Heather is pretty tall

Heather finds out why it's true that you shouldn't talk to strangers. Or look in mirrors, quite honestly.

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Burning Man
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Heather is pretty tall

Post by Burning Man »

Heather stands at 190 cm in-game. That's like 6 foot 3. She wears high boots, but that would still make her 6 foot 2 or something.

Source: There's a water level depth marker drawn on a wall in one of the rooms in the sewer. It's the open area at the end of the hallway, where you fill in the Wine bottle with kerosene in an adjacent room. The marker starts at 0.5 towards the bottom and increments in 0.1 until it reaches 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3. The 3 is drawn in red.

The measure unit is clearly in meters. Might be an oversight by the developers as the States use inches and feet. When you place Heather against that marker, her height reaches the 1.9 mark making her 190 cm tall. Not sure what Harry fed her.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by Lifetolifeless »

As entertaining as it is to imagine Heather is 6'2", and what that means for the height of other characters, or the doorframes she walks through, I suspect that the far more likely scenario is that that marking itself is not 1:1 scale. Def not as fun though.


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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by The Adversary »

At 6’3, Heather is going to have a hard time on Tinder.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

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I don't put much stock in measurements/numbers in the games. Didn't the highway sign in SH2 place Brahms like 2000 miles away from Silent Hill?
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by The Adversary »

Droo wrote: 06 Mar 2022 I don't put much stock in measurements/numbers in the games. Didn't the highway sign in SH2 place Brahms like 2000 miles away from Silent Hill?
It says 265 miles to Brahms in the original release. I always just said 26.5 because that actually makes sense as "the next town over."

However, after watching some of the HD version, the signs clearly read

PALEVILLE 6
OLD SILENT HILL 6
BRAHMS 18


So it was definitely changed to be more appropriately distanced.

Heather still isn't 6'3, though.

*edit

The original release actually reads

PALEVILLE 10
OLD SILENT HILL 50
BRAHMS 265
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by Lifetolifeless »

The original release actually reads

PALEVILLE 10
OLD SILENT HILL 50
BRAHMS 265
I remember scratching my head back then, trying to come up with a real-world example of [town] vs. Old [town] being physically fifty miles apart. Yeah, seeing their subsequent touch-up to the values substantiates the idea of those original values having just been wack.


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Re: Heather is pretty tall

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Lifetolifeless wrote:seeing their subsequent touch-up to the values substantiates the idea of those original values having just been wack.
I can't say I'm a fan of these kinds of alterations even if its intention was well-meaning.

James proved to be an unreliable narrator so the sign didn't need to be altered for accuracy. The strangeness of the distance feels deliberate. I remember one of the developers giving the reason why James takes a long-winded road to Silent Hill, which was to demotivate players from going back. In this line of reasoning, James may have unconsciously not only placed a gate going to Nathan Avenue but also placed the next towns so far away that he removed any reason for himself to leave.

Heather is a fairly reliable narrator in comparison. The depth marker doesn't seem like it would change based on her unconsious fears or desires. I'd agree that it's a scaling issue, which would make it a technical oversight.

I do wonder if Ms. Morris' actual height is relevant to Heather's in-game height. It's hard to tell from the "Making of Silent Hill 3," but Ms. Morris' posture suggests that she might be taller than average.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by Droo »

Burning Man wrote: 26 Mar 2022
James proved to be an unreliable narrator so the sign didn't need to be altered for accuracy. The strangeness of the distance feels deliberate. I remember one of the developers giving the reason why James takes a long-winded road to Silent Hill, which was to demotivate players from going back. In this line of reasoning, James may have unconsciously not only placed a gate going to Nathan Avenue but also placed the next towns so far away that he removed any reason for himself to leave.
Perhaps. I always just chalked it up to them not having a good grasp on American landscape and mileage.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by The Adversary »

I forgot the Victim Files also indicate characters' heights, and, as such, according to this, Heather would be the same height as Walter Sullivan (6' 3), which I just don't see being likely. If I had to guess, I'd guess she's actually 5' 5, being your average teenage girl.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by Burning Man »

I totally forgot about that. However, Victim 11's info items were mostly listed as "Unknown" including height in the original Victim Files. "Theme of Murder" was the only known entry with "Assumption." The tallest victim listed was Jimmy Stone at 190 cm. So, Heather would be the same height as Jimmy, and taller than everybody else.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by The Adversary »

That's fair—I forgot that Walter's info was filled in by the translator(s).

I still say this is an oversight. I just can't imagine Heather being barely shorter than myself, especially at 17 years old. She should be playing volleyball, not hanging out at the mall.

The topic of character heights came up on Reddit, so I started looking into it more. There's nothing official for Harry or James, of course, though we can look at the standard door height in the U.S. (80"/6' 8) and get a fairly good estimate.

It looks like James is about 6' and Harry about the same, maybe a touch shorter.

I don't recall any specific measurement device in either game like in SILENT HILL 3, and I haven't watched a playthrough yet to see if Heather's extreme height can be validated by the doorways, but it's something to look into.

*edit : So I'm watching a playthrough of SILENT HILL 3 and Heather is definitely not 6' 3 based on standard door height. She looks more like 5' 3, possibly shorter. I also say this because I asked my 5' 3 friend to stand next to a door and she's about the same height as Heather.

*2nd edit : This is such a weird thing to be researching at this point.
Last edited by The Adversary on 12 Nov 2022, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by Burning Man »

I alluded to this in a previous post, but I wonder if there's a correlation between the characters and their voice actor/motion capture models.

Polygons can be scaled up-and-down, but I don't think they can scale it too much as their facial motions would get distorted. I don't know what Heather Morris' and Guy Cihi's heights actually are. Neither Morris nor Guy looks like they'd be short. She looks taller than Jeremy Blaustein.

Victims 16-21 were not part of the original Victim Files, by the way.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

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There's nothing official for Harry or James, of course, though we can look at the standard door height in the U.S. ( 80"/6' 8 ) and get a fairly good estimate.
Developers take quite a bit of liberty with empirical scale, for various reasons, so I wouldn't put too much stock in relative heights you can infer. I can take a closer look at SH2 at some point, but scale is all over the damn place in SH1.
Image

I don't think Harry is 4'7". Treating Harry as nearly 6' instead, this puts the doorway at a staggering 8'7"! haha


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Re: Heather is pretty tall

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Objects are often tweaked in scale and/or mass for gameplay purposes in games, even to this day.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by Droo »

Lifetolifeless wrote: 09 Nov 2022
There's nothing official for Harry or James, of course, though we can look at the standard door height in the U.S. ( 80"/6' 8 ) and get a fairly good estimate.
Developers take quite a bit of liberty with empirical scale, for various reasons, so I wouldn't put too much stock in relative heights you can infer. I can take a closer look at SH2 at some point, but scale is all over the damn place in SH1.
Image

I don't think Harry is 4'7". Treating Harry as nearly 6' instead, this puts the doorway at a staggering 8'7"! haha
Since Harry's experience of Silent Hill is based on Alessa's perceptions, that may be why things are so much larger than they should be. He's seeing these objects from the perspective of a 7-year-old child. Recall how ridiculously wide the streets are in SH1 compared to SH2 and onwards.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by Lifetolifeless »

Droo wrote: 09 Nov 2022
Lifetolifeless wrote: 09 Nov 2022
There's nothing official for Harry or James, of course, though we can look at the standard door height in the U.S. ( 80"/6' 8 ) and get a fairly good estimate.
Developers take quite a bit of liberty with empirical scale, for various reasons, so I wouldn't put too much stock in relative heights you can infer. I can take a closer look at SH2 at some point, but scale is all over the damn place in SH1.
Image

I don't think Harry is 4'7". Treating Harry as nearly 6' instead, this puts the doorway at a staggering 8'7"! haha
Since Harry's experience of Silent Hill is based on Alessa's perceptions, that may be why things are so much larger than they should be. He's seeing these objects from the perspective of a 7-year-old child. Recall how ridiculously wide the streets are in SH1 compared to SH2 and onwards.
Problem is, scale varies wildly in both directions. Depending on what you're comparing to, Harry can be either a GIANT, or very short, or anywhere in between. Like others have keyed, this is common throughout the series, and throughout games in general. Devs just need things to size up in particular ways, and consistency with empirical sizes isn't as important (or easily noticeable).

Points for creative interpretation though!


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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by The Adversary »

>Victims 16-21 were not part of the original Victim Files, by the way.<
I thought they were but the information wasn't complete. I may be misremembering, of course.

>Developers take quite a bit of liberty with empirical scale, for various reasons, so I wouldn't put too much stock in relative heights you can infer.<
That's fair, though other doors around town look more like your standard 80" door, with Harry being around 6'. Café 5-to-2, for example. I also wouldn't put it past some doors, especially in Nowhere, as being larger.

Clearly this isn't en exact science. I do think most character heights can be extrapolated by real-life objects in comparison to their models, it's just a matter of the willingness to do it. Which apparently I am semi-willing to do it, so there's that.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

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I think James and Harry being the same height would technically be correct as they reused James' model for Harry in SH3.

I just remembered the unused photo of Heather and Harry at a Christmas party.

Image

Assuming they're both standing on a level plane, it looks like Heather might be shorter than Harry by 2-3 inches...? Making Heather... 5' 9, 5' 10?

EDIT: Of course, this could be Heather at age 16 and she had growth spurt at 17. So, yeah, 6' 3.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

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^I forgot about that photo. Very interesting. So either Harry is of short stature or Heather is wearing high heels for that occasion.

... Or the developers just wanted both faces to fit nicely into a rectangular picture frame.
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Re: Heather is pretty tall

Post by The Adversary »

Well I dove a little more into this topic with Travis, with him specifically standing outside Andy's Bookstore.

Based, again, on the standard 80" doorway, he measures right around 5' 10, which I think is a pretty accurate representation.

I'm checking other doorways around the town with him next to them to see if there's consistency, at least.

*edit: There isn't. The General Store up the street has a massive doorway, suggesting he's more like 5' 0. Whereas the back door is closer to Andy's Bookstore's height, so, maybe the General Store's front entrance is an anomaly, like say a CVS or Walgreens here in the U.S. And the entrance to Riverside Motel is also the same as Andy's Bookstore, so I suppose there is some consistency.
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