Silent Hill

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Wesker said:
At least nothing but Born from a Wish wasn't cut. But then again I don't know why people are shitting blood that it's not included when I never thought it was worth playing more than once anyway. Maria just popping to existence and going to the park when James arrives makes much more sense than her having her own Separate Ways.
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Because it makes things potentially much more horrific for Maria herself I think. Remember the letter and other shit was basically a bullshit call from SH to get James to come to the town, meaning Maria's existence can't really be quantified by just "James goes to the gazebo and she magically forms into being there for gameplay". The horror for Maria in BFAW comes from the fact that when "created", Maria seems to have at least some sort of agency or personality to call her own. She seems to have unease about who or what she really is, and she questions her life. But that character gets supplanted by her "reason for being", the need to be a Replacement Mary for the man named James Sunderland's grand delusion. She contemplates suicide at the end of the side story, but ultimately doesn't pull the trigger and tosses the gun. She then wanders off into the fog of Silent Hill resigned to her fate, whispering the name "James", seemingly in a trance. I think BFAW brings a new dimension to Maria.
 
Quijibo69 said:
The SH2 remake needs a mod that turns Mannequins into Chain Chomps. Overused enemy much.
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Pretty much all three of the main enemies were overused. The game suffers from too much content bloat and padding. It's like BT saw how easy it was to outrun and avoid combat encounters in the OG, and went "We need to make sure there are plenty of enemies, and the players HAVE to fight them.".
 
Lone MacReady II said:
Because it makes things potentially much more horrific for Maria herself I think. Remember the letter and other shit was basically a bullshit call from SH to get James to come to the town, meaning Maria's existence can't really be quantified by just "James goes to the gazebo and she magically forms into being there for gameplay". The horror for Maria in BFAW comes from the fact that when "created", Maria seems to have at least some sort of agency or personality to call her own. She seems to have unease about who or what she really is, and she questions her life. But that character gets supplanted by her "reason for being", the need to be a Replacement Mary for the man named James Sunderland's grand delusion.
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BFAW does a really good job of establishing Maria as an actual (if temporary) sentient being rather than a pretty puppet of the town. Before BFAW, it was easy to imagine her as a menacing extension of the town which made it difficult to sympathise with her as a character. I think it's under-appreciated what implications that has for the Mary in Silent Hill as well - she might not be the real thing, but one can imagine a similar confused awakening in Silent Hill and a decision to await a visit from the man who killed her.
 
lichen said:
BFAW does a really good job of establishing Maria as an actual (if temporary) sentient being rather than a pretty puppet of the town. Before BFAW, it was easy to imagine her as a menacing extension of the town which made it difficult to sympathise with her as a character. I think it's under-appreciated what implications that has for the Mary in Silent Hill as well - she might not be the real thing, but one can imagine a similar confused awakening in Silent Hill and a decision to await a visit from the man who killed her.
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The problem I always had with the questions of character agency brought up by Born From a Wish is that it points to the town specifically forcing innocents to play out roles in James' psychotherapy (rather than hallucinations or the other guilty parties being presented as mirrors through which James' character flaws are gradually established). Laura's (presumed) agency is essential to her role in the main story: Her innocence essentially renders her immune to the hellscape, save the pain specifically caused by her link to James. If Laura's anything less than a real child searching for Mary in Silent Hill, then her reaction of betrayal, pain, and anger toward James while she denounces him as a murderer simply fails to carry as much weight in burdening James' re-established conscience.

Maria needs to 100% be an illusion which illustrates James' starting delusions, and Laura needs to be 100% real for James' confession of guilt to be grounded in reality for the finale. Any blurring of those sides of the coin, deliberately or otherwise, unnecessarily muddles the journey from denial to acceptance. Born From a Wish adds nothing to Silent Hill 2 - It only subtracts, while adding weird bullshit about ghosts in the town having already written James off as a "bad man" based on vibes alone. I agree with the above post about the DLC adding dimension to Maria's character - But the story demands Maria be a one-dimensional character. In fact, fleshing her out undermines her role in the main story by humanizing her. She exists to be a caricature of how shallow and Flanderized James' idealized version of Mary was by time she had wasted away. The more you add to that character, the less tragic Mary's character is.

It's a delicate balance which can be struck by leaving more to the audience's imagination, rather than presenting new considerations. So, for me, Born From a Wish has always been Team Silent trying to add more colors to a completed painting. I played it only once, on the Greatest Hits Xbox port, and just found it distasteful. The whole point of James' narcissistic story is that we don't experience it from anyone else's point of view.
 
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gf just finished SH2 remake and I received a voice message this morning of her clearly upset after the leave ending (I told her going in the game would basically just be resident evil lol)
 
Richter Belmont said:
gf just finished SH2 remake and I received a voice message this morning of her clearly upset after the leave ending (I told her going in the game would basically just be resident evil lol)
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I can only imagine how ass blasted she would be if she got the original mary letter instead of the deep fried gutter oil great value brand mary letter; theres just no comparison in terms of emotional damage inflicted.
 
Marc said:
The problem I always had with the questions of character agency brought up by Born From a Wish is that it points to the town specifically forcing innocents to play out roles in James' psychotherapy (rather than hallucinations or the other guilty parties being presented as mirrors through which James' character flaws are gradually established). Laura's (presumed) agency is essential to her role in the main story: Her innocence essentially renders her immune to the hellscape, save the pain specifically caused by her link to James. If Laura's anything less than a real child searching for Mary in Silent Hill, then her reaction of betrayal, pain, and anger toward James while she denounces him as a murderer simply fails to carry as much weight in burdening James' re-established conscience.
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I don't agree that Maria's side story detracts from Mary's tragedy; Maria isn't a threat to Mary because Mary's tragedy is complete (she was sick, then she was murdered). Born From a Wish just emphasizes the tragedy of the creature called Maria. Even her contemplation of suicide is futile because the player knows death isn't an escape for her. Born wasn't necessary, but it didn't detract from anything - it suggested interesting things about how the town works, at least, without falling into the trap of explaining anything. There's no problem with the town fucking with innocents - whatever it is, it's not a benevolent force.

I also don't agree that Laura's being real is very important, since other major characters are manifestations of the town and retain their emotional weight (Maria and Mary). She can still be an innocent creature that signals the town's aggression being specifically aimed at the guilty, and James still perceives her as a person so confessing to her in the hotel room carries the same weight to him regardless.

(I know Ito at least has confirmed that Laura is real. She's fine at serving her role in relation to James's development, but the pieces of her story don't fit together as well as they should which is why she was questionable in the first place)
 
SH2 is an amazing game and the "remake" will never compare to it.But I liked the cult story-line from SH1 better.
 
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Brain Power said:
A Silent Hill 1 remake with the Cybil + that lost DLC with the kid scenarios from the GBA play novel version would have been great. But there's no way they make it and leave the story completely untouched in Current Year™.
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They would’ve given cybil a manjaw, kinda like how she was ugly in the silent hill movie.
 
Blitzsneed said:
SH2 is an amazing game and the "remake" will never compare to it.But I liked the cult story-line from SH1 better.
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Me too. Sh1 3 and 4 are amazing and I wish western devs understood the value of the cult. 2 added a lot to the cult as well.
Soycast Guy said:
They would’ve given cybil a manjaw, kinda like how she was ugly in the silent hill movie.
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"Butch dyke!" -fungo in TRSHE
 
Nameless One said:
Me too. Sh1 3 and 4 are amazing and I wish western devs understood the value of the cult. 2 added a lot to the cult as well.
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They tried to go back to the cult in Homecoming but they did it poorly and it's a memberberry more than anything, cult's entire agenda is gone and they are just generic bad guys.
 
Illuminati Order Official said:
They tried to go back to the cult in Homecoming but they did it poorly and it's a memberberry more than anything, cult's entire agenda is gone and they are just generic bad guys.
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They did copy from the film later in development. To think the game was originally possibly the shadows game team silent were working on. :(
 
Wesker said:
It's definitely not a bad remake, but that doesn't make it good either. It's just there.
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I think that's SH2R's biggest issue is that it just is there. It just exists.

I really have no strong opinion on it other than immediately getting bored when I tried replaying it last week.

And yet the incredibly questionable REmake3 I find myself popping in and blasting through for shits and giggles nonstop for fun. Unfaithful to the original it may be but at least I can have fun with it.

I just can't muster any energy to replay SH2R.
 
Who knew a studio that made walking simulators and endless counts of plagiarism would just soullessly rip off REmakes and shitty modern bloated survival horror games like RE4 and alone in the dark and Alan Asleep? They didn't love the original SH2. If they did they at least would have tried to pull a Shattered Memories and make their own game as a "reimagining" or refuse to remake it and ask to do an original entry instead. They aren't original. Bloober is creatively bankrupt look at their track record. I still get the feeling that the short message studio could have did a better remake looking at the footage. This game was a stepping stone for their careers, nothing more.
 
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