A True Ending of Silent Hill 2, & Why

[Disrupticon]

I've thought extensively about the possibility of a loops myself, and while it's interesting to think about from a purely granular perspective I'm not sure I can buy into it (if we're not taking Downpour into account).

Conventional wisdom says that time loop stories usually revolve around their characters having to either resolve personal crises through incrementally accumulated knowledge that they then use to untether themselves from the loop, or searching out/using some kind of McGuffin to free themselves.

There are occasionally exceptions... The Endless, a film by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead features various characters stuck in their own spatial time loops, each of varying lengths - sometimes a couple of seconds, sometimes days, but their clocks always reset at some point. It's a pretty existentially grim proposition, but the issue is that the plot still revolves around our two main characters managing to escape the temporal anomoly that surrounds the compound before they end up stuck in their own loop.

Where I'm going with this, while certainly horrifying on a vague, abstract, cosmic scale - the prospect of James being caught in a loop doesn't really pass the "so what?" test for me. If anything it kind of neuters each of the four main endings for me, because instead of four different versions of James entering town each with their own motivations, goals, and end points - it's the same James entering town with a random grab bag of possible endpoints - but the requirements needed to reach those endpoints effectively meanng nothing. So in one loop, James may give in to his latent desire for Maria and sets a new course with her at his side, but in another loop he ends up at the bottom of Lake Toluca, only for him to leave with Laura in the next loop, and then try and resurrect Mary's deceased corpse in the next one. Nothing about that idea feels particularly motivated to me from a storytelling perspective.

I also like to avoid explanations for the town that revolve around the supernatural power exacting some kind of moral judgement over those who visit it, and as mentioned previously - most time loop stories revolve around the resolution of personal crisies for their characters. We know that James felt an unconscious desire for punishment, but I don't think the same can be said for Eddie, Angela or Laura. So are Eddie, Angela, and Laura stuck in their own loops too, and why are Laura and Angela stuck in theirs? Next to Mary they're arguably two of the most blameless and tragic characters in the game.

Looking at it holistically - I do think on a purely metatextual level, whether you end up with the Rebirth or Maria endings, James is doomed to repeat his last few years that he experienced with Mary - thus being stuck in a "loop" of some sort - but the metaphysics of an actual time loop I feel cheapen Silent Hill 2 thematically quite a bit.

[Utherworld]

I've thought extensively about the possibility of a loops myself, and while it's interesting to think about from a purely granular perspective I'm not sure I can buy into it (if we're not taking Downpour into account).

Conventional wisdom says that time loop stories usually revolve around their characters having to either resolve personal crises through incrementally accumulated knowledge that they then use to untether themselves from the loop, or searching out/using some kind of McGuffin to free themselves.

There are occasionally exceptions... The Endless, a film by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead features various characters stuck in their own spatial time loops, each of varying lengths - sometimes a couple of seconds, sometimes days, but their clocks always reset at some point. It's a pretty existentially grim proposition, but the issue is that the plot still revolves around our two main characters managing to escape the temporal anomoly that surrounds the compound before they end up stuck in their own loop.

Where I'm going with this, while certainly horrifying on a vague, abstract, cosmic scale - the prospect of James being caught in a loop doesn't really pass the "so what?" test for me. If anything it kind of neuters each of the four main endings for me, because instead of four different versions of James entering town each with their own motivations, goals, and end points - it's the same James entering town with a random grab bag of possible endpoints - but the requirements needed to reach those endpoints effectively meanng nothing. So in one loop, James may give in to his latent desire for Maria and sets a new course with her at his side, but in another loop he ends up at the bottom of Lake Toluca, only for him to leave with Laura in the next loop, and then try and resurrect Mary's deceased corpse in the next one. Nothing about that idea feels particularly motivated to me from a storytelling perspective.

I also like to avoid explanations for the town that revolve around the supernatural power exacting some kind of moral judgement over those who visit it, and as mentioned previously - most time loop stories revolve around the resolution of personal crisies for their characters. We know that James felt an unconscious desire for punishment, but I don't think the same can be said for Eddie, Angela or Laura. So are Eddie, Angela, and Laura stuck in their own loops too, and why are Laura and Angela stuck in theirs? Next to Mary they're arguably two of the most blameless and tragic characters in the game.

Looking at it holistically - I do think on a purely metatextual level, whether you end up with the Rebirth or Maria endings, James is doomed to repeat his last few years that he experienced with Mary - thus being stuck in a "loop" of some sort - but the metaphysics of an actual time loop I feel cheapen Silent Hill 2 thematically quite a bit.

As far as Eddie and Angela, IMO their fates are already set. IMO that is exactly why James meets them in the first place, as seen here in my own theory.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27118&p=702071#p702071

The towns power calls to those with guilt:
BoLM quote:
“Calling
Those who have guilt are summoned
Due to the appearance of the otherworld on a massive scale in the first game, the town has come to be a place that calls those who hold a profound darkness in their hearts. It seems that people with afflicted minds are easily drawn to the otherworld.”

So Eddie, Angela, Maria and to a lesser degree Laura become catalysts for James’ journey to find out what kind of person he is.
Will he embrace being a killer?
Will he end his own life?
Will he be with Maria and fall deeper into his own delusion?
Will he become completely lost and try to resurrect Mary?

I don’t believe the town is passing judgment at all, as Misty Day remains of Judgement is James judging himself IMO. James does not kill PH, he kills himself when James accepts the truth.

Eddie and Angela have guilt, but they simply arrive at their demise because of their reasons for being called. Their stories are a lot more black and white whereas James’ is as grey as it gets. I believe that whatever happens to James is entirely up to James himself.

To me, “loops” as we call them may only exist in certain endings. In Water and Leave seem to close things out, but the Maria ending, and Rebirth prop up the “loop theory” because James makes the choice to live in his delusions.

[Disrupticon]

You seem to be disagreeing but then just stating what I've already wrote.

I was actually going to reply to your topic but I had a hard time parsing through your ideas. With what I could parse, you seem to be framing every ending of the game and juxtaposing them against a different character - which is all well and good but you're going to have a very hard time squaring that against Eddie. Maybe, if you squint really hard, you could maybe juxtapose the Rebirth ending against Eddie giving into his persecutory delusions but that's not exactly a neat fit there either, given that Rebirth has more in common with the Maria ending than anything else.

We end up with the item to help trigger one of the endings through one character to be sure- Angela, but for your theory to fully work, that would have to be the same for the other characters. It is not not. For the other endings, you either have to collect a set of items that exist irrespective of of the other characters, or fulfil a set of criteria that also exist regardless of the other characters.

Okay, going to try and reply to this bit-by-bit.

Will he embrace being a killer?

There is no evidence that James is (or becomes) some bloodthirsty killer at any point in the story. And to reduce James' killing of Mary to some cold blooded revenge fantasy like we see happen with Eddie is not a factual reflection of why he did it. The Leave ending is James shedding his delusions and moving on with his life. Eddie's end happens when he gives into his and thus needs to be subdued by James - we see no such scenario play out with James himself. To presumably try and juxtapose one ending with Eddie because James "embraces being a killer" is more than a little bit of a reach.

Will he end his own life?

It's likely James already "...came to the town to take his life in a place of memories." (Lost Memories). That's when he invents the letter, which sets him on his course through town. James obviously displays a fair bit of denial towards Angela's assertion that "you're the same as me" - and he may be right about that. Whether he eventually ends his own life or not depends on if he's able to shed his delusions or not - but Angela has no such delusions to shed. She's trying to find her estranged mother in town, and shows several signs of being severely traumatized - and even seems accutely aware of what caused that trauma, even if she's less than open with James about why that is at first.

Of course, she's the one (alive) character that we get an item from that we can use to trigger one of the endings, but there's other criteria that need to be satisfied and there's there's no evidence that she's repressed anything like James has.

Will he be with Maria and fall deeper into his own delusion?
Will he become completely lost and try to resurrect Mary?

So the Rebirth and Maria endings are associated with Mary and Maria to be sure, and it can certainly be speculated that any success with the ritual in the Rebirth ending would probably just be James manifesting yet another simulacrum of Mary to occupy the gap in his mental space with. In the Maria ending, there are no items required to trigger this IIRC, you simply have to pay plenty of attention to Maria, make sure she's doesn't incur much damage, and spend most of your time tending to her.

To wit, I do not believe the four endings are specifically intended to symbolize each of the characters James meets along the way, it's too messy and you have to do too much mental short-circuitry required to make it work. Certain endings are more strongly associated with some characters than others (such as Leave, with Laura) - but to say that Eddie's fate, for example, foreshadows James' in one of the four endings doesn't map over them very well at all.

To try and juxtapose the endings against each character, but then say that "whatever happens to James is entirely up to James himself" is a bit of a contradiction here. To try and cap this off, whenever Eddie and Angela say that James is "the same as [them]", it's imperative to remember they're trying to justify their thoughts and actions to themselves as much as they are to James. We're dealing with people that aren't entirely mentally sound here - Eddie is now at the height of his delusion and truly doesn't believe he's doing anything wrong anymore, and Angela has more or less just given up by the time we reach the staircase scene.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but this very much sounds like a case of something sounding better in your head than on paper.

[Utherworld]

You seem to be disagreeing but then just stating what I've already wrote.

I was actually going to reply to your topic but I had a hard time parsing through your ideas. With what I could parse, you seem to be framing every ending of the game and juxtaposing them against a different character - which is all well and good but you're going to have a very hard time squaring that against Eddie. Maybe, if you squint really hard, you could maybe juxtapose the Rebirth ending against Eddie giving into his persecutory delusions but that's not exactly a neat fit there either, given that Rebirth has more in common with the Maria ending than anything else.

We end up with the item to help trigger one of the endings through one character to be sure- Angela, but for your theory to fully work, that would have to be the same for the other characters. It is not not. For the other endings, you either have to collect a set of items that exist irrespective of of the other characters, or fulfil a set of criteria that also exist regardless of the other characters.

Okay, going to try and reply to this bit-by-bit.

Will he embrace being a killer?

There is no evidence that James is (or becomes) some bloodthirsty killer at any point in the story. And to reduce James' killing of Mary to some cold blooded revenge fantasy like we see happen with Eddie is not a factual reflection of why he did it. The Leave ending is James shedding his delusions and moving on with his life. Eddie's end happens when he gives into his and thus needs to be subdued by James - we see no such scenario play out with James himself. To presumably try and juxtapose one ending with Eddie because James "embraces being a killer" is more than a little bit of a reach.

Thanks for taking the time to read my theory. I’ll try my best to make my answers as clear as possible. I am simply pointing out why the town ensures James’ path intersects with these particular characters. I will start with the above. I am in no way suggesting that James is a bloodthirsty killer. But, as Laura accuses, James does not deny that he is a killer. See below after watching the video tape where the truth is revealed:
Laura: She... she died 'cause she was sick?
James: No. I killed her.
Laura: You killer! Why'd you do it'! I hate you!! I want her back! Give her back to me! I knew it! You didn't care about her! I hate you, James! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! She was always waiting for you... why... why...
We watch Eddie turn into a killer after we meet him multiple times. Eddie continually denies that he has just killed someone in the apartments and the prison in the same way James subconsciously denies he killed Mary, saying she died 3 years ago. The parallels between the characters are abundantly clear. In the Maria ending James killed Mary because he hated her. He accepts he killed Mary and the reason for Maria’s existence. Just as James mirrors Angela in the In Water ending, he does the same with Eddie in the Maria ending.

Will he end his own life?
It's likely James already "...came to the town to take his life in a place of memories." (Lost Memories). That's when he invents the letter, which sets him on his course through town. James obviously displays a fair bit of denial towards Angela's assertion that "you're the same as me" - and he may be right about that. Whether he eventually ends his own life or not depends on if he's able to shed his delusions or not - but Angela has no such delusions to shed. She's trying to find her estranged mother in town, and shows several signs of being severely traumatized - and even seems accutely aware of what caused that trauma, even if she's less than open with James about why that is at first.

Of course, she's the one (alive) character that we get an item from that we can use to trigger one of the endings, but there's other criteria that need to be satisfied and there's there's no evidence that she's repressed anything like James has.

I agree with you for the most part here, although Angela mistaking James for her mother is a massive hint that she is repressing the fact that the very person who should have cared for and protected her does not exist the way a mother should. In the same way James should have been the very person who should have cared for and protected Mary and failed. Exactly why the below back and forth happens on the staircase.
Angela: Or maybe you think you can save me? Will you love me? Take care of me? Heal all my pain?
Angela: That's what I thought.
Angela is very aware that James failed to take care of Mary, seen in the back and forth after the Abstract Daddy boss battle.
Angela: You said your wife Mary was dead, right!?!?!
James: Yes, she was ill...
Angela: Liar! I know about you.... You didn't want her around anymore. You probably found someone else.

Will he be with Maria and fall deeper into his own delusion?
Will he become completely lost and try to resurrect Mary?

So the Rebirth and Maria endings are associated with Mary and Maria to be sure, and it can certainly be speculated that any success with the ritual in the Rebirth ending would probably just be James manifesting yet another simulacrum of Mary to occupy the gap in his mental space with. In the Maria ending, there are no items required to trigger this IIRC, you simply have to pay plenty of attention to Maria, make sure she's doesn't incur much damage, and spend most of your time tending to her.

To wit, I do not believe the four endings are specifically intended to symbolize each of the characters James meets along the way, it's too messy and you have to do too much mental short-circuitry required to make it work. Certain endings are more strongly associated with some characters than others (such as Leave, with Laura) - but to say that Eddie's fate, for example, foreshadows James' in one of the four endings doesn't map over them very well at all.

To try and juxtapose the endings against each character, but then say that "whatever happens to James is entirely up to James himself" is a bit of a contradiction here. To try and cap this off, whenever Eddie and Angela say that James is "the same as [them]", it's imperative to remember they're trying to justify their thoughts and actions to themselves as much as they are to James. We're dealing with people that aren't entirely mentally sound here - Eddie is now at the height of his delusion and truly doesn't believe he's doing anything wrong anymore, and Angela has more or less just given up by the time we reach the staircase scene.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but this very much sounds like a case of something sounding better in your head than on paper.

LOL, everything sounds better in my head….

It is abundantly clear that James will only arrive at a handful of choices as there are only a handful of endings. So, me saying that James “chooses” is obviously what happens to him inside of a vacuum so to speak. I am not suggesting endings symbolize characters, I believe they are tied to them. James meets them to find out what type of person he is.
Foreshadowing is not the correct terminology. Mirrors are a constant theme in the game. James is looking into one at the start of the game and the Angela apartment scene is a massive indicator. Mirroring is the behavior in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. Which is exactly why James meets the people he does and does not meet any others called to town.

[Disrupticon]

So, I've thought over it a lot and I'm doing my best to be as generous as possible to your interpretation. But to put it gently I think you're getting wildly confused here.

With regards to your point:

I am not suggesting endings symbolize characters, I believe they are tied to them.

You seem to be trying to create a distinction without a difference here.

I really think you need to go back and either rework this theory (or just discard it entirely - it happens to the best of us, there's no shame in going back and reassessing somewhat hastily thought out ideas). You're tangling yourself up into an idea spagetti, particularly at one point by trying to force Eddie's character to match with that of the Maria ending - which feels like a gigantic reach to me.

There's no circumstance at all in the game where Maria and Eddie interact, and Eddie has no bearing on any of the endings. You do not acquire any of the items or conditions needed to satisfy getting the Maria ending from Eddie. Eddie does not die due his glutonous or hedonistic nature - he dies because his persecutory delusions lead him to believe James is just shrugging him off and quietly laughing at him like everyone else in his life.

There's a reason James, Eddie, and Angela are specifically framed as a triad in the game, and that's because taking one out to try and contrast with another leaves you wothout the whole picture. While Silent Hill certainly is not some cosmic magistrate with a will of its own, but the common thread between these three characters is that they either feel like they're being judged, or need to be judged. The game is a thematic exploration of the different forms that judgement can take - whether it be in the form of residual familial trauma, feelings of persecution (whether justified or not), or long term repressed guilt. Eddie and Angela simply serve as alternative narrative devices for how different forms of judgement and guilt manifest themselves in people. That's literally it.

Eddie is not hiding anything from himself like James is - he knows full well what he's done and doesn't want to face the concequences because he's felt judged in other ways all his life. James has fully repressed what he's done like he'd repressed his resentment towards Mary. And lastly, Angela is seeking out her mother because she requires absolution from her after murdering her father and brother - despite her mother never granting her that, and by all indications intentionally abandoned Angela to the other Orosco family members.

In closing, I mean yeah... of course the other two characters in the triad exist to reveal certain characteristics about James - because that's basic storytelling 101. Characters in fiction fundamentally exist to reveal certain characteristics about their protagonists and vice versa. Angela and Eddie call out certain characteristics about James and know more than they're letting on. I'm not disputing their role as foil characters for James. But I think you're getting lost in the weeds a bit here when you start trying to connect Eddie to the Maria ending and other ideas like that. And while James seems to have a little bit of a misplaced savior complex that causes some dysfunction between the two other characters - each of the different endings are based on a certain course of action that James takes himself, and only by himself - given that he's the playable character.

Your latent point about Silent Hill 2 ultimately being about relationships - how understandings and misunderstandings happen - how we judge ourselves/are judged by others - and what that reveals about us has merit, but I can't help but like you're going about it in all the wrong way.

Once again, I'm not trying to talk down to you or stifle your ideas - just suggesting that maybe you're getting a little bit ahead of yourself. When theorizing, it's always worth slowing down and wondering "is this internally consistent, or am I stretching the limits of credulity here?".

[Utherworld]

I will move this conversation to the actual thread where it belongs.

[Disrupticon]

A further point about the idea that James is stuck in a loop - if this is to be the case then the interplay between Pyramid Head and Maria is made completely redundant. There's no reason for them to exist if he just starts from the beginning again for no reason.

Every ending save for the Bliss ending of the remake and the obvious joke endings result in him breaking his delusion of what he did to Mary. It's just how he handles that knowledge that varies across the endings. Either he accepts what he's done and moves on with his life, is destroyed by the knowledge and takes the only way out he sees for himself, or decides that some kind of surrogate for Mary is infinitely preferable to being alone. He knows what he's done - it's not that he fails in his mission to remember that in each of the outcomes, it's that in most of the outcomes he fails to be able to forgive himself and move on with his life.

Not to mention the removal of any real stake in the story if he's just reliving the same events over and over apropos of nothing.

It's one of those ideas that sounds deeper on its surface than it actually is, but falls to pieces rather quickly when it's thought about for more than 5 minutes.

[alone in the town]

Can't agree with the last. There are plenty of stories in which the outcome, for the protagonist, is bleak and unsatisfying. But, while the story is about James, the story is for the player.

What is our real stake in this story, anyway? It turns out that we are given one, right away, in the form of James' mission to figure out why is dead wife is writing him a letter. In the end, it is revealed that this stake, both for James and for the player, is actually fraudulent (though, naturally, we might suspect this from the beginning). It therefore follows that the game can do this to us, more than once. Why does James' story necessarily have to result in some kind of progression for him, as a character? The notion of hell being a personal realm of suffering has always existed alongside the notion that this suffering is endless, repetitive, and ultimately meaningless to the penitent. Which, naturally, makes Pyramid Head and Maria make perfect sense. They exist to make him suffer and doubt. That's happening, regardless of whether it happens once or a million times.

It makes nothing meaningless for us, however, as we, the player do not necessarily need the same thing James needs. His endless, cyclical suffering can tell us a lot, teach us a lot, even if it's just senseless agony for the protagonist. For that matter, since one of the core themes of this game is suffering and grief, and since we can all accept the outcome of James never coming to grips with his suffering and grief, I see nothing thematically inappropriate about the idea that his suffering begins anew the moment he thinks it's finally over.

"You might be going to a different place than Mary, James".

[Utherworld]

I am more inclined to believe that James reliving this nightmare repeatedly has more to do with certain endings he gets. It has more to do with "why" he killed Mary.

I exclude UFO and Dog ending here.

Stillness, Leave and In Water seem to close things out for James. As the "why" he killed Mary seems full circle in all instances.

But with the Maria, Bliss, and Rebirth endings, they give us a sense that James will have to endure another run through Silent Hill.

In all endings, there are many different reasons James expresses on why he did what he did. But one particular reason has more weight than others depending on the ending.

In the endings where things are left unresolved, as far as his own guilt, repression etc, he'll have to relive things again and again if he hasn't garnered a better understanding of himself and his actions....

[Disrupticon]

Apologies in advance for the length of this post but it required quite a lot of unpacking.

Can't agree with the last. There are plenty of stories in which the outcome, for the protagonist, is bleak and unsatisfying. But, while the story is about James, the story is for the player.

What is our real stake in this story, anyway? It turns out that we are given one, right away, in the form of James' mission to figure out why is dead wife is writing him a letter. In the end, it is revealed that this stake, both for James and for the player, is actually fraudulent (though, naturally, we might suspect this from the beginning).

Just because the initial parameters of James' mission aren't what they initially appear to be doesn't mean that James isn't working towards an eventual endpoint.

I'm perfectly fine with bleak and unsatisfying endings and am no stranger to uncertainty - I just don't think it fits - especially since we're given so much resolution and payoff over the course of the story anyways.

It therefore follows that the game can do this to us, more than once.

Because we're playing a game. Personally the looping idea works better for me in the context it's almost certainly intended to be, as a fun metanarrative device pointing the finger at the player for taking James on the same journey over and over.

Why does James' story necessarily have to result in some kind of progression for him, as a character?

Because that's exactly what stories are. That's exactly what each of the endings are...

Ryan, perhaps this is simply poor wording on your part but you're better and smarter than this. The story results in progression for each of the other characters - Laura, Eddie, Angela, even Maria. Even if the results are less than desirable or positive for some of these characters, their stories are still fundamentally progressed because the basic tenets of storytelling require them to be.

The same is true for James. He starts out looking for his wife who he believes to have been dead for 3 years, meets various characters along the way that externalize exactly what he's experiencing and to prompt the player that they may be experiencing something similar as well - albeit in different forms, before an esoteric truth is finally uncovered and James reaches the end of his journey. But in each one of these endings (save for the Bliss ending), the result is the same, he uncovers the truth regardless of whether he commits himself to the bottom of Lake Toluca or leaves town with Laura/Maria.

At the micro level, the same happens with Eddie and Angela. While Eddie sinks further into his persecutory delusions, he has enough awareness to know that he is there for a reason. With Angela, her story ends with the realization that the mother she's looking for not only isn't in town anymore - but won't grant her the absolution she's looking for. These are still stories with the same basic building blocks even if we may not see everything that happened to them in the interim - if you look, you see a clear structure from exposition-inciting incident-rising action-climax-falling action-resolution.

The notion of hell being a personal realm of suffering has always existed alongside the notion that this suffering is endless, repetitive, and ultimately meaningless to the penitent. Which, naturally, makes Pyramid Head and Maria make perfect sense. They exist to make him suffer and doubt. That's happening, regardless of whether it happens once or a million times.

They don't exist to make him suffer needlessly, devoid of any context in the story. They exist chiefly to remind him of what he did. Their purpose is the interplay between the memory of what James has done, and his suppression of it. There would be no reason for Pyramid Head to be killing Maria over and over if James is just going to start out as a blank slate again anyways after finally understanding what purpose they serve, literally none.

I also reject the limitations inherent in the popular assumption that Silent Hill is a personal "hell", or some kind of cosmic magistrate with an outdated moral code, even if it appears that way on the surface. I think the stories makes it pretty plain that the spiritual power of the town is simply reacting to the psyches of the people ensnared by it.

"...furthermore, he is happy there".

James wants judgement? Farm-to-table judgement coming right up.

Eddie wanted revenge? Here's a legion of bullies made-to-order for him to take out his delusions on, but any relief from this torment will have to come from inside of himself (again, this isn't the same as the town doling out punishment).

Angela wants absolution? Here's the visage of her mother to give it her but it may not be exactly what she wants - and that absolution will be fleeting.

It's by that measure, if you accept that the events are all looping and nothing in the story actually means anything - there's no purpose to at least two of the endings, all of them really, but primarily the endings where he gets to leave town. There's no purpose in the story for James to uncover what he did because it won't matter in the end anyways, and the story just becomes a spooky series of vignettes completely divorced from any kind of narrative fabric. I will not accept explanations that require me to devalue a story like that to accept them.

As it stands now "James is in a timeloop" is no more valuable an explanation to me than saying any other story in existence exists in a timeloop simply because they can be observed again by the consumer.

It makes nothing meaningless for us, however, as we, the player do not necessarily need the same thing James needs. His endless, cyclical suffering can tell us a lot, teach us a lot, even if it's just senseless agony for the protagonist. For that matter, since one of the core themes of this game is suffering and grief, and since we can all accept the outcome of James never coming to grips with his suffering and grief, I see nothing thematically inappropriate about the idea that his suffering begins anew the moment he thinks it's finally over.

A story can certainly comment on the cyclical nature of grief and suffering without actually placing the characters in an endless loop (we accept that time loop stories are usually stand ins for something else in the character's lives, but stories can communicate these emotions in other ways, too). And I'd also disagree heavily that the player's goals aren't the same as James'. We're placed in his shoes for a reason and uncover knowledge as he does. The gameplay goals and James' goals are directly alligned.

"You might be going to a different place than Mary, James".

This could just as easily be attributable as James' judgement of himself. This is during the lowest point in his journey, Maria is dead, Laura is missing again, and he has no directive to speak of other than the vague hint of something in the park for him to find.

In psychology and other social sciences, there's a device that is well known as the Just-So Story. This is when a claim is offered that's by its nature fundamentally untestable and unverifiable when no other satisfactory explanation exists. It can't be enough for some people that the developers of the remake added in a cheeky meta narrative puzzle for players to unravel on their own, and that the various corpses found around town are simply projections, with the accompanying notes beind from other people that have experienced such phemonema.

But don't question why these corpses no longer appear outside of interactions with Eddie as soon as the game stops tutorializing you. (SHHHHHHH!!!!! Stop asking questions!)

It just has to be that James is stuck in a time loop... for... reasons...

To conclude, the theory doesn't satisfy me...

I think it's bad theorycraft that only offers up empty narrative calories by more or less making the revelations that happen within it meaningless. It holds about as much value to me as the idea that Dahlia is an alien robot ("because you can't prove she's not!"). I can accept a tale is about the cyclical nature of grief without having to accept a premise based on a metanarrative device introduced by the developers of a later remake (this isn't a knock on Bloober, I think that was a stroke of genius on their part) as proof of a theory that already had rather flimsy legs 20 years ago.

It's fundamentally no different from arguing that the other characters are manifestations ("you can't prove that they aren't").

I can't stop people from accepting it themselves - another wonderful meta-aspect to the story is that not only do the characters bring what they have to the table - but so does the player. But that also doesn't mean I personally have to find every explanation satisfying, I'm not an evangelist by nature but I also require tighter criteria for ideas than simple wishcasting.

I can accept that that if there's anyone stuck in a time loop - it's the player. This is a rather dense narrative that takes multiple playthroughs to really unpack and that's why it endures. It took me a good number of years to realize the game is administering you a series of empathy tests based on its puzzle structure and the way the various endings play out - and how that plays into James, Eddie's, and Angela's journey. And while again, I reject the idea that the town is actively punishing these characters - the game is asking you (both literally through its puzzle solving initiatives, and figuratively through the stories of its three chief protagonists) to weigh the crimes of the condemned. It actively challenges you, the player, to ask who is more worthy of redemption (or question if redemption is even a worthwhile concept at all).

That to me is far more compelling than "oh, the characters are repeating the same events over and over, and it's also inescapable, just becausue". And while James' and the player's goals are directly alligned, you also act as a joror for James, Eddie, and Angela and it's up to you to decide who is more worthy of your sympathy. And that cuts to the heart of the matter of why I can't accept that the characters are just in a timeloop that's never explained - a lot of the empathy tests we're administered - and the judgement we're offered to hand down carry an expectation of finality to them. You can fail some of the puzzles and have to try again, but there's ultimately no unringing that bell once it's been rung.

Spoiler ahead, you'd mentioned when we last spoke on Facebook that you were only at Brookhaven, so I'm unsure if you've managed to finish or not.
That's part of what makes the hangman's puzzle in the remake's prison area such a disturbing one - you're told that two people are innocent and yet you need to condemn one of them to death regardless.

The game has just as much thematic resonance with the concept of finality as it does with the cyclical nature of being, in my opinion.

And with that, this has gone on far too long, so I won't labor the point any further.

[alone in the town]

I feel like a very, very important point got lost along the way, but the looping repetition of events is not pointless or meaningless, within the context of the thread we are discussing: A True ending of Silent Hill 2. To recap, James repeats his experience, potentially ad infinitum, potentially not, because whatever he believes his goals to be, he has another purpose for being here that is not his own, which is, to perform a ritual related to the local menagerie of gods (or whatever they are). The presence of a time loop (which is really more a loop of events repeating, and not actual spacetime hijinx) is to ensure that, given enough chances, James will eventually absorb enough knowledge of the local lore, as well as successfully find all the required items for the ritual of Holy Assumption, and put them to their intended use. James does this because he's crazy, desperate, and just wants his wife back. He's also doing it because the powers that be (whatever they are) are subtly guiding him towards doing it, entirely for their own reasons. My speculation is that, in performing this ritual, James inadvertently revives the local pantheon (or whatever it is) after it had been rendered dormant after the events of Silent Hill 1, and in doing so, sets the stage for all the events in the series canon which chronologically follow. In other words, Rebirth would, in this case, be the "canon" ending, because it is the tangible thread connecting the game to the quasi-supernatural character that the series had both before and ever since. And, it's possible that the Rebirth ending breaks this series of events for James! But, also, possible that it doesn't.

Now, you can agree that any of it means any of the things I think I do, but I am certainly not describing something that is empty of meaning or bereft of bigger connections. Nor did the remake in any sense inspire my thoughts on the subject.

I do have one other comment to make:

Because that's exactly what stories are. That's exactly what each of the endings are...

In Silent Hill 2, I would argue that we are witnessing the very end of James' story, and that what takes place between the start of the game and the ending of the game is, to a large degree, a long process of selecting an ending for a story that has largely already taken place before the game itself begins. The backstory provides all of the context which makes the game events matter. Throughout most of Silent Hill 2, we don't really know anything about James or Mary, or their relationship, beyond the fragmentary and questionably-credible things he himself volunteers on the subject. The backstory is revealed throughout, mostly near the very end, and it is through this means that we witness James progress from a happy husband, through the years of Mary's illness and his own weaknesses and shame, to a broken, desperate man who is now enduring a terrifying nightmare that doesn't seem to make sense or possess greater context to us. The game, itself, is largely a process of concluding this tragic story, from the moment we press any button to start. In this sense, we, the player, are not here to witness James undergo some profound transformation, but to guide and influence him along the path to one of several conclusions, as we learn about all the things that really did and did not happen before we pressed start to play.

In this sense, James' progress as a character is a mystery we uncover, not a transformation we witness in real time. At least in the original game, the ultimate outcome for James is still potentially up in the air even after the Big Reveal tells us all the hard, ugly truth about why Mary actually died.

Each of the three primary endings (again, I can't speak credibly about new endings) is beautiful, possible, and can conclude the adventure in a satisfying way with no time loops. But, if we are asking ourselves, which ending is most relevant to the canon of the series of which it is the most famous entry? It's the Rebirth ending, and James definitely goes through that entire experience at least twice in this situation. An event loop is, essentially, confirmed right here. It might not need to happen more than twice, if James magically collects all the items he needs the first time. Since I personally failed twice to collect the items before succeeding, I deem it credible that James relives this as many times as he has to, in order to get it right.

[Utherworld]

Apologies here, lurking and enjoying this conversation....

A couple of questions alone in the town.

1. If James is called because of his guilt, how can the town's power have an "ulterior motive" for his presence? ie: Ritual of Holy Assumption.
2. For this thread, are you suggesting that the purpose behind what is happening in Silent Hill 2 is ultimately about what the town's power wants from James instead of enduring his own personal metaphysical journey?

[alone in the town]

1. This is speculation on my part, but I believe that there isn't a motive per se, nor do I believe that the 'power' of the town is something that has agency or goals that we would relate to. I think of it more as an inexplicable natural phenomenon which has taken on a sort of form thanks to the generations of local religious loonies forming a religion based upon their experience with the phenomenon, and after centuries, it has absorbed these elements by some means. I don't believe there are actual gods or anything like that pulling strings.

2. I think James has his own reasons and goals, as do each of the other characters, he is serving both purposes in doing the things he does.

[Disrupticon]

To get back on topic, while I certainly appreciate the willingness to fly the flag for the Rebirth Ending - as it always felt like the most throwaway (probably a poor word, but rather 'obscure') ending of the main 4 for me, I had difficulty in accepting it as a default state for the story.

While a man coming to Silent Hill to find his dead wife, being driven mad by the revelation that he killed her, and trying to commune with the old gods of the town to bring her back is a delightfully morbid endpoint for the story, and gives the whole story a Machen-esque flair - I have a hard time accepting it as a default. It feels like a much less intuitive version of the Maria ending, in which he's still trying to summon a surrogate for Mary because he can't bear the thought of being alone - but he's doing it in a vastly more convoluted manner than simply his unconscious mind conjuring another Jungian shadow of Mary. It (mechanically, not thematically) almost feels like the Good+ ending of Silent Hill 1 in that sense because it's so wildly convoluted from a gameplay perspective.

This doesn't mean I'm doubting its validity as an ending at all, mind you.

I suppose it's my hangup around every ending but Leave feeling like a sort of fail state for James. The game revolves heavily around the interplay between Eros and Thanatos and while you can certainly make a strong case for Rebirth fitting into this - Leave feels more appropriate as a critical path for James in my opinion.

Edit: I'd like to add a point that in the remake, the Rebirth ending is given a rather compelling new dimension, because the island that The Lady of The Light was banished to could very well be the same island the Rebirth ending occurs at. There's no airtight proof of it as far as I know - but from a thematic lens it certainly makes sense.