Silent Hill 2

[Weltall]

Alright, I beat the game again with the intention of getting Maria's ending, but I actually got the Leave ending, which I enjoyed a lot. Video game hint websites say that to get the Maria ending, you must not let a lot of damage be incurred to her. I didn't know how to do that when running down the hallway at Brookhaven Hospital. It didn't seem possible to both progress to the next cutscene and prevent the Pyramid Head from assaulting Maria. Thank you for that post, Ryan, it was very insightful.

I'll tell you, to be honest, the best fool-proof way to make sure this happens is to play on Hard mode, because here it is essential you never allow the r.p.t. to even touch Maria.

I've never tested this method on easier modes (both because I don't usually shoot for that ending and, because if not, it's hardly necessary), but on Hard mode, the only way to ensure her survival is to arm the handgun. As soon as the r.p.t. initially appears, shoot him exactly ten times. Count your shots so you don't automatically re-load (and ensure defeat). As soon as the last shot is fired, run until you get to the part where the hall doubles back on itself (it's shaped like a long sideways U with the curve facing east). Make sure you're in front of Maria, reload through the menu manually, then fire off ten more shots, counting again as you do. After the last shot, run like hell. The hits do not damage the r.p.t., but they do slow him down enough to where he cannot catch you. At least, not until he's supposed to.

And thank you for that, too. I read every word of it. That's a very fascinating interpretation, I definitely hadn't thought of it that way, but there's certainly a lot of evidence to support it.

It's definitely my favorite pet theory. D= You're welcome.

I can prove that I did by telling you that (inferred) might work better as (implied). But it's very well-written overall, and I enjoyed it, so kudos.

Thanks again. Though, those two words, in this context, can be used interchangably. :D

Mary's will? For James to visit again? I'm behind you on that, but in the sense of her thanking him and telling him she'll always love him and apologizing for his torment (for which she feels responsible, even though she was also victimized) and ultimately that she thinks he should live his life and move on, Laura's not much help. She tells James that he never loved Mary because Mary likely confided in her about seeing how badly Jame's visits were hurting him emotionally. It is interesting, the connections they do share, though.

The very reason she is so helpful is because every time she has a conversation with James, she ends up saying things that make no sense to James. The reason this is the case is because he has deluded himself into believing a huge lie about the entire last three years of his life. She knows the truth about things (except the big, final piece of it), and each time they meet, she reveals more of it. Each time, this makes James call his own assumptions into question. After their penultimate encounter in the hotel restaurant, James' delusion is tattered and hanging by a thread that will be severed as soon as he finds that video tape.

This is why I consider her an extension of Mary's will: though perhaps it's not an intentional thing, Laura serves to steer James towards the truth of what happened, and guide him out of the fog of lies within which he has trapped himself. Without doing this, he will be unable to move on with his life.

I'm a little fuzzy on the timeline. Did James take Mary to Silent Hill for the last time she was able to go home and kill her? That wouldn't make sense because she told him in the flashback that he never brings her there, and wanted him to promise that he'd bring her back. She would know there was no going back. So perhaps the murder (euthanization?) took place near where they actually lived. The fact that flashbacks of that are spliced between their video at the hotel is a little confusing.

The implication, through the circumstantial evidence and what nots, is that Mary did have a brief stay at Brookhaven Hospital. She is noted to have displayed suicidal tendencies and deep depression. These symptoms worsened because, as we find out near the end, Mary had at one point blown up at James, chastising him for visiting and bringing flowers. It is at this point when the emotional trauma became too much for James, and because of this, he no longer visits Mary in the hospital. When she goes to Brookhaven, she goes alone. She writes her long letter while here, and this is where the pertinent lines of the beginning make sense:

I'm alone here, now. In our special place. Waiting for you. Waiting for you to come see me.

Her letter further mentions that she is given a temporary discharge so that she may have one last visit home. At this point, James goes to Silent Hill to retrieve Mary. They go home, and it is here that James perpetrates the single most pivotal act of his life. The ensuing trauma, on top of everything else, drives James into a full-blown psychosis. His mental defenses overcompensate by reconstituing his memories and experiences into a form that is less painful for him. The euthanization takes place in their own home, and only hours before the beginning of the game. As the Rebirth ending shows her body (though not clearly), she is most likely in the trunk of his car.

In any case, your statement isn't true for the fact that James also hasn't moved on from his delusions in Rebirth. Well, I suppose he gets his wife back and forgives himself for her death, but at the same time, it's still a way he is holding onto baggage. Cool ending to throw in there, though.

Well, yeah. The Leave ending is really the only one in which he truly sheds the baggage and moves on as he really ought to. What I mean, though, is that in the Maria ending, even though he is made aware of the fact that he had deluded himself, he decides that he requires the safety and comfort his delusions provided him, and thus opts to replace his wife with the clever lookalike. In the other three endings, he has shattered the delusions and recognized them for what they are, though he still has choices to make in how he deals with this truth. The Rebirth ending shows him possibly deluding himself in other ways, certainly, but the initial batch of lies is still out of the way. His ultimate fate is never decided for certain, but I strongly suspect that, in the Rebirth ending, he does not get what he thinks he's getting . . .

With regards to the Maria ending, I thought it was cheesy... before I saw the rest of it. What a great way to make the ending chilling, by having her cough and foreshadow James repeating his guilt and anger and self-loathing and loss.

I agree. It also means that Laura's (and Angela's) judgment of his character is accurate; he didn't love Mary and he just wanted her out of the way. I think it also displays the possibility that James is only further hardened and callous. The way he responds to her coughing (you better take care of that) suggests that if events repeat themselves, he is going to handle it in the very same self-destructive manner that led him here in the first place. He's not going to think its his problem, and he's going to make sure that it won't be.

Perhaps the town was able to manifest her? Perhaps he's gone insane and is hallucinating her (or the town implanted something inside him to delude him into seeing her)?

I've never been a believer in the idea of the 'town', or some supernatural representative thereof, exists and manipulates events, mostly because the games have done a remarkable job of implying so much of that without ever showing it as actually happening. :D

But, she is, literally, Born from his Wish. Her sub-scenario begins at the same instant James steps away from the mirror in the Rest Stop from Hell and steps out into the fog.

There are also aspects of Mary that manifest in Maria, which is responsible both for her appearance and for the memories she has that only Mary can know (the ones about Laura, in particular). Popular opinion has it that Maria's sexy appearance is the result of James' repressed libido. I think it more accurate (and appropriate) that this element is minor, and that the real catalyst is Mary's self-image. The disease wracked her body and left her looking monstrous. Though perhaps not quite in such a slutty fashion, Maria is reflective of Mary's desire to look attractive and healthy once more.

Maria's behavior, however, is entirely derived from James' psyche.

Having played through it again, I've changed my mind and now agree with you. I'm not sure why I was so hard on it, I guess I was just expecting cinema-like acting in a video game. :) I'm glad I beat it again, seeing it all a second time in context was very nice. I'll probably put this away for a while, but I know I'll come back to it and gradually unlock Extra.

Also, I really appreciated the music this time around. The music which plays when James confronts both r.p.t.s is perfect.

That truly is an awesome track, as is the one playing in Room 312 at the conclusion of the video.

Also, since writing this, I've come to have an extra appreciation for the voice acting, for a particular reason.

I never mentioned it here because I never felt there was much interest, but in 2005 and 2006 I wrote a full-length novelization of this game. I did so mostly as a lark. It would be a way to hone my talent, and people seemed to like the initial few chapters. Eventually, it grew into hundreds of pages and almost fifty initial chapters, and in the process, I became something of a minor celebrity among Silent Hill fandom.

Late last year, a woman named Dena Natali decided to feature Silent Hill 2 in a youtube show she does about gaming. As a part of this, she opted to feature my novelization within part of the video. I agreed to this when she asked my permission, and pretty much just waited for four months. I thought this was a neat gesture, but I had no idea that she had something more in mind.

Come to find out, while making the last part of this video series, she had contacted Guy Cihi, who was James' voice actor. Through means I still don't know, she convinced him to read my novelization, and got him to narrate a portion of it for her video. I later contacted him myself to verify that this shit was for real, and he confirmed it. So, alone among perhaps almost all amateur writers of fanfiction and video game adaptations, I got to hear the words I wrote spoken by the character's own voice. Needless to say, I thought that was pretty damned cool.

If you care to read it sometime (I'm re-writing it because the original draft is old and too rough for my liking), you can find it here. The video in which Mr. Cihi narrates the passage (from chapter 6) you can find here.