STICKGHOST'S PLOT ANALYSIS OF SILENT HILL
BOLDLY GOING WHERE SLOWBEEF HAS GONE BEFORE!
Welcome to the world of Silent Hill, the survival horror
series that put the Resident Evil one to shame. Aside from actually creating
an aura of spookiness and disturbing things, it also features what is
most likely the most convoluted (or stupid) plot this side of Marathon.
As always, I don't take any special efforts to keep things under wraps,
so this article should not be read if you haven't played the games and
plan to in the future. Let's get started!
Here's the basic premise: Harry goes to Silent Hill with his daughter. However, just outside town, he swerves to avoid a person in the road and crashes the vehicle. When he awakens, he finds his daughter missing... She is somewhere in this town, and he must find her before its too late.
And that's actually pretty easy. Since it was late night when he crashed and it is daylight when he wakes, I reckon Harry must have been unconscious for quite a while. However, Cheryl is just around the corner of the block. Ignoring Harry, she runs off into an alley. Harry follows and comes across some grisly remains of people (and a dog too.) After being attacked, he passes out again and reawakens in a cafe with a female cop watching over him.
The officer, Cybil, is from a nearby town, so she's just as clueless as he is. After some dialog consisting mostly of "What the hell is going on here?", Harry goes to leave in search of his daughter. Cybil stops him, telling him that its dangerous and that he should have a weapon. So she hands him her gun. You learn that one in the academy, Cybil? She says she's going to get reinforcements and promptly leaves.
Back in control, you must first check out the place for useful items. One object of interest is a notepad.
Here's the basic premise: Harry goes to Silent Hill with his daughter. However, just outside town, he swerves to avoid a person in the road and crashes the vehicle. When he awakens, he finds his daughter missing... She is somewhere in this town, and he must find her before its too late.
And that's actually pretty easy. Since it was late night when he crashed and it is daylight when he wakes, I reckon Harry must have been unconscious for quite a while. However, Cheryl is just around the corner of the block. Ignoring Harry, she runs off into an alley. Harry follows and comes across some grisly remains of people (and a dog too.) After being attacked, he passes out again and reawakens in a cafe with a female cop watching over him.
The officer, Cybil, is from a nearby town, so she's just as clueless as he is. After some dialog consisting mostly of "What the hell is going on here?", Harry goes to leave in search of his daughter. Cybil stops him, telling him that its dangerous and that he should have a weapon. So she hands him her gun. You learn that one in the academy, Cybil? She says she's going to get reinforcements and promptly leaves.
Back in control, you must first check out the place for useful items. One object of interest is a notepad.
"Someday, somebody may experience these bizarre events.
Hopefully, they will find my notes useful."
I think I could find better things to do in this situation
than scribble down my thoughts on little memos that no one will probably
ever find. But I'm sure they'll find your account of how you used a magnet
to retrieve a key or that one time you plugged a hole with a rubber ball
completely invaluable. As you leave, the radio starts to emit static and
one of the most infamous pieces of dialog commences... As you look over
the radio, a window behind you shatters! You turn to see nothing, but
suddenly a gargoyle bursts through another window in front of you! Yep,
the gargoyle broke two windows just so he could scare you. Who
knew gargoyles were such assholes?
Now outside, you begin your search for your daughter. Your newly acquired radio helps clue you in to nearby enemies by emitting static. Now, I don't know why the radio reacts to the monsters unless they have radio towers strapped to their heads or something. If you head back to the jeep, you can now find a health drink. Thanks for not checking the glovebox earlier and possibly saving me a trip walking back, asshole. A piece of paper in the alleyway mentions the school. Great, there are monsters all over town, and she decides to hide in the motherfucking school. On Levin Street, Harry demonstrates his amazing mental abilities in this screenshot I managed to snag.
Now outside, you begin your search for your daughter. Your newly acquired radio helps clue you in to nearby enemies by emitting static. Now, I don't know why the radio reacts to the monsters unless they have radio towers strapped to their heads or something. If you head back to the jeep, you can now find a health drink. Thanks for not checking the glovebox earlier and possibly saving me a trip walking back, asshole. A piece of paper in the alleyway mentions the school. Great, there are monsters all over town, and she decides to hide in the motherfucking school. On Levin Street, Harry demonstrates his amazing mental abilities in this screenshot I managed to snag.
Okay, 3 things here:
1: Wow, those graphics looked like crap back then!
2: No dogs around? Depending on the difficulty, there's at least one snarling cerebrus in the vicinity.
3: No Harry, I'm sorry. This here is quite obviously a doghouse. I don't need a damn dog to come to that conclusion.
I'd like to see what he thinks in other situations.
1: Wow, those graphics looked like crap back then!
2: No dogs around? Depending on the difficulty, there's at least one snarling cerebrus in the vicinity.
3: No Harry, I'm sorry. This here is quite obviously a doghouse. I don't need a damn dog to come to that conclusion.
I'd like to see what he thinks in other situations.
It looks like a parking garage, though I'm not sure
since there's no cars inside.
It looks like a classroom, though I'm not sure since
there's no students inside.
Not too far away, you find another clue, this time pointing
back to the doghouse. Looks like Cheryl didn't have any trouble figuring
out what it was. The doghouse hides the key into the house, but now you
need to find 3 more keys to open the backdoor of the house. Although climbing
the wooden fences or simply kicking (or shooting) the door open would
be easier, the protagonists of survival horror games always keep their
wits about them. After all, they might just be seeing things. Just imagine
the awkwardness afterwards...
"OK, sir. Could you please tell me again why you
blasted your way through a private residence and into the public library?"
"Look, I already told you, I was running from the
fucking GARGOYLES!"
"Uh huh, the Gargoyles?"
"Yeah, they're all over this town!"
"I think you'd better come with me."
After finding the keys, its on to the school. A pretty
good representation on Konami's part. It has bathrooms for boys and girls
on both floors, for instance. Except for the science lab. These kids are
all in line for some honors classes. Hell, my elementary school didn't
even HAVE a chemistry lab. The school is also the first place you experience
the transition to the nightmare reality. Harry seems to take it pretty
well, as this screenshot shows:
Shit, Harry. I'd have thought you'd have given up on making sense of
this place. Is a wheelchair in a school really all that strange either?
Maybe it belongs to a handicapped student, perhaps? The school's not
very wheelchair accessible, though. And you don't find a cage with half
a human inside to be strange at all?
After conquering the school and a boss, it transforms back into... A
NORMAL SCHOOL! AAAIIIEEE! Beat it out of the school; not like you really
have much of a choice since apparently some devious demon went and locked
the double doors from your side and jammed the locks on the others while
you were in the other world. What evil is at work in Silent Hill? You
are attracted by the sound of bells to a church where you meet an old
lady named Dahlia who gives you instructions to go to the hospital and
a pyramid thing before walking off.
Once there, you meet up with some guy right after he kills a winged
beast. Jumpy, he shoots at Harry as well, and somehow manages to miss
despite literally being at pointblank range. Presented with the question
"Do you work here?", he responds:
"I'm Dr. Michael Kaufman. I work at this hospital."
Okay, good answer. "Yes" also would have been
acceptable. He says he was taking a nap and woke up to find hell like
Harry. After a bit of talking, they decide to part ways. While searching
the hospital, you find a busted vial in an office.
Harry Mason, crime scene investigator. How the hell
does he get the idea it was deliberately smashed? He's right, but come
on. Those who are clever will put some of the unknown liquid into their
recently found water bottles. When the hospital turns into a nightmare
as well, he finds a nurse named Lisa. She was knocked out when the city
got fucked up, so she doesn't know what's going on either. When questioned
about the weird stuff in the basement, she says she doesn't know since
staff are not allowed into the storeroom. What a great cover! You'd figure
the evil guys would probably pick a better entrance than an essential
room of a building. Why wouldn't staff be allowed into the room?
You pass out and awake in the 'normal' world with Dahlia, who now tells you to head for the 'other church', which is hidden in an antique store across town. She leaves once again. Once there, Cybil shows up! She couldn't get out, but it seems she had no trouble finding another gun. Harry asks Cybil if she believes Dahlia about the 'darkness devouring the town' thing. She replies:
You pass out and awake in the 'normal' world with Dahlia, who now tells you to head for the 'other church', which is hidden in an antique store across town. She leaves once again. Once there, Cybil shows up! She couldn't get out, but it seems she had no trouble finding another gun. Harry asks Cybil if she believes Dahlia about the 'darkness devouring the town' thing. She replies:
"Must be on drugs!"
Ah, you're such a skeptic, Cybil! If my town suddenly
was suddenly infested with demons and falling into an abyss and someone
said "The town is being devoured by darkness", I would believe
him/her. A brief argument over who goes through the tunnel first follows,
with Harry insisting he should. Despite being a trained officer of the
law, Cybil decides to let the civilian handle himself. Inside the makeshift
chapel, he gets whisked off to the dark world again. As he gets up, Harry
thinks to himself...
"I don't want to think so, but maybe this is all going on in my head."
Whoa, whoa. Hold on there buddy. Are you saying you'd rather NOT be dreaming than this being real? Dude, this is seriously fucked up, man! Oh, I just hope this isn't actually a dream or something. That would REALLY suck. Make your way back to the hospital to meet Lisa again, who tells you that you can get to the lake via the sewers.
Once in the resort district, Harry steps into a bar (optional) and just happens to stumble across Kaufman as he is about to be killed by a demon. Once again, they part ways, although they soon meet again when Harry finds a strange bottle with a red liquid not unlike the one from the hospital. Kaufman's not in a very happy mood, and grabs the bottle from Harry before spitting out a spew of hostility and storming out. Harry reflects on this...
"That guy's gotta be involved in the local drug racket. That was probably dope in the bottle."
Yeah, probably; well, if dope is a red liquid usually carried in bottles. Harry decides to head for the docks and enters a boat where he happens to meet Cybil again, who has followed him, yet got here ahead of him. He tries to explain...
"I don't want to think so, but maybe this is all going on in my head."
Whoa, whoa. Hold on there buddy. Are you saying you'd rather NOT be dreaming than this being real? Dude, this is seriously fucked up, man! Oh, I just hope this isn't actually a dream or something. That would REALLY suck. Make your way back to the hospital to meet Lisa again, who tells you that you can get to the lake via the sewers.
Once in the resort district, Harry steps into a bar (optional) and just happens to stumble across Kaufman as he is about to be killed by a demon. Once again, they part ways, although they soon meet again when Harry finds a strange bottle with a red liquid not unlike the one from the hospital. Kaufman's not in a very happy mood, and grabs the bottle from Harry before spitting out a spew of hostility and storming out. Harry reflects on this...
"That guy's gotta be involved in the local drug racket. That was probably dope in the bottle."
Yeah, probably; well, if dope is a red liquid usually carried in bottles. Harry decides to head for the docks and enters a boat where he happens to meet Cybil again, who has followed him, yet got here ahead of him. He tries to explain...
"This may sound really off the wall, but listen to
me. I haven't gone crazy, (pause) and I'm not fooling around. You've got
to believe me. At first, I thought I was losing my mind. But now I know
I'm not. It's not me..."
Aw Christ, Harry! Just go and say it already! Yes, we
KNOW you're being dead serious right now! We get the idea! And really,
did you really need to drive that home so hard? Hell, if you told me we
needed to find the Ark of the Covenant and summon up Jesus to defeat the
demons, I probably would believe it. Anyway, Dahlia shows up again to
give more informative but ultimately unhelpful dialog. In all their infinite
wisdom, Harry and Cybil decide to split up to stop the demon. You are
too late to stop Alessa (the girl you keep seeing throughout the game,
although you wouldn't know that because I didn't mention her earlier cause
I'm too lazy) from hexing the lighthouse.
Cybil fares no better. Worse, in fact. After being jumped by something, she gets possessed and attacks you when you show up at the amusement park. One of the 'correct' ways to deal with this situation is to shoot her until she dies (also works for a number of real-world problems.) But an even more 'correct' way is to throw that red liquid you've been carrying around for half the game on her. Where did that idea come from? You're not given any prior hints of this particular action. The only time you might get an idea for what this thing does is at the tail end of the game, AFTER you wasted her.
After that, you get whisked off to "Nowhere", a world consisting of hallways and rooms from the different places you've visited in one seriously messed up package. I mean, a door is a single door on one side, and a double door on the other. Some stuff happens: Harry finds keys, spills jellybeans everywhere, Lisa becomes a zombie, and encounters a puzzle so insidious, not even the player's guides got the damn solution right.
Everyone alive meets for the final confrontation somewhere. Cybil gets knocked out, Dahlia gets fried, and Kaufman (how'd Cybil and Mike get here anyway?) simply vanishes, so its just you vs the flying devil. When it dies, Kaufman gets up from his hiding place of lying facedown in the middle of the arena and heads for the light. Oh THEN Lisa jumps up, grabs him, and pulls him down into the void with her. Um, okay. Will the sequel yield the answers?
Find out in part 2!
Or not. The answer is no.
Cybil fares no better. Worse, in fact. After being jumped by something, she gets possessed and attacks you when you show up at the amusement park. One of the 'correct' ways to deal with this situation is to shoot her until she dies (also works for a number of real-world problems.) But an even more 'correct' way is to throw that red liquid you've been carrying around for half the game on her. Where did that idea come from? You're not given any prior hints of this particular action. The only time you might get an idea for what this thing does is at the tail end of the game, AFTER you wasted her.
After that, you get whisked off to "Nowhere", a world consisting of hallways and rooms from the different places you've visited in one seriously messed up package. I mean, a door is a single door on one side, and a double door on the other. Some stuff happens: Harry finds keys, spills jellybeans everywhere, Lisa becomes a zombie, and encounters a puzzle so insidious, not even the player's guides got the damn solution right.
Everyone alive meets for the final confrontation somewhere. Cybil gets knocked out, Dahlia gets fried, and Kaufman (how'd Cybil and Mike get here anyway?) simply vanishes, so its just you vs the flying devil. When it dies, Kaufman gets up from his hiding place of lying facedown in the middle of the arena and heads for the light. Oh THEN Lisa jumps up, grabs him, and pulls him down into the void with her. Um, okay. Will the sequel yield the answers?
Find out in part 2!
Or not. The answer is no.