MovieChat Forums > Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008) Discussion > Too many people, not enough space. (majo...

Too many people, not enough space. (major spoilers are marked)

posted 15 years ago by devil_of_kimone
3 replies | jump to latest

Playing it through again (it might not be great but what kind of fan would I be if I didn't get every ending?) and I'm beginning to feel that the abundance of other humans in the game may have taken away some of the fear, lets take a look at the series as a whole and the other characters within each game.

(I like comparing them as you can tell by now!)

SH1: So in Silent Hill, the original game we had Cybil, Daliah, Kaufmann and Lisa. And I suppose to some extent you can count Cheryl and Alessa. However, we rarely see any of these characters more than a couple of times, and since, besides Cybil they pretty much have their own motives and are all very mysterious characters, the feeling of isolation is maintained, indeed, the fates of some of the characters only serve to enhance that feeling. So even including the Cheryl and Alessa appearances we only have a handful of people and given the size of the empty town in this game it hardly feels like there's anyone there at all!

SH2: Here we have Angela, Eddie, Laura and Maria. Again however each of them besides Maria have their own personal objectives/torments and again serve to enhance the feeling of isolation more than reducing it. Especially Angela, encounters with her always left me feeling pretty bleak. And as for Maria, well, she may be with you for a large portion of the game, but then again, she isn't even real! Again here we have just a few people and again there are large open areas to explore so the isolation is maintained.

SH3: Douglas, Claudia and Vincent, oh, and Leonard, are our cast here. Claudia and vincent again follow their own mysterious agendas and again appear only now and then, Douglas, who is completely on your side is really no help at all and apart from getting a lift with his to Silent Hill you hardly spend any time with him at all. And Leonard, well, yeah!

SH4: Things change somewhat here, and we are introduced to a fairly large cast of characters, I won't bother listing them all outside of the spoiler tags though. So here we have Cynthia, who gets killed, and Jasper, who gets
killed, and of course that fat guy, (Andy?) who gets killed, and Richard, who gets killed there's a pattern emerging here. Also, there's the fact that despite the size of the cast here we tend not to be with more than one of them at a time, and of course the main reason for all of the afore mentioned characters being in the game at all, is so that they can die infront of you without you being able to do anything to help them, and as if that wasn't bad enough, they then come back to haunt the f_ck out of you. On top of these characters we have Walter, who is mental, and a ghost, and a corpse hidden in the wall, and a child all at the same time, yeah, go figure. The we have Eileen and Richard. However, these characters again are used to enhance the isolation, when we see multiple people at a time it tends to be because one of them is Walter, or they're outside of your apartment but despite being just on the other side of the door they might as well be a million miles away. the ability to catch glimpses of people going about their daily lives only hammers home the fact that you can't go anywhere that isn't all f_cked up.

SH5: Well, now, let me see. Elle, Wheeler (henceforce referred to as Forest Whittaker), lillian(?), Adam, Joshua, Judge Holloway, Mayor Bartlet, Doc Fitch and Curtis. That's already 9 people, (I'm not inclyding the mysterious hotel resident or Travis's cameo) more than ever encountered in an SH game. Add to this the fact that there are regular human beings as an enemy towards the end of the game, meaning that the total number of humans encoutered throughout the game stands at around 25-30, I forget how many of the Order Soldiers you have to fight. And it isn't just the abundance of characters but their apparent invulnerability. Forest Whittaker and Elle both seem to be dead several times as I recall, only to turn out to be absolutely f_cking fine twenty minutes later. Whereas both of your parents get killed, but because you've hardly hadn't anything to do with them throughout the game you don't really give a sh!t. A more effective thing would have been to actually kill Forest Whittaker or Elle because by the end even when they dissapear you generally just assume that they'll be fine.

Furthermore, added to this large cast of characters is an incredibly small area of exploration, in Shepherds Glen we have a total of 3 streets, none of which extend any further than they have to in order to reach the next destination, all of the alleyways are blocked off except one, which you have to go down anyway and has basically nothing in it besides a fire escape whih you can climb up (WTF was up with that?).

Then on to Silent Hill itself which is even smaller, being that we get one street to begin with which is about fifty metres long. And then when we return later we get a couple of streets that for some reason don't really feel like streets at all being that they are so closed in.

How is it, I ask, that a PS1 game can create a more immersive and explorable world with vast areas of a town to explore and get lost in and feel so small and alone in, streets that are so wide that you can't even see the far side through the fog and the snow, and yet with current gen capabilities we get a small corner of one of the 3 map ares from SH1 plus three streets of Shepherd Glen? If you ask me, Double Helix just got it all wrong.

Well, I'm glad I've got that out of my system now, and if you bothered to read it all then I salute you!

Perverthttp://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll203/devil_of_kimone/S8302068.jpg

[–] amorphous_being 15 years ago

I read it, and it made me realise yet another point I couldn't put my finger on as to why I disliked this game. On top of that, I felt the interactions between the characters were horribly cliched, like they were ripped from B-grade Hollywood movies.

As you pointed out about Silent Hill 2 the encounters with Angela Orosco were so strange and awkward, it immediately enhanced the creepy experience. Particularly the first encounter, you can she that she is strange, and it just sets a mood for the rest of the game. In fact, every character intro in SH2 is really odd, but great at the same time. Even the monster intros were great, with your first encounter with Pyramid Head having him just stand there behind the grate.

Vae victis!!

PSN: lady_mystic

[–] cainn82 15 years ago

Oh hell, I think that was one of the scariest parts of silent hill 2, where pyramid head was just standing there looking back at you and you can see him breathing! As a matter of fact, I think that is the scariest part in the whole game franchise.

[–] jaylex_ffxi 15 years ago

Thanks I gotta agree with you on that although it took me a while to realise where I had to go in shepherds glen I felt like I was in a small box compared to the endless possibilities that were open to you in the first game and although I actually liked the idea of wheeler as a combat buddy something nasty happening to Elle or him might have been a good idea like in SH2 at the end, now that was really dramatic.