Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is amazing.

Besides lazy, who else has played it?

I mean, I'll be the first to admit it's not much of a game, but it's games like this that will help the medium of videogames be recognized as a legitimate art form to rival film and literature. It was mindblowing. I forced myself to stay clear of any spoilers for four months, and it was totally worth the effort.

I don't own a Wii, but I might pick one up solely for this game. I'm glad to hear some support for it, I read a forum (found by a random google search) where the posters' opinions of the game seemed mixed. What's the general consensus on Shattered Memories among your Silent Hill circles?

I have a friend with a copy. Watching it, I thought the gameplay was pretty nicely done. Escaping from baddies is the name of the game, and they really went all out making that experience feel like they're all up on you, and further allowing all sorts of mechanics like bashing open doors while keeping your running momentum, and being able to hide, which only works for so long.

The story is certainly weird, though I only saw a few parts. Certainly an interesting reimagining. One thing's for sure, they realized that the blood and rust look was getting stale and this new aesthetic of ice and cobwebs really keeps the hellish world feeling fresh.

Yup, plus it's designed that way for very particular reasons that relate to the story. It disappointed some fans because put simply it's not your dad's Silent Hill but at the same time it a lot closer than you might think at first glance.

The God killer played the PS2 version, so I lit a candle for him at a Catholic church which i'm pretty sure means he'll be haunted or snatched up by Candle Jack.

But I agree completely that the fluid nature and of the whole piece, the story, acting, even the emotions displayed on the characters faces (atleast in the wii version) are so well done you cant help but wonder why other companies haven't caught up to the level. I know, it's Konami and Climax who deal specifically with emotional context in their games heavily, but this should be the standard. The shortness is definitely an issue, I complained about MGS for the same reason, but unlike MGS you can really dictate the branches of your path, not totally off the linearity of the story, but enough to impact you and make you feel important to the universe.

I hope it gets recognized. It doesn't have the graphical flair of the other versions for 360 and what not but the graphics it does have are used brilliantly. That fucking bear was good enough to get a jolt out of me, the little details shine through, anyone who likes spooky/mindfuck games in general needs to play it.

There's a PS2 version? That has to suck, considering so much of the gameplay revolves around motion controls.

One of the scenes I saw involved the world suddenly freezing over while the main character was in a car, and suddenly you're underwater with the whole thing filling up, using motion controls to try and figure out how to get out of this situation. Looked pretty awesome.

The PS2 version was quite underwhelming. It's obvious that it's a port, and that little effort was put into it. There are constant graphical glitches, the framerate slows considerably when the flashlight is on, and the quality of textures is terrifically inconsistent (considering how often you have to read signs on the wall, this is important). I shudder to think how the PSP version looks and plays (and why they even bothered with the PSP).

As far as how Silent Hill fans have reacted, they have separated into two groups. One (the smaller) despises it for various reasons. The stupid ones hate it because it's not Silent Hill 1. More plausible gripes have to do with the game being extremely easy and short. As I said: judged merely on the merit of being a video game, this one can be tough to appreciate.

The majority seem to view it favorably, though, and this is nothing short of amazing considering that the last three Silent Hills have broken the fanbase into pieces. It is an amazing story, and what's more, not just the details but the story itself changes fundamentally based upon certain things you do and say. I've beaten it twice so far, and both have given me extremely different Harry Masons. What's more, when you look closely at everything going on, you're going to see how almost every detail in a game loaded with details turns out to either be important or at least indicative.

It's odd because gameplay is limited almost entirely to interactivity outside of the Nightmare sequences, yet this story could not be effectively told in any kind of passive medium. The interactivity is vital.

If you want me to sum up my opinion, take this for what you will: I'm trying hard to figure out whether or not this is my favorite Silent Hill. I've been playing the games for ten years, I'm a huge, obsessive, hardcore fan, and this isn't a question I've had to ask myself since 2001.

So, yes: I love this game!

I've been meaning to play Shattered Memories for quite some time. Games like FFXIII and GOW have kept me away from my Wii, though.

In the time it takes you to switch out Gears of War to play FF 13 you can beat Silent Hill: Shattered Memories 4 times.

To anyone who has surround sound please, please set your system up properly for this game - the sound work is amazing.

This is a mild spoiler so feel free to read past it, but seeing as the cult has no part in Shattered Memories I cant help but see the PS2 sequel as a logical path. I wonder if Konami will re-release SH2 with Shattered Memories wii controls. It wouldn't be hard to do SH2 with no weapons. You'd essentially just be running from a myriad of baddies, maybe with different methods to escape them when they tackle you. Then there's boss fights, that would be fun. Maybe some particular movements or boss-only weapons would apply (you find a gun loaded with 4 bullets, you find a crowbar that after defeating the boss, a cut scene shows you beating it so severely it breaks or bends the crowbar, etc).

the RE series motivated its ammo and weapon dumps because in each game you arrive during or after a viral breakout or like in 4 and 5, its a building army. So it makes sense to find weapons, healing items and ammo everywhere. In SH it was out of place, however in at least particular instance it breaks the fourth wall in a way, before an epic boss battle in the original Silent Hill (or was it 2?) there was a room full of empty health drinks, as if warning you. But I guess it's all 'placed' there for you in particular, now that I think about it.

Ryan, let me ask you this: do you think that SM is the path that future Silent Hill games need to take?

I finally had the opportunity to pick this up. There were a few things I was waiting on getting before buying this game - namely my tax credit so I could get a bigger TV and a Wii. Turns out I wouldn't need the tax credit after all, though, because I ended up getting both things second-hand (Wii from a friend, the TV from my parents).

I paid GameStop a visit today and brought this game home. I'd been waiting weeks for this moment... I started to play it, but didn't get much past the opening cut-scenes before I decided to shut it off. It was still daylight out, and I wanted wait until night time so the atmosphere would be better. :)

The controls seemed a little wonky at first, but I've gotten used to them for the most part. The only problem I've been having lately is that at certain moments of panic, I tend to forget that you can't use the analog stick to turn. It's kind of weird only using the wiimote for this purpose, but I wouldn't want to sacrifice strafing, so it's fine.

I *love* the idea they had of making the user swing the wiimote in certain directions to get the monsters off your back. I wasn't expecting that, so when that moment came, I had to shove my coffee table out of the way with my foot to give me room to stand up and flail my arms around like a spaz. It makes the game all the more intense and really immerses the player.

I'm not much far yet, I'm only at the 2nd nightmare sequence in the woods. This part's really frustrating, I must have played it 5 or 6 times, but I can't help myself from basically running around in circles, frantically trying to get away from the monsters. I have a poor sense of direction to begin with, so there's practically none at all when I'm trying like hell to run away. One hesitation and I'll have those fleshy fuckers all swarming on me at once.

My god, the things they did with the speaker on the wiimote are brilliant. I love the idea of holding it to my ear when a psychic flash appears and I get a creepy phone call. A brief note on "psychic flashes" that you generally see in movies/TV/some pulp novels: I hate them and think they're obnoxiously cheesy, but they work well in this game. The little disturbing stories you get from them really add to the experience and mood. Also, hearing the squeaking from the monsters on the wiimote speaker really reinforces the urgency of GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE THEY'RE RIGHT BEHIND YOU!

So far, I'm loving the whole experience, I just wish there was a way to look at your GPS while being chased in the nightmare scenes. I get the feeling I only made it through the first one by dumb luck, so I guess I have a lot more trial and error to look forward to. :crap: Maybe turning the brightness up on my TV will help, I think part of the problem is that it's so dark that I'm almost blindly running from door to door with little chance to think out the path.

Hey Bean, I heard ice has a secret and if you follow ice it treats you nice.

Ice also reflects light really well, doesn't it?

*whistles*

There's ice everywhere though? It doesn't seem to lead anywhere. I've been following and running through the doors with blue outlines, but they lead me around in circles. After some coffee I'll pop it back in today to see if I have any better luck.

Well, I'll be damned. Got it the first shot this time. :confused: I think I just ran through a different door. I must have gotten close a couple times last night, but just lost my way.

look for ice above doors. ;D

My favorite nightmare is the one you face next, I think.

The one in the mall? Wait no, the one in the school. I know, I loved that sub-plot they did with the teacher/principal/whoever having the affair with the student. The task of taking the pictures while running away from those god damn demons was pretty neat, I think it was that nightmare where I finally felt I got the hang of running away from those squeaky fuckers.

My god, the whole sequence with meeting Michelle (I make a mean plate of churros lmao) and then her turning into Dahlia made my jaw drop, and not just because Dahlia makes my willie waggle. That was so creepy, especially how she tells you that you've known her for years and that it isn't unlike you to act weird and disoriented sometimes. Syd and Nancy! You can tell this game wasn't developed by the Japanese, they were just spot on in nailing down too many details in western culture. Fake edit: Climax is British? Makes all the more sense, especially the Syd and Nancy reference.

And then Dahlia getting frozen solid and the car going into the lake and oh fuck I'm trapped in a car with rising water! God damn I love this game so far.

I think the last thing I did in the game was complete the nightmare sequence where you're in the mall and have to use the gumball machine to get the right colors of the mall's bird mascot.

Oh! I also liked the part when you're in the hospital and need to use the wiimotes to spin the wheelchair's wheels. Fuck-a-diddle, the developers really out-did themselves in the creative ways they found to use the sticks. I wish more developers did this (or maybe they do and I just don't play enough games).

I was skeptical about how the designers would be able to pull off a frozen winter color scheme rather than a hellish hot / rusty / decrepit-brown color scheme, but they've done a great job so far. It's not freaking me out as much as Silent Hill 1 or 3, but I think so far this is the most fascinating and immersive of the Silent Hills.

I actually still need to play through most of SH3, I got stuck in the subway and put it down for some reason. After a few playthroughs of Shattered Memories I'll probably pick it back up. I'll say this, though, that game managed to creep me out and make me squirm and panic probably more than the entirety of SH2 (though I still expect that SH2 will still beat it on having a fulfilling plot / themes, based on all I've heard). It's been a while that a game will stick with me and make me anxious even after I turn it off, and I was glad to see that magic again. :)

Yes sir, and yes the school is my favorite.

Are you close to finishing up?

Did you take planetarium or art room?

I took the art room. I like how the paths divide and merge in this game, how many differing paths can you take?

I actually haven't gotten further since I last posted. I didn't get the chance to play Monday night because my chores took me too long, and then last night I decided to watch Persona first, but I ended up falling asleep early.

Have you heard of Persona? I've heard its Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece but I didn't get it. It was frustrating. The first half was easy enough but then it starts going in different directions and gets confusing. Even Eraserhead makes more sense. I looked online and apparently there's not even really much of a consensus, aside from the obvious existentialist themes about who you are and what you'd like to be according to society's rules or suggested goals or what have you. I'd like to see it again sometime to try and soak it back in, but I don't know if that'll be any time soon, I might just return it for now.

Anyway, I excitedly told my buddy (another Silent Hill enthusiast) that I have the game and we could play it when he comes to visit, and he told me that he already looked on youtube and saw all the cinematics. He was really impressed by the story, he said it made him misty-eyed at the end and couldn't wait to actually buy and play the game. What the hell is that? That's like putting the orgasm before the sweet build up, or being instantly full without tasting or enjoying a dinner. He just can't resist temptation.

I gotta play the hell out of Shattered Memories tonight and make up for lost time.

INDEEDY.

Persona is very experimental, there's some hidden messages right from the start. The fact that she's an "actress" (all women feel this way anyway) and loses her ability to voice an opinion, communicate, she's sealed herself up and the uncommon name "Alma" (Final Fantasy Tactics taught me this one) which is sort of like "soul" in Spanish. As the nurse, she is repairing our actress's soul. The hidden story starts getting much more complicated: The opening series of shots is important, it's basically the movie in a nutshell.

Sexuality plays a major role. In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories the Dr. asks you to find the images that are the most sexual to you and then reveals them for what they really are. That you cant love sex without embracing death, since sex is the act of love and life. It's in this movie too, remember how she (Alma) freaks out around sex? A woman with too much on her shoulders and/or trying too hard to ignore who she is will lack her identity and have no clue how to percieve sexual thoughts. Just like children have a hard time trying to fathom sex beyond touching and exploring because they have no idea what they want (and they dont want to get hurt).

Alma is the total opposit, weee sex! and she confesses that she had a hot threesome with two boys, and if i remember correctly she was married at the time, or had a boyfriend.Now in her adult life she is scared of sex, like that child who got hurt. Alma never shuts up either - she's the voice our actress as well as Alma's. Here's where it gets tricky...

The paradigm of the relationship is simple: One girl is afraid of everything and has 'acted' her way through life, never truly experiencing anything. While Alma cant help but be herself, crashing through life and soaking the experiences in. They're literally polar opposites of the same person.

It's the same person with different personas. "When I look in the mirror, I think it wouldn't be hard to be you. You could be me, but your soul is so big it would burst out!" Alma talking to our actress. Alma is so upset about her orgy fun, she thinks she 'ruined' her soul. Then when she's delivering the letters to our actresses distraught husband in town, Alma cant help herself and reads the letters.

"Alma's a lesbian and had orgies." (paraphrasing)

Now the whole film is turned on its ear - Now Alma confronted with her own guilt and the anger towards our actress wants to make her life miserable. After all, she's never told a soul about her past and she could only feel calm enough to do so with a person that, by appearances, has no opinion, no voice. But remember - She's an *actress*

What happened? the personas broke down, this woman's head is exploding with conflict. The film literaly breaks and its essense spills across the screen. (keep the halloween kids in mind). When we come back we're in ghost world because one persona is existing without the other, when our actress makes contact with a crying Alma *ZIP* we're back in motion again.

"I know how rotten you are inside!" AYE? ...AYE? Think of Alma looking at the scars on the actresses face after she threw that water. Alma is looking at her OWN scars.

Remember the husband of the actress, he thinks Alma is his wife. We think it's just because of circumstance, lighting, angles, no sir. And suddenly the husband is doing Alma while wife watches (reverse cuckold?) and the trick that gives it away: The image we see of the actress is becoming blurry.

Alma had a disgusting orgy, getting pregnant and aborting her baby.

The actress was told she had no motherly instinct so she forced a pregnancy with husband, worried about what the pregnancy would do to her life, her body, she tried to abort it but it survived (the little boy and the children in the halloween costumes). Alma was created by the actress as an escape, a life where the child was aborted and had freedom.

"I'm just here to help you!" Alma cries.

In a panic of scenes, the actress becomes insane. Alma gashes at her arms (remember "comparing hands?") Reality is crashing down around them both - When the dizzy of panic is done, Alma leaves and sees the actual film crew filming the movie. Our actress has killed her own persona that she used for protection.

Her protection gone, she is flooded with her impregnable walls, her reality destroyed she becomes catatonic and begins to slip in to a vegetable state. At the hospital, her persona appears again and tells her "Nothing. Listen to me very carefully... nothing."

Our actresses mind is blank, she will live the rest of her physical life in a hospital bed. But her mind is gone... "Good, that is how it should be." The film falls to pieces an destroys itself in front of our eyes.

The husband was real but never physically there, Alma and the actress are the same person re-living her life from the perspective of her 'prison' that she made. To quote another favorite of mine, Barfly, "a prison with golden bars." The child she had, I cannot tell if he is dead, is dying, or was never to be actually seen by the mother. He is horribly thin like death, and we see him in the first opening shots trying to touch his mother in the hospital bed. But is it what our actress imagined, or did it actually happen? The genius of it is that only she knows, her "impregnable" (word play) mind, wont even let her own audience in that far.

Good choice for film, it's even better if you have a little weed and some friends over to discuss it. Too much weed and you'll miss the point entirely but a little bit will relax you enough to kinda absorb it all. It's not a film, or a movie. It's some kind of art, like Kubrick at his best. It's not to 'entertain' you, it's literally a window in to the events of a very shallow and disturbed woman who tried to heal herself in all the wrong ways.

When you beat SM post what ending you got, I wont spoil anything but get ready for awesome real-time gameplay cinematics. Just remember to "Look". ;D

how long did it take you to figure out the shadow puzzle?

Persona sore nap rose pan no spear snap ore pa snore

Thanks for the write-up, very impressive, I think I'll give it another watch. An interesting thing I read about it is that Bergman wanted to call it "A Bit of Cinematography", but a producer suggested calling it "Persona" to make it more accessible. The only other Bergman I've seen is The Virgin Spring (which is obviously more straightforward) and has absolutely breath-takingly beautiful black-and-white photography, the man really was a master of cinematography.

I just beat SM (or maybe S & M, I checked off the "I like to role-play during sex" part of the questionaire), and

...fuck, that was sad. :( It didn't make me misty-eyed like my buddy, but he could identify better with parents splitting and his father passing on when he was young.

My ending was that it was Cheryl seeing the therapist all along, and the entire game is her delusion. She obsessed over her father after he died, idealizing him, and as might be natural for a little girl in that situation, she began resenting her mother, perhaps blaming her for the split. We see her mother as a slutty young goth girl, continually hitting on and seducing Harry. There's a bit of Freudian theory here, where the child loves the parent of the opposite sex and wants to imitate the parent of the same sex, only its taken to an extreme, Cheryl sees herself as the pure one who really loved her father and twists her mother to be some kind of slutty demon that seduces her father and makes her love him for all the wrong reasons, it's sort of the game females play with one another, calling each other sluts or whores or ostracizing them, even though the idea of virginity/purity is in its origin a man's invention and concern. But nonetheless women still use it as a form of fierce competition to the point where if two are aiming for the same man and one happens to use sexuality (as though sexuality or attraction were inherently evil) a bit more, the other one immediately labels her as a ruthless whore and a succubus and hates her with a fiery passion that us men can barely even begin to fathom. But I'm starting to exaggerate and this rant has gone on far enough.

I was a little disappointed to see "the main character was DEAD THE ENTIRE TIME!!" cliche pulled out but it was mostly saved by WHY he was still alive. It's an interesting story idea to have a character be dead and trapped halfway in a corporeal world because he's still holding onto his life or what have you, but it's been done to death. But the source of it all was Cheryl holding onto guilt from her father's death, her broken family, and the resulting obsession she takes with seeing him again... it had heart, and it was a good spin on an old idea.

The only thing I don't get is how Cybil, someone who's clearly shown as a real person in the end, was seeing Harry. Was Harry an actual physical manifestation of Cheryl's thoughts? Was Cybil getting pulled into Cheryl's fantasy? How does Michelle fit into all of it? Was her little side-story supposed to represent Cybil's fear of relationships falling apart?

How many different endings can you get, and how much do they vary? What kinds of things do you have to do to change the course of the story? Is it all dependent upon your interaction with the psychologist? It's neat to see the game try to psychoanalyze you during the credits, but its a magic trick where the illusion is easy to see through, and it wasn't 100% spot on. It's a cool idea that's monumentally difficult to pull off, but I give them credit for getting maybe 50% there.

Oh, and regarding shadow puppets... I cheated. :( It was the only time I cheated during the game, but yeah, I did it. I don't know how long it would have took me to figure out there was supposed to be a phone number there. I was too busy getting frustrated saying "god damn it the figurines are exactly like they are in the picture or at least as close as they can get with the two humans being flipped like that". Good idea for a puzzle. I kind of wish there were a few more difficult ones in this game, everything was very straightforward.

I just remembered another thing I liked:

Remember the nightmare you have right after you visit your house? Where you see Dahlia as an older woman? (I didn't recognize her there actually, it took Harry mentioning to Dahlia that he saw an older version of her to make the connection) Remember where you walk into a bedroom and say "Cheryl's room... but she's not here..." and it's profoundly sad. There's a camera shot where you see a picture of Cheryl, it's taped to a door of glass or some reflective surface so you get to simultaneously see the picture of Cheryl and Harry's pained expression as he looks at it. I would suck more kielbasa than a full polish restaurant if I could get a screencap of that.

hahahaha I looked for an hour on google for that image. I found the hand painted artwork of course but not that specific image, it embodied the entire story in one frame.

He is a reflection and the memory (a photograph) is looking back at him, transcending space and time. It gave me a Keanu Reeves moment.

Also

You suck so hard, it took me about 10 minutes of playing with and then when I got the phone call "door's open" I had to get a coffee and take a break because it honestly creeped me out. It was just so unexpected and I didn't know if there was another person in the school with me.

More on ending:

It's always her in the therapy, that doesn't change. What changes is the reasoning and the how and why, to me this game fails in a very particular area. As a gameplayer, you and me want to "do it all" and "see it all" so we examine every picture, call every number, etc. Well THAT is what dictates your ending! So if you only looked at the sexually themed images/numbers to call, you get an ending based on that - so you have to role play. I wish it used a more in depth mechanic to determine your outcome. BUT, it does record everything else, it just doesn't use it in gameplay. How was your ending synopsis? spot on, close enough? Did you remember to "Look" under the water as you swam?

It's always her in the therapy, that doesn't change. What changes is the reasoning and the how and why

This is enough for me to keep playing, as long as her motivations are varied. I'm excited! Though you bring up a very good point about how players need to "role play" to see everything. Now that I've beaten the game, I'm more open to filling in the gaps by watching them on youtube, but that still feels like cheating. That's what I eventually did with the extra endings in Silent Hill 2 (I think I beat it 2 or 3 times before giving in), but this one is a little shorter so maybe I can swing that. I'll have to be careful to avoid the sexual imagery this time around. It was natural for me to fall into that the first time through, and after a point I was actively trying to go that route, since it was an obvious running theme. Sex is pretty much a dead ringer for any kind of study of the human psyche.

Do you know how many different endings there are?

How was your ending synopsis? spot on, close enough?

It was maybe 80% true. It tried to claim I'm neat and clean and am anal about details, neither of which are true. I'm very sloppy and laidback. However, it did say I consider myself a romantic and that in a relationship I would consider a commitment to be important, that I desire to make other people happy, and maybe a couple other true things.

Did you remember to "Look" under the water as you swam?

Yes I did, I saw some statues of Harry and Cheryl. In one scene, it looked like he was on top of her and I was all OH HELL NO I DIDN'T RAPE HER DON'T SAY THAT YOU BETTER NOT SAY THAT ITS NOT TRUE but in retrospect I must have just been looking at it from a weird angle.

Are you always supposed to almost-drown during that sequence, or did that just happen because I spent too much time looking down? It was pretty cool how you had to use the wiimote sticks to swim.

I kind of wish
the mementos amounted to more than just worthless collectibles. They could have incorporated them into the town's stories/psychic flashes more, like telling us about the people who owned them. You get some sense of that, like the hunting knife in the cabin full of the taxidermy, but it's not enough, and there's no good pay-off.

And to kiss this game's ass again, holy crap the voice acting and emotion was not only the best in any Silent Hill game (I think I can safely say that having not played 4, Origins, or Homecoming), but possibly even in any video game. I certainly can't think of any that I've played that have come so close. There's probably some out there, but this is very impressive by video game standards. I can't recall a single time where a cheesy delivery brought me out of the game. The facial expressions are wonderful in how precise they are. I'm eager to get to a time when video game faces can closely replicate what a talented actor can do in front of a camera, and this is the next stepping stone towards that goal.

Oh, and regarding shadow puppets... I cheated. :( It was the only time I cheated during the game, but yeah, I did it. I don't know how long it would have took me to figure out there was supposed to be a phone number there. I was too busy getting frustrated saying "god damn it the figurines are exactly like they are in the picture or at least as close as they can get with the two humans being flipped like that". Good idea for a puzzle. I kind of wish there were a few more difficult ones in this game, everything was very straightforward.

This puzzle seems to get everyone, mostly because it doesn't have a DING DING DING YOU SOLVED THE PUZZLE noise when you finally get the arrangement right.

btw

Cybil (at least, as she is portrayed) is no more real than anyone else in the game. The only people seen in the game who are real are Cheryl, Dr. K., and Dahlia at the very end.

btw

Cybil (at least, as she is portrayed) is no more real than anyone else in the game. The only people seen in the game who are real are Cheryl, Dr. K., and Dahlia at the very end.[/QUOTE]

Fun stuff:

I was researching names a while ago because they're so important in any good characer, so I was looking up character names that I could think of to see if they had hidden meanings that jive with the character or story they portray, and found this: From Greek: Sibylla, meaning "prophetess, sibyl". In Greek and Roman legend the sibyls were ten female prophets who practiced at different holy sites in the ancient world. In later Christian theology, the sibyls were thought to have divine knowledge and were revered in much the same way as the Old Testament prophets. Because of this, the name came into general use in the Christian world during the Middle Ages. The Normans brought it to England, where it was spelled both Sibyl and Sybil. It became rare after the Protestant Reformation, but it was revived in the 19th century, perhaps helped by Benjamin Disraeli's novel 'Sybil' (1845).

The actress "Cybil Shepard" (Shepard of the holy women = Queen of knowledge) takes on a whole new light with her name of hidden meaning. But back to Silent Hill's Cybil, she appears in the story at important times and acts as a prophet with devine knowledge, slowly cracking the case of Mr. Mason. Eventually she figures it all out and leaves Mason to his own devices after telling him "You're dead." Cybil looks like Cheryl in the physical words themselves for one and I think is a persona of Cheryl's mind switching from a powerful sexy woman, to a plain yet professional 'good cop', she's a police officer "policing" Cheryl's mind and might be a manifistation created because of her therapy to bring her mind back in to reality.

This puzzle seems to get everyone, mostly because it doesn't have a DING DING DING YOU SOLVED THE PUZZLE noise when you finally get the arrangement right.

True. I also didn't like, when I found the answer, how hard it would be to make the two human figures look like a convincing 8. They could have just as easily gone with a simpler number. But that wouldn't have made the puzzle magically click for me so the point is moot.

Cybil (at least, as she is portrayed) is no more real than anyone else in the game. The only people seen in the game who are real are Cheryl, Dr. K., and Dahlia at the very end.

I guess the Dahlia detail is from a different ending, I only remember seeing Cybil. In the ending I got, Cheryl leaves her therapy session and is comforted by Cybil outside. I don't see any reason why Cheryl's delusion or hallucination (or obsession if you want to view her interactions with Harry as more symbolic) would extend as far as her... it just seems strange, but I suppose it makes less sense that Harry would be able to interact with anyone real, and a person he likely never met no less.

But back to Silent Hill's Cybil, she appears in the story at important times and acts as a prophet with devine knowledge, slowly cracking the case of Mr. Mason. Eventually she figures it all out and leaves Mason to his own devices after telling him "You're dead." Cybil looks like Cheryl in the physical words themselves for one and I think is a persona of Cheryl's mind switching from a powerful sexy woman, to a plain yet professional 'good cop', she's a police officer "policing" Cheryl's mind and might be a manifistation created because of her therapy to bring her mind back in to reality.

This is all brilliant and works very well within the story, though at the same time one must consider that the characters are taken from the first Silent Hill, which was a very different game. Rather than an actual force of truth and order, Cybil is more of a bystander who gets sucked into the hellish reality that the cult develops through Alessa's tormented mind. Maybe in Silent Hill 1's case the character's intended effect was more that the authority of the real world becomes meaningless and impotent in the face of evil and power of the cult.

I love the idea of Cheryl being a figure of order to restore the chaos in Cybil's mind, though. That never occurred to me and makes a lot of sense, authorial-intent-be-damned. Since Shattered Memories is so different, though, the subtext you give still makes sense, I guess my contention is more with the origin of the name Cybil being ascribed to a prophet, that seems more a happy coincidence.

Maybe with this insight, Cybil being a figment of Cheryl's imagination makes sense after all. There's just a dissonance there, I think. With her first session behind her belt, Cheryl should be on the road to recovery, and the idea of her acknowledging an imaginary person immediately after that kind of flies in the face of that. Thematically it makes sense, though, if Cybil is supposed to be guiding Cheryl's mind and helping her put her mind back together.

Is anyone else even reading this thread? Anyone else that's concerned about spoilers? Should we just drop them? It's not a big inconvenience, we can keep doing it, but if it's for no one's benefit then we might as well forget about them and make this thread easier to read.

yeah screw spoiler tags ;P

I think Cybil's name-meaning applies to her first incarnation as well. A prophet that shows up at 'important' times, but she is tainted and destroyed by the evil of Alyssa or her mother, not sure which.

Ergo, a false prophet. Leme paruse the story quickly.

Okay first off, Cybil tells you ITS DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE, TAKE THIS and hands you a gun. She also tells you that she's attempting to contact reinforcements.

The next time you meet, she says she saw your daughter "walk on thin air" and tells Harry it's worse (the town) than she imagined. She briefly touches on a drug trafficing ring that's been an ongoing investigation (as you know, part of the major plot to SH is the particular drug that is refined there which comes from a flower).

Of point of interest is where you meet her: In front of a 'church' with an altar. Harry goes off in to la-la land while talking to Cybil, entering alternate Silent Hill while Cybil tries to keep him in what she thinks is reality.

Next time you meet, it's the boat. Cybil finally meets Dahlia here. Cybil confesses she cannot comprehend what is happening in the town, even though Harry explains it. It's like Cybil WONT understand it. She tells Harry she'll do anything to save the child though and heads towards the amusement park, where Dahlia said would lead to clues.

Boom - Cybil's on the couresel in a wheelchair and has a huge parasite on her back. What in the fuck buckets right? But I think, measuring realities here, that Cybil was, in some way, portraying Harry's dead wife who had 'fallen ill' years ago and could not have children (hence the strong bond to the 'adopted' Cheryl). The parasite could be the sickness eating away at her, or how Harry's growing guilt of seeing his wife suffer and caused him to view her as a parasite, sucking the life out of him as she slowly died. Regardless, in the true story, during the fight with Cybil (who is not acting like Cybil at all) your douse her with the liquid and the parasite comes off - she returns back to normal.

My theory on it is that she is Harry's nightmare. Him and Cybil kinda felt for each other, didn't they? They were so happy to see each other in the hell they were in. As he grew attached to her, she became a monster to him, just like the wife. But now he can fight those demons, and save her.

Ryan will have better info than me on this, but that's my theory. So i think the hidden meaning of the name has clout here because Cybil is:

1. Devine in that she is the only normal person to survive. (Kauffman is killed by Lisa)

2. She has 'special knowledge' of the drug trafficing and helps Harry bridge the clues together of what's happening in the town.

3. She appears in the game at all the special locations that are important to Harry, Alessa, or Cheryl.

Now the best ending of SH has Cybil finding Dahlia and the monster in the wheelchair. This confuses me here. The wheelchair reference is made multiple times in Harry's story and here it is again with Alessa + Cheryl as Mr. Frankenfurter X-Treme.

Dahlia's bullshit: I was shocked to realize the talisman of Metraton was being used. In spite of the lost soul returning at last. Just a little longer and all would've been for naught. It's all because of that man. We must be thankful to him. Even though Alessa has been stopped, his little girl has to go. What a pity... *lol*

So now we get the whole story, a little girl was going to give birth to a demon God by being tortured severely and her pain and sufferng would bring the God out (talk about your long and painful pregnancies, oy!) but Alessa wanted help and created Cheryl out of what good that was left inside Alessa. As long as the two are apart no God can be made. But Cheryl was drawn to recconect with Alessa, or, Dahlia was using black magics to lure her back. Once returned, they are combined and the big ptereodon of evil is formed. Strange tho, it doesn't pop out until Kauffman throws the vile of liquid on it. I dont get that either.

Hmm, dammit, Weltall get in here!

God damn it, lazy, you're making me want to play through Silent Hill 1 again. I can't do that, because I don't have a PS1 memory card. :( My god, I was furious when I found out that you can play PS1 games on PS2 but you need a PS1 memory card. I used to have one, but I couldn't for the life of me find it.

I remember the "drug trafficking" comment made by Dahlia, but I don't recall any other mention of using drugs in the game. Was there more of that in the first, or did it come with the 3rd Silent Hill?

Next time you meet, it's the boat. Cybil finally meets Dahlia here. Cybil confesses she cannot comprehend what is happening in the town, even though Harry explains it. It's like Cybil WONT understand it. She tells Harry she'll do anything to save the child though and heads towards the amusement park, where Dahlia said would lead to clues.

But if Cybil is supposed to be a prophet, shouldn't she understand what's going on and be guiding Harry to understanding? It seems to me that given what you say, her role is more brute force than intelligence, it's not important that she understands fully what's happening so long as she can protect the citizens of Silent Hill under any circumstances possible.

Cybil equated to Harry's dead wife

This idea is pretty interesting, especially considering that in one ending you see Cybil take the place of Harry's wife as it shows the exact same camera shot of Harry picking up baby Cheryl in one ending. The only thing is I think you're merging some of Silent Hill 2 in here. Is there any in-game (or in-manual) evidence to support that Harry's wife being sick made him miserable?

The rest of your post is a good, the only other thing I don't remember is Lisa killing Dr. Kauffman. Was that in one of the endings?

I played some Silent Hill 3 last night, got from the subway to the construction site, where the fuck is the story in this game? The great thing about Silent Hill 1 is that it was paced perfectly. It gave you a good premise, a spooky ghost town, and just when you think you might be getting close to your daughter the shit hits the fan and oh shit, you find yourself in this alternate reality. I remember how creeped out that made me, I felt like I was in a concentration camp or something. You play through that a bit, get to a climax with a boss, then oh shit the sirens again, and everything's back to normal? Then you got a bit more story, rinse and repeat, the entire thing was brilliant.

Silent Hill 3 so far seems pretty much all "here you are in an alternate reality, kill a few monsters, solve a puzzle, run away, blah blah blah". It's just staying that way and starting to get repetitive. I haven't gotten that much story, either. This is killin' me, and not in the good way. If you just show the alternate reality all the time, it starts to get dull. You have to distract the player from it with some story (which also enriches the experience obviously), or lull him into a false sense of security with a "normal" reality for a while.

Maybe this is why people seem to think it's the weakest of the first four...

God damn it, lazy, you're making me want to play through Silent Hill 1 again. I can't do that, because I don't have a PS1 memory card. :( My god, I was furious when I found out that you can play PS1 games on PS2 but you need a PS1 memory card. I used to have one, but I couldn't for the life of me find it.

:FuckYou: You dont have/planning to get a PS3 i'm assuming (I wouldn't)? I'm getting a PS2 slim JUST to play Silent Hill 1 and 2, FFTactics.


I remember the "drug trafficking" comment made by Dahlia, but I don't recall any other mention of using drugs in the game. Was there more of that in the first, or did it come with the 3rd Silent Hill?

White Claudia is a major drug in Silent Hill and from what I can tell is either a way for the cult to make money or was used for its hallucinagenic properties to comune with the 'other side'. Maybe both, but of course we never see the real Silent Hill as both the light side and dark side are representations of Alessa's and Cheryl's broken mind. You'd have to ask Ryan what the giant symbols on the ground mean, I think Alessa placed those in particular places as a method to 'seal' the city from evil (created by Alessa to keep Cheryl away) but I read somewhere that it was a symbol of the drug as well.

But if Cybil is supposed to be a prophet, shouldn't she understand what's going on and be guiding Harry to understanding? It seems to me that given what you say, her role is more brute force than intelligence, it's not important that she understands fully what's happening so long as she can protect the citizens of Silent Hill under any circumstances possible.

Well, I dunno. A prophet just means you have special information (from God(s)) and you preach it. In the mythos of all religion, to solidify the importance of the person they usually work miracles as well (there's hundreds of prophets in the bible who all work miracles as Jesus did). Cybil had special information that we otherwise wouldn't have known and she was 'preaching' to Harry to stay focused. When ever Harry saw her, he lit up! She almost appeared to him like a guiding spirit, a dead Ben Kenobi to Luke kind of partnership. In a way, she seemed to appear when ever Harry (and the game player) were completely lost, she pushed the next direction of the story acting almost like the antogonist of the whole thing. I cant put my finger on it, but her special role may not be a mirror t her name meaning but atleast signifies her role as something more important than just 'some cop'. In fact, she may be created by Cheryl unknowingly (Cybil can only appear in the light side of Silent Hill until you use flouros which binds the dark side) to help 'protect' Harry (her foster daddy). If that's the case, which I cant prove or unprove, it would literally mean a God (Cheryl) created a person (Cybil) to guide and protect a savior (Harry).



This idea is pretty interesting, especially considering that in one ending you see Cybil take the place of Harry's wife as it shows the exact same camera shot of Harry picking up baby Cheryl in one ending. The only thing is I think you're merging some of Silent Hill 2 in here. Is there any in-game (or in-manual) evidence to support that Harry's wife being sick made him miserable?

Good question, i'm wondering if I pulled that out of my ass or not now. Okay, found this:

Harry: I'm not sure myself. But, you know, Cheryl isn't my biological daughter. I actually haven't told her yet. She probably already knows anyway, though. We found her abandoned on the side of the highway. Nobody knew where she came from. We didn't have any kids of our own, my wife was sick, and it didn't look like she was getting any better. So we took Cheryl in.

Now that wheelchair that keeps popping up in the game has more clout, it's piece of Harry's and Cheryl's horror.

The rest of your post is a good, the only other thing I don't remember is Lisa killing Dr. Kauffman. Was that in one of the endings?

In the good plus ending, Lisa grabs him and drags him in to hell. It's inferred that Kauffman killed her directly or indirectly, it involves the drug white claudia I believe.

I played some Silent Hill 3 last night, got from the subway to the construction site, where the fuck is the story in this game? The great thing about Silent Hill 1 is that it was paced perfectly. It gave you a good premise, a spooky ghost town, and just when you think you might be getting close to your daughter the shit hits the fan and oh shit, you find yourself in this alternate reality. I remember how creeped out that made me, I felt like I was in a concentration camp or something. You play through that a bit, get to a climax with a boss, then oh shit the sirens again, and everything's back to normal? Then you got a bit more story, rinse and repeat, the entire thing was brilliant.

Silent Hill 3 so far seems pretty much all "here you are in an alternate reality, kill a few monsters, solve a puzzle, run away, blah blah blah". It's just staying that way and starting to get repetitive. I haven't gotten that much story, either. This is killin' me, and not in the good way. If you just show the alternate reality all the time, it starts to get dull. You have to distract the player from it with some story (which also enriches the experience obviously), or lull him into a false sense of security with a "normal" reality for a while.

Maybe this is why people seem to think it's the weakest of the first four...

It's actually pretty good story wise, see, you're playing as Harry's daughter that he got after killing the god, its Alessa and Cheryl combined again and sure enough she is still the pregnant harbinger of a unborn god. Harry thought the nightmare of it all was over, and for him it was. But for Cheryl she is now bringing the hell with her wherever she goes. It will explain a lot more once you get a little further. It's not as strong a story as 2, but it's still quite good imo. And yeah the structure of the story telling is like a good book, even if the first game has engrish issues and lacking voice work.