12th March 2015, 12:01 AM
I haven't watched any of the movies either of you have mentioned, I'm pretty sure. I've heard of David Lynch, but don't really know anything about him. I have not seen The Shining either, or any of Steven King's other horror stuff.
Beyond that though...
So no, suspension of disbelief? I'm kind of the other side of that one, particularly for things involving setting accuracy.
One thing you should realize is that in northern New England there weren't very many Indians to begin with. Massachusetts had had more, but once the Europeans arrived Indians started dying of old-world diseases. It is estimated that in the ~400 years after 1492, as much as 90% of the native population of the Americas probably died; this depends on pre-Columbian population estimates of course. And the US didn't have large populations of settled people, those were down in Mexico through to Peru. And north of Massachusetts in particular, most Indians were only hunter-gatherers, not settled farmers. Hunter-gatherer populations are low because only so many people can survive off the land, you need a lot of land for each person compared to more settled people. So Maine (and New Hampshire and Vermont as well) started out with relatively few people, then a lot of them died, and then the British settlers slowly pushed most of the survivors back. There was plenty of fighting in Maine during colonial days between settlers and Indians, to be sure, and down in Mass., RI, and Connecticut they had actual wars against Indians (King Phillip's War was the last major one, if I remember right), and many of the surviving Indians eventually fled into Canada where European populations were lower, but Indian populations in northern New England today are tiny as much because they always were small as because of anything else.
But yeah, no mention there of Indian ideas mixing into the colonial settlement.
On a few points:
http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Devil%2...s_Pit_Mine
You'd have to go out west to find anything remotely like this crazy-big canyon gorge -- Arizona and such. Maine has a bit of limestone, but not much, it's mostly a state made of granite and igneous rocks. Also, I know of no large caves anywhere near here, "here" being New England in general pretty much.
And for a massive waterfall... 1500 foot waterfall? That's fine for videogame-land, but in reality, there aren't any within 500 feet of that height east of, like, Montana. :p Maine doesn't have big waterfalls. I guess New Hampshire might have one, though that's just a waterfall going down the side of a mountain, not something going into a crazy giant cave which doesn't exist in New England. New England doesn't have big caves. Too much igneous rock and granite.
http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Hazel_Street_Station (and such)
As I said earlier in the thread, the only subway in New England is the one in Boston, Mass. Only big cities build subways, and not even all of those have one!
It's fine to have extremely unrealistic things like this in a game; they are games after all, not depictions of a real place. Games would be VERY boring if they were just like the real world, that's for sure. I don't want to have to walk for days to get from one town to the next in a game, for example... :) But this does show the perils of setting your game in a real place and then having things which are too obviously completely wrong in the game, it stands out as questionable to anyone who knows better. This is why Rockstar does so much location research for the GTA games, to get the details right even if the place is theoretically fictional. I don't care for those games too much gameplay-wise, but at least the settings seem to be pretty solid. I can't expect something like Silent Hill to match GTA's insane budgets of course, but they obviously don't try at all. And that's okay, but I live in this state, so I notice. :p
Beyond that though...
Sacred Jellybean Wrote:And dammit Falcon, colonists and Natives? That makes it the ultimate American horror story. C'mon, haven't you heard of suspension of disbelief? I mean, the plot is nothing but a vehicle for better things: atmosphere in the first game, character study in the next. You nuts, man.Suspension of disbelief? Sorry, yeah, I'm not very good at that. I mean, I can for something like magic in a fantasy world (I mean, there is no magic like that in the real world), but when you have a "realistic" setting and then get the details wrong, I often notice, and it can REALLY bug me. Videogames are absolutely loaded with unrealistic things impossible to the actual setting the game is supposedly set in, yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't notice them, I still do. Sometimes these things make sense (changes for censorship reasons, etc.), but other times not so much.
So no, suspension of disbelief? I'm kind of the other side of that one, particularly for things involving setting accuracy.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:What if that particular town was on the very fringe of the European settlements, and they felt the need to mix with a local native tribe or die out entirely, and thus their cultures mixed that way?The problem is, after the early days the Indians didn't try to mix either, not after the way the settlers treated them. If you're on the frontier you are afraid of Indian attacks, not making friends with them most of the time. Many place names do come from Indian words of course, but cultural connections, not as much. It's not impossible I guess, but it is quite unlikely.
One thing you should realize is that in northern New England there weren't very many Indians to begin with. Massachusetts had had more, but once the Europeans arrived Indians started dying of old-world diseases. It is estimated that in the ~400 years after 1492, as much as 90% of the native population of the Americas probably died; this depends on pre-Columbian population estimates of course. And the US didn't have large populations of settled people, those were down in Mexico through to Peru. And north of Massachusetts in particular, most Indians were only hunter-gatherers, not settled farmers. Hunter-gatherer populations are low because only so many people can survive off the land, you need a lot of land for each person compared to more settled people. So Maine (and New Hampshire and Vermont as well) started out with relatively few people, then a lot of them died, and then the British settlers slowly pushed most of the survivors back. There was plenty of fighting in Maine during colonial days between settlers and Indians, to be sure, and down in Mass., RI, and Connecticut they had actual wars against Indians (King Phillip's War was the last major one, if I remember right), and many of the surviving Indians eventually fled into Canada where European populations were lower, but Indian populations in northern New England today are tiny as much because they always were small as because of anything else.
Quote:What if they were cut off enough that this particular town didn't communicate very often with the other settlements? What if all of this developed as their culture merged and evolved separately from the rest of the settlements until eventually they reestablished contact with the rest, reconnecting with the other settlements as America eventually took form, but always maintaining their heritage? Could a situation like that have happened?Without contact or connections to the rest of the colonies I'd think that the place would die out, not have some weird colonist/indian cultural merger... colonies relied on supplies. A lone family might live off in the woods somewhere, sure, but for protection from Indians and for supplies they need most needed some kind of connection to civilization.
Quote:Edit: Scrap that, here's the timeline as put together by fans. How much of this seems like it could happen in a slightly alternate history of America?I don't see much there that connects to the Indians after the beginning part, unless it's in the game but not in that timeline? I mean, it's mostly just a long list of characters from the games and when they did stuff, it seems...
http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline
But yeah, no mention there of Indian ideas mixing into the colonial settlement.
On a few points:
Quote:Jennifer Carroll is executed for witchcraft. She was one of the founding members of what would become the Order.I don't know if anything like this ever actually happened here in Maine; of course there were the famous Salem trials down in Mass. during colonial days, though. They were probably thinking of that. Wrong state.
Quote:Around this time, a coal field is discovered and Wiltse Coal Mine opens, which leads to the revitalization of the town. [1]There has never been any coal mining at all in Maine, and I've never heard of any coal being found either, so this is totally wrong. Maine has a great amount of natural resources, including lumber (forestry), fishing, slate and granite quarries, and more -- it's a poor state that has historically relied mostly on natural resources and now tourism for income -- but mining, no. Not here. That'd be, like, Pennsylvania or West Virginia or such.
http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Devil%2...s_Pit_Mine
You'd have to go out west to find anything remotely like this crazy-big canyon gorge -- Arizona and such. Maine has a bit of limestone, but not much, it's mostly a state made of granite and igneous rocks. Also, I know of no large caves anywhere near here, "here" being New England in general pretty much.
And for a massive waterfall... 1500 foot waterfall? That's fine for videogame-land, but in reality, there aren't any within 500 feet of that height east of, like, Montana. :p Maine doesn't have big waterfalls. I guess New Hampshire might have one, though that's just a waterfall going down the side of a mountain, not something going into a crazy giant cave which doesn't exist in New England. New England doesn't have big caves. Too much igneous rock and granite.
Quote:Portrayed as what could be considered an archetypal New England tourist town, Silent Hill is shown to be anything but ordinary. Its chief industries are tourism and, to a lesser extent, agriculture. In the first Silent Hill, it is described to be a small town with a population below 30,000 and its key industry, tourism, is in a state of steady decline. However, it is still growing and expanding and may be considered a city by the events of Downpour.For Northern New England, 30,000 is not a "small town". It is a large town. There are only three towns/cities in Maine with a population over 30,000 (Portland, Lewiston, Bangor). The town I grew up in had a population of a bit over 20,000, and is regarded as one of the larger towns in the state. Vermont has even fewer towns that large (I think there is only one), and New Hampshire isn't much different from Maine, though its largest cities have higher populations (smaller state, but the same number of people as Maine).
Quote:JP stating that the pit is 490 meters down is likely a script error as a sign found behind JP states that the bottom of Devil's pit is 1,607 feet (490 meters) above sea level, and that the platform is 3,350 feet (1,021 meters) above sea level, making the pit at least 1,743 feet (531 meters) deep.... Uhh... I already addressed above that this gorge is on the wrong side of the country and there's nothing remotely like this east of the Mississippi, but beyond that, that base elevation is way too high! While New England has some tall mountains, if we pretend it's near a mountain instead of a mini Grand Canyon, somewhere with a large lake at such a high elevation? I doubt New England has anything like that, much less one with a big town next to it. The elevation isn't TOO absurdly wrong -- Maine's largest lake, Moosehead, is apparently at a elevation of about a thousand feet, and it's near Maine's tallest (mile-high) mountain -- but it is off. Oh, and the only towns on the lake are quite small. Larger towns in Maine are next to rivers, or where a river meets the sea.
http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Hazel_Street_Station (and such)
As I said earlier in the thread, the only subway in New England is the one in Boston, Mass. Only big cities build subways, and not even all of those have one!
It's fine to have extremely unrealistic things like this in a game; they are games after all, not depictions of a real place. Games would be VERY boring if they were just like the real world, that's for sure. I don't want to have to walk for days to get from one town to the next in a game, for example... :) But this does show the perils of setting your game in a real place and then having things which are too obviously completely wrong in the game, it stands out as questionable to anyone who knows better. This is why Rockstar does so much location research for the GTA games, to get the details right even if the place is theoretically fictional. I don't care for those games too much gameplay-wise, but at least the settings seem to be pretty solid. I can't expect something like Silent Hill to match GTA's insane budgets of course, but they obviously don't try at all. And that's okay, but I live in this state, so I notice. :p