#silent hill theory

[farashibutjustfoolingaorund]

I just noticed this picture in Harry and Heather's apartment that looks like a kid's drawing. We know Cheryl liked to draw, I wouldn't be surprised if Heather did too since they're kind of like the same person/a reincarnation/continuation of the same person.

Assuming Heather drew this, this drawing is very interesting to me. My instinct is to say Cheryl is the one on the left, Alessa is the one in the middle, and Heather is the one on the right. To me this feels like symbolism/foreshadowing of Heather eventually possessing the memories of both Cheryl and Alessa, becoming 'complete' in a way.

After Heather gains Alessa's memories, Claudia seems to expect her to switch sides. However, despite all the pain and hatred that Heather remembered as Alessa, she maintains her outlook on the world: that suffering is a part of life, but at the end of the day, we were put here to feel joy. Ultimately it's a positive outlook.

I feel like the drawing being a happy union between these three parts of a whole (if you wanna think about it that way) is symbolic of Heather's ultimately positive outlook on life and the world, despite everything she knows.

And she has this outlook because of Harry. Harry changed her life. Harry was a good father, and raised both Cheryl and Heather in such a way that even after gaining Alessa's memories and having full reason to hate the world, Heather chose not to. Harry thought many times about killing Heather when she was a baby, but ultimately chose to love her, and that really changed everything.

So I think it's significant that whatever drawing pad Heather drew this picture on was a gift from Harry. Heather was able to build her view of the world and of reality and create a positive outlook even from painful and hateful memories because of that gift of love and care that Harry gave her.

photo ref from here btw

[susielesbianism]

[wounded-warsong]

YOU'VE BEEN HERE FOR TWO DECADES

SILENT HILL 2 (2001 & 2024)

[beatlesmenrock]

yeaaa idk if im gonna finish this but here’s a storyboard of that silent hill 2 audio because it fits so well with the Paul is dead theory 🔥

[acecroft]

SILENT HILL 2 Remake (2024) dev. Bloober Team

[corneliuscornstarch]

Primal Fear.

[sanamustdie]

— james and the bad bitch he pulled by seeking punishment for his sins!

[a-shakespearean-in-paris]

It’s pretty well known that Maria is a manifestation from Silent Hill and obviously James’s psyche, but I don’t know I also like to think she’s also partially a manifestation from Mary herself.

Mary probably sensed that James was angry and frustrated. She was angry and frustrated. Maybe Maria represents the person she wanted, but couldn’t be. Carefree, sultry, teasing. Her continuous ‘deaths’ at the hand of Pyramid Head not only tortures James but serves as cruel reminders for her—that she can’t escape her death, that it was inevitable.

The dead wife trope is pretty tired—husband always holds the wife up to a pedestal and she always accepts her death with grace and dignity, telling husband he has to move on and life—but I appreciate SH2 for acknowledging the anger and pain of the wife with the hallway conversation. Maria is that anger and the desire that things could have been different personified—for both James and Mary.

[jamie-sunderland]

James being the one writing most if not all the notes?

Sad because it makes a lot of sense, a lot of these patients and doctors. Same with the prisoners, it all leads to everyone just being James. Warden in the prison became obsessed with the idea that all the prisoners were sick, the notes in the hospital as well showing signs of maybe being treated not well there at one point in his life.

And the writing, a lot of it is the same handwriting, save for maybe a few off here and there. Mostly the prison notes, the writing makes me think it *is* just him because he writes his 1s in a very specific way. Along with his Ns, and Es if I'm remembering right.

Being stuck in his prison from Mary's sickness, the previous traumatic experience of possibly being taken care of very poorly at some point in his life. I don't know, I have a lot of thoughts. This is just a 'THEORY' so I'm not trying to say this is real. Just makes a lot of sense to me

They just read to me as self punishment, and some thoughts he may have had (like the note telling him to kill himself). Implying that, just like Mary, he delusionally came up with a different story to bury it.

I think some day someone will put together the notes and give this theory a bit more effort rather then my post, because I'm not the only one who thinks it and there is just so much more I can say about it.

[youkoden]

Correct me if I’m wrong

I was a little confused when watching this scene over and over. But I’m convinced that James turns into her ‘father’ in front of her eyes. Because she’s so apologetic to James but this is different….

[madame-mortician]

So I finished Silent Hill 2’s remake and saw a theory going around which I agree with and want to talk about.

Spoilers obviously.

So before I say the actual theory itself I have to talk about another “theory.” I put it in quotes because it’s so heavily implied that it’s basically canon. The theory is that Silent Hill 2’s story is a loop, and this is not the first time James has gone through Silent Hill. The idea is that any time James dies or gets one of the bad endings (In Water, Maria and technically Dog) he always ends up back at the start, because he didn’t learn from his mistake and move on. Silent Hill is refusing to give up and forcing him to face the truth, and anytime James chooses the easy way out or refuses to move on entirely the town forces him back. The main evidence of this theory is:

The corpses around the town are all James. Likely from previous loops where he died to random enemies.

Maria getting the same illness as Mary and James saying she better do something about it. This implies she’ll get sick like Mary, and James will kill her again, learning nothing from what just happened.

Most of the writing found on the wall seems to be written by James. Either subconsciously put there by the town or literally left there by a previous James who caught on to the fact he was stuck in a loop.

After completing Silent Hill 2 at least once, and replaying to get the Rebirth ending, the second James sees Maria dressed like Mary he instantly calls her out, even to her surprise. He already knows it’s Maria because that’s what happened last time.

So that was a popular theory of the original game. Now here in the remake it still works. It works even better in fact, for you see that’s where the new theory comes in. The new theory is that the remake is one of the many loops from the original game. It’s very likely this loop is one of the later ones and let me explain some of my evidence:

Maria is dressed completely differently. Her new outfit is sort of the perfect mix of Maria’s old clothes and Mary’s dress. It seems to imply that after being rejected by James before in some of the loops, she’s slowly becoming more and more like Mary to better appeal to him. She even shows off her old outfit, and though James wouldn’t remember it, Maria would and is sort of mocking him by asking if he would’ve preferred she wore it.

Maria’s personality is also different. She’s less rude and sexual here. Yes she is still sexual and pretty manipulative but not to the extent of the original. Why that’s interesting is because she’s actually portrayed much more sympathetically, with even James taking pity on her, even knowing she’s not real. Like what I said about her outfit, it’s almost like she’s softened her personality to be more appealing than she was previously.

I think Pyramid Head is also a big one. In the original game he was way more monstrous and would instantly go for you. Here he seems bored more often than not. The best example is the closet scene. In the original he was assaulting a mannequin before going to James in the closet who shoots him. It clearly doesn’t do much, but Pyramid Head still flails around like he’s hurt. In the remake he isn’t assaulting a mannequin, the monster is already dead and Pyramid Head chucks it, seeming bored waiting for James. When James gets in the closet, he still approaches him and just stares straight at James. When James shoots him, he doesn’t react instantly, he continues staring at him. Only after a few awkward moments does he actually begin to flail around and then leave. How I interpret this is that since Pyramid Head remembers the loops but James doesn’t, Pyramid Head already knows he’s in the closet and goes up to him, and when James shoots him (despite knowing it wouldn’t do anything) Pyramid Head stares at him like “we’re really doing this?” before awkwardly flailing around. He’s not hurt, he’s basically acting. Whenever he appears he will still hunt James, but he really seems bored, which he likely would be since this would be one of the later loops.

There’s also references to the older game, specifically meaning this would be a loop canon to the original. The first one is that one of the corpses has a copy of the original SH2 map on him. This not only confirms that the corpse is James, but also that it’s one of the original James’. Another Easter egg I can think of, is the rooftop scene. In the original game, Pyramid Head pushed James through a fence and he fell off the roof, despite landing indoors? Here in the remake, Pyramid Head shoves him through the floor instead (which also adds to my point earlier about the newer Pyramid Head seeming more impatient than originally.) Why this is interesting is because you can still find the area of the fence James was originally pushed through, and it’s broken. This implies James was still pushed through it, yet we clearly see he wasn’t, he was shoved through the floor. This means that James was still pushed through the fence in previous loops, just like in the original game.

Eddie mentions killing James before, and him returning. To be fair here, he probably means the James corpses everywhere and isn’t referring to the original boss fight but it still implies a loop.

During the endings, whenever James speaks with Maria he is more sympathetic and understanding of her. He’s quicker to realise it’s not Mary, and he tries his nicest to reason with Maria unlike in the original where he kinda just said she wasn’t Mary and was mad she tricked him. The way I view this is that after being through so many loops, he’s gotten close to Maria even though she isn’t Mary. He still wouldn’t give up Mary for her, but he understands Maria more and doesn’t want to hurt her. He tries to talk it through, and Maria even considers it briefly but she literally can’t let him go. It goes against her entire purpose and thus she always transforms into a monster.

Another one is a line change I noticed. In the original game after Angela asks if James is keeping the knife for himself James says “I’d never kill myself.” In the remake he doesn’t say anything. This implies that he would and this is likely because James subconsciously knows he would, because he did in the previous loops (In Water.)

Another small detail I noticed is the broken puzzles you can find. Now there’s a lot of broken shit in Silent Hill, but nothing important is ever broken. The entire point of the puzzles is for James to solve them to progress. The town, nor any of its monsters would ever purposefully break a puzzle, and even if they did it would be in a way where James could easily fix it. If the town ever broke a puzzle, and made it impossible for James to progress then there’s no point, so they wouldn’t do that, it defeats the purpose. So who is breaking all these puzzles? I doubt Eddie or Angela would be destroying random puzzles, and Laura likely doesn’t even see any puzzles. So who is it then? Well, I believe these are puzzles broken by previous James’. The puzzles that are destroyed don’t have a purpose anymore, and since they’re broken we can’t really have James solve them to progress, so they’ve been replaced by new ones in the current loop. Perhaps a previous James got mad at one of the puzzles being too hard and broke it. This likely would’ve meant he was softlocked and wasn’t able to progress and either was killed or just eventually died because he couldn’t continue. Whilst now the puzzles are replaced, you can still find the old ones. They aren’t puzzles from the original game, but this still implies a loop.

*UPDATE: A mystery was solved in SH2’s remake that confirms James has been in a loop for 20 years. This confirms the loop theory, and since 20+ years ago was when the original game came out, it also seems to imply that the second theory about the loop being canon to the original game is true too.

[farashibutjustfoolingaorund]

2/2

Might as well share these timeline musings! Why not

1/2

[thin-white-twink]

I’m probably just stating the obvious but there’s something I find really interesting:

When I first played sh2 I thought “why do we have to walk through a graveyard in the beginning? Isn’t that too cliché for a horror game?”. I know the bathroom and the forest are actually the first places we walk through but we meet the first other person at the graveyard so –

Angela wanders through the graveyard and says that she searches for her father and her brother but she can’t find them there. We know that Angela isn’t by far as delusional as James, therefore she’s aware of having murdered her father and brother. That’s why she searches for them at the graveyard. On the other side, stuck in his delusions, James wants to proceed to the town. He must suffer the entirety of the game to accept the truth even though the actual truth was right there in the beginning.

I think it’s a very smart choice to put the graveyard as one of the first destinations, because it’s actually where James should have started searching for Mary (figuratively). The game tells us right in the beginning what is going on but it only makes sense if you’re playing for a second time or if you know the story. It adds to the game’s replayability. It’s a circle of creating meaning and it’s a circle of gaining new information every time you play it.

Conclusion: my favourite game 10/10

[puppys-teeth]

Very funny that people label certain games as Cozy Games but I find them stressful as fuck sometimes.

Unpacking: what the fuck is this blue box where does it go?? oh my god there’s so many fucking boxes I’m tired just looking at it

Minecraft: A bit more on the fence but kinda just mind numbing running around to do this and then I have to do this and let’s go mining and let’s make potions and I hate the nether but I need potions and

Stardew Valley: haven’t played it yet but it kinda just looks like more Minecraft except I get to kiss people so that’s cool

Meanwhile, an actually cozy game for me is fallout 4. It definitely helps that FO4 is my special interest but,,, I love going around and shooting and building in my settlements and exploring the world despite having done that a hundred times before. I literally have 1,300 hours on this game

Silent Hill 2 is a close contender until I get to a boss fight and I feel like I’m abt to shit my pants but it’s mostly cool and fine. Puzzles aren’t hard, normal enemies aren’t hard, and the atmosphere is awesome

[owlstar97]

I have a feeling that this is the religious cult; The Order (will this be an origin story?!)🌸🌺💮

[nadas-dirthalen]

Whoever writes the codices over at BioWare has my eternal thanks, because I'm out here misty-eyed about Kal-Sharok just reading these tiny little mementos. Weeping about Emmrich consoling Harding on the nature of spirits, souls, and the spirit-soul exchange across the Veil.

I still think that the next game (or the one after) is going to show us that a mass movement of spirits is what's going to fix the Titans, and I'm in mourning over it in advance, because this is a wound that's stayed open, barely allowed to scab, for millennia.

Thank you BioWare for making me mourn... the ground. The sky. Everything that ever was and ever will be. Thank you for wrapping that up in Paragon Metez.