VERSION 2
AN EXPLANATION OF THE COMPLETE PLOT OF SILENT HILL
Uncopyrighted material 2000 President Evil
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1. Table of Contents
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Chapters
1. Table of Contents
2. Updates
3. Introduction
4. Topic 1: Alessa and Cheryl
5. Topic 2: Silent Hill
6. Topic 3: Harry, Dahlia's Pawn
7. Topic 4: Paging Dr. Kauffman
8. Topic 5: Lisa
9. Topic 6: Cybil Possessed
10. Topic 7: The Endings
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Credits
You can always find the newest version of this guide at the following
locations on the web:
GameFAQs - www.gamefaqs.com
Silent Hill Sanitarium - www.dark-legacy.org/silent-hill
NOTE: Silent Hill 2 is covered in a separate document. This file covers
only the first game, Silent Hill by Konami.
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2. Updates
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March 1, 1999 - Version 1.1, posted at GameFAQs.com and at Central Silent
Hill.
April 1, 1999 - Version 1.2, Added Updates and FAQ section. Added to
Credits Section.
April 19, 1999- Version 1.3, Cleaned out FAQ section. Added logo at the
top. Added Analysis section to formally state my opinon.
January, 2000 - Version 2, Supplemental guide to first version.
Sept. 12, 2000 - Updated contact and where to find info.
January, 2001 - Updated contact and where to find info. Corrected minor
typos and deleted some extraneous sentences. Updated
FAQ section.
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3. Introduction
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The first version of this guide was a very in-depth study of the game
Silent Hill by Konami. It described the entire plot and then attempted
to explain it. Due to the continuously high volume of emails I continue
to receive regarding the plot, I consider the first version to be a
failure. I am not putting myself down, nor is this a personal problem.
There just comes a time when an author must evaluate whether or not his
work achieved the goal for which the entire project was conceived. The
first version fulfilled several smaller goals that I had in mind, but
it did not achieve all that I desire from a full Plot Guide to Konami's
second greatest game. (Metal Gear rules!!!) In this new version, I
believe I have attained the goals I should have been striving for in
the first place. This is not about self-criticism, nor is this about
contempt for those who're still in the dark even after reading my guide.
Truly, I do appreciate all the email I have received regarding Silent
Hill and this guide. This is merely an attempt at personal and
professional growth.
Also, I have grown a great deal as a guide author. This is mainly due to
my recent good fortune to become a freelance strategy guide author for
the illustrious BradyGames. You can pick up copies of my guides for
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and SaGa Frontier II at any store that
specializes in videogames.
My experience with BradyGames taught me three things about guides: They
should be concise and to the point, easily referenced, and the player
should be able to read the guide before OR after playing the game and
not have the plot ruined. So how do you write a plot guide that doesn't
give away the plot?!?!??!
The Silent Hill Plot Guide has now been completely rewritten so that it
only covers topics that are left unanswered when you finish the game.
Players who have finished the game will know exactly what parts and
characters of the game the guide is referring to. For those who haven't
played the game yet, this guide offers points to look for in the game,
so that you are not confused while you are playing it. I will admit that
in describing characters and certain events, this guide still gives
away some major plot elements. But people who've played the game don't
care, and people who haven't will probably be able to enjoy the game
better than the hundred of people who've emailed me in frustration,
"I've finished Silent Hill. What the hell was THAT all about?!?!?!?"
To see the original version of this guide, please come to my website,
listed above. There's also a "runthru" that's very cool to look at as
well.
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4. Topic 1: Alessa and Cheryl
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The answer to the most frequently asked question about the plot of
Silent Hill, and the first thing that occurs in the game, concerns the
disappearance of Cheryl. Where is Cheryl, and who is Alessa?
The answer, for all its complexities, is that Alessa IS Cheryl!!! (Just
like Darth Vader IS Luke's father.) This revelation at the end of the
game threw me for a loop too, but it is clearly stated by Dahlia at the
end. To figure this out, you have to start with the ending and think
backward through the last hour or so of the game.
At the end, Harry enters a dark area inhabited by three others: Dahlia,
a person wrapped from head to toe in bandages and seated in a wheelchair,
and the girl Alessa, seated on the floor. When Harry demands to know
where Cheryl is, Dahlia replies that Cheryl is sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF
HIM, that she has been there all along. The girl seated on the floor has
been seen throughout the entire game. She IS Cheryl. Harry has been
running into Cheryl through the entire game. So why didn't she ever
talk to him, let him know who she really was?
Because Cheryl never really existed. In fact, neither did Alessa. Both
of the girls are only conjurations of Dahlia's cult. See, the cult
wanted to bring their lord Samael to the mortal world, so that he
could take control of the universe. But for the cult to benefit they
would have to be able to control Samael. The only way to do this was
to summon Samael into an unborn fetus, a child that the cult could
raise and teach to control its powers, all for the benefit of the cult,
of course. Dahlia conceived the child somehow, with the help of Dr.
Kaufmann. (He either inseminated her, or had intercourse with her.
Eeeuuggh!!!!) But when the child was born, only half of Samael's Dark
Soul had been summoned into the child. To prove this, I will refer to
two ghostly flashbacks of sorts that Harry is witness to on his way to
the final confrontation with Dahlia and the two Alessas.
The scene prior is the one that I believe occured first. Alessa and
Dahlia are struggling in an upstairs area of Dahlia's house, seen
previously only from an exterior shot in the intro sequence. (Yes,
the house where Cheryl seems to be trapped.) Alessa refuses to do
what Dahlia says. Dahlia wants Alessa to use her latent powers for
Dahlia's evil interests. Alessa is not cooperating with the cult's
interests. She only wants to be a normal kid, with a normal mother.
Somehow, this reveals to Dahlia that in order to summon the other half
of Samael, she must have another child. This is how there are two
children.
What happened to the first Alessa? Think back to the scene Harry
witnesses in the Hospital basement. The cult members are all standing
around the horribly burned child. One of the members has some kind of
perception that tells him that only half of the Dark Soul is contained
in the child. The cult has failed, temporarily. Burning the child has
placed it into a coma, where the power within can be tapped by the cult,
but only in a minimal basis. This is when Dahlia begins to reveal that
she knows how to summon the second part of the Dark Soul. But the
scene cuts away. They burned Alessa on purpose!!! The fire that Lisa
refers to in one of her scenes, which she says consumed half of Silent
Hill and put an end to the cult activities in town, occured seven
years ago. Cheryl is seven years old. Alessa looks like she's a teen-
ager, about fourteen maybe. In the second flashback, she looks like she's
about seven.
So let's add it all up, starting from the beginning. Fourteen years before
the events of the game, in neither Silent Hill that exists in the game,
but the REAL one, Dahlia and the cult performed a ritual to summon their
dark God Samael into material form. This way, they could control him, and
together they would all rule the cosmos. Nice plan. Then they performed
a ceremony similar to the one you can read about in Ira Levin's Rosemary's
Baby. (Hence, the street named Levin St.) But the ceremony only conjured a
child that contained half the soul of their dark god, and so it only
remained dormant within the child. That child was Alessa. For seven
years, the cult and Dahlia tried fruitlessly to teach the stubborn
child to tap into the power she carried, and to come to terms with her
true purpose for living. The girl continued to refuse. So the cult locked
her in her bedroom, and set fire to Dahlia's house. This is the fire that
spread, and nearly burned up half the town, which Lisa refers to. Every-
one in town knew that Dahlia had a little girl, but the story was that
she died in the fire. The cult knew that the power within the girl's body
would prevent her from dying. The cult members thought that by doing
this, they would be able to use the power within Alessa without having to
coax her into compliance. This is when the scene in the hidden rooms in
the hospital basement occurs. The cult realizes something that Dahlia has
known for some time, that Alessa only contains half of the Dark Soul of
Samael. The power can be used now that Alessa can't get in the way, but
it is very weak because it is only half there. This is when Dahlia
begins to reveal her idea to the cult, the one she'd had previously,
about conceiving a second child. So the ritual was performed again, and
the second child was born. It contained the second half of the Dark
Soul, and this is Cheryl, essentially. So you've got two identical
creatures, containing two halves of a Dark Soul. Since both girls
share the same dormant soul, both girls are the same girl, in essence.
This is why Cheryl disappears. When she and Harry crash, notice how the
jeep seems to go right through Alessa???? Think of it in metaphor.
This symbolizes Cheryl crashing into herself, her REAL self. Also,
think of the fact that there are two Alessas at the end of the game
as being a metaphor for there being two halves of the Dark Soul. So
there was metaphysically only one girl, conjured one half at a time.
Two half-girls, two half-Dark Souls. One demon god. Samael. It's a
metaphysical equation written across the entire game. It has taken
me almost a full year, but I have cracked it.
Why does Cheryl, who now appears as Alessa throughout the game, conjure
such horrible monsters to try to kill the man who raised her and
loved her for seven years? This will be answered in the Topic 3: Harry,
Dahlia's Pawn.
The only other question I have left to answer is, how did Dahlia lose
the second child? How did Harry and his wife find her on the roadside
during one of their vacations in Silent Hill? The answer I will give
involves the videotape item found in the Darkside Hospital and the
scene of Lisa and Kaufmann fighting, which occurs in the intro movie,
but never in the game. When finally viewed without static, the
videotape reveals that Lisa was the nurse forced by Dr. Kaufmann to
care for Alessa after the fire. The horror of the situation was too
much for Lisa to bear. But she was forced to go on, since her Diary
indicates that she was addicted to White Claudia, a drug manufactured
by the cult to bring the citizens and tourists of Silent Hill under
their power, to make them do what they wished. Lisa's videotape appears
to be shot in Alessa's very room, where she was confined for many
long years in burning torment. She knew that Kaufmann and his creepy
cult friends were somehow involved. Now the theory that I can easily
form from all this information, and the only one that makes sense, is
that somehow, Lisa realized that her patient was Dahlia's daughter,
burned alive. When Dahlia produced a second child, Lisa would have
surely assumed that the second child was also in danger. Being the
truly caring person that we see throughout the game, she finally
stands up to Kaufmann (as seen in the cinema) and takes the child.
Perhaps she only got as far as the highway, before she fell victim to
her drug addiction, and turned back. Rather than take the child
back, perhaps she figured it was a lesser fate to be abandoned on the
side of the road than to be left in the clutches of the evil cult. I'll
bet anything that Lisa is one of the townspeople who died under strange
circumstances, as mentioned in the article clipping Harry finds as well
as by Lisa herself. So why doesn't she remember any of this when she
talks to Harry? Because the Lisa that Harry meets is only her ghostly
memory, created by what Alessa remembers of her. And Alessa, being
trapped in her hospital room deep under the Hospital, wouldn't know
about Lisa's abduction of the second child, or of Harry's finding and
raising the girl, or of Lisa's fate. For more explanation on why Lisa
isn't the REAL Lisa, refer to Topic 5: Lisa.
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5. Topic 2: Silent Hill
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The next question posed to me most often is, why does Silent Hill keep
going back and forth between the snowy, misty town and the dark,
treacherous one? What is real, and what is false, here?
First of all, let's all admit it, Silent Hill is a town in a videogame,
it is not real, per say.
Now let's approach the subject from an abstract view, for the rest of
this guide. Let's explore Silent Hill as if it WERE real. How would
such a situation occur? Why is the game so mysterious and vague in
many aspects of the plot?
The developers had to be vague, since the ESRB would never allow a
game with blatant satanistic elements to be published in the continental
US. So the story had to be left vague on purpose, only hinted at, to
give the reader the clues they need to figure out the basics. The
problem is, the plot is broken down into clues that must be deciphered
by the player. And your average videogame player is 10-26, which means
that half of them are going to have a rough time putting the fragmented
pieces together. So the final product is a game that not only has many
puzzles, but the entire game is one big puzzle. So now, hopefully you
get the impression that I am attempting only to solve the big puzzle.
Am I wrong? Is there another explanation that is more plausible?
The only explanation that makes any sense, if you sit down and analyze
the whole thing for a few hours, is this: the developers have a very deep
love of the more irreverent aspects of American television programs and
films. Take for instance the streetnames of the town. This is a dead
giveaway. All the names refer to various sci-fi and horror authors, and
also to the bandmembers of KISS, Sonic Youth, etc. The intro is also
another clue. All the cross-fading between scenes we have yet to see,
and scenes that've already occured. The whole intro is like watching
the beginning of an episode of the short-lived David Lynch TV series
Twin Peaks. The viewer wonders, what will happen to Harry this week on
"Silent Hill". What new and strange events will occur this episode? What
new insights will be revealed? How will it all end this time? Will
Harry finally escape from the tragic loop he seems to be stuck in?
So all these irreverent influences on the game, where did they come
from? Read, watch and listen to the works of the people who are
referred to in the game. Many of the streetnames refer to authors
and artists who are the favorites of the developers, obviously. For
instance, as previously explained, the whole conceiving-a-demon-in-a-
child element was taken from Ira Levin's novel, Rosemary's Baby. And
his last name is a street name in the game. Richard Bachman is the
pseudonym of Stephen King, and we all know what a great horror writer
he is. But a couple of years ago, King release a title called The
Regulators under his old pseudonym. If you read this novel, you will
understand that the ability of a child to conjure a world all his
own and physically draw other people into it, is a major theme that
has been drawn from the novel and used in the game. Read the other
authors' works, and try to figure out what influence they had on the
game. I can also tell you that Carl Sagan subscribed to and wrote
about the theory that there are infinite worlds layered on top of one
another. He expanded this from one of Einstein's theories, that time
exists in layers, and that one might be able to puncture through the
layers to a previous time, or to a world that never existed. Sagan
concludes that in this case, there would be infinite worlds, all
derived from the possiblities of the decisions of each individual. Say
that you make a choice. According to Sagan, there exists, somewhere in
time, an alternate universe where you made a different choice, and the
entire world is different because of it.
I will also add two other references which I feel are obvious in the
game, but are not referenced to by author names. One is the film
Jacob's Ladder, in which Tim Robbins is a character dealing with
weird and sometimes nightmarish shifting realities, exactly like
Harry Mason in the game. Also, the existence of a Misty or White
Silent Hill versus a Dark or Black Silent Hill reminds me of the
concept of alternate universes from Twin Peaks, where they were
named "The White Lodge" and "The Black Lodge".
Even if you don't understand right now, keep the above perspective in
mind as you continue to read. It will help clarify things and allows
me to be less redundant, more concise.
The town of Silent Hill would seem to be caught between two worlds.
One is the world where it is foggy all the time, a light snow is
falling in the middle of the summer tourist season, and monsters
are crawling out of the mist. (And no, the mist is not there as a
convenient way to help the game render more easily!!! Look at games
like Tomb Raider and Shadow Man, which have similar game engines, and
you can see almost miles away. The developers wanted to promote a
spooky and mysterious atmosphere!!!)Strange events have occured before
the game starts. The whole town has been sealed off by what looks like
cooling magma, and certain streets have been cut off by large,
impassable chasms. This the world where you can easily get around with
the help of the tourist map, using the streetnames which are easily
visible on all the streetsigns at every intersection. This is the
world where you always meet Dahlia. This is also where you find clues
and are told where to search next. Make note of that for later.
Then there is the other world of Silent Hill, which takes over from
time to time. This is a world of utter darkness, a world where it is
raining, not snowing. The Mark of Samael can be seen cropping up with
greater and greater frequency. The only way to get around is with the
help of a flashlight, and there seems to be alot more monsters hunting
you. This world shows signs that it is quickly decaying. Before long,
the paved streets are replaced with iron mesh platforms, which seem to
be standing over a bottomless void. Buildings and areas, which seemed
perfectly normal, now shows signs of interior and sometimes exterior
decay. Frightening and gigantic monstrosities seek to destroy Harry.
This is the world where you will meet a nurse named Lisa, and you will
also see a young girl named Alessa from time to time. Make note of that
for later.
Misty Silent Hill fades into Dark Silent Hill. And Dark Silent Hill
returns to Misty Silent Hill when one of the gigantic boss monsters
is defeated. So what does this shifting between worlds mean?
Let us assume, since there are monsters and strange things in both
Silent Hills, that NEITHER version of the town seen in the game is
the REAL Silent Hill. Both are metaphysical recreations of the real
town populated by monsters and such. So then let's say that there is
a real world, where there is a REAL Silent Hill. What happened to it?
My answer would be that it is still there. So we are dealing with
three Silent Hills, Misty SH, Dark SH, and Real SH.
What power conjures these fake Silent Hills? Since Dahlia always appears
in Misty SH, it is safe to assume that she somehow controls Misty SH.
Since Alessa only appears in Dark SH, she somehow controls Dark SH. How?
In Alessa's case, it is obvious. She has half of a power within her that
if united, could take over the entire physical universe. If the second
girl was somehow able to tap into the power of the first, then the united
power would reasonably be all that you need to conjure an entire world.
If Dahlia possessed such a power, she would be able to tear away
Alessa's world and find the second girl, easily.
So the only logical answer is simple. Alessa has conjured a fake Silent
Hill to hide herself in, so that Dahlia does not find her. But Dahlia
is crafty. She has an arcane device called the Flauros, which can bend
alternate universes. She says as much when she tells Harry at the Church
that he just needs to follow the path through the darkness, as
illuminated by the Flauros. Since the Flauros has the power to subdue
alternate universes, Dahlia can use it to subdue Alessa. Problem for
Dahlia is, Alessa has hidden herself so deeply in this alternate world
that she cannot get close enough to the girl to use the Flauros without
Alessa sensing her, and getting that much further away. Dahlia needs to
stay relatively hidden herself, yet somehow get the Flauros close to
Alessa so that it can work. This is where Harry becomes Dahlia' pawn
in the game. In seeking to find Cheryl, he is really looking for
Alessa. This is perfect for Dahlia, and this is why Harry is brought
into Alessa's conjured universe.
So let's sum up what we've got so far: Alessa conjures an alternate
Silent Hill to hide in. How better to hide than in a dense fog, with
many streets blocked off by deep schisms? So now, Dahlia can't get to
Alessa. But she has a device which can alter or affect the world that
Alessa is hiding in. She can conjure herself into it, but like I said,
Alessa controls this world, and would know where Dahlia is at all times.
So Dahlia forms a plan to use Harry, Alessa's surrogate father, to get
the Flauros close enough to Alessa so that the device can subdue the
girl and dismantle her world. She needs a pawn, what appears to be an
insignificant person, who she can move across this supernatural chess
board and checkmate Alessa. So she uses the Flauros to physically draw
Harry into Alessa's world. This is not the real Harry though, but Harry
doesn't know that. Thus if Harry THINKS he is dying in Alessa's world,
he dies in the real world. We see this evidenced in the Bad Ending,
where Harry dies in the wreckage of his jeep, where he has been all
along. But the Harry that exists in Alessa's world is still a mental
manifestation of the real Harry. So he can act and affect objects in
this world, since he has been 'programmed' into it by Dahlia. If you
don't quite get what I'm saying in this theory about Harry in the game
not being the real Harry, rent the movie The Matrix. You'll quickly
see what I mean.
Alessa becomes aware that Harry has been brought into this world. So she
brings on a scary dark side, where she changes Silent Hill into a
Hellish nightmare world in the hopes that Harry will not want to
proceed. But Harry doesn't know what is going on, he is just looking
for his daughter. He continues on. So Alessa generates monsters that
overwhelm and kill Harry's form. No problem. Dahlia simply regenerates
Harry in a safer area, the cafe. If you still don't know where I'm
getting this, see The Matrix. This may go on an infinite amount of
times. In fact, the ending of the game may not be the ending.
Think about it. If Alessa and Dahlia are engaged in a tug-of-war over
this conjured reality, where each of them have the power to bend that
false reality to some degree, then even when the false reality falls
apart during the Good+ Ending, Alessa could simply conjure it all up
again, and Dahlia could 'hack' into it again using the Flauros, just as
she did before. Thus you, the player, are trapped in a no-win situation.
You can never win the game, because you were never the player. You have
been played. How do I substantiate this? By the endings, and the ensuant
replay games. But now we're getting into another topic. Go to Topic 7:
The Endings to read more along these lines, if you don't already under-
stand what I meant.
Things should be clicking for you as I discuss the issues. The point
of this topic has been to define the world you are playing in in
Silent Hill, and I have explained as best I can.
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6. Topic 3: Harry, Dahlia's Pawn
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In the struggle between Dahlia and her daughter, Alessa, Harry is the
pawn Dahlia is using to checkmate Alessa. Why Harry, specifically? Why
doesn't Dahlia just go find and regain control over Alessa herself?
The answer was unclear to me for a long time. But as I continued to
think of the game in the metaphysical sense, I think I've come up with
a solid answer. Think of the game you are playing as a game within a
game. Your game is about running around, collecting keys and items,
learning what you can about where to go next, and getting there without
getting killed. Your game is contained within a larger, more meta-
physical game between Dahlia and Alessa. Think of it as a chessmatch,
Alessa on one side Dahlia on the other. Both are moving their pieces
across the board toward each other. But Alessa is the one who created
the board, so she has ALL the pieces. Her advancement across the board
is signified by the Mark of Samael. Dahlia has only two pieces, herself
and the Flauros. The Flauros is the piece she needs to checkmate Alessa
with, but Alessa controls all the other pieces on the board, the
monsters throughout the game. As Dahlia tries to penetrate Alessa's
defenses, Alessa loses pieces here and there. But Alessa can conjure
more pieces, and play can go on infinitely. Dahlia uses the Flauros
to create a new piece, and uses the soul of a man who was Alessa's
unknowing surrogate father for seven years. She hides her Flauros
piece inside of the Harry piece. This allows her to move Harry,
without actually being on the board herself. Thus, she is free to
conjure weapons and items that will help Harry. She also creates
images of Cheryl in danger that will spur him on, make him want to
find her that much faster, when the person he is really seeking is
Alessa all along. With the weapons and items left in weird and
illogical places, Harry is able to remove Alessa's pieces from the
board, and continue moving before she has time to regenerate new
ones. Alessa generates the Lisa piece, from her memories of the
dead nurse. She uses this piece to try to block Harry's moves, but
Harry has the determination to find his daughter. If Harry is
removed from the board, or dies, the whole game just starts over again.
But when Harry checkmates Alessa with the Flauros, Dahlia is able to
move in and take the piece that represents Alessa. This is why the
conjured world of Silent Hill goes suddenly out of control, and why
Lisa attacks Harry instead of only trying to block him. Then Dahlia
turns the board around, since Alessa is no longer in control, and
reunites the two girls into the one being they were meant to be.
The piece that is Dahlia is consumed by the intensity of the magic,
but she is laughing, indicating that she is not really there at all,
but controlling the board from outside. When Harry squares off
against Alessa or Samael and wins, he is only removing another
piece from the board and doesn't realize it. The truth is, Alessa
and Dahlia both lose, yet they both exist outside this board that
I'm talking about. So all they have to do, is start another game.
This is when Harry regenerates in the cafe in a Next Fear game.
So why did Dahlia use Harry? Because he was a surrogate father to Cheryl
for seven years, who was really Alessa. Dahlia perhaps hopes that Alessa
will have enough love or sympathy for Harry that she won't wipe him off
the map. Tough luck, though. Alessa alters her conjured Silent Hill, so
that Harry is forced to travel horrifying areas, and pierce a terrible
darkness. The girl conjures horrible and weird monsters to stop Harry,
hoping that the man will give up in some way. But he does not. So she
uses a majority of her power to force Harry to meet giant and powerful
monsters, more terrifying than the rest. But because all Alessa'a
attention is bent toward this conjuration, she cannot prevent Dahlia
from aiding Harry. Thus, he is able to find weapons, placed within
the conjured world by Dahlia, no doubt, which help him to dispel
Alessa's creations. Thus, Alessa's attention is consumed by her
attempts to stop or kill Harry, while Dahlia is able to provide Harry
with the items he needs to destroy Alessa's creations.
To what end? Harry finally admits to Cybil that Cheryl is not his real
daughter, that he and his wife found her on the side of the road seven
years ago. He never told Cheryl. Either that, or he never had a chance.
It is only then, when he is ready and willing to admit his fault in
the whole affair, that Cheryl appears to him. But she appears in her
true form, as Alessa, so Harry doesn't understand that she has
allowed him to find her. Who knows what would have happened, had the
Flauros not kicked into action right there? Maybe Alessa, touched by
her father's final honesty, was prepared to tell him the nature of
what was going on? This would make sense, as to why she allows herself
to be found by Harry. Perhaps she had something to say, but was cut
short by the abrupt intervention of the Flauros, which subdues her
powers.
So why doesn't the world Alessa has conjured fall apart, right there?
My guess is that the Flauros somehow is able to bind Alessa's will to
it, so that Dahlia, who controls the Flauros, now controls Alessa. If
that's the case, then she most likely controls the power within Alessa
as well. But the conjured world does fall apart, to some degree. Notice
how Harry suddenly finds himself back in the hospital with Lisa? See
how twitchy and weird Lisa has suddenly become? Notice how the
layout of the hospital, which the player was able to fully explore
earlier, has suddenly become rearranged? Elements from the entire
game are evident, but in new and twisted ways. Suddenly, Harry is
going down into the basement of the Hospital, when before, the door
wouldn't even open. In the basement, he finds himself in a class room
from the Midwich Elementary School!!! The world is indeed coming apart,
as Alessa is slowly losing control of it, and of herself.
Caught in circumstances that he never truly begins to understand,
Harry loses his daughter, again. Thus, Harry never achieves a truly
happy ending, only what passes for one. This is due to his limited
understanding of the events transpiring. Thus, Harry's perspective
becomes ours, and the only way to set Harry free of this never-ending
nightmare chess match is to quit playing Silent Hill. Strange, neh?
Thus, Harry's role in the entire game is defined. What the player
thinks of as the hero, the protagonist, the man who's going to get to
the bottom of all this and explain everything, never does. The most
startling revelation of Silent Hill is that the hero has been working
for the wrong side all along. He is NOT the hero, he is nothing but a
pawn. And therefore, so is the player. We've all been duped, and it is
Konami who is cackling madly at us all.
So how does Harry get out of this situation, this never-ending loop in
time and space? He may never be able to. The answer may reside in
another character in the game, an outsider of sorts. I'm talking about
Cybil. Yes, indeed. If there's going to be a sequel to Silent Hill, a
very good idea for one would be to play the exact same game from a
different perspective, of one who's not looking for a daughter or
loved one, but for a doctor with an extremely dirty nose. Cybil
explores other parts of Silent Hill while Harry is reliving events
planned by Alessa and Dahlia. In this, she is an outsider, and she
may be able to get to the bottom of everything. Harry is Dahlia's
pawn, and thus he has no power to alter the main events taking place,
nor to stop the never-ending loop he's stuck in.
=======================================================================
6. Topic 4: Paging Dr. Kauffman
=======================================================================
What is Dr. Kauffman's involvement in all of this? What is the nature
of his concoction, Aglaophotis? Why does he resist helping Harry, when
it seems to be his intention to stop Dahlia, all along?
Kaufmann is perhaps the most puzzling figure in the game. So little is
known about his involvement in the events which transpire during the
adventure. I'm not totally sure why he's even present in the game. If my
theory about neither Silent Hill being real is true, then what variable
is Kaufmann in the equation? Maybe by sorting out the pieces of this
part of the puzzle, I'll be able to figure this out, right here. So
let's start at the beginning, and recap everything we know about
Kaufmann.
Harry first meets Kauffman in the hospital. Kauffman has been shooting
and killing Alessa's monsters, trying to make sense of the situation
he's been drawn into. When he is discovered by Harry, he tries to shoot
him. This is because Kauffman probably realizes that everything is not
real. He says as much to Harry when he starts pointing out the
characteristics of the phenomenon. How does he realize that Harry is
real? Maybe it's something that Harry says or does, or maybe it's the
way Harry pleads not to be shot. Notice how Kaufman abruptly says he
has things to do and leaves, when he finds out that Harry is looking
for his daughter? Perhaps Kaufmann is as confused about his presence
in the conjured world as we are. Maybe the true importance of this
scene lies in the fact that Kaufmann is starting to put all the
pieces together.
So what's in the briefcase, Doctor? At the end of the game, we see
Kaufmann pull the Aglaophotis out of his bag, and throw it at Alessa.
But previously, Harry discovered this weird mixture hidden in the gas
tank of a motorcycle, parked in the garage of the Motel. So does
Kaufmann have the Aglaophotis in the briefcase during the Hospital
scene? My answer is no, since Harry finds it spilled on the floor of
the good Doctor's office. This leads me to believe that Kaufmann had
come to the Hospital to get the sample of the Aglaophotis out of his
desk. Something happened, and the glass bottle was spilled. Now,
Kaufmann has to make his way over to the Motel, where he has a backup
sample stashed.
Harry encounters Kaufmann next at Annie's Bar. Kaufmann is being
attacked by what looks like a Teddy Bear from Hell, and Harry saves
him. Kaufmann is thankful, but his business presses him onward. When
Harry finds the Aglaophotis in the gas tank of the motorcycle, as I
previously mentioned, Kaufmann finds Harry and takes the sample. His
gruff answer to Harry's queries is to "stop screwing around" and to
"take care of business". Kaufmann is next seen in a weird flashback
moment, when it is Harry who is experiencing Alessa's flashback, in a
sense. Kaufmann, Dahlia and two others stand over the burned and
bandaged form of Alessa. The powers of the Dark Soul have slipped
through their fingers. Dahlia comes up with an answer. Then Kaufmann
appears at the end of the game, in the Good+ or Good Endings, which
I'll get to in a moment.
So what is Kaufmann doing? If we add all these pieces up, plus a few
other facts that I have yet to mention, we'll see that Kaufmann is one
crooked dude. I'm sure most of you suspected that, but let's try to get
to the truth and find out just HOW crooked he is. Lisa mentions that
there was some cult activity in Silent Hill seven years ago. From the
"flashback", we can determine that Kaufmann was part of the cult that
Lisa mentions. Dahlia was also a part of this cult, and so were two
others. Why don't the two others appear in the game? Because I don't
think Alessa had ever seen them before. She only heard their voices,
as they stood around her hospital bed. That's why the man standing at
the head of the bed has no face. Alessa knew who Kaufmann and Dahlia
were, that's how they are so well represented. Anyway, to continue:
Kaufmann is in with this cult for personal status and power. He is
the director of the Hospital, since it is in the Director's Office
that we see Kaufmann's Aglaophotis spilt. He most likely attained
this position through the cult's influence. We've already discussed
that the goal of the cult was to summon the blind hebrew archangel,
Samael, into the body of an unborn fetus. Thus, the cult could raise
and teach the child to do what they want, and therefore be able to
rule the world through the power contained in the child, which they
would control. But the child proved uncontrollable, and Dahlia
burned Alessa alive. The girl was unable to die because of the power
her body contained, but because of the wounds, the power went dormant.
Then, Dahlia reveals her plan to have a second child by the same
means as the previous ritual, and it would contain the rest of the
power of their dark god. Meantime, Alessa needs to be kept someplace
safe. Dahlia's house is gone at this point, burned down in the fire.
Since Kaufmann is the director of the Hospital, he can keep Alessa in
a basement storage room, seal off the entrance, and keep her a secret
for many, many years. Only problem is, Alessa's wounds will never heal,
and the bandages have to constantly be changed. Alessa needs around-
the-clock care, and Kaufmann needs a nightwatchman. This is where
Lisa comes in.
Now I have to diverge a bit, to bring Lisa into the whole sordid
affair. One of the ways the cult gained status in the town was to
create an entire drug-smuggling operation. The drug that they were
manufacturing and selling, to locals and tourists alike, was produced
from a flower that was indigenous to the region called White Claudia.
Now they probably passed this stuff off as some other drug, like
Heroin or Cocaine. But the difference with this drug is that it was
often used in magical rituals, and had hallucinogenic properties. Thus,
once the drug was introduced into someone's system, that person was
able to be affected or commanded by the cult. Kaufmann and Dahlia had
an entire drug operation going in the resort area, so that the drug
could be given to the tourists. This brings up a question for me, which
I hope one of you will answer: Wasn't Harry a tourist, and had visited
here many times in the past? Had he been given the drug, or had he
bought some?
An e-mail I get over and over on this one is that Harry is really
hopped up on White Claudia this whole time, and is hallucinating
everything. I don't think this is true, since too much of the game
makes too much sense, especially in a very deep way. It's not
something a hallucinating drug-user would come up with, it's far too
complex. But it certainly is an interesting theory to entertain, I just
stopped entertaining it, is all. No, Silent Hill is ABOUT SOMETHING, we
just have to figure out what.
To continue investigating Kaufmann: He and Dahlia are described in the
journal kept by the convenience store manager, which is found by Harry.
The drugs were dropped off by Kaufmann and Dahlia, and picked up by
another. Harry finds the drugs in the store safe, so Kaufmann is
obviously not after the drugs. And the purpose of using White Claudia in
the drugs and selling them to the tourists was to try to spread the
influence of the cult. This way, when Samael's power was made manifest
through the girl Alessa, a whole world of uninitiated followers would
suddenly do the cult's bidding.
This wasn't an invisible operation. The local police were investigating
it (as Harry discovers at the Police Station), and Cybil's department in
Brahms was also investigating, independently. But no leads could be
gained in the case, since everyone involved wouldn't say anything. Any
officers who investigated too well ended up the victims of bizarre
heart-attacks and deaths. The cult had a perfect money-making operation,
and no one would mess with it for fear of retaliation.
As Lisa's Diary describes, she was addicted to Kaufmann's drug.
Naturally, she became the only one Kaufmann could use to care for Alessa.
Her drug addiction prevented her from doing anything about Alessa.
There's a scene in the intro of the game where Lisa and Kaufmann are
fighting. I'll bet anything that this is the last that the real Lisa
was ever seen or heard from. Kaufmann and the cult probably caused her
an "accident" or an overdose at some point after that. It seems that
Lisa was ready to make trouble for the cult, if in fact she wasn't the
one to abduct the second child from Dahlia and leave it on the side of
the road for Harry to find.
When Harry returns to Silent Hill, and the second child remembers who
she is and creates a false reality to hide in, how does Kaufmann get
sucked into that? As the videotape confession of Lisa proves, the
nurse had some regrets and feelings about Alessa. I'm sure that Alessa
appreciated the sentiments, and was angered at Kaufmann for using the
poor nurse in such a way. Alessa probably wants revenge for Lisa, as
is evidenced when she conjures up the fake Lisa to drag Kaufmann down
to Hell at the end of the game. So she has dragged Kaufmann into this
nightmare world so that he will be killed, just as Dahlia dragged
Harry into this nightmare world to be her pawn. That is the only
answer that makes any sense to me. I will continue to read and
think about the hundreds of emails I get to the contrary, however.
What in the world is the Aglaophotis? Well, you got me. It seems to
serve dual purposes, and doesn't seem to be very well thought out,
in my opinion. But here's what is clear, if we add up everything I've
brought up thus far: Kaufmann is trapped in Alessa's conjured world,
so that she can have revenge for Lisa's death, at some point. At first,
when Harry first meets him, Kaufmann really doesn't know what is going
on. I believe him when he says that he fell asleep, and woke up in this
situation. Harry is also unconscious, and probably so is Cybil, so that
is how they all got pulled into this conjured world. (That's why
there was no body at Cybil's crash site, when Harry passed it.) But
Kaufmann is more informed than either Cybil or Harry, so he should be
able to put the pieces together right away. The cult was attempting to
gain control of the universe by channeling a power into a young girl's
body. The pact was that the cult would control the child, and thus the
universe, together. But Lisa abducted the second child, containing the
other half of the dark soul, and the cult's work was ruined. It's
possible that the cult even disbanded. But then the second child is
returned to Silent Hill, and the reunited power conjures a fake reality
full of monsters and mist to hide in. As an added bonus, Alessa pulls
Kaufmann into this fake world, so that she can kill him when the time
is right, for what he did to Lisa. When Kaufmann sees the strange things
going on around him, he has to realize that somehow, the power has
broken loose from its dormancy. When Harry tells him that his daughter
is missing, Kaufmann must realize that the second child has been
returned to the town, and that she is causing all of this. The
Aglaophotis, according to how Kaufmann attempts to use it in the end,
must be some kind of supernatural concoction that takes control of a
person's mind. Thus, Kaufmann was attempting to get his Aglaophotis
sample to use on Alessa, when something unknown happened. Either he
was attacked by a monster and dropped it, or Dahlia had gotten there
before him and smashed the sample, so that Kaufmann wouldn't be able
to use it. But Kaufmann kept a backup at the Motel, in case Dahlia
ever turned on him. Smart man. The problem for Kaufmann is, Harry finds
Alessa much faster, and the Flauros allows Dahlia to take control of
Alessa and the power inside her. Needless to say, Kaufmann feels that
Dahlia is attempting to screw him over, in the nicest way I can put it.
By what he says at the end, he's certain that Dahlia intends to control
the entity within Alessa all by herself. Maybe the Doctor is just
paranoid, and maybe not. He hurls it at Alessa in an attempt to usurp
the control of Dahlia over the the entity within Alessa. But what happens
instead is, Samael's power breaks free of the Aglaophotis. United, the
power cannot be contained by the mixture. Only, Samael has to manifest
in order to break free. That's why Alessa transforms at the end of the
Good or Good+ ending (Kaufmann appears in both). When Samael is
dispatched forcibly by Harry, and Alessa returns to her natural form,
she conjures her version of Lisa to return and drag Kaufmann off. To a
fate worse than death, we can imagine.
So I think I've pretty much nailed down why Kaufmann is in the game,
and what he is doing throughout. What a loser!
=======================================================================
7. Topic 5: Lisa
=======================================================================
Lisa is perhaps the most tragic character of Silent Hill. She is really
nice to Harry when he meets her in the Dark Silent Hill Hospital. But
she serves a higher purpose in the game (or should I say, a Lower
purpose).
The only time Harry meets Lisa is in the Dark version of Silent Hill.
She is in the Dark version of the room Harry first met Kaufmann in. If
we agree that Alessa is in control of the Dark version of Silent Hill,
as I've stated in previous Topics, then that means that Lisa must be
under her control as well. But to what end?
Previous Topics have discussed Harry's purpose in the game due to
Dahlia's manipulations of Alessa's conjured world. He is Dahlia's
pawn, her Trojan Horse, sent to find the girl he thinks is his
daughter, but is really Alessa, who is trying to hide from Dahlia.
Along the way, Alessa must figure some part of this out, and keeps
plunging the conjured world into darkness and decay, featuring awful
creatures that should cause Harry to pause in continuing his search for
her. But he loves the girl he thinks is his daughter, and keeps chasing
her. Lisa is Alessa's OTHER strategy for stopping Harry. Lisa is nice to
Harry and concerned for his safety. If he continues searching, he won't
be safe. If he leaves Lisa, she won't be safe. She displays terror and
anguish at being left alone by Harry. Truly, she doesn't want him to
continue searching. This is actually what Alessa wants.
Notice how these scenes with Lisa happen almost as dreams. Harry is
suddenly "awakened" from each one of them. The first time he meets
Lisa is after searching the entire Darkside Hospital. When Harry
meets Lisa in the Darker side of the room he met Kaufmann in, he gets
to know and like the young nurse (as do we all). Abruptly, in the
middle of the conversation, Harry wakes up in the Misty Silent Hill
version of the room he met Kaufmann in. The last time Harry was in this
version of Silent Hill, he was in an elevator going between floors.
So how did he get back here?
Simple. Dahlia used the power of the Flauros to manipulate the conjured
world. Thus, Dark Silent Hill Hospital becomes Misty Silent Hill
Hospital. Now that we're back in Dahlia's territory, she steps in and
gives Harry some further guidance. Thus, Dahlia knew that Harry was
being persuaded to give up the search and stay with Lisa, and she
stepped in to salvage the situation for herself. Notice how she's
kinda angry with Harry?
This sort of thing continues throughout the game, with Lisa appearing
and disappearing, continually failing to keep Harry from persuing
his quest to find his daughter. But once Harry confronts Alessa with
the Flauros, and Dahlia regains control of her daughter, Harry wakes up
in the room Lisa is always in. But now, Lisa is kinda twitchy and
aggitated. She doesn't seem to have any control over herself. That's
because she NEVER HAD ANY. She has been controlled by Alessa this whole
time, and now that Alessa is no longer in control of the conjured
world, Lisa begins to revert to being the same as the other conjured
creatures. She runs away from Harry, who she has been programmed to
be nice to, this whole time. But now that her programming has gone
haywire, she begins bleeding uncontrollably and goes after Harry. He
then uncovers her diary, in which she confesses to be a drug addict.
She didn't want to go back to the hospital, because she was creeped out
by her undying patient. But she needed the drug, which was why she had
to go back to the Hospital. Who was at the Hospital, who was supplying
her with the drugs? Kaufmann. Who was in charge of the Hospital, and
the patient kept secret in the sealed-off basement. Kaufmann. Who is
Lisa seen arguing with at the beginning of the game? Kaufmann.
Then there's the videotape, with Lisa's confession. If such a tape
ever existed, then Kaufmann and the cult surely would have killed Lisa
for taping a confession. (Notice how the tape has blood on it???) Lisa
showed signs of compassion for Alessa, and horror at her situation. She
also threatens to do something about it, toward "them". So this leads
me to believe that Lisa knew that Kaufmann was involved in something
weird involving this child and a cult that Kaufmann was in. If by chance
she ever caught site of Kaufmann and Dahlia together, which is highly
probable, then she probably figured out for herself that her patient was
related to Dahlia. The fact that Alessa's body was kept locked away in
the Hospital basement goes to show that Kaufmann and Dahlia were trying
to hide her. That must mean, to Lisa, that they had something to do with
the girl's unfortunate situation.
Then one day, maybe Lisa hears that Dahlia has had another child. It's
a small town, so it's possible that word gets around. Lisa can't bear
to think that they might do the same to another child as what she's
seen that they did to Alessa. So if there is one person in the game
who might've stolen the second child from Dahlia and left it by the
side of the road for some strangers to find, it was Lisa. She's the
only one with any compassion in the situation.
Now here's the thing: These events had to have occured seven years ago.
Kaufmann surely would've been able to figure out who abducted the
child. Maybe this is when he tries to confront Lisa in the Hospital
corridor, only to have her throw wild accusations in his face. After
all the other people that the cult silenced, they certainly wouldn't
have let Lisa live, after that.
So I'm thinking that Lisa was most likely killed seven years ago. The
Lisa who appears in the game is only Alessa's fondest memories of her
caregiver. Remember, the tactic is to keep Harry in the Hospital, to
convince him to stop searching. Only a really nice person could do
that, and the only nice person Alessa has ever known is Lisa. So I
believe that the Lisa who appears throughout the game is only an
enhanced construct of Alessa's. Yet at the core, she is just like all
the other psychotically mutating nurses and doctors in the Darkside
Hospital. She is a monster, but under Alessa's control, she takes on
the form and aspect of the horribly burned girl's former caregiver.
When Alessa loses control of the conjured world, she also loses
control of her Lisa. Dahlia is probably in control of everything in
the game at this point, so Lisa is suddenly reprogrammed to attack
Harry. The conflicting controls are probably what cause her to go
berserk. I think that when we see Lisa begin to bleed from every
pour, not only is it in homage to the '70's horror film The Fury,
but it is a metaphor that the Lisa facade is falling apart.
=======================================================================
8. Topic 6: Cybil Possessed
=======================================================================
Cybil is the police officer from Brahms, the next town over. Harry
first sees her on her motorcycle, speeding toward Silent Hill. She's
responding to a call to see what is happening there. Previously, all
communications to the town were cut off, and the neighborly Brahms
police force became concerned. Cybil has been investigating other
matters in Silent Hill previously, so probably she was the best
candidate to investigate the communications failure. Cybil passes
Harry and Cheryl as they are driving to Silent Hill for a vacation,
and she and Harry seem to make some eye contact during the intro. The
intro then makes it seem as if some few minutes have passed, and then
Harry passes Cybil's wrecked motorcycle. Her body is not seen. Because
Harry is looking for the officer, he turns around just a moment too
late to see the figure we would later identify as Alessa, standing in
the middle of the road.
Harry next meets Cybil in the Silent Hill Cafe. Previously, he has had
a strange experience, which he thinks is a dream. He "dreamed" that he
was chasing Cheryl through the streets of Silent Hill, and that the
world transformed into a nightmare. He found himself running from
murderous dwarven creatures, all carrying butcher knives. He was closed
in with them and they stabbed him until he died. But then Harry wakes up
in the Cafe, as if from a nightmare. Cybil Bennet walks into view, and
introduces herself.
In the scene that follows, Harry comes to the conclusion that he
was dreaming. After talking to Cybil, he finds out that parts of
his dream were somewhat accurate; The misty town seems deserted,
and a light snow is falling, out of season. All the radios don't
work, and all the exits from town have been cut off. So while
Harry was unconscious, Cybil has been doing some investigating of her
own, it seems. She leaves Harry in the Cafe with her gun, and tells
him to be careful.
So what is Cybil doing here? Well, I'm not completely sure. I do know
that in the structure of a normal drama, Cybil would be considered the
classic "Confidant", a character who's main purpose in the narrative
is to allow the main character to question the situation of the plot,
and together they reason it all out. The problem in Silent Hill is,
Cybil does not seem to experience the same things that Harry does. This
makes it impossible for them to sort out what is happening to Harry.
When they next meet, in Dahlia's Antique Shop, Harry learns that Cybil
is not experiencing the menacing "other world" that he has experienced.
The fact that she denies it needs to be addressed for a moment, because
when this situation occurs, it is indeed dark outside. This seems to
confuse many players, "How can she deny it when she's FRICKIN STANDING
IN IT!?!?!?!" The difference is, this is not yet the Dark Silent Hill.
This is only Misty Silent Hill, at "night". When the player pilots
Harry out of the Antique Shop, it is indeed dark and there are monsters
about. But the streets are still streets, the buildings are still
pretty normal, and there is snow falling, not rain. When Harry leaves
the Town Centre, after encountering the Larvae, yes, that is Dark Silent
Hill!
I hope I cleared that up for many of you, and that maybe a few light
bulbs and bells went off. I hope that they are going off all the
while you are reading this. But if not, you'll be given the chance to
get further answers. Don't worry, I won't leave you... IN THE DARK!
So now, to return to Cybil's purpose in the game. She is a Confidant,
but not a perfect one. The conversations between her and Harry do let
us know that whatever Harry is experiencing, this "Dark Silent Hill"
as it were, it is only happening to him. This reinforces the whole
Alessa/Dahlia powerstruggle theory, and that Harry is the pawn in
the entire milieu. Since Cybil is not experiencing Dark Silent Hill,
she would seem to have no use in the struggle between Dahlia and her
daughter. Why, then, is Cybil even here???
Is it because Cybil just happened upon the situation, as Cheryl was
returning to Silent Hill and gradually remembering who she really
was? Did the officer get sucked into this situation by accident???
Maybe so, even though Cybil is later used against Harry. The officer
spends most of the game as a normal person, and as Harry's ally. Only
after Cybil assists Harry, by telling him that she saw a young girl
crossing the lake, does Cybil become important in the power struggle
between Dahlia and Alessa. By giving away Alessa's hiding place in the
conjured world, Cybil has focused Harry on where he needs to search.
Up till this point in the game, he has been searching entirely the
wrong areas. But Cybil has provided assistance to Harry, and that
makes the officer an inconvenience to Alessa. Soon afterward, Alessa
takes control of Cybil by attacking her with a parasite, to be
discussed later.
Cybil follows Harry through the concealed tunnel in the Antique Shop,
to the altar where Samael was worshipped regularly by the cult. But
Harry has been sucked into Dark Silent Hill by Alessa. Previously,
she had been investigating near the town lake, and saw a young girl
walking on the air across the water, toward the Resort area. This
was most likely Cheryl, in Alessa's form. So SHE HAS seen something
weird, but just doesn't know how to process it, maybe. Harry uses this
to question Lisa about the Resort area, and finds an alternate route
to the Resort through the Silent Hill sewer system. If Lisa is under
Alessa's control, why does she give Harry this valuable information,
which leads Harry to Alessa? I don't know, I find it to be a plothole
in the game, if all my other theories are to be accepted.
Cybil is next seen in the same sewer system, looking around a corner
in a frightened manner. Something hits her from behind and knocks her
to the ground. Whatever it was, it caused alot of red liquid to
splatter. What happened to Cybil???
This is the question that I have to be the most vague about
answering. The only affirmative answer is, "I don't know". And
neither can any of you, because not even Cybil herself can explain
it later. What we all do know happens, is that Cybil is somehow
"possessed", or taken control of, by the dark forces of Silent Hill.
With blood-filled eyes, Cybil goes after Harry in a slow and creepy
manner, and begins shooting at him. She moans and bends over several
times. If Harry runs far enough away, she won't pursue him. Several
times, Cybil turns, as if to show Harry the red patch on her back.
These behaviors are quite a bit like those exhibited by the evil
doctors and nurses in the Dark Alchemilia Hospital, who all had strange
humps on their backs, containing wriggling shapes.
Now the player has the choice of either fighting to the death with
Cybil, in which case she dies and Harry laments, or if the player is
extremely keen(and I mean EXTREMELY KEEN) they might attempt to prevent
Cybil's death by curing her, using the medicine scooped off of the floor
of Kaufmann's office. This second method causes Cybil to collapse, and
a smoking parasite of some kind crawls out of her back.
So how did Cybil become possessed? Obviously in the previous cinema,
where we saw the parasite slam into her back. Many have written to me
since the publication of the Silent Hill Plot Guide, addressing this
issue. Many seem to feel that Kaufmann uses the Aglaophotis to turn
Cybil into this. I do not agree. Where, then, did this THIRD
Aglaophotis sample come from? And please don't email me with your
imaginative extrapolations, saying "Well, there's plenty of parts of the
town we don't get to see, where Kaufmann might have other stashes of
Aglaophotis". Fine, if you want to believe that, don't let me stop you.
However, I will stick to what is presented in the game.
Something... something UNSEEN attacks Cybil. This much is clear to me.
Something smashes into her back with a either a great enough force to
cause her blood to splatter, or with such a splatter that it goes
everywhere. What I will accept is that the spine, in the back, is
depicted in this game several times as the doorway to possession. Mother
Alessa (the full-grown version of Alessa seen only at the end of the
game, in the white gown)is possessed by Samael. Samael rises out of
Alessa, through her back. This is the same as all the doctors and nurses
of the Hospital, controlled by the parasites squirming around in their
backs.
Were these the actual staff of the hospital, at one time? Perhaps. I
certainly do think so, for myself. I think Alessa had to suck ALL of the
staff into her nightmare world, just to draw Kaufmann in as well. When
she had drawn them all in, she asserted control over all but Kaufmann
by creating parasites that attacked and "possessed" all the staff.
Then, she transformed one of these possessed creatures into the likeness
of her old nurse, Lisa.
Along these lines, I will assess that while trying telepathically to
remind Cheryl of who she was, that Samael accidentally allowed Cybil to
slip into the conjured world. And like everyone else who was
accidentally drawn into this world, one of Alessa's parasites finally
seeks out Cybil and takes her over. Now, Cybil becomes another of
Alessa's tools to stop Harry, and maybe the most powerful one yet,
since Harry has recently become acquainted with the cop and has sided
with her. Only when Harry twists "possessed" Cybil around and uses the
Aglaophotis on her back is Cybil reclaimed from the clutches of evil.
The next time we see the Aglaophotis used is when Kaufmann hurls it at
Mother Alessa, and Samael then pours out of her back.
So the purpose of the Aglaophotis seems to be that it can extract the
demonic element in possession of any person in the game. My only
problem with this is that you can't use the Aglaophotis on any of the
Doctors and nurses at the Hospital, and you can't use it on Alessa
yourself during a Bad Ending (an ending in which Kaufmann does not
appear, and Harry must fight and defeat only Mother Alessa). This gives
me some pause in fully endorsing this theory, but then I remind myself
that it's just a videogame, and not everything is planned for. Plus,
this is the only near-conclusive theory I can attain from what is
presented in the game.
Now I will recapitulate from what has been previously stated to make
my assertions regarding Cybil and her role in the game clear:
1. Cybil is drawn into the conjured world by accident. As an incidental
and unimportant piece in the chessmatch between Dahlia and Alessa, she
does not experience the same shifting-reality experience that Harry
has. She is free to explore on her own, and incidentally catches sight
of Alessa, telling Harry where he can find her.
2. Perhaps because Cybil helps Harry draw closer to Alessa, Alessa
creates a parasite that possesses Cybil, just like she did previously
to everyone else who was accidentally drawn into the conjured world.
Now, Cybil is under Alessa's control.
3. Alessa positions "possessed" Cybil to fight Harry. But in a + ending
scenario, Harry thinks to use the medicine from Kaufmann's office on
her. This causes the supernatural parasite to be extracted from Cybil's
back.
4. True to form, the Aglaophotis extracts the demon Samael from Alessa,
but probably not with the results the doctor expected. Samael is freed
momentarily to wreak havoc on the universe.
Well, I admit it's not the most conclusive part of this analysis, but
I have basically explained Cybil's role in the entire game as best I
can, using the skills I was trained to use in years of Plot Analysis,
while studying Dramatic Structure in my screenwriting classes at
college.
=======================================================================
9. Topic 7: The Endings
=======================================================================
What confuses most players is that Silent Hill does not wrap itself up
at the end in a nice, tight little package with a bow, like most other
games. Not everything is explained, and the player is left to question
what actually occurred during the game. This is usually the case for
most players, even after replaying the game enough to get all five
endings to the game.
So let's examine these endings, to find out what happens.
THE BAD ENDING
This is what occurs in the final area if you did not use the Aglaophotis
on Cybil, and if you did not find Kaufmann's stash at the Motel. Harry
is in a conjured version of what seems to be Dahlia Gillespie's house,
on the second floor. After experiencing another psychic image from
Alessa, he runs downstairs. This room is very similar to the
Dark Midwich Elementary School Boiler Room, where Harry encountered
the Lizard. But now, the room is inhabited by three others. They are,
from left to right: Dahlia; Alessa #1, seated in a wheelchair, burned
from head to toe and wrapped in dirty bandages; and finally, Alessa
#2, who was Harry's adopted daughter Cheryl for the past seven years.
Harry demands to see Cheryl, and Dahlia explains to him that Alessa
#2 IS Cheryl. Then Dahlia magically combines the two girls into one
being, whom I call the Mother Alessa since Dahlia proclaims, "My
daughter will be the mother of a god!" The Mother Alessa bears the
full and vibrant power of the demon contained within her, Samael.
She releases her power now, and destroys Dahlia. Then, she tries
to destroy Harry. Harry runs around and shoots her until she dies.
Then he collapses to the floor, sobbing in grief. Alessa's fake
world crumbles around him. Then the credits begin to roll, but the
best is yet to come. With this ending only, a song with lyrics plays.
In all the other endings, we get to see bloopers of sorts, featuring
the CG-rendered cast messing up scenes from the intro and the game,
and acting all kinds of silly. But not in the Bad Ending. This time,
there is only credits scrolling over darkness, and the sad song
playing. After the credits, there is one last shot. Harry is still
seated in his crashed jeep. Blood runs from a wound on his forehead.
He is dead.
THE BAD + ENDING
This is what occurs in the final area if you used the Aglaophotis on
Cybil, but you did not find Kaufmann's stash at the Motel. Harry is
in a conjured version of what seems to be Dahlia Gillespie's house,
on the second floor. After experiencing another psychic image from
Alessa, he runs downstairs. This room is very similar to the
Dark Midwich Elementary School Boiler Room, where Harry encountered
the Lizard. But now, the room is inhabited by four others. They are,
from left to right: Dahlia; Alessa #1, seated in a wheelchair, burned
from head to toe and wrapped in dirty bandages; Alessa #2, who was
Harry's adopted daughter Cheryl for the past seven years; and finally,
Cybil, who's somehow beaten Harry here, and has her gun trained on
Dahlia. Dahlia uses her power to knock Cybil away. Now Harry steps
forward. He demands to see Cheryl, and Dahlia explains to him that
Alessa #2 IS Cheryl. Then Dahlia magically combines the two girls
into one being, whom I call the Mother Alessa since Dahlia proclaims,
"My daughter will be the mother of a god!" The Mother Alessa bears the
full and vibrant power of the demon contained within her, Samael.
She releases her power now, and destroys Dahlia. Then, she tries
to destroy Harry. Harry runs around and shoots her until she dies.
Then he collapses to the floor, sobbing in grief. Alessa's fake
world crumbles around him. Then the credits begin to roll, but there is
yet a final shot afterwards. Cybil gets up, and limps over to Harry. She
grabs him, shakes him, and finally slaps him to bring him around.
"Harry," she yells. "Go!"
THE GOOD ENDING
This is what occurs in the final area if you did not use the Aglaophotis
on Cybil, but you did find Kaufmann's stash at the Motel. Harry is in
a conjured version of what seems to be Dahlia Gillespie's house, on the
second floor. After experiencing another psychic image from Alessa, he
runs downstairs. This room is very similar to the Dark Midwich
Elementary School Boiler Room, where Harry encountered the Lizard. But
now, the room is inhabited by three others. They are from left to right,
Dahlia, Alessa #1, seated in a wheelchair, burned from head to toe and
wrapped in dirty bandages, and finally, Alessa #2, who was Harry's
adopted daughter Cheryl for the past seven years. Harry demands to see
Cheryl, and Dahlia explains to him that Alessa #2 IS Cheryl. Then
Dahlia magically combines the two girls into one being, whom I call the
Mother Alessa since Dahlia proclaims, "My daughter will be the mother of
a god!" The Mother Alessa bears the full and vibrant power of the demon
contained within her, Samael. But now, Dr. Kaufmann enters the room.
He is quite certain that Dahlia has betrayed him, that she assumed
control of the power within Alessa for herself. He produces the medicine
he took from Harry in the Motel garage, which Dahlia identifies with
some horror on her part to be "Aglaophotis". Kaufmann hurls the liquid
at Alessa. The substance causes the giant, winged demon, Samael, to be
extracted from Alessa. The demon turns on Dahlia, and destroys her
form. Then, the demon tries to destroy Harry. Harry runs around and
shoots the monster until it screams in agony, the scream of a young
girl. Behind him, the monster that Alessa had disguised as her former
nurse, Lisa, rises out of the floor. She sneaks up behind Kaufmann and
grabs him, dragging him down through the floor, to a fate we can
safely assume to be worse than death. Harry turns to Mother Alessa,
who has collapsed on the floor. The conjured world is crumbling around
them. Alessa produces a small bundle containing an infant, and gives
it to Harry. She then points to a bright light off in the distance.
Harry runs. After the credits roll and are done, a final shot occurs.
Harry emerges from the conjured world, and finds himself running down
the highway at night. He is carrying the small baby. He stops, looks
around. His expression is one of confusion and anger.
THE GOOD + ENDING
This is what occurs in the final area if you used the Aglaophotis on Cybil
and you found Kaufmann's stash at the Motel. Harry is in a conjured
version of what seems to be Dahlia Gillespie's house, on the second
floor. After experiencing another psychic image from Alessa, he runs
downstairs. This room is very similar to the Dark Midwich Elementary
School Boiler Room, where Harry encountered the Lizard. But now, the
room is inhabited by three others. They are from left to right, Dahlia,
Alessa #1, seated in a wheelchair, burned from head to toe and wrapped
in dirty bandages, and finally, Alessa #2, who was Harry's adopted
daughter Cheryl for the past seven years. Harry demands to see Cheryl,
and Dahlia explains to him that Alessa #2 IS Cheryl. Then Dahlia
magically combines the two girls into one being, whom I call the Mother
Alessa since Dahlia proclaims, "My daughter will be the mother of a
god!" The Mother Alessa bears the full and vibrant power of the demon
contained within her, Samael. But now, Dr. Kaufmann enters the room.
He is quite certain that Dahlia has betrayed him, that she assumed
control of the power within Alessa for herself. He produces the medicine
he took from Harry in the Motel garage, which Dahlia identifies with
some horror on her part to be "Aglaophotis". Kaufmann hurls the liquid
at Alessa. The substance causes the giant, winged demon, Samael, to be
extracted from Alessa. The demon turns on Dahlia, and destroys her
form. Then, the demon tries to destroy Harry. Harry runs around and
shoots the monster until it screams in agony, the scream of a young
girl. Behind him, the monster that Alessa had disguised as her former
nurse, Lisa, rises out of the floor. She sneaks up behind Kaufmann and
grabs him, dragging him down through the floor, to a fate we can
safely assume to be worse than death. Harry turns to Mother Alessa,
who has collapsed on the floor. The conjured world is crumbling around
them. Alessa produces a small bundle containing an infant, and gives
it to Harry. She then points to a bright light off in the distance.
Cybil gets up, and the two of them run for the light. After the credits
roll and are done, a final shot occurs. Harry and Cybil stand in the
same spot Harry and his wife stood at seven years ago. Harry picks up
the baby in the bundle from off the ground. Cybil plays with the baby,
and there is a look of happiness exchanged between Harry and Cybil.
Now here's the strange thing, when you start up a new game and watch
the intro, the scene with Harry and his wife finding the baby has been
replaced with the same scene, with Cybil instead of Harry's wife. And
it will remain this way through every subsequent game, no matter which
ending you get.
THE UFO ENDING
During a Next Fear game, a replay of Silent Hill, Harry might be
able to find a new item called the Channeling Stone at the Convenience
Store near the beginning of the game. As the game progresses, access
the inventory menu and Use the Channelling Stone at the following
areas:
1. The rooftop of the Midwich Elementary School
2. In the courtyard of the Hospital, right before going to fight
the Giant Moth.
3. In the parking lot of the Motel
4. In the cabin of the Boat, right after Dahlia leaves.
5. At the top of the Lighthouse, after Alessa disappears.
With each use of the Channeling Stone, Harry will see more and more
UFOs in the sky, for a greater duration each time. When the stone is
used at the top of the Lighthouse, the UFO Ending suddenly occurs. The
UFOs land, and Harry approaches them. Aliens emerge from the UFOs, and
Harry waits for them to speak. But they say nothing. In confusion,
Harry apologizes, awkwardly. Then he asks, "Say, have you seen a little
girl, about seven, short black hair-" One of the aliens whips out a
Konami Hyper Blaster (a real lightgun product, usable with the Sony
PlayStation) and fries Harry with it. They pick up the stunned and
groaning man, drag him into the spaceship and zip off. Then, the credits
roll, but like the introduction at the beginning of a Star Wars film.
The theme music is really weird, like a twelve year old is playing with
a synthesizer, and some guy keeps repeating "Silent Hill, Silent Hill!"
Very humorous!!!
So what does it all mean? In my opinion, you have to experience and
add up ALL the endings in order to understand what happens. And even
then, any player can only interpret for him- or herself.
When I add all the endings together, I noticed a great many things.
The notes that I made helped me to interpret the entire plot of the
game, and to create this guide.
All of the endings are unsatisfactory, in that the nature of the power
held by Alessa and the real plot of the game are not explained. In this
much, I agree with everyone. Why would the developers spend a small
fortune on the development, packaging, and marketing of a game, when
it fails to have a tell-all, conclusive ending?
If we look at the works that inspired the game to start with, the
answer is clear. How do we know what works inspired the game? The
streets of Silent Hill are all named after famous authors and musicians.
Many of these authors have put forth works which have themes and
situations adapted directly into the story of Silent Hill. A list of all
the works that I agree have had an influence on the plot of Silent Hill
follows:
1. The Regulators, a novel by Richard Bachman (Stephen King's pseudonym)
A young child is possessed by a powerful and irreverent evil, which
materializes the child's toys into reality, and turns an entire
neighborhood upside down. Life-sized versions of the toys invade the
streets, and anyone standing outside is killed. Those who are left
cannot call for help or leave the neighborhood, because the evil
entity has sucked them all into a conjured world, from which there
is no escape but to play this thing through.
2. Rosemary's Baby, a novel by Ira Levin, a film by Roman Polanski
Rosemary and her actor husband, Guy, move into a swanky and expensive
apartment in Manhattan. Their elderly and intrusive neighbors, the
Castavetes, are actually the leaders of a Satanic Coven. Guy makes a
pact with Roman, the leader, to get a lead role in a very promising
Broadway play. In return, the Coven is allowed to summon Lucifer, who
impregnates a drugged Rosemary with the Antichrist. Rosemary tries to
get away, but the conspiracy reaches so deeply that she cannot. She
gives birth to the child, and eventually accepts that she is the mother
of the Son of Satan, and to make the best of it.
3. Phantoms, a novel by Dean Koontz
Two sisters are en route to a small town. When they arrive, the entire
place seems deserted. Then they stumble across the corpses of several
people, who all seemed to have died suddenly of some sort of virus.
Others seem to have been butchered so suddenly that they were stopped
in the middle of menial tasks. Arming themselves, the girls suddenly run
across a Sheriff and his two deputies. These men are from the next
town over, investigating what is going on in town after the local
Sheriff called them for backup. They hear screams coming from a local
inn, where seven guests were previously registered, but only one
body is found. After searching the entire premises, they find words
written in red lipstick on a bathroom mirror, "The Ancient Enemy by
Timothy Lyte". Suddenly, the body they found is missing. They return
to the sheriff's station, and attempt to radio back to their town.
But the transmission is cut off by terrible interference. They are
suddenly attacked by a large, mothlike creature, who kills one of
the deputies. This is where most of the simularities to Silent Hill
ends. The rest of the story is about an ancient creature, who has
fed every couple hundred years on a small town or village, causing
the whole population to mysteriously disappear. Roanoke Island in
Virginia, and an ancient Aztec city are two instances. This thing
wants Timothy Lyte, and expert on mass disappearances, to come to
the town and see it, to tell the world to submit to its appetite.
4. Something Wicked This Way Comes, a novel by Ray Bradbury
The novel relates the tale of an evil carnival that comes to a small
town, in the fall, out of season. Two young boys discover by accident
that the carnival people and their devious leader, Mr. Dark, are luring
several townsfolk into giving up their souls and becoming slaves to the
carnival. The carnival's main attraction is a carousel, much like the
one that appears in Silent Hill, except that those who ride on this one
are aged or made younger, depending on the direction the ride is
spinning. Several instances occur where Mr. Dark is able to convince
the boys that they are someplace that they are not, and that they are
being attacked by spiders that don't exist. These are the only
simularites that I notice between the two plots.
5. The Midwich Cuckoos, a story by John Wyndam
This classic science fiction/horror tale is the basis of the Village
of the Damned films, in which children have terrible powers to alter
reality and attack adults. The Midwich Elementary School in Silent Hill
proudly steals its name from Wyndam's book.
6. Sphere, a novel by Michael Crichton
Another Crichton work that may be an influence on Silent Hill is the
famous Jurassic Park, in which dinosaurs roam the planet once again.
I only mention this due to the pterodactyl-like flying demons in the
game, maybe they were influenced by the book. But even more of an
influence on the game, I feel, is the novel Sphere, which just recently
became a movie. This story plays with reality and the reader's head in
ways that remind me of Silent Hill. Also, one of the main concepts of
the book involves thought becoming reality, no matter how illogical
those thoughts may be. Monsters are generated simply because one person
unknowingly wills them into being. This is how I developed my theory
that Alessa is controlling reality in Silent Hill with her mind, and
that she is generating all the monsters in the game sheerly out of pure
thought. Notice how, when the monsters are killed, they fade away after
some time? I've seen it happen!!! Just back away from any enemy you
kill, until it is lost in fog or darkness. Count to three, and then run
back to it. You might catch a glimpse of the dead enemy fading away.
This fading of monsters happens in Sphere as well.
7. Hell House, a novel by Richard Matheson
Matheson Street in the game is named after the author of many horror,
sci-fi, and mystery novels. Matheson also wrote classic episodes of
Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. Needless to say, reality is not a
firm concept in any of his works, and irony in the situation of
characters is mainstay. This is especially true in Hell House, where
a team of paranormal detectives travels to a notorious house to
investigate. Upon first arriving, they discover a secret room which
seems to have been used for Satanic rituals, and the sacrifice of
living children, many of whom seemed to be burned to death. But things
are not what they seem. Luckily for Matheson readers, the author is
a bit more generous about explaining things at the end. I strongly
suggest that all Silent Hill lovers read this book, you should be able
to find it at the library, or a book collector's shop. You also might
enjoy his other work, I Am Legend, which was the basis of the film
Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston.
And there are plenty others, from the other authors reference to in the
game by name. Here are some works which I personally feel were influences
on the game, but are not referenced to directly in Silent Hill:
1. Jacob's Ladder, a film by Adrian Lynne
This is a truly disturbing film, and it's obvious to me, and most Silent
Hill players who view it, that it was a big, BIG influence on the game.
Tim Robbins plays a Vietnam veteran who was exposed to some kind of
nasty gas during a fire-fight in the jungles. Now he is a postal worker
in the states, but he has some severely disturbing flashbacks, and some
very hellish hallucinations involving demons. The big question is, what
part of his experience is reality? One sequence involves Robbins'
character, named Jacob, being forcibly wheeled into a hospital against
his will. As he is taken on a gurney further into the hospital, the
doctors and patients take on disturbing and twisted shapes. The walls
are covered with chainlink fencing and mesh, and everywhere there are
bloodstains and rust. The setting is quite visually similar to what is
encountered in Dark Silent Hill. We find out at the end of the film
that NONE of what has been seen was real. This helped me to form the
theory that neither Misty Silent Hill nor Dark Silent Hill are the
Real Silent Hill.
2. Twin Peaks, a television series created by David Lynch.
Twin Peaks involved alot of weird and unexplainable events connected
to the murder of a local high school girl named Laura Palmer. The
main plot of the show, during its first season, revolved around the
attempts of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and local sherrif Harry S.
Truman to figure out who murdered Laura Palmer. The only good clues in
the case were of a metaphysical nature, mostly derived from Agent
Cooper's strange dreams. Eventually, Cooper and Truman learned that the
murderer was Laura Palmer's own father, who acted under the influence
of a demonic entity known as "Killer Bob". This evil spirit possessed
Leland Palmer since he was a young boy, and only manifested
occasionally, like a second personality. Leland had no knowledge of Bob
or what the entity caused him to do. Killer Bob hailed from a place
called the Black Lodge, an alternate reality that Agent Cooper had
visited many times in his dreams. In tracking down a deranged FBI
agent named Windam Earl, Cooper was forced to enter the Black Lodge
and confront Bob, among other entities. After Cooper was found
unconscious in the woods, he began acting strangely. The very last
shot of the series showed Cooper slamming his head into a bathroom
mirror, causing himself to bleed. Laughing hysterically, he began
making fun of things he had said previously, while pretending to be
Agent Cooper. You see, Killer Bob had taken possession of Agent Cooper.
This much was not clearly explained, or spoon-fed to the viewers, and
many had trouble understanding what had occured. I myself had to watch
this episode several times before I understood. Seems like the makers
of Silent Hill devised their ending along the same lines. Notice also
how the intro is kinda like the opening of a television series? The
viewer is shown clips that they may have seen and clips that are yet to
come. (Even if you've played the game five times, you still haven't
seen all the clips in the intro.) The theme music is very experimental,
and the music that occurs in the game, (low, quiet, ominous, more noise
than music) is very similar to the music of Angelo Badalementi during
some of the more disturbing parts of Twin Peaks. Also, Twin Peaks was
chock full of irreverent humor, which may explain the inclusion of the
hilarious yet offbeat UFO Ending. I consider Twin Peaks, which I watched
enthusiastically from its premiere to its closure, to be all the warm-up
I needed to be able to tackle the plot of Silent Hill.
Now that we've got all that information under our belts, I feel a
little safer trying to explain my interpretations of the endings to the
game. Listed hereafter are the several theories that I entertain,
regarding the meaning of the endings of Silent Hill.
THE "IT'S ALL IN HARRY'S MIND" THEORY
The developers went to some lengths to make the Bad Ending Stand out
from the rest. This much is clear, in that there are no "bloopers"
during the credits, and there is a ballad that is played. After the
unique credits are concluded, a shot of Harry in his jeep, dead.
I think that these occurances have been highlighted by the developers to
hint that this is the most important ending, and maybe the most telling.
The implication is that Harry has been in his jeep this whole time,
teetering between life and death, witness to images of heaven and hell.
Viewers of the film Jacob's Ladder will recognize this concept right
away. I'm going to go ahead and spoil the ending of that film, so that
my concept of the ending can be illustrated better. I would suggest that
any of you who want to view that film, and don't want it spoiled, rent
it before you read any further.
In the end of Jacob's Ladder, we learn that none of what Jacob has
experienced has been real. He has never even left Vietnam. All of what
he has experienced has happened only in his mind, as he fell in and out
of consciousness. Previously, we saw how Jacob was seriously wounded in
the jungle during a fire-fight. The events of the entire film are only
the hallucinations that he has while dying. He must make amends with
his past, forgive himself for the death of his son, in order to save
his soul from the horrors of Hell. His hallucinations vary between
nightmarish visions, full of demons, and moments of bliss, where he
has survived the war and lives a peaceful life. All of the
hallucinations that Jacob experiences occur while he is being extracted
by helicopter from the jungle and flown to a medical base, where
doctors operate on him to try to save his life. In the end, Jacob makes
peace with himself, and with death, and goes into the heavenly light.
The doctors who tried to save his life finally give up, and Jacob dies
on the operating table, where he has actually been for most of the film.
The Bad Ending, and the way that it is highlighted, say to me that none
of what has happened during the game is real. What is real is that Harry
has been in a car accident, and that the events of the game are no
more than his guilt-ridden hallucinations before death. Perhaps at one
point, he regained consciousness just enough to become aware that Cheryl
was gone. I think his hunt for her, throughout the game, is really a
metaphor for his inability to forgive himself. He's going to die, and
he never got to tell Cheryl that she wasn't his real daughter.
What is the meaning of the other endings, then? In the Bad+ Ending,
Harry has rescued Cybil, and therefore has the opportunity to confess
his sins to her, not telling Cheryl that he wasn't her real father. In
this manner, perhaps the true purpose of Cybil's existance in the game
is revealed. She is Harry's confessor, his priest, and therefore, his
angel. Hence, Cybil is beautiful and kind. She becomes evil when Harry
is still reluctant to admit his guilt. But she is returned to angelic
status so that Harry can confess what he feels to be his major sin. But
these are both still the Bad Endings, and for good reason. Notice that
at the end of both, there is no exit tunnel, with a light at the end.
The game ends with Harry being stuck in the Dark conjured world, and
flames are raining down upon him. If Harry has admitted his guilt, then
why is he confined to Hell at the end of the game? I think it is
because he has failed to cause the circumstances that allow the demon
to be extracted from his daughter. Thus, at the end of the game, when
Harry kills the woman who represents his own daughter, he has failed
to see her as anything but a monster and the bane of his existence.
Sometimes, when people can't admit something to the people they love,
they begin to see those people in a resentful fashion. Hence, Harry
resented his daughter in real life because he couldn't admit the truth
to her.
So in the hallucinatory world within his mind as he lay dying, Harry
must not only admit that he was wrong not to tell his daughter, whatever
her real name may be, that he wasn't her real father, but he must also
stop resenting her for it. Thus, when the demon is extracted from
Harry's daughter, and he defeats it, this is all a metaphor for Harry
finally being able to admit his wrong and conquer his own inner demon,
who was not his daughter, but another entity all along. Only then is
the long tunnel with the light at the end available for Harry to run
to. Only then does Harry achieve everlasting peace and a final
happiness. Otherwise, he condemns himself to Hell, and the entire
game has only been a metaphor for the choice he has had to make. He
has experienced Hell, and maybe Heaven, just like Jacob did in the
film that I have compared it to.
Seem a little deep? Watch the film, Jacob's Ladder, and then see if
this theory makes any sense.
But this leaves out the final shots of the other three endings. What
are their secret meanings? If we hold the previous theory up, then the
other endings are merely Harry's mental explorations of all the possible
outcomes. If he confesses his guilt and stops seeing his daughter as
his personal demon, then he goes to Heaven and is finally happy with
his angel, Cybil. If he doesn't confess his guilt, but still quits
casting his daughter as his demon, then he still gets to go to
Heaven, but it's a much emptier place. If he confesses his guilt, but
still resents his daughter for his own crimes, he is condemned. And if
he does neither, then he becomes aware that he has died and committed
himself to an eternity of grieving over his mistakes.
THE "TWILIGHT ZONE" THEORY
Many episodes of the television series The Twilight Zone, including
one written by referenced author Richard Matheson, related the tales
of individuals who are stuck in limbo, doomed to repeat the same events,
never realizing from one repetition to another that they are stuck in
a continuous loop of time. My other theory about the meanings of the
endings of Silent Hill are drawn from this plot formula.
Remember the theory I stated previously that the whole game is a game
within a game, a chessmatch between Dahlia and Alessa, with Harry as
the pawn? Here is where that theory comes into play. If nothing in the
game is real, but has all been set up by a girl with supernatural
powers, who in turn controls everything about this reality, then she
must also exist somewhere outside this reality, in order to control it.
Thus, we have Alessa, burned to a crisp, wrapped from head to toe in
bandages, lying in a hospital bed in the basement of the Hospital,
througout the whole game. She conjures the illusion that there is
someone standing in the middle of the road, so that Harry has an
accident. The appearance of Alessa reminds Cheryl who she really is,
thus the expression on her face is not just of horror, but of the horror
of recognition. After the crash, maybe she gets out of the jeep, leaves
the dying man who pretended to be her father all these years, and goes
to find her other half. When the two are reunited, the power that has
lain dormant within both of them is also united. But there is danger,
that the evil mother of the girls will seek to find them, to regain
control over them and the power they contain. So they use their power
to conjure an alternate reality, in which they can hide. Dahlia must
enter this reality in order to find the girls and reclaim them, but
the girls have total control over the conjured world. They mentally
generate demons and monsters to stop Dahlia, to kill her. Dahlia
comes up with a plan, to use the man who in reality is about to die.
Instead, she uses a magic device called the Flauros to alter the
conjured world, to "program" Harry into it, so that he will carry
the Flauros to Alessa, where it will take control of the conjured
world from her.
Now let's step back and examine this model. We have two worlds,
the Real Silent Hill and the Conjured Silent Hill. Alessa is no
longer in the real world, she is only in the conjured one. Dahlia
is in the real world, and can only mentally project herself into
the conjured world. And then there's Harry, who is unconscious in
his wrecked car, dying from his injuries. But he doesn't know it.
So Dahlia magically inserts the essence, or mental spirit, of Harry
into the conjured world. She makes him think that he has awoken in
Silent Hill and his daughter is missing. Harry loves his daughter,
in spite of the fact that he's never told her that she's not really
his. Dahlia knows that Harry will be driven to find Cheryl, who is
really the active and capable second half of Alessa.
Alessa must sense that Harry has been brought into the conjured world
by Dahlia, and she probably figures out that the purpose is to find
her. Her main motive is to hide from Dahlia, and Harry never told her
the truth anyhow. So she alters the world she's created so that it's
dark and scary. Then she generates little demons that quickly overcome
and kill Harry.
But remember, this is only a magical projection of Harry. The real
Harry is still comatose in his wrecked jeep. So Dahlia merely starts
over. She reinserts Harry at a safer spot, so that he can get a better
grip on what is happening in the conjured world. To help him do this,
Dahlia inserts Cybil in this world as well. The cop doesn't remember
that she also wrecked near Silent Hill, and that she is also comatose
somewhere on the highway. She thinks she is in Silent Hill, and that
she needs to go for help. What causes her to give Harry her gun?
Perhaps she never does. After all, she shows up with another gun later,
where did she get that one? Maybe Dahlia, working her magic on the
conjured world, only makes it SEEM like Cybil gave Harry a gun. At
least that way, he would be able to fight through the monsters Alessa
was hiding behind. Dahlia then generates more weapons, and sets them
in Harry's "path", so that he will be able to thwart Alessa's creations.
This "path" is generated by Dahlia's device, the Flauros. As soon as
Harry has proven himself capable of handling and dispatching Alessa's
monsters, Dahlia projects herself into the conjured world and gives
Harry the Flauros. She needs him to keep searching for Cheryl, who is
really Alessa. Whenever he begins to falter in the quest, Dahlia
takes control of the conjured world and kicks his butt back into gear.
Alessa continues to run from Harry, in spite of his being her loving
surrogate father for seven years. Alessa knows that Dahlia is using
him to get to her, and also he never told her that she wasn't really
his daughter. Perhaps Alessa has trouble forgiving him for that. So
she devises a trap to make him sorry. She takes control of his new
friend, Cybil, and turns her against him. Harry is forced to either
kill her or cure her. If he kills her, then perhaps Alessa becomes
sorry for how she has anguished Harry. If he saves Cybil, he finally
admits that he should have told Cheryl that he wasn't her real father.
Either way, Alessa allows Harry to find her. The Flauros automatically
kicks into action and strikes Alessa down. At this point, Dahlia gains
control over Alessa and the conjured world. Harry winds up in a horribly
disorganized and rearranged version of the Hospital where Alessa's first
half was kept. As he is travelling through it, the ghostly scenes he is
witness to are mental cries of help from Alessa. When he finds Dahlia
and the two Alessas, Dahlia tells him that Alessa is his daughter.
Harry is in disbelief at this. Whether or not he accepts that Alessa
was his daughter is dependent on whether or not he sees the demon
Samael get extracted from Alessa. The extraction depends on whether
or not Kaufmann was able to get his sample of Aglaophotis back.
Remember, the "path" of the Flauros is laid out for Harry, NOT Kaufmann.
In order for Kaufmann to be able to reach the Aglaophotis, Harry must
forge the path over there first. If Harry failed to show up at the Motel
then Kaufmann was never able to get his Aglaophotis, then Harry will
never see it used on Alessa, and he will never see the demon as a
separate entity from her. Only when the demon is separated from Alessa
and Harry gets the chance to kill it, then and only then has Harry
truly accepted that Alessa was not the evil behind all of this, that
she was probably his daughter. Then and only then will Alessa allow
Harry to pass on, into the Light, into happiness. Of course, this
doesn't turn out the way Dahlia wanted. If you remember the model as
I have set it up, the Dahlia that is burned up at the end is only a
mental projection of Dahlia, projecting herself into the conjured
world. That's why she isn't screaming as she's burned up. She's
laughing, she can't actually die in the conjured world. So if things
haven't turned out her way, perhaps she is able to "reset" everything,
just as she was able to when Harry was killed the first time by
Alessa's demons. So if things don't go her way, all she has to do is
start over. This is signified in many ways. The scene with Cybil
replacing Harry's wife in the scene indicates a certain repetetiveness
in the events of Harry's life. Suddenly, he finds himself on the side
of the road, scooping up a strange baby, admiring it with a woman he
thinks rather fondly of. They take the baby home to Harry's house.
Maybe they raise it together. In a few years, maybe they forget about
what happened in Silent Hill, and they start vacationing there again.
Maybe Cybil develops a strange illness and dies, leaving Harry to
raise the child alone. And maybe, one night seven years later, when
Harry is returning to Silent Hill for a planned vacation with his
daughter, a figure will step out into the middle of the road.
Or maybe Dahlia resets the conjured world, so that Harry wakes up in
the Cafe again, with no memory of how things turned out the previous
time around. After all, this is how the next game you play starts. Not
at the crash site, but in the Cafe, where everything was reset to
the first time.
So what you're left with is an eternal struggle, where a dying man is
drawn into a situation over and over, with no memory of the previous
times he's lived out these exact same events. Doomed to search for a
daughter that he lost through dishonesty, exploring every possible
outcome of this stalemate chessmatch between two players with the
supernatural powers to control alternate universes. Welcome to the
neverending nightmare of Harry Mason, age 35. A writer who just wanted
a simple vacation with his adopted daughter, but instead, he took a
wrong turn, into the Twilight Zone.
=======================================================================
10. Frequently Asked Questions
=======================================================================
Hopefully, The Silent Hill Plot Guide, Version 2, has put all your
questions and confusion to rest. If it is not, feel free to post a
message at the Silent Hill Sanitarium forums hosted at The Dark Legacy
Network:
http://www.dark-legacy.org/forums
I will not reply directly to email regarding this guide anymore. (It's
time to move on with my life!!!) If you have a good question or a good
point about this guide, then I will post it in this section and try to
answer it. I've written this guide to the best of my
abilities, and I refuse to rewrite it over and over in responses to the
hundreds of emails I receive. Just try reading the guide again!!!
The one question I have not tried to answer here, out of all the emails
I get, is this one:
QUESTION:
Is it true that there might be another ending, where Harry finds Cheryl?
ANSWER:
Maybe there once was, in a previous, unreleased version of the game.
There are certain pieces of evidence and certain messages that Harry
receives when he tries to pick up certain items or examine certain
areas, which would indicate that they might some use at some point.
Alas, these items can never be picked up, and all hope of finding a
hidden sixth ending as a result is lost. My thanks go out to an
individual who posted a theory at my board that has cleared all this
up. When Silent Hill was first announced, press releases indicated that
there would be two playable characters with different scenarios, like
Resident Evil 2. But we all know that the retail version has only one
playable character, Harry. Evidently, Cybil was originally intended to
be a playable character, and maybe another side of the story was viewed
from her perspective. Items that Harry has "no use for right now" may
have been essential in Cybil's adventure. But Cybil's scenario was not
completed or it was scrapped, and not all the clues were taken out of
Harry's scenario.
I have exhausted every possibility of finding another, more conclusive
ending. I even created a forum at my personal page for a while called
"Silent Hill Workshop", where myself and a team of volunteers attempted
every trick in the book to find it. We even applied gameshark codes to
certain situations, but to no avail. So I am content with the theory
that another scenario for Cybil was once planned, which would have tied
up the loose ends in the story and made use of certain objects Harry
cannot use. But when this scenario was scrapped, the developers left
Silent Hill largely incomplete and confusing, and thus the need for
this plot guide arises.
=======================================================================
11. Credits
=======================================================================
Special thanks to the following:
To KCET, for making one of the greatest horror experiences ever,
and I mean it. SILENT HILL is scarier than any horror movie in
Theaters or on video right now. Let's hope some Hollywood exec's
are taking notes....
To Victor Quimson at Konami, for replying to my ridculous demands
for an advance copy of the game and for answering all my questions
before and after the game's release.
To Ashley Jhonen, for being nice enough to post my completely
overwritten Resident Evil Thesis on his website, a cool and
somewhat dour Resident Evil site at:
http://members.tripod.com/~Bad_Ass_Barry/newevil.html
and for requesting that I write this and for all his support.
To "Chris Redfield", webmaster of the Central Silent Hill website
at: silenthill.evil-online.com , also for asking for this treatment.
Where ARE you, buddy?
To "buttcaptain" for his weird e-mails, containing the strangest
jokes I've ever read, and for being kind enough to read my synopsis
only partially contained herein and explaining how Carl Sagan's
theories apply to the story of SILENT HILL.
To Gunsmith, author of the SILENT HILL Walkthrough at
www.gamefaqs.com and many other sites, for replying to my
whiny e-mails and trying to help me find the stupid katana.
To everyone who e-mailed me with every kind of question
imaginable and forced me to update this guide.
To everyone who sent me really nice letters complimenting me
on this guide and thanking me for writing it. Thanks to your
encouragement, I will definitely write more guides. Keep an
eye out for them.
To BradyGames, for giving me fantastic games to write guides for.
Find my offical strategy guides for games such as The Bouncer, Onimusha:
Warlords and Zone of the Enders at your favorite gamestore.
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife, Laura, whom I love very deeply and who
has read everything I've written and corrected all my grammar and
spelling mistakes. If she were trapped in Silent Hill, not 6000 Winged
Demons could keep me away.
And thank YOU, for reading this.
Due to personal abuse and viruses received at my personal email as
a result of posting my email address in this FAQ, I will not accept
personal email about it any longer. The only way to contact me is
through a The Silent Hill Sanitarium's messageboards. Copy and paste
the following URL address into your browser, and go there with any
questions or comments you have:
http://www.dark-legacy.org/silent-hill
Coming Soon: The Zone of the Enders Official Strategy Guide, published
by BradyGames! Yee-hah!
