demon-hunting covert army, that might throw SH3 in a whole different light for me.

And, yes, I've played SH4 and Origins. Though I wasn't paying all that much attention when I played Origins... something about a trucker... and meat... no, can't quite remember.
Well, I think the point of "Harry MOTHERFUCKING Mason" is that he went through the hell that was Silent Hill AND escaped the Order multiple times, but still attempted to give Heather a normal life.
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