Why does she have no eyebrows?

Are there any Silent Hill books that are pure lore to read?

The shit that goes on in (and around) SH is a "neutral force", so to speak.
What people see is a mix of themselves, the history of the locations they find themselves in, and the intent and nature of the people they meet.

So if you meet a normal person while you're tripping balls they might appear normal, or might appear like a monster.
Sometimes you'll be beating the shit out of someone or simply whacking on delusions that aren't actually real (but they're real enough in that specific moment to kill you).
It depends on a number of factors.

Basically Vincent went "it's a joke" because it's too complicated and long to explain everything to Heather, additionally he needed her to stay resolute to dispose of Claudia at that point in time.
On top of all that, he didn't know how everything worked quite clearly himself.
He gets a lot of things wrong, such as thinking the sigil Leonard carried around actually did something, when in fact it did jack shit.

At the end of the day Vincent is just a succesful con artist, and wanted his life to be simple, he involved himself just enough to make a profit off it all.

translatedmemories.com/book.html

Here you go.

Blonde people sometimes have really thin and fair eyebrows that they look invisible.

Oh, neat~

Plain, swept back hair, plain clothes, she's supposed to be the image of a faithful follower in the cult. She's the self-disciplined one, compared to Vincent the opportunistic showman, who dresses and acts more flamboyantly. You can also see here in the earlier concept art they had an even more ascetic appearance for her originally, shaved head and tattoos.

The way Vincent acts, especially his facial expressions, is also meant to convey that he's very mentally unstable.

The team made a point of trying to convey this information to the player visually, instead of having another character tell it to Heather, thus why they're so exaggerated (as good as SH3 looks, they were still working during the PS2 era, they didn't have today's technology to convey subtle facial expressions).

Well if we go by the twin perfect videos that could be a projection of how Claudia saw his own father.

Even then, they still put a lot of attention to that details. One of the designers said that if you put enough attention you can see how one of Vicent's eyes never sees directly at you.

It's kind of sad that developers doesn't put that kind of effort in game nowadays.

Didn't he say he doesn't look directly at you when he's hiding something?
That'd make more sense since that's a common thing to do when you're lying.

And we don't.
Because twin perfect is the SH community equivalent of VaatiVidya.

With Fungo…or "DustFungo", how he calls himself these days, being the biggest faggot the SH community has ever seen.
Rejects and leeches, the lot of 'em.

I don't think they gave a definite answer behind Leonard's appearance (neither did they claim to), just speculation.
Also, Fungo's been out of the team for years now

I can swear that there's a cutscene in sh3 where you can clearly see how one of his eyes diverts to the left

I don't know about mentally, but he's very emotionally unstable.

Fuck them regardless.
Fungo back in the day did more damage to the community than a million Homecomings.
They still carry his stench with them.
As far as i'm concerned they're a bunch of cockroaches.

I was never that much in the silent hill community because
so what he exactly do? The only thing I know is that he dropped the spaghetti really hard with Guy chibi

I'd say it's totally the opposite. One of the reasons behind the breakup was a discrepancy in ideas; Fungo took things a lot less seriously than Ross, who was bent on things making sense and harsher criticisms. That's why Fungo's channel is more light hearted and has shitty humor (not that Twin Perfect's humor is stellar, but still)

SH3 is for hipsters. SH2 is the only good Silent Hill, and if you don't adore it then you are a faggot.

You got the numbers wrong

...

Everything in SH3 is transparent. There are no surprises, like finding out James killed his wife. Nothing as deep as that.

Silent Hill 3 wrapped up Silent Hill 1's story and 2,4, and Homecoming were just random people getting stuck in Silent Hill, correct? Wasn't Silent Hill tied to that cult? Why did it continue to be a thing when they got wiped out twice?

because faggots couldn't accept that the series was perfected in SH2, which is simply perfect.

That was fucking awful. Damn

You weren't stuck in Silent Hill in SH4, just in the dream world Walter created.
The spiritual power in Silent Hill was heavily distorted by the cult and Alessa's involvement, specially, but it's still something tied to Silent Hill and not necessary the cult itself. The place and the spirits that inhabit it are the reason for the spiritual power.

Neither in silent hill 1 or 3 is implied that the cult was destroyed and you can see it in 2 and 4 where is implied that it still continue working even after Dahlia's and Claudia's death

Silent Hill thread? Nice.

Playing through The Room again for the first time in years, since 2008 probably. After spending a ton of time fucking around with PCSX2's renderer and other emulation shit to get Tony Hawk's American Wasteland somewhat stable, it's really nice that The Room runs and looks at a consistent framerate with zero graphical issues on standard emulation settings.

How bad is the SH2 port? Is it worth it to play the PC version or should I emulate?
SH3 port is pretty fucking great aside from the fog being a bit simpler and i think the field of depth being missing.

But could the cult in Silent Hill defeat the cult from Resident Evil 4?

...

4 maybe, all the information in 2 says they packed up and left

It's tied to Silent Hill and the mists of Toluca Lake but it's not wholly geographical, Heather can still manifest nightmares even when she's not in the town and it at least has enough reach to send James a letter.

Nothing really special about the SH2 PC port besides that the flashlight casts dynamic shadows correctly, and the DC edition on PS2 does that anyway

I was thinking about emulating Silent Hill 2 at some point, actually. I have no idea how it runs emulated, but I've seen an entire longplay of the PC port and it looks fine. I don't recall any graphical errors or missing info or anything of the like.

A battle between the cult in RE4 and the cult in Silent Hill is like discussing whether or not a pea shooter could wipe out an entire battalion. Las Plagas deals in the physical, Samael and the cult consists of multiple planes of existence.

I think Claudia was around when that happened. Might be safe to say it's tied to the people that inhabit it as well, since James went on vacation to Silent Hill before.

Silent Hill's manifestations are physical too

She was, but it only explains why her manifestations are showing up, not why manifestations are showing up outside of the town

Fair enough, the spiritual power doesn't have that much power if all it could do for James was a piece of paper anyway, Heather has the power of the god and everything

A plot twist doesn't make a good plot, necessarily.
I agree SH2 has a better plot but SH3 excels in other aspects. It has a better variety of monsters, more interesting designs, a lot more weird creepy shit going on and little surprises here and there, and a lot more little interesting details that reveal things about the lore.
I think SH2 would have been a much better game if they had put as much detail in it as they did in SH3.

I swear to god SH2 fans are more autistic than FNaF kids

I don't know, plagas are brainless retards (also known as Spanish) but the SH cult was stopped by a single guy with a sledgehammer and a rifle.

The 2,3 and 4 PC ports are pretty good, you might need some fixes in modern computers but you shouldn't have major problems

Oh shit I just realized she truly has no eyebrows.

I still remember the potentially awesome SH2 playthrough with Guy Cihi and Dave Schaufele being ruined by Fungo's egotistic behavior. It was still worth it for the good Cihi/Dave moments, though.

She wanted to die due to her medical condition. However, she was still afraid of being alone, which is why James was dragged into Silent Hill.

James and his wife visited Silent Hill in the past and didn't experience anything weird from what I can remember. That would suggest that either the effects of Silent Hill are very picky or they weren't in effect until a later date.

I see. So the supernatural elements were already there, but subdued until the cult started riling them up.

I hear they lost the original code for SH2, so the hd collection was crap. There were some gamebreaking bugs in it too that would delete your save iirc.

Too bad Silent Hill never really branched out all that much. You could have had distortions follow the various cult members that fled, which would lead to events in other towns and anywhere they went. It could have made for a nice game to see someone running away from Silent Hill and not returning while witnessing the manifestations and managing them. Heather ran away, but she ended up going right back as soon as Harry dies.

1 and 3 is Alessa psychic magic and the other games are people coming to town and getting fucked out of their minds on White Claudia. They wander around, talk to delusions of their dead wives, wander into traffic, smash up some trash cans and scare some cats. Everyone in town knows that when they see someone wandering around with a pipe and a pocket flashlight just to lock the doors until they leave, because as annoying as it is they need the tourism.

Where exactly? The only pieces of information of the cult in sh2 that I recall is when it talks about the spiritual power of the town

Probably the latter since the spiritual power's been present even before American colonization, but no records of nightmare manifestations until that Cheryl came back to the town.

There's notes from the residents of the apartments, there's also the Baldwin House if you count Born From a Wish, notes in the hospital, the radio announcer explicitly talks about the abandonment of the South Vale, but more than anything it's in the Silent Hill Historical Society part.

I sometimes wonder if is has similarities to the warp in 40K, the warp being another plane of existence that is shaped by the emotions of the living, and in turn is full of monsters created from those emotions. Call it a power/dimension/state of mind, something about Silent Hill allows to cult to tap into it in small ways, and their emotional states being so fucked up lead fog and rust hallways. Alessa was straight up psychic and shit, so that and the cult ritual allowed whatever makes Silent Hill tick to manifest stronger through her, and through the lens of her suffering it created a hellscape. The way I've always seen it was that, even when Alessa escapes as a newborn baby with Harry, there is a certain amount of Silent Hill's "magic" that still lingers, and cult members like Claudia know ways to strengthen it.

If Silent Hill is something like the warp, as much a state of mind as a dimension as power, then at this point it's tuned to human suffering. So people in a state of mind like James who walked around in Silent Hill during better days, would feel a tug on them when they're going through mental torment. And as much as I joke about everyone being fucked up on White Claudia, that's also a possible factor (I forget if it was described at all as a hard drug or more of a recreational drug unique to the region). Even if everyone wasn't a PTV junkie, White Claudia, a hallucinogenic, could have lingering side effects that make people more susceptible to Silent Hill's mojo. Since the cult ran the town, anyone who entered it might have been slipped PTV or some traces of White Claudia could even be in the drinking water. If the White Claudia just got people mentally tuned to Silent Hill, it's even possible that enough non-psychic people in the right mental state could produce SOMETHING that the cult would at least find interesting.

I don't know, part of the fun is not knowing everything.

Is she going further beyond?

I really like that first picture, can have more faceless waifu;s please

Dhalia was not her real mom, she just had a bond with Alessa.

Is a shame you weren't here 2 weeks ago, we marathoned the whole documentary on a weekend.

No, 2 was some specific people going there, in 4 you never go to SH, Origins, Homecoming and beyond belong to the Hulettverse where the lore is completely different and is all caused by the story in Book of Memories.

Is the Silent Hill Smile Society children prison tower not close enough to Silent Hill to count?

On the other hand maybe they are monsters but Vincent doesn't see them as monsters, and well, you can just go from there on and on.

Because she had a demon fetus inside her which was also stimulated by Claudia's faith.

There were no multiple planes of exsitence, it was more like blurring the line between dreams and reality, have you read The Hounds of Tindalos? is like that but dreams and nightmares instead of time and space.

Yep, as usual, a sacred land twisted by a third party, in this case some crazy colonists.

Is not the real place, you never leave the apartment, you are basically inside Walter's dream but you never step into the real Silent Hill.

It's nice to see beyond the 2deep4u nonsense it attracts and has gone through all these years, it's nice to know there's always a good solid community among the core fanbase. You guys rock as always.

Well let's not ruin it by focusing on the bad parts of the franchise

The cult preceded the colonists also, according to SH3

It still counts in my book

Why did claudia allow silent hill to endanger heather if she wanted her to reach the church? All she needed was heather to be pissed off at Harry's death, everything after that was pointless to her cause

Walter was a better villain lads

I really find the 'lost source' excuse pathetic. Maybe Konami was already on a 'fuck Silent Hill' mentality when this was released? ZoE's HD collection was the same deal…
Bluepoint would've decompiled the originals just like they did with Ico/SotC, but even people like Hijinx could've done it with some assistance from Konami - the games in question had PC versions for fuck's sake. SH2 was ported by Creature Labs, and I don't know who did 3.

SH HD Collection is seriously not worth getting. If you want HD the PC versions are all you need (with the appropriate fixes).

She might've wanted her to kill "monsters". The game has a kill counter that gives out possession points. If your possession points exceed a certain number in a newgame+ you'll get the Possessed ending.
Since killing more monsters turns Heather further into the possessed "muh god" territory, Claudia would've wanted her to fight.

A real brow-raiser that one.

Interestingly enough, for the current climate this villain, for all intents and purposes was a real mysoginist but in a way that made sense in context and all, of course, the SJWs would never give Walter some proper coverage.

Maybe Hijinx was cheaper.

The town itself is part some force with a mind of it's own or whatever, just because the people that corrupted via psychic powers is gone doesn't mean that the results leaves and magically disappears. Plus that whole "the lake had mystical properties to it long before psychic powers" so you've got some divine and psychic quagmire piling up which is what Homecoming is about.

That actually sounds very nice. They could make it a detective game where the supernatural elements are downplayed, but acts of the occult are on the rise. It could even take place during the period in which the occult have largely been forgotten about in SH.

he is a cult member, he's human.

here you go (x2)

HOLY FUCK I PLAYED 1 & 3 A LOT AND NEVER NOTICED

is that Brendan Frasier?

Explain

...

Now she seems trustworthy. I'll gladly take one of her pamphlets about God and listen to her brief presentation on how the world needs to be saved.

You will notice all subtext as you play the game, Walter, for good reasons developed a deep hatred of women, notice how his female victims got killed, specially Cynthia and Eileen (whe barely survived), once you are on the spiral staircase in the final segments you can see all those motifs in the "exhibits" he has around, the burping women are also a good example too, notice how he was basically aborting something from one of them when you begin the hospital level.

Oh OK I guess that makes sense

I am not sure how much the files tell you in the game since I haven't played for a while, but apparently he ran into a younger Cynthia once while visiting the apartment and she was basically flirting with him, being almost a child himself he grew some resentment and fear at the same time.

For some odd reason kid Walter decided to stop his adult self from killing Eileen in the last second, I think it was because of the doll or something, that's why Walter gives it to you on the level before that, basically trying to get rid of the only thing holding him back from killing her metaphorically speaking, surprisingly enough TPC never went too deep into SH4's lore.

...

underrated post

He failed at being a hipster and wanted a sense of belonging so he brought his shit taste here. Leave him. He doesn't possess the intelligence to appreciate the beauty in SH4.

But what is the goal of the entity? Why does it keep calling out to people with a deep seated sense of guilt, or children even? Why does it make them confront their darkest secrets?

What exactly is whatever "deity" resides in and around Silent Hill trying to achieve?

kek

nobody will ever know because Team Silent scramble a long time ago which is a shame since Silent Hill 2 and 3 expend the lore enough to make dozens of worthy sequels, the whole "purgatory city" or "purgatory city expanding to nearby cities until one day it takes over the world" concepts had so much potential and it was all throw away by giving the series to western developers.

That's true, but I mean that Las Plagas is only inhabiting a single space of time. The Cult, or Alessa, or maybe even just the town itself, can bend reality to whatever it needs to do to accommodate several visitors at a time. Las Plagas is a general hell, Silent Hill is a personalized one. I'd take the general hell over something much more personal.

I haven't read it, but I'd disagree on there not being multiple planes of existence. I think it's pretty evident that there's a real Silent Hill that has no fog, is normal or possibly not even there anymore. A Silent Hill that perpetuates an upper level of hell, more akin to limbo with fog and general rust and decay and then, of course, the otherworld which is hell itself.

Well, you learn something new everyday

I'm trying to figure out what TPC is. Are you talking about Twin Perfect? If so, it's because they think Silent Hill 4 is garbage and isn't worth discussing.

For the record I fucking hate those faggots.

Actually, I don't think even as simple as normal Silent Hill, fog Silent Hill and hell Silent Hill.

SH2 makes note that what the protagonist sees and experiences does in no way match what most of the other characters do. Laura moves throughout the city without encountering any opposition, let alone anything scary. In fact, she seems to be having fun playing pranks on the protagonist, and other characters look at James when he tries to explain that something weird is going on.

SH game where you play as Billy when

The mannequins are faceless, technically

I don't think Silent Hill has a will of it's own, but it's deeply effected by human emotion. Alessa's suffering was so great it could consume the entire town, the Silent Hill 2 cast is all seeing their own personal demons, Claudia's faith and tortured soul amplified the power of the god growing in Heather, Walter's faith and obsession imbued the room with a Silent Hill like power. I don't feel there was ever any malicious intent put in except the malicious intend that humans poured into it, it's a power that can be tapped into but humans have only discovered it in their suffering. If it can only respond to suffering, or if humans only know how to interact with it through dark emotions, that's up to the viewer.

But it clearly has a purpose. I'm mostly going on SH2 here, where the town specifically summons James to it for no apparent reason than he was there with his wife once and is actually trying to help him confront the guilt he is suffocating under, and is doing so with the other characters too.

no, it's somebody else

Does anyone know optimal PCSX2 setting for SH2? I've been playing it, it's pretty fun and spooky but cutscenes are pretty fucked. Can't remember if software mode fixed it or not.

it's been a while since I played the game but I think Walter was already an adult when Cynthia, still an actual kid, gave him that doll to cheer him up.

Maybe the town just felt like having a DnD session? Does there really need to be an explanation?

Brendan Frasier?

I still feel that falls under human emotions, James had always promised to take his wife back there, and the town weighed on his mind. In a way I would say James called to it as much as the town called to him, and there is a mental/spiritual connection that people can make with Silent Hill that lingers. Silent Hill basically gave James everything he wanted, but James didn't know exactly what he wanted until the end (leading to your multiple endings). Does he want a sexy new replacement wife? If he does, part of him believes he deserves to lose her as well Does he want to die and be with his wife? If so Silent Hill will recreate his wife for him to walk into the lake with Does he want to move on from it all? Then Silent Hill will let him go, because his desire is to leave

There is some weird shit in the SH2 side quest thing though, which I guess were… ghosts? I don't know, I assume ghosts can also linger due to the power of Silent Hill. As much as the cult dresses everything up in religion, the whole thing could be argued to be psychic power run amok, and the town just for some reason amplifies the desires of certain strong emotions. Which is part of why I feel the whole problem certain people have with calling the layers of Silent Hill "dimensions" is retarded. Some games clearly take place in a mental dimension created by one of the characters, and it's a space that defies reality while other people go about their lives.

Speaking of D&D, I sometimes think of Silent Hill as a cross between the Ethereal and Astral planes, basically a mirror of the normal world that people can fall into. While these omit a lot of unrelated details, I got these from a D&D wiki just now:

While neither is a perfect analog to Silent Hill, both are planes that are separate yet connected to the material world. They are also both transitional planes, with the Astral Plane serving as a buffer between normal reality and the realities of the gods. Their coexistence with the normal world also reminds me of the Warp from 40K (a plane fed by emotions) and the Upside Down from Stranger Things (which was in some ways very Silent Hill like).

I both love and hate this stuff.

SH1 was about Alessa's nightmares becoming reality, 2 and 3 went with the "it's all in your mind" shit a bit too far I think. SH1 is a much more tradtional story and I think it stands the test of time a bit better compared to the waxing philosphical bullshit you encounter in the 2&3 fandom.

No, it doesn't, the only exception is Laura and she is never present when the manifestations are around. James and Eddie and Angela all see each others' manifestations to a certain extent, James can see the womb room and the Abstract Daddy and he can also see the corpses and raw meat haunting Eddie.

It has no reason to want to help him overcome his guilt. Silent Hill used to be a site for executions and the executioner is calling James to punish him, this is straight from Sato. The spiritual power has no will beyond a vague malevolence and definitely has no interest in James' feelings.

3? It mostly comes from the 2 side and I don't think the game itself should be blamed, TS made a totally logical transition with the sequel. "The first game was about walking around in somebody else's nightmare, what about walking around in the main character's nightmare?" There's a fairly concrete explanation for everything that doesn't need deep philosophical reflection.

I didn't mean the need for deep analysis, I meant the faux-intellectual "games are art" jerking that surrounds these great games.

You could say it is as follows:
1. Vague malevolent desire to harm you, due to stuff like the execution site leaving behind it's imprint.
2. Vague desire to help you as decreed by the cult with their magic fuckery with Alessa.
3. Vague desires from the imprint Alessa left behind the town, as well as the link she has as she grew up as Heather. Keep in mind Alessa was a scared, tortured little girl.

I got what you meant, I still don't think I've seen all that much of it from SH3 fans, if anything is annoying about SH3 fans it's the waifuism

But games are art and always have been. Unless you mean the bullshit "some games are art, but only the ones I deem worthy" attitude that game journos try to pass off (though that's mostly to try to just make games made by their personal friends seem important despite being barely interactive shit that lasts half an hour).

It's not our fault that Claudia is the purest waifu.

All it took was Vincent's monster line.

If by "journos" you mean "writers/bloggers" then yes. Although not limited to. Look up some popular SH analyses and see how long it takes you to run into critical theory. Protip: not long.

We have no idea what the other characters saw beyond that it scared them. It's wrong to assume they all share the same reality when it's obvious this is not the case.

But then why let him go? This entity has had every chance to punish James yet always gave him a way out. Yes, this is a meta thing because games need a win condition to move things along, but from a narrative perspective it doesn't make sense to toy with James in that way. If the town wanted to simply punish him it could have just trapped him in "hell" and shoved pineapples up his ass for all eternity, yet not only does it give him a way out, but like said even allows his actions to dictate what shape his absolution and redemption will take.

I find it interesting that, taken alone it implies that Vincent sees something different than Heather, but when you see him next he's berating Claudia's "taste in decor" revealing that he actually DOES see the same fucked up shit all over the place. I didn't really think about it until watching the cutscenes again recently, but I wonder if it was purely Vincent fucking with Heather or him testing her. Because, if she saw everything the same way he was seeing it, it meant she was still human (and not overtaken by god), which is what he needed her to be. But, I don't know. Guy could just like a good joke.

Well he's a brilliantly written character, I'm not denying it at all. Actually I think I'll have to replay again after some time. Too bad it's so combat heavy, irritating.

It's also wrong, more wrong, to assume they don't since it requires a bigger leap than just saying they're seeing the same things, especially since manifestations are confirmed to be real physical entities in the other games. It's not "obvious" this is not the case at all, Angela and James both see the burning staircase and verbally confirm it.

You think it "let" him go? Do you think Samael "let" Harry Mason defeat it also? James fought his way out for the Leave ending. There are also multiple failure states in the game where the town did successfully punish James. Again, this is not my opinion, this is the scenario writer describing what he wrote.
silenthillmemories.net/creators/interviews/2009.05.15_sato_core_gamers_en.htm

It allowed nothing, the spiritual power is not actively involved in James' emotional journey, it's just a narrative vehicle for it.

I'm intrigued, what do you mean? Or is it said in your link?

I'm not being deep, I mean you can die in the game, James doesn't have to make it out of the town alive or even make it to the end. Although he does die in the In Water ending also.

If you want to hear more from the team I'd also recommend the other interviews linked at SHM and this documentary. There's one for SH3 too.

Yeah, because Angela straight up says she ALWAYS saw fire. It's almost seems like James couldn't perceive of the fire until he understood to a better degree what Angela's suffering was. Each encounter game him a glimpse, and as the full picture emerged, so did his ability to see HER Silent Hill. That's why her monsters didn't start appearing until he saw her being attacked by one (though it's possible he still doesn't see it the same way Angela does).

You'll have to agree with me on the fact that the physicality of things tends to lose meaning when venturing into Silent Hill. There was a HOLE here. It's gone now.

That's assuming one can win against the entity if ti doesn't want you to win. It's its world, obeying its rules and internal logic. If it only possesses a basic wish to punish why go through all the trouble? Why not just put James in an inescapable room with Pyramid Head and get it over with?

Yet the creatures and the "script" he is forced to follow are closely tied to himself, his past and the feelings he carries.

If that's the one that came with this, I've watched it a dozen times.

Best Christmas gift ever.

Now you're being a pedantic ass. Of course you can fucking die in a game, but you know full well that's not what I meant. The "proper" way of playing SH2 is to successfully navigate the hazards and puzzles and reach one of several endings on offer.

By his own choice. He choose such a fate and the entity obliged by granting him his wish.

This is a very good interview format. A question with an in-depth lead in for the reader, very nice. Always produces the best results.

I don't have to agree, what's physically illogical about that? There are holes everywhere in SH1.

I'm not assuming it, it happens in all three games. Why would you assume the spiritual power wants you to win?

I'm being a pedantic ass? Why do I need Silent Hill's permission to drive into a lake?

Unfortunately most of the interviews are with Yamaoka and he pretty well always gives the same answers, but that is a particularly good one with Sato

The cult and Alessa, again the town was brought to life with Alessa, it's desire to be the executioner painted by a tortured little girl's desire for revenge, escape, and salvation. You're putting too much stock in the entity's desires when it's merely a reactive force.

It's also worth noting it pretty much does, at one point

Also reminds me how great the fight design was. A tight room with no escape and an enemy that slows down momentarily from your hits. It was pretty amazing the first time.

thoughts on this? since it's really kinda unrelated to fucking everything. I thought it was ok

I thought it was Wii only.

In SH2 it shows how nightmares overlap, they don't just look different when two people are close together, James sees the meat and the fire from Eddie's and Angela's, another reason to confirm that everything physically manifests, as for the fog, that's the usual state of the town after the Alessa incident,it comes from the lake and it doesn't just go away, when Alessa's nightmare invades it just turns everything into hell almost instantly and in a certain scene in front of Harry's eyes, in SH2 notice how is always foggy and only certain places indoors degrade but never go full blown hellish like in SH1, in SH3 the fetus manifests the hellish things wherever it goes, there is no foggy mall for example.

Me neither, there was this film about young witches that explained that their "deity" was more of a playground than an entity, the spiritual power of the lake basically shapes things according to the will of others, not its own.

James goes there because of his connection to the town, it doesn't just actively summon him, Eddie was on the run and Laura wanted to go there so they ended up there, I presume Angela had a past around there, sounds like 50% coincidence actually.

The town is not really a purgatory, it manifests stuff depending on those poor souls that happen to be nearby and may have some issues, but I am pretty sure not everyone would be affected, only the ones with big issues.

It came out for the psp too. Wii is best version doe

I never played it, but I've seen a lot of it. Seemed competent, at least, better than most of the other American Silent Hills. Despite being a "reboot" it's real strength is that it (as far as I know) is completely unrelated to the main games, and can be taken on its own.

Don't want to split hairs but I disagree on the second part, it does send him a letter

Yeah, I may not like SHSM at all but without the Wii hardware gimmicks it's worse

I hate how it uses that gimmick of "your ending changes depending of your mental state" when every other game in the series did the same

I want to say this is one of the better threads here I've seen in a while, so thanks for that. Merry Christmas all.

It was the goodbye letter from Mary as far as I recall, James just selectively denies and forgets stuff.

Well, mostly SH2 and SH3 I guess, the others were less about mental state and more about side quests, let's say is half of the series because anything from Origins onward is a complete mess and part of a diferent "canon"

It's not quite that simple since if you follow the chain of events there's no way that James ever actually saw the letter, Laura stole it from the nurse Rachel's locker and then went straight to Silent Hill. So there's the problem of James reading a real excerpt from a real letter that he could never have seen, it had to have been the spiritual power manifesting it

Merry Christmas to you too

I seriously have a boner for her, too bad I can't seem to find any porn except those shitty photoshops

also, I'd like to think she doesn't wear underwear

Fuck that shit. I love theorizing, discussing and analyzing shit but there are certain franchises where the fanbase is just so annoying about it.
Silent Hill, Dark Souls or Neon genesis evangelion are prime examples. The main problem is that certain theories are seen as fact and random faggots become e-famous because they make videos about random ideas shit they stole from forums.

SH threads are always good, it something that happens when a game is great

It called the Hulettverse

Or it could be that the letter was other product of his guilty mind, like when he thought that Mary died 3 years ago

Whoever could you be talking about? :^)

Right, but it still wouldn't explain how he's seeing a letter that actually exists miles away from where he reads it. I think a lot of people underplay the letter since the text disappears later in the game but it's a pretty crucial plot point, they name the entire main scenario after it in the Director's Cut

It's a Christmas miracle. I've got a high fever but this is making me super comfy, you glorious faggots.

However, where are your favourite OST picks?

right here in my hand

Checkin them trips.

And them double dubs.

Also I always figured the reason that she lacks eyebrows is they got burned away in the fire.

Also it'd be odd to have a Silent Hill thread without this, so here you go.

I've wondered before, is Silent Hill based on the town? I know the movies were inspired by it, but I wasn't sure about the games.

Yeah, the developers once upon a time confirmed that Centralia was their first piece of inspiration.

SH, the games have lots of inspiration, the town doesn't seem to be one of those.

Find a source on that, I think it's movie only.

the sequel that should have been

Suffering.

Claudia likely had nothing to do with the fire. But I guess it's technically possible? There would be scarring though.

Nah. The original movie was meh, but the connection between SH and Centralia was never really made up until the promotions for the movie. It's basically the litmus test to know who actually played the games. SH's general blocky layout was supposedly based on a metro line. The visual aesthetic was based on American 80s/90s movies and TV shows, and King novels.

Nah nigga, the most relaxing track that I've hear in a videogame

And I'll add that while the moive's not great by any means, it's probably among top movie-based ones. At least it keeps quite true to source material and visuals with the exception of mixing PH into the mix.

*game-based

Seriously, SH seems like a goldmine for R34. Think of all those doujins of Heather, Claudia, Angela etc. There is that one artist whose done a couple of SH doujins and they are great because its not generic stuff in SH, the guy tailors a porn scenario to SH and it works well.

What I was referring to is flash burning of hair. A quick flash of fire, not prolonged exposure. My father once accidentally burned his eyebrows off while trying to build a potato cannon. It was so effective at removing the hair that he's never been able to grow his eyebrows back.

Has to be Theme of Laura or I Want Love. I'm also pretty partial to SH1's title FMV theme. If anybody doesn't have the full OSTs I can put them on the vola

It's more Stephen King than anything else

So you think Claudia was present when the accident happened at Alessa's house?

silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Silent_Hill_Wiki

I've wasted some time reading many pages on here.

This indeed. The Midwich school is basically the school from Kindergarten fuckin' Cop. The writer influence isn't limited to King's works - even the streets are mainly named after authors: Bloch, Finney, Levin, Koontz…
silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Inspirational_works_of_Silent_Hill

That wiki is full of fanfiction stuff though.

Try and find me a wiki that isn't.

How bout I wish you a comfy christmass user?

It sounds crazy enough to be true.

Nah, I don't think so. But then again, I don't think 0rigins goes against canon so what do I know.

Exactly my point, if you want real information and a starting point for SH then check the official documentaries and find a summary of every document the games give you.

SH Japanese and European release, the house fire was due to a boiler explosion, allegedly by Alessa's stress during the impregnation ritual.

The key word here is allegedly.

Wasn't there a file saying that a fire spread and killed most of the cult?

I wasn't aware about her psychic powers until I played SH1 a couple more times, BUT the boiler explosion is a fact.

The file reports the thing about the fire, I can't remember if there were mode deaths.

The fire spread to several neighbouring houses. The cult is never mentioned,

The cult has people in the town management, Gucci didn't die for nothing. The whole point of the Police Station and the motel/kaufmann is to let you know there was a major cover up.

The boiler explosion is a fact in the local newspaper run by perfectly normal locals, I'm sure.

Don't get me wrong, it's hazy as it is, but I just can't accept a boiler explosion as fact when the game repeatedly implies there was shady business.

I would like that thanks

Given how she is so devoted to the cult I would said that no

The only thing those reports said that besides Dahlia's house other ones also suffered damages, which is weird because the intro shows that Dahlia lived in the country side of the town

Been so long since I played, I forget bits and pieces. I just remember the file being somewhere near the last locations, with some info scrubbed out.

the shady business is what covers up ring leaders and crazy cultists were having a party there, besides, it is also a reference to Carrie (I think is Carrie's ending)

The file is hinted at during your first trip to the hospital, is cropped out, I don't remember how you unlock it but you can't just come across it.

Yeah. The only doujin with Claudia I was able to find is this one. I sure ain't complaining, since I love Dowman Sayman's weird shit but I still wish I could find some porn of her.

Well then Holla Forums, I present to you:
(C64) [Bakushiishi, Daiyon Teikoku (Dowman Sayman, G=Hikorou)] SH3 (Silent Hill 3) [English]

There's a newspaper in Brookhaven with the article cut out, and then the same one with the article intact at Norman's motel where Kaufmann stayed. Additionally, on Next Fear in Nowhere there's the extra newspaper that talks about the fire and the alleged boiler explosion. I think it's in the medicine cabinet room (the small one before you'd normally find Lisa).

and that's it

The fact of how the explosion happened is the shady business, that's why you found an article speaking of poltergeists and his effects on things to explain that Alessa caused the boiler explosion

THANKS!

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man, I feel so bad about that movie. The visuals are amazing. Too bad they tried to "reinvent" and "improve" the story.
The second one is pure shit though

I cry every time.
literally

...

Truly magical.

Such a good fucking scene. I think I need to play through Silent Hill 1 again soon.

SH1 doesn't get enough love, and seeing how it will never get a REAL remake, it will simply fade away as modern gamers wont even try and bother with it.
I played the game five years after release and was terrified out of my mind like never before.

Got you
volafile.io/r/HF33Go

Why not today? It's like a 3 hour game

I'd do the same but it must be hell with emu without a controller.

When I start thinking on it the story of sh1 is fucking depressing
Harry got a hard life

This is what really hurts, sh 2 and 3 still looks good but 1 definitely needs a treatment too bad that knowing developers in current year it would be impossible without them trying to push their agenda or losing the point

Thanks

I got family things tonight, but I may get to it soon. Nothing gets one into the holiday mood like a trip to beautiful, scenic Silent Hill.

Something about the old PS1 graphics really add to the fear, I feel. They're just detailed yet primitive enough for your mind to try to fill in the gaps of what you're seeing and not seeing.

It's weird, I've always been really careful with my games (I still have game and systems from my childhood, and a lot of stuff in original cases with manuals and everything) yet I've somehow lost two copies of Silent Hill 1. I don't know how, I don't even know for sure someone didn't take them, but they're gone. So I'll probably have to buy it digitally, or hunt down another disc (as I still have the case).

Don't forget
Christopher Gans thinks only a woman would really suffer like that for her child, men can't feel anything like that.

Did they ever explain the same position of Harry's death and the body James finds in the apartments being the same?

Still pisses me off.

the director from the second movie is also pretty bad, since he stated in an interview that he thinks Heather was a badly written character and that he did much better in his film

Just a coincidence I'm sure, although they may have been thinking about SH3 at the time and included it as a teaser. I don't think Harry died the same way as that corpse anyway

Then again maybe there is more to it since Sato's script for SH3 didn't end up being used and he apparently had different plans for the game originally

Jeez, and Heather is the REALEST teenager ever.

This is why I'm always amazed that people debate "are games art?" yet film, which has just as high a percentage of complete hacks, gets a pass.

All of SH's plotlines are about sad families, i.e. lack of love.

I think Gans changed Harry into a woman purely because of that one "Mother is God in the eyes of a child" line.

They probably just reused the model, user. SH3 was released about a year after 2 which is insane.

PS1 graphics you say?

Ha, that looks more like The Note than SH.

According to the making of sh3 the script was writed right after the release of 2 so it's possibly that it was a premonition of what it was to come

She's a little too brave too be a teenager. After fighting those monsters you'd be traumatized.
But yes, gameplay aside, she's fucking perfect.
She's also gorgeous

my fucking sides

What it's weird about Heather it's that after all the shit she saw she comes to her house on the most calm way possible like nothing had happened

...

YEAH! That's the part that bothers me the most.
She should have been like "HOLY FUCK DAD THERE ARE FUCKING GIGANTIC BLOODY MONSTERS AROUND, AND THE WORLD JUST TURNED INTO RUST, AND GIANT FUCKING PENIS WORMS, CALL THE FUCKING MILITARY PLEASE HELP".
Instead she's like "hey dad, something weird going on…".

All other interactions in the game make perfect sense aside from that one scene.
Oh and I guess the scene where she meets Douglas for the second time after fighting the giant worm. Douglas knew there were monsters around but still left this little, skinny teenage girl alone? I know she said she would be fine but still….

I think there are a few lines of dialogue implying she might think she's dreaming. The game does start with a dream sequence in the mall, after all.

It's not like he really left her alone, she snuck away from him

what is this?

Yeah, but the illusion of dreaming fails when you get hurt.

If you look at the cutscene, you can clearly see he lets her go. He sees her leaving after she tells him she's going home, by herself, and instead of following her or even telling her to stop, he just asks her "what should I do?".
He doesn't try follow her. He doesn't try to stop her. He doesn't even tell her to stop.

maybe it wasn't that extreme before but are you sure she never had any otherworld experience in her live? Maybe she sees it in her dreams every night, or worse.
She is carrying a knive around for defense after all
She is Alessa/Cheryl after all

He probably shit himself multiple times and had to clean up before he could think to follow her… and he already knew where she lived.

I always just took it as Heather is subconsciously not as shocked by it all due to her past life as Alessa. That and she's Harry Mason's daughter, so she's got BALLS OF STEEL!

Trips confirm

She never used that knife before.
You can see the description on the knife item changes from the first time you have it to after you use it on a monster (that's the other great thing about Team Silent, they're so attentive to details), it says she feels bad for using it to kill a living being or something. Also, she never mentions having dreams with monsters aside from the dream at the beginning of the game.

I don't think Douglas was a pussy, he confronted Claudia head on and got pretty hurt in the process. Also as a private investigator you see a lot of weird shit, of course you can't be a pussy if you're in that line of work.

If you have the game on hand in emu with correlating saves, mind putting up a side by side description of before and after of knife usage?

I think I read it in the book of memories but it explains that Douglas simply doesn't know what to do because he only gets to watch and when he interfers he is more useless than helpful

Good point it could be, but the knife was a gift from Harry in case she found problems with a cult member.
I feel bad because team silent never got to explore a little more the consecuences of sh3 in the world of the series. To be honest I found the ending of 3 a little lacking in terms of conclusion I really wanted to know what happened to the town and the cult after it.

I was talking about the previous cutscene, when she leaves through the bathroom window

It's also possible that Douglas is already familiar with the nightmare manifestations, his dialogue in the car scene is ambiguous but it implies he knows something is wrong with Silent Hill

I like to imagine his confrontation with Claudia involved her doing some sick cult developed martial arts.

Joking aside, I think he was conflicted because he was starting to realize the crazy lady with no eyebrows you hired him might not be looking out for Heather's best interest. Heather straight up accuses him of being a cultist, so he knows enough not to force the issue until she calmed down. And he did know where she lived, so he could check on her afterwards. Also, as far as he knew the monster thing wasn't going to happen again immediately, despite the stuff he's seen, he's never seen anything quite like that. I figure confusion for a while is reasonable, since he has no idea how or why Silent Hill stuff happens or doesn't happen.

No, that scene is fine. No real monster thing happened yet and Douglas had no reason to be worried about Heather's well being.

Book of Memories the game? Not only it isn't canon, but it's complete utter crap and shits all over the original games.

When a person's in danger of death you have to put other things aside. You shouldn't be worried for looking like a rapist if you jump and grab a girl that's distracted because she's about to get crashed by a car.
But I guess he being shocked/confused can make sense…

I don't, sorry.

No, like Book of memories the book

I'll do it tomorrow and post it in either this thread or a following one I spot here.

Fug, even if you remove the spoiler tag from the top it stays in the pop-up.

This? translatedmemories.com/book.html
It's not called Book of Memories, it's called Book of Lost Memories.
It wasn't written by members of Team Silent so it can't be taken at face value.

Neat. It takes very little time to do. Just boot up the game, die quickly at the nightmare part, check your knife you got in your inventory already, play for like 10 mins till you see a monster, and then kill it.

But there's many quotes that come from actual members of the team

Well, what does it say about Douglas?
Was it a quote or just something the writer put in?

God I HATED that fight as a youngun'. Scared the shit out of me each time, made it so much more difficult than it might have really been.

I got the game on Xmas eve when I was 14 and played late into he night alone in my dark room up until the hospital. It was a very suspensful fight and the weird "water" really adds to the atmosphere. The water being there and lowering makes little to no sense, but adds to the claustrophobic feeling of not being able to run away.

They do. James can see Angela's hell when he's around her often enough, like at the end when he sees her climbing the staircase on fire. He can also see Angela's abstract daddy monster throughout the game after he fights the abstract daddy boss.

The town manifests all people's inner demons, but these demons usually don't appear in the presence of a person that doesn't have anything to do with them. The fact that Laura was walking around safely is mostly due to the fact that she was mostly walking around alone. If she had tagged along with Eddie, she would have eventually seen Eddie's monsters, but she ditched him instead.

Basically, there are no alternate dimensions.

You brute! You absolute man! I've never been able to play silent hill at night in the dark to this day.

James still couldn't see Angela's monsters as they were. That thing in the room was her father and she never treated it as a generic monster, so it could be assumed as you said, he only got to see her silent hill the better he came to know her. James could not see her father as she did, because he never met him, so he instead looked like a more generic monster rather than what was on the outside.

Since James is able to enter other people's nightmares, are they then able to do the same? The little girl never sees any monsters, but she never sticks around James for long. Angela saw flames all around her and they ended up consuming her, but that was personal to her and not James. Maria is tied to James and plays out in a way that tortures James for what he did to his wife.

Playing in the dark I think heightens your senses, and also helps in solving puzzles.

On Harder puzzle modes I don't think I wouldäve grasped things like the hospital keypad as soon as when I was in daylight and "safe". The darkness and silence makes you think more fluidly.

...

Was watching your linked vid and saw in the related vids another vid based on this town but it had real silent hill in the title. Get about 1:50 in and this is the host.

You killer!

..why……why…

It's one of those things SH2 in particular is good at, presenting an everyday thing in a very abstract way, instead of relying on the straight up grotesque body horror Ito usually uses. It's also consistent with Angela's manifestations and is foreshadowed by the pools of water in the hallway leading up there, it happens before you see her in the Lakeside Hotel too. The room she's in at the apartments is also pretty scorched on the inside.

You are seriously missing out if you have never played these games in the dark, especially SH3, since so much of it is at nighttime or otherwise dark areas

it has to do with horror games in general, if the character you're playing as acts more scared than you it takes you out of the experience, so it's better to err on the side of caution and have them be stoics.

Yeah I watched that one afterward the first time I watched it, and then I called him a cunt and he deleted my comment.

I dont disagree, but I get really scared and its hard to continue.

Software mode fixes some cutscenes but not all. I'm in the second apartment building and a cutscene beginning with a woman lying on floor is fucked regardless. Anyone know how to make it work?

B-brianna?

I think she had the sense not to come in screaming hysterically to her dad, which could lead to her being put in a mental hospital if everything up until that point had been some sort of dream or hallucination. She wanted reason on her side.

not really in this case, it's unrelated. also it's more based on muh psychologist profile. also the game is a little different based on that stuff too.

I played SH2 on PCSX2 on OpenGL from start to finish and except for FMV cutscenes I don't remember having any problems. Can you post a pic?

No, is literally the Hulettverse because that canon is the one Tomm Hulett made for the series when he took over, and most fun of all, with Book of Memories he retconned the reason behind SH1-SH4.

Don't normally try Open GL, but software and hardware got me the same results respectively for each. It's frozen on these screens. I can mash buttons to skip the cutscene. Watched it online, it was awkwardly acted as hell.

Yeah that was the same problem for me. The FMV cutscenes sometimes work and sometimes not both in software and hardware mode. Since I already beat the game's PC version, I knew where the cutscenes were so I just had a savestate right before they trigger and tried them a few times, got them all working this way eventually. But it's your first time don't know how you can fix it honestly. When I played it I switched between software and hardware mod right as cutscenes start/ a few seconds before they start/ a few seconds after they start, etc. Try fucking around this for a while, they work eventually. If you don't know where cutscenes are, you can just use savestates often and if they froze you can revert back to them and try again I guess

Changing between HW and SW just fills the screen with either darkness or or complete garbage. I'm just going to savestate often and watch any broken scenes on jewtube.

This is why I still don't like using PS2 emulation.

At least SH3 doesn't have any FMV videos, if you plan to play it after SH2 so you won't have any problems with that. I think it has only one if you wait long enough in the main menu or something, but nothing important. SH4 doesn't have any problems either IIRC

Glad to hear that about 3, my sister wants to play that one. Right now she's playing Haunting Ground/Demento. We have the game, but it's broken. Can't get the shadows on doors to emulate right in PCSX2, or just eliminate them.

Here's the knife difference.

There should be a hack in PCSX2 that does it automatically if you look under emulation settings. I know it works for DX11, maybe not OpenGL. Do use OpenGL for SH3, though.

Neat

I honestly didn't remember that the camera was so fucking floaty, especially when running. Maybe it's the upped resolution on my PC compared to CRT but I'm getting a headache.

In SH3? I thought SH3 had the best camera of the three personally. Maybe it's the increased framerate on PC?

Pic fucking related. If I had one wish – and this wish consisted of "pick one person, they poof out of the timeline, everything they did also disappears/never happened, but you die too" I'd burn that wish in a hot second to kill ol' Tomm Hulett. Goodbye, ruiner of Silent Hill.

Tomm is a reminder that "loving" something does not imply a person has a basic understanding of what they love. So much clutter and nonsense has been added to the Silent Hill story since he started making the games.

I don't know what game that is but it's shit

Now examine it. She says something extra

Yeah, the game fix hack for auto-software mode was already on. Probably the only reason any of the FMVs were working at all.

Huh. Sorry I didn't remember to do that.

That would just lead to someone else ruining it, the franchise getting shitcanned. Still, it'll be nice living in a world without you.

Tomm, please, don't be angry.

It's amazing how a company with so many great franchises managed to kill them all

Like tears in rain.

...

I'll add to that, fam. It's not a favorite track of mine, but it's one of the best ones from Silent Hill 4

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