indigozeal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
indigozeal) wrote2015-02-26 08:36 pm
indigozeal) wrote2015-02-26 08:36 pm
Entry tags:
Silent Hill 4 playlog Interlude B: Questions
about the story of SH4:
- Why are there two people - the Giver and the Receiver of Wisdom - in the 21 Sacraments ritual whose purpose is expressly to undo it? As stated previously, I thought initially that this referred to Henry receiving knowledge of Walter's wretched past and being the one to "understand" him in Walter's little mental ritual, but that doesn't seem to be the case, as the Giver and Receiver of Wisdom are alluded to in what appear to be external cult documents. (Then again, since nearly the entire story - including the stuff in Henry's apartment, going on the theory that Henry's in alternate 302 all this time - takes place in Walter's Otherworld, one might question whether anything in the environment is truly "external.")
- How did Walter manage to wall himself up in the apartment wall in a way that was totally undetectable? I mean, who replaced the drywall? A check of the Silent Hill wiki reveals that Douglas hadn't busted up the cult by the time of Walter's suicide, so he could in theory have had an accomplice from there - but that doesn't seem his style, and it's much less thematically consistent: Walter's a lone wolf entirely throughout the 21 Sacraments (he's doing all this, in fact, because he is all alone in the world), and the tenants who saw Walter rummaging around in 302 didn't see anyone else knocking about the apartment with him. (Plus, y'know, he'd taken out at least a couple of the cult's high priests by this point, which might've made the cult less willing to help him out - I mean, not that they're above human sacrifice, but not everyone was on board with the 21 Sacraments idea to begin with; Dahlia chose Walter because he was a fervent believer and emotionally vulnerable, not because he held a position of power in the cult.)
- Hold on: was Walter's body *actually* in the apartment? If we go with the idea that Henry was caught in the Otherworld Apartment since getting locked in there, then Walter's body may not have been in the actual, real-world apartment at all. That does take a good deal of punch out of the late-game revelation, though. It's built up like it's an actual and not-symbolic fact, and the impact is there only if Henry was indeed living right next to Walter's body during his entire tenancy, unaware, as unlikely a scenario as that may be. Perhaps Walter's body is in Henry's real-world apartment and we're only seeing the Otherworld representation of it - it's remarkably well-preserved, for one. But that puts us back to square one as to how real-world Walter did all that stuff.
- If Walter's body was in the apartment, then what was the significance of the open grave Henry finds in Forest World? Granted, we have the Otherworld issue with which to deal again: this may have been merely symbolic of Walter's spirit not being at rest, Walter not being in his grave, etc. But Joseph mentions going to Silent Hill and digging up Walter's grave, too, and finding nothing there. It seems he went a bit too early for this trip to have taken place during his own locked-in-the-apartment period, so I assume it didn't take place in Otherworld Silent Hill. Was the man who killed himself in prison, as Joseph speculated, really just not Walter, and the "grave" was just a symbolic cover-up by the cult? But then we're back into the issue of the practical & dramatic feasibility of accomplices to Walter's rampage, which doesn't seem all that high.
- Who wrote the Crimson Tome? Supplemental materials seem to indicate that it's a cult tract, and the backstory with the various sects of the cult seems to point to it being a "rival" sect to the one that taught Walter the 21 Sacraments, but the Tome talks extensively about the "God" of the 21 Sacraments being "naught...but the Devil" and that "to give birth to a world of wickedness within the blessed realm of our Lord be blasphemy," which seems more befitting something akin to a Christian viewpoint than anything of the cult. I mean, has the cult ever spoken of a Satan figure before? That seems a rather significant element to drag into the mythology without explanation, doesn't it? And to refer to the Otherworld as a "world of wickedness" seems out of character for the cult - and they certainly don't view the current world as "blessed." (Unless they're talking about Walter creating his own personal Otherworlds within or beside or out of the "existing" Otherworld, but it's still exceptionally strange phrasing.)
(Put another way: it seems exceptionally odd for a cult member to recognize "God" as a demon, discover & record the ritual needed to block her resurrection, and still be a cult member, is what I'm saying. It's possible, given the splintering of the cult mentioned in the game, that a member of the opposing sect "correctly" identified the 21 Sacraments sect's God as evil without realizing that it is indeed the God the cult at large worships instead of a "wrong" God worshipped in error by this one heretical sect. Certain details don't quite mesh with that idea, though; as discussed above, the author seems to hold select cult beliefs but isn't talking about staple Silent Hill fixtures as a cult member would.)
(This is all supposing that the God of the cult exists, that Walter's ritual would've summoned something, and that something would have been the cult's God, which are all big ifs in themselves. And speaking of which...)
- Is the "Mom" that Walter's trying to make descend - or, rather, that some think his acts will make descend whether it's his own intention or not - the cult's God? Is it another entity in the cult religion that hasn't been mentioned? From the perspective of the game - if we're taking it on faith that there is an actual entity that will be brought into the world by the 21 Sacraments, rather than this all being a manifestation of stuff in Walter and the cultists' heads, which can't be ruled out - what is the looming threat? Is this SH3 endboss God? Is this another being? What?
- If Dahlia was part of the "Holy Woman" sect that was in opposition to the "Holy Mother" sect that ran the orphanage, then why was she helping out with Walter's education and telling him that the room was his Mom and everything?
- Why has Walter seemingly continued to age as a ghost? His was mid-twenties when he died, and his corpse looks to be mid-twenties, but his ghost looks to be at least mid-thirties, which would be his actual, "current" age had he lived. I mean, it's his world; I suppose he can present himself as he likes, and I suppose there's fictional precedent for acts of massive evil aging a person like the Emperor in Star Wars, but it does seem odd.
- OK, we first see Cynthia walking outside on the city streets down the entrance into the subway. She dies in the Otherworld subway, and when Henry "wakes up" from that excursion, he hears sirens outside his window presumably responding to the crime (and seemingly overhears, in some supernatural way, one of the investigator's comments). Not everything Henry sees outside is actually there (like DeSalvo's head), but Eileen seems to respond to the ambulances, too, during this incident, which suggests that they are, to some degree, real.
However: it's later suggested that the victims are entering the Otherworld while asleep, and that the selves that we're seeing are to some extent spiritual (as per Henry's lack of need for food of other necessities for physical survival during his sequestration - "it's like my stomach is paralyzed" - and the fact that you can see Richard, or at least his body, asleep in his bed for the duration of Building World; Cynthia's comments about being in a dream, which seem like folly initially, prove to be clues). So: Where exactly was Cynthia's body during Subway World? Did she fall asleep in the subway station somehow?
- Are the characters physically present in the Otherworld, or do they leave their physical bodies? If it's the former, then what's with Richard Braintree being asleep in his apartment during Apartment World and Henry returning from the Otherworld by literally waking up back in his apartment bed and etc. etc. etc.? If it's the latter, then how is Walter possessing Eileen (and, in the bad ending, possibly Henry) if she has no physical body to possess? When was Eileen taken - she didn't go to sleep in her party dress & makeup, did she? Or did she only get into her party dress & makeup in the Otherworld (explaining why she's still in her tank top in the hospital)? And did Cynthia just go to sleep in a subway terminal, or what?
- And presuming the "trapped in the Otherworld" hypothesis, how are Walter's victims killed? Is it identical to the deaths we see on-screen? The policemen who discover Cynthia's body mentioned that she has "numbers carved into her chest," as we see in Cynthia's death scene. (Again, I'll note that if Henry's apartment is part of the Otherworld, then what we overhear has a degree of unreliability.) I doubt, though, that Walter got an electric chair into the actual Richard Braintree's apartment, and though we see Eileen nearly beaten to death in Apartment World, when Henry reunites with her in the good ending, she's spotless. Poetic license? If it's hinting that she wasn't beaten, then what method did Walter try to use to "actually" kill her that left her life hanging by a thread and readily identifiable as a murder victim to the paramedics but that didn't leave a mark on her the presumable day after her attack?
And who called the cops & ambulance for Eileen? If the attack we saw took place only in the Otherworld, then what transpired in the real world that led someone to call for medical assistance - and who did? (I can think of a number of scenarios; I'm just curious.)
- And - OK. I mentioned in my Silent Hill 3 playthrough that I was waiting futilely for the much-discussed Valtiel to show up, only to discover that he was apparently a nondescript background character of no importance. In schlepping around the internet after playing Silent Hill 4, I discovered a widespread belief that the spirit of Valtiel had somehow been fused to Walter's consciousness at an early stage in order to help him carry out the murders. There is nothing, translated or otherwise, to support this theory (except for some weird trading cards from the English-language site, which is kind of an iffy source - certainly too iffy to gain such widespread acceptance among such persnickety fans.)
So: does Valtiel exist? Is he really not this huge collective delusion that the Silent Hill fanbase has made up? 'Cause that's really looking to be the case at this point.
Seriously, though: You can conjure scenarios that explain, like, 90% of each of the above issues, but you can't really cover that last 10%. The little corners of the plot don't snap cleanly together, like in SH2; they kind of stumble together, in ways where you can maybe see a resolution I guess.
.
- Why are there two people - the Giver and the Receiver of Wisdom - in the 21 Sacraments ritual whose purpose is expressly to undo it? As stated previously, I thought initially that this referred to Henry receiving knowledge of Walter's wretched past and being the one to "understand" him in Walter's little mental ritual, but that doesn't seem to be the case, as the Giver and Receiver of Wisdom are alluded to in what appear to be external cult documents. (Then again, since nearly the entire story - including the stuff in Henry's apartment, going on the theory that Henry's in alternate 302 all this time - takes place in Walter's Otherworld, one might question whether anything in the environment is truly "external.")
- How did Walter manage to wall himself up in the apartment wall in a way that was totally undetectable? I mean, who replaced the drywall? A check of the Silent Hill wiki reveals that Douglas hadn't busted up the cult by the time of Walter's suicide, so he could in theory have had an accomplice from there - but that doesn't seem his style, and it's much less thematically consistent: Walter's a lone wolf entirely throughout the 21 Sacraments (he's doing all this, in fact, because he is all alone in the world), and the tenants who saw Walter rummaging around in 302 didn't see anyone else knocking about the apartment with him. (Plus, y'know, he'd taken out at least a couple of the cult's high priests by this point, which might've made the cult less willing to help him out - I mean, not that they're above human sacrifice, but not everyone was on board with the 21 Sacraments idea to begin with; Dahlia chose Walter because he was a fervent believer and emotionally vulnerable, not because he held a position of power in the cult.)
- Hold on: was Walter's body *actually* in the apartment? If we go with the idea that Henry was caught in the Otherworld Apartment since getting locked in there, then Walter's body may not have been in the actual, real-world apartment at all. That does take a good deal of punch out of the late-game revelation, though. It's built up like it's an actual and not-symbolic fact, and the impact is there only if Henry was indeed living right next to Walter's body during his entire tenancy, unaware, as unlikely a scenario as that may be. Perhaps Walter's body is in Henry's real-world apartment and we're only seeing the Otherworld representation of it - it's remarkably well-preserved, for one. But that puts us back to square one as to how real-world Walter did all that stuff.
- If Walter's body was in the apartment, then what was the significance of the open grave Henry finds in Forest World? Granted, we have the Otherworld issue with which to deal again: this may have been merely symbolic of Walter's spirit not being at rest, Walter not being in his grave, etc. But Joseph mentions going to Silent Hill and digging up Walter's grave, too, and finding nothing there. It seems he went a bit too early for this trip to have taken place during his own locked-in-the-apartment period, so I assume it didn't take place in Otherworld Silent Hill. Was the man who killed himself in prison, as Joseph speculated, really just not Walter, and the "grave" was just a symbolic cover-up by the cult? But then we're back into the issue of the practical & dramatic feasibility of accomplices to Walter's rampage, which doesn't seem all that high.
- Who wrote the Crimson Tome? Supplemental materials seem to indicate that it's a cult tract, and the backstory with the various sects of the cult seems to point to it being a "rival" sect to the one that taught Walter the 21 Sacraments, but the Tome talks extensively about the "God" of the 21 Sacraments being "naught...but the Devil" and that "to give birth to a world of wickedness within the blessed realm of our Lord be blasphemy," which seems more befitting something akin to a Christian viewpoint than anything of the cult. I mean, has the cult ever spoken of a Satan figure before? That seems a rather significant element to drag into the mythology without explanation, doesn't it? And to refer to the Otherworld as a "world of wickedness" seems out of character for the cult - and they certainly don't view the current world as "blessed." (Unless they're talking about Walter creating his own personal Otherworlds within or beside or out of the "existing" Otherworld, but it's still exceptionally strange phrasing.)
(Put another way: it seems exceptionally odd for a cult member to recognize "God" as a demon, discover & record the ritual needed to block her resurrection, and still be a cult member, is what I'm saying. It's possible, given the splintering of the cult mentioned in the game, that a member of the opposing sect "correctly" identified the 21 Sacraments sect's God as evil without realizing that it is indeed the God the cult at large worships instead of a "wrong" God worshipped in error by this one heretical sect. Certain details don't quite mesh with that idea, though; as discussed above, the author seems to hold select cult beliefs but isn't talking about staple Silent Hill fixtures as a cult member would.)
(This is all supposing that the God of the cult exists, that Walter's ritual would've summoned something, and that something would have been the cult's God, which are all big ifs in themselves. And speaking of which...)
- Is the "Mom" that Walter's trying to make descend - or, rather, that some think his acts will make descend whether it's his own intention or not - the cult's God? Is it another entity in the cult religion that hasn't been mentioned? From the perspective of the game - if we're taking it on faith that there is an actual entity that will be brought into the world by the 21 Sacraments, rather than this all being a manifestation of stuff in Walter and the cultists' heads, which can't be ruled out - what is the looming threat? Is this SH3 endboss God? Is this another being? What?
- If Dahlia was part of the "Holy Woman" sect that was in opposition to the "Holy Mother" sect that ran the orphanage, then why was she helping out with Walter's education and telling him that the room was his Mom and everything?
- Why has Walter seemingly continued to age as a ghost? His was mid-twenties when he died, and his corpse looks to be mid-twenties, but his ghost looks to be at least mid-thirties, which would be his actual, "current" age had he lived. I mean, it's his world; I suppose he can present himself as he likes, and I suppose there's fictional precedent for acts of massive evil aging a person like the Emperor in Star Wars, but it does seem odd.
- OK, we first see Cynthia walking outside on the city streets down the entrance into the subway. She dies in the Otherworld subway, and when Henry "wakes up" from that excursion, he hears sirens outside his window presumably responding to the crime (and seemingly overhears, in some supernatural way, one of the investigator's comments). Not everything Henry sees outside is actually there (like DeSalvo's head), but Eileen seems to respond to the ambulances, too, during this incident, which suggests that they are, to some degree, real.
However: it's later suggested that the victims are entering the Otherworld while asleep, and that the selves that we're seeing are to some extent spiritual (as per Henry's lack of need for food of other necessities for physical survival during his sequestration - "it's like my stomach is paralyzed" - and the fact that you can see Richard, or at least his body, asleep in his bed for the duration of Building World; Cynthia's comments about being in a dream, which seem like folly initially, prove to be clues). So: Where exactly was Cynthia's body during Subway World? Did she fall asleep in the subway station somehow?
- Are the characters physically present in the Otherworld, or do they leave their physical bodies? If it's the former, then what's with Richard Braintree being asleep in his apartment during Apartment World and Henry returning from the Otherworld by literally waking up back in his apartment bed and etc. etc. etc.? If it's the latter, then how is Walter possessing Eileen (and, in the bad ending, possibly Henry) if she has no physical body to possess? When was Eileen taken - she didn't go to sleep in her party dress & makeup, did she? Or did she only get into her party dress & makeup in the Otherworld (explaining why she's still in her tank top in the hospital)? And did Cynthia just go to sleep in a subway terminal, or what?
- And presuming the "trapped in the Otherworld" hypothesis, how are Walter's victims killed? Is it identical to the deaths we see on-screen? The policemen who discover Cynthia's body mentioned that she has "numbers carved into her chest," as we see in Cynthia's death scene. (Again, I'll note that if Henry's apartment is part of the Otherworld, then what we overhear has a degree of unreliability.) I doubt, though, that Walter got an electric chair into the actual Richard Braintree's apartment, and though we see Eileen nearly beaten to death in Apartment World, when Henry reunites with her in the good ending, she's spotless. Poetic license? If it's hinting that she wasn't beaten, then what method did Walter try to use to "actually" kill her that left her life hanging by a thread and readily identifiable as a murder victim to the paramedics but that didn't leave a mark on her the presumable day after her attack?
And who called the cops & ambulance for Eileen? If the attack we saw took place only in the Otherworld, then what transpired in the real world that led someone to call for medical assistance - and who did? (I can think of a number of scenarios; I'm just curious.)
- And - OK. I mentioned in my Silent Hill 3 playthrough that I was waiting futilely for the much-discussed Valtiel to show up, only to discover that he was apparently a nondescript background character of no importance. In schlepping around the internet after playing Silent Hill 4, I discovered a widespread belief that the spirit of Valtiel had somehow been fused to Walter's consciousness at an early stage in order to help him carry out the murders. There is nothing, translated or otherwise, to support this theory (except for some weird trading cards from the English-language site, which is kind of an iffy source - certainly too iffy to gain such widespread acceptance among such persnickety fans.)
So: does Valtiel exist? Is he really not this huge collective delusion that the Silent Hill fanbase has made up? 'Cause that's really looking to be the case at this point.
Seriously, though: You can conjure scenarios that explain, like, 90% of each of the above issues, but you can't really cover that last 10%. The little corners of the plot don't snap cleanly together, like in SH2; they kind of stumble together, in ways where you can maybe see a resolution I guess.
.