Silent Hill [Archive] - Virtual Teen Forums

Hauptmann Kauffman

January 19th, 2008, 02:17 AM

kk =D Here goes....

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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.

This is part of this: Silent Hill Plot Guide (http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/198641/4180)