Okay, for everyone who hasn’t played this game, lemme give you some background to the story…
It’s scary and creepy, and deals with funky realities, weird monkey-demons, and an atmosphere that’s a cross between The Blair Witch Project and Se7en, times ten.
(If I get any more specific describing the game, I’d end up with a thirty-page thesis)
Most likely, there may be spoilers in this thread.
ANYWAY…
Me and my friend just got through the game. We liked it, we thought it was brilliantly done (if you disagree, take it to IMHO, please). However, after the closing cinematics and those mock-outtakes at the end (which are great), we both dropped our collective jaws and said, “Wait a minute…”
See, we’d been following the story very, very closely for the past week. We’d sit, side-by-side, and at every new development in the plot we’d pause the game and spend ten or fifteen minutes speculating on where we thought the plot was going. We thought we had pretty much everything covered, and were looking forward to one major plot hole get revealed at the end.
That plot hole? Cheryl, the main character’s daughter, and the whole reason for him being in Silent Hill in the first place.
What was the deal with her? We didn’t know if she got involved in this whole Samael thing by sheer coincidence, or if she was somehow crucial to the whole “coming of darkness” bit. My personal theory for a while was that Cheryl was the other half of Allessa’s soul, and the two of them were combined in order to maximize Allessa’s power. The problem with that theory is that this wasn’t even hinted at ANYWHERE in the game.
My friend’s theory was that Allessa’s two halves were the battered, broken, and burned part that lay in a hospital bed, on the verge of death for seven years, and the other half was the “spirit” that you see at certain key areas throughout the game, and Cheryl was needed to act as the “glue” to recombine these halves… unfortunately, there wasn’t anything to hint at this theory, either.
The third theory that we came up with was that Cheryl and Harry’s arrival in Silent Hill was serendipity, and their involvement with this whole cult/drug cartel thing didn’t have any cosmic significance other than dumb luck. The problem with THIS is twofold: 1. That’d be a pretty shitty explanation, and 2. Why bother giving so much background about Harry and Cheryl if it didn’t matter?
So, does ANYONE have an explanation for what the hell was up with that? NOTE: If the answers are revealed in subsequent playings of Silent Hill (on harder difficulty levels) then just say so, please, and don’t give the answer. If the solution is there, we wanna find it on our own.
NOTE II: Didn’t poor Lisa get a really raw deal? Who else felt so sorry for her that they were on the verge of tears?
NOTE III: Wasn’t Cybill hot as hell? (Hey, gotta have SOME sex in this thread, or it wouldn’t belong in Mundane Pointless Sextalk I Must Share!)