Emotionless James

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

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katanamaster40
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Emotionless James

Post by katanamaster40 »

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?
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Soulless-Shadow »

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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Pyramid Head15 »

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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Soulless-Shadow »

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. :(
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Uyrikeustek »

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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by AuraTwilight »

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

Post by Wolfus »

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 :D
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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Pyramid Head15 »

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

Post by Typographenia »

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

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Re: Emotionless James

Post by everfield »

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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by SilentWren »

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?!"
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Harrys_Girl »

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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Typographenia »

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.


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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.
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
One of the first clips I found was of Dr. Manhattan killing Rorschach, and I was really mad at how Zack Snyder handled it. In the comic, Night Owl stays inside the facility, but the movie had him chasing Rorschach outside to witness his death. He screams an overly dramatic "NOOOO!" letting the audience know that his death was a bad thing. I loved that the comic left it up to the viewer to decide which side of the biggest plot point in the book was right or wrong. Instead, Zack Snyder, in all his slow-down-speed-up-blue-screen glory told me which was which.
I decided I wasn't going to be watching the movie, afterwards.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by lain of the wired »

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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Miette »

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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by katanamaster40 »

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 :evil:
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by warfare315 »

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
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
killing his wife and then going crazy enough to forget it in just a matter of hours...could leave him a bit screwed up mentally haha. As the rest of the game certainly proves.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by alone in the town »

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!
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by Doctor Eggnog »

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.
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Re: Emotionless James

Post by RestlessxDreams3 »

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. :lol:
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