"GOOD": The only ending that can possibly be true.

[Kenji]

Have you ever died?

Have you? I've come close. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. All I saw was my father crying. Broke my fucking heart.

Odds are greater than not that when our brains shut down, as they do in death, we'll have no thoughts - looping or otherwise - and be wormfood, just like everything else. Circle of Life.

The problem with assuming that everything takes place in a dream and therefore operates on dream logic (which most take to mean "no logic at all"), is that it's a discussion-ender. If anything can happen for any reason, or no reason whatsoever, then there's no point in discussing cause and effect because it's irrelevant. There's no point in discussing sequence of events, because it's irrelevant. Moreover, any and all things that happen to the characters are arguably rendered irrelevant.

In this case, it renders SH1 to not be a story at all, because nothing changes. Stories, by nature, require some kind of change. Jacob's Ladder gets a pass because Jacob Singer finds salvation in his near-death visions: He changes. Harry Mason does not, and instead just goes through the same thing repeatedly, ad infinitum.

Trying to apply Occam's Razor to a fictive and supernatural story featuring a splitting god-birthing little girl wandering in a dimension-shifting town filled with ammo and health drinks that instantly rids you of any injury (or whatever you' d like to describe it) ? Yeah, right ...

Stories still must operate by internal logic. Just because something is fiction doesn't mean it's a free pass to pull anything out of one's ass and throw it at the reader: That's called "bad writing."

You can have wizards, aliens, and mad gods, but the illusion of the world you build relies on verisimilitude. Like the real world, the fictional world operates on a series of laws. Those laws don't have to be spelled out, but they must be maintained or the illusion will shatter. The writer has then failed.

So, yes, even a fictional world can be shaven by Occam's Razor. There is a logic to be found and, more likely than not, the simplest, self-sustaining logical explanation is the best. Sherlock Holmes may have come from the future and simply not be letting Dr. Watson in on that, but it's simpler to assume that he didn't.

[alone in the town]

Stories still must operate by internal logic.

Do you have any idea how often I've fantasized about inscribing this sentence on a baseball bat and striking people here over the head with it?

Anytime anybody starts with "Anything can happen in Silent Hill so my theory can't be wrong", it's an automatic declaration of "I'm wasting everybody's time with my bullshit and could have summed up everything I said by not posting anything at all".

A good story, as Kenji said, cannot exist without internal consistency. That being said, the average writer, if he/she isn't completely inept, is going to leave it to assumption that real world rules apply to the story unless specifically stated/displayed, or strongly implied otherwise. Every fictional universe has its own set of rules, but in almost all of them, what makes them special is, specifically, the exceptions to rules of reality as we know them. Harry Potter details a great many exceptions, but outside of those exceptions, the reader is going to assume that normal rules apply until given a good reason to believe otherwise. Early on in the series, when it was incomplete, a lot of fans assumed that Harry and Hermione would end up as a couple. When incomplete, some assumptions featuring other characters were every bit as valid. The seventh book has resolved this issue for good. Now, all but one of those theories are worthless. Of course, before we reached that point, almost all potential theories on this score were absolutely meaningless because they conflicted with the internal rules of the series. Five years ago, I could not prove that Harry Potter would never marry a New York business executive who was also a transsexual serial killer alien from Ganymede in disguise--Rowling could have written it that way if she really wanted to--but, such a pairing would make no sense within the context of the story as it had been told all along, even if some of those constituent elements did exist within the Harry Potter universe.

Likewise, Silent Hill plays by its own set of rules. Initially, Patman's theory fit within them as they were established. But, the third game came along and established a great many new rules, resolved several issues which were previously ambiguous. Whereas all four endings could be said to have validity, we now know that the story continues on after those events, and only one ending ties those two stories together. To reduce ambiguity, the developers have stated outright which ending that is.

The point is that when the first game stood alone, its internal rules allowed for the possibility that Harry was trapped, forever, in a time loop, but Silent Hill 3 established new rules that rendered this theory impossible. And, one cannot pay close attention to games in this series without understanding that these guys do take internal consistency seriously. There are quite a lot of instances where ambiguities end up resolved by future games, but very few instances where future games conflict with previous ones in terms of story.

You can easily apply Occam's Razor to the topic at hand by making a simple comparison: In both Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3, Harry and Heather both acquire Aglaophotis. Both are faced with a situation in which using it properly will have a profound effect on future events. It is perfectly acceptable for Heather to use it properly, so why is it not the same for Harry? The simple answer is because while both of them are able to discover what it is and how it is useful, Heather does this before it is necessary for her to use it. Harry does not find out until it is too late.

If you have to circumvent this with time loops, you have to account for the fact that the loop must break at some point. If Harry breaks the loop by achieving the Good+ ending, you are required to explain several things:

• Why does the time loop end with this ending in particular? If there is a loop, and this is the only outcome which breaks it, why is this the case? It must be important for some reason.
• Inherent in the idea of a time loop is the assumption that Harry eventually manages to use the red liquid on Cybil and save her from the parasite. This means that, for some reason, Harry is carrying knowledge back through time with him.
  
  There are only two ways in which Harry can affect a real change in the course of events. The rest plays out the same way no matter what he does or does not do. Besides Cybil, the other is saving Kaufman and going on that sidequest. This sidequest is vital to getting the good endings, yet it relies on one of two assumptions: either Harry decided to explore the resort area and came across Annie's Bar at the right time, or he just happened to hear the commotion inside while passing. Both are equally valid assumptions, so it's possible that his saving Kaufman was just a fortunate accident.
  
  To save Cybil, Harry has to collect the red liquid. This is explained easily enough, because his attention is drawn to it by the noise of it shattering and the reasonable assumption he makes about it being important, since it was broken deliberately. He also must use it on her when she is parasitized. He must have some reason to believe it will work. This is not something you can say is a reasonable assumption, so if there's a time loop, you have assume that Harry remembers from a previous experience that the red liquid is more than just dope, and that it can potentially save Cybil because her condition makes him remember something that happened in a past trip through the loop.
  
  This leads to the question of why this particular piece of information is important enough to violate the otherwise completely closed time loop when nothing else is, and it's an important question because there are quite a few things which would be vastly more valuable for Harry to know ahead of time (Dahlia's deception and manipulation, for example), or that there really isn't any chance he really can save Cheryl. Either would have a profound effect on how things turned out. Both are more personally important to Harry than the life of one cop he's known for three hours. It could be that he feels anguish over killing Cybil, but how does that even compare to the anguish of knowing you can't save your own child?

tl;dr: The time loop theory doesn't work anymore.

[Patman]

In this case, it renders SH1 to not be a story at all, because nothing changes. Stories, by nature, require some kind of change. Jacob's Ladder gets a pass because Jacob Singer finds salvation in his near-death visions: He changes. Harry Mason does not, and instead just goes through the same thing repeatedly, ad infinitum.

Yeah, but Jacob' s ladder wasn' t supposed to be a horror movie. The point of SH games is to creep you out, to give you a spleen feeling, amongst other things. The fact that the hero can never find an exit is kinda creepy in my book.

Have you? I've come close. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. All I saw was my father crying. Broke my fucking heart.

Ah, sorry. My point was that after-death stories are allowed any formal eccentricities they want to have since no one knows for sure what happens then.

Stories still must operate by internal logic. Just because something is fiction doesn't mean it's a free pass to pull anything out of one's ass and throw it at the reader: That's called "bad writing."

Just because it' s a dream or the delusion of someone border-line insane (hi, James) doesn' t mean that the story isn' t allowed some form of poetic narration and must be void of metaphors or uninteresting. Saying that SH could be a dream doesn' t have any impact over the story itself or the way we' ll look at it, it' s just one more layer of the onion, one more angle to think about, nothing else. Lots of poems don' t have a coherent narrative structure, are they bad writing ?

So, yes, even a fictional world can be shaven by Occam's Razor. There is a logic to be found and, more likely than not, the simplest, self-sustaining logical explanation is the best. Sherlock Holmes may have come from the future and simply not be letting Dr. Watson in on that, but it's simpler to assume that he didn't.

I get why you would want to apply it to Sherlock Holmes, which is a fiction based on real world laws and isn' t poetic at all. SH games do have a poetic narration, a weird dream-like cinematic direction and game-mechanics absurdities. The reason why someone would want to apply Occam' s razor to it is a little beyond me.

If, on the other hand, we make postulates (the SH story happens in the real world, we imagine it' s narrated in a game-mechanics ridden way and SH3 is indeed its' sequel) then we' re allowed to throw in Occam' s razor and conclude that the Good + ending isn' t canon or that the time-loop theory is absurd. That doesn' t change the fact that the whole reasoning is based on postulates.

[alone in the town]

That doesn' t change the fact that the whole reasoning is based on postulates.

All except for the one fact which really decides everything: The Good ending is canon, and the third game is an extension of it. This thread is not an attempt to explain a theory, it's providing a rational explanation of an established fact.

[Patman]

Yeah, I know what' s your angle, I didn' t mean to bother you once again, I was rather reacting to Kenji' s time loop theory and I didn' t remember that bringing the "canon is a postulate" thing in my answer was off-topic.

[AuraTwilight]

Yeah, but Jacob' s ladder wasn' t supposed to be a horror movie.

Lol what.

[Patman]

Lol what.

Well I wouldn' t call it that way, apparently you would.
Point is Kenji was saying that the story needs a progression, a climax.
I don' t think the story beeing seen as a dream or a loop would deprive it of a progression. There' s no absolute need for a happy ending either.
A single picture is worth a thousand words so let me put it this way :
There' s abstract art using abstract symbols to depict some real facts/situations/subjects in a poetic way, like Guernica :


And there' s abstract art that looks ... abstract, period :

When Kenji and AITT say that "stories must operate by intern logic" they' re basically saying that abstract art isn' t art. I would tend to agree with them about the second painting I linked, but to me SH thankfully belongs to the Guernica category, even if there' s clues leading to the dream or loop theory (or aliens, or dogs). However many people would disagree and still consider both paintings as art, who are we to pretend otherwise ? After all the second paint is just the visual analogy of an obscure poem.

The whole point of AITT in this thread, as I understand it, is to say : look, it so happens that a Guernica 2 painting was found (SH3). I' ve tried to put it above the first one, to its right, to its left, under it, and common sense leads me to the conclusion that it' s supposed to be put under it (Good ending), which doesn' t force anyone to not organize the paintings the way they want to, nor to view them as two independent paintings.

[alone in the town]

When Kenji and AITT say that "stories must operate by intern logic" they' re basically saying that abstract art isn' t art.

Okay, I don't want to sound condescending, but this is so tremendously ignorant that I literally can't find a basis by which to explain to you just how ignorant it is. You are comparing apples to oranges--to the tenth power.

Stories are structured narratives, by their very nature. They literally cannot exist without internal logic and consistency. If a story lacks such a basic framework, it is not a story but a collection of random gibberish. Even the most avant-garde poetry usually operates according to a kind of pattern. If it does not, then it is nothing more than a meaningless assortment of words. A painting, such as the second one you showed, does not need internal logic of any kind to work, because it narrates nothing.

A narrative falls apart without internal consistency and well-defined context. It is the basic tenet of storytelling. If it were a class, that would be the very first lesson you ever learned about that particular art. A painting which attempts to convey a narrative is bound to operate by internal logic no less than a novel, movie or video game. There's no meaning to the comparison you tried to make. Abstract art is, for all intents and purposes, the precise opposite of a structured narrative, and just as a narrative cannot narrate anything without internal consistency, abstract art ceases to be abstract once logic is introduced to it.

Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 are related to one another because the latter clearly follows the narrative thread of the former. The creators state that 3 follows a particular ending of the first game, but this is really only confirming what anyone should be able to grasp simply by paying attention. The second painting, on the other hand, is related to some poem only because the artist says it is. None would intrinsically assume any relationship existed whatsoever unless told.

[Kenji]

Patman, the problem with your analogy is that you're comparing two aspects of medium in which one is the goal and the other is the means.

Conflict and Change are the two central raison d'etre of a story. Its analogue in visual art is to represent some idea or set of ideas in a visual manner. To have a story with no conflict, or in which nothing changes, isn't akin to the Impressionist movement, but to a painting with no paint: An empty, unprimed canvas (or no canvas, at all).

I'm sure some properly silver-tongued charlatan can hawk an empty canvas at one of those moron-filled art shows and make millions, but we're technically talking about a sculpture (and a lazy one, at that), not a painting.

No, Impressionism, Dadaism, all of the other -isms, weird or no, represent a modus operandi, the means to an end. Their analogues in narrative fiction include such movements as noir, cyberpunk, stream-of-consciousness, and other such narrative styles that an author can choose to employ. Inasmuch as no visual art abandons the visual aspect, no legitimate narrative can abandon progression in which the situation at the end is in some way different from what it was in the beginning.

Bringing up poetry is another way of missing the point: Poetry is fundamentally different from narrative fiction, like music is from painting. Both use words, yes, but they use words for completely different purposes: Poetry has more in common with visual arts - the use of the medium to reflect a singular idea or set of ideas - than it does to narrative.

The reason why narratives that takes place in dreams (usually in the form of "it was all a dream" endings) are so heavily criticized is that the things that happen in the narrative are rendered irrelevant... unless the protagonist experiencing the dream changes, internally, through some fundamental realization or emotional change.

That's why I brought up Jacob Singer: Whether Jacob's Ladder is in the horror genre or not is irrelevant, because it's still a story, either way. Horror is a style, and style does nothing to alter the fundamental ends of an artform, only the means to reach it.

Everything Harry does in Silent Hill only has meaning if it occurs in a physical reality. Harry undergoes no character changes and experiences no meaningful revelations (Cheryl being Alessa is meaningless if it isn't real). He doesn't even realize that he's damned and that there's no point in doing anything, which would be a legitimate change brought about by the situation (I dunno where you're getting this idea that we want "happy endings" when we've said nothing of the kind).

If SH1 is a dream, then it isn't a story because, literally, nothing happens.

Shattered Memories, which may or may not take place in Cheryl's head, would still be a story because Cheryl not only experiences a revelation, but can undergo a significant emotional and philosophical change over the course of the story. So, even though the main action of the game may not happen in any real context, it does affect the protagonist and it does change her. In short, Shattered Memories is a story, even in that context.

This isn't some rejection of metaphorical language (how can you have a story without metaphorical language?), but a laying out of what makes a story a story. That's why the idea of SH1 and SH3 all being dreams of a dead Harry who changes in absolutely no way must be rejected.

[Patman]

Fair enough, my painting analogy was shaky.

About SM, I' ll write a spoiler in white :
Isn' t there an ending in which Cheryl stays in her delusion ?
I think I read that somewhere, I' m not sure ...

If SH1 is a dream, then it isn't a story because, literally, nothing happens.

Nothing happened indeed, it' s a game ! Even if the plot didn' t change the character it changed you ! The narration can be clever enough that the audience understand the moral, even if the character doesn' t. Whatever I' m watching I' m embarked on an emotional ride just as much as the fictional character.
Again, writing a spoiler in white :
The SM ending I mentioned would be as sad as any other, if not more. It' s a twist in itself, and it does convey a particular feeling to me that is different from the feelings conveyed by the other endings. Maybe it conveys sadness and spleen to me while it conveys a "What ? Huh ? Well that was crappy !" feeling to you.

I get why you would deem dreamy endings crappy, but I don' t get why you would say a dream plot isn' t a plot. That reminds me something : in a Lost forum that I used there was three people that felt so cheated by the ending that they decided to see the whole story as the dream of a dead from starters Jack and to elaborate on that. I was a fierce opponent to their theory !!!
Not that I thought that it would be crappy, it' s just that the series itself denies that possibility.
A lot of people just told them that a dream ending is the ultimate crappy ending, so maybe it' s a good idea for an author to avoid that kind of plots, even if some people are fine with them, I' ll give you that.

[Kenji]

I'll start with Shattered Memories: Even if Cheryl decides to embrace the delusion, she first has to be confronted with the revelation that it is a delusion. There's still a change, even if Cheryl ultimately makes the choice to ignore everything she's learned and go back to what's safe. It's not a happy change, but it's still a change.

With that out of the way...

Nothing happened indeed, it' s a game ! Even if the plot didn' t change the character it changed you ! The narration can be clever enough that the audience understand the moral, even if the character doesn' t. Whatever I' m watching I' m embarked on an emotional ride just as much as the fictional character.

I think you have it backwards. What makes gaming (or, "the interactive medium") different from noninteractive narrative fiction is that you, the player, are the agent of change. You're the one who saves the princess, wins the war, or discovers that you killed your wife.

The simplest form of this is forcing the protagonist, the player's proxy, to walk to the point at which changes occur and conflicts are resolved. Modern Final Fantasy games are a good example of this. However, the extent of our agency can expand, from the manner in which we rescue Princess Peach in Super Mario Bros. to how James Sunderland reacts to the revealed truth of his actions. It's a change in means (and narrative possibilities, much like how sculpting marble lets you do things you can't do with oil paints), not ends.

Video games that rely on narratives must also follow narrative conventions, because this is the medium it has chosen to emulate. The Silent Hill series, like most of the PlayStation Era video games, uses a Cinematic Model, which is a style of combined narrative fiction and visual artistry.

Stories designed to affect the observer are unreliable, because it's impossible for the author to reliably gauge the reaction of the audience. If it affects you emotionally, then it serves as a sort of metafictional narrative (but is still not a story, in and of itself). If you're not affected, it's manipulative trash (and still not a story).

I get why you would deem dreamy endings crappy, but I don' t get why you would say a dream plot isn' t a plot.

When I say a dream plot isn't a plot, that's only if there isn't some tangible effect. Dreams can be very effective means of revealing a character, but unless some form of change occurs, then it isn't a plot.

Consider Frederic Brown's "Knock,"

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...

That's a two-sentence story in which the situation fundamentally changes from the first to the second sentence. Contrast this with Ernest Hemingway's six-word short "story":

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

This is a description. It may serve as poetry, it may elicit an emotional response, and it even qualifies as art, but it has no conflict and no change, and is therefore not a story. I don't care how manly Hemingway was.

A dream is, by nature, descriptive. A dream-plot removes the real-world cause from the story, and so renders the dream-plot not a story unless there is an effect (this is why, "I am dead" is not a story). Since the dream-plot also removes real-world effects, the only way that a dream-plot can be a legitimate story is if the dreamer is changed by the experience, because implied effects are just as illegitimate as implied causes. Within the dream, action is irrelevant because it doesn't actually happen and, therefore, has no effect.

[mr. mason]

not that im arguing any theories at the moment but for anyone trying to piece any new ones together i have some tidbits that you might want to know. again im not pushing anything but this should be up for those who want all possible clues.

first, i played through the game for fun last week and i noticed that the bottle that has the red liquid dosent have a cap, some people were talking about that little detail as if there was but there isnt.

second, there are two variations of the kauffman scene in the garage, one where harry says the suff is probably dope and the other he dosent make the connection. i think to have him metion the drugs he has to read the paper on the table in the lounge and find the indian runner stash, anyway if he only finds one of those clues he dosent make the connection.

[AuraTwilight]

The scene where he concludes it's dope is canon, so he can't not make the connection. We're also aware that the bottle has no cap, but that doesn't allow for some "get behind Cybil and throw it on her" bullshit.

[alone in the town]

Whether or not he does openly state his analysis of the red liquid really doesn't matter. He's got reason to believe it might be, but even if he didn't think it was a narcotic, he certainly is not given any reason to believe that it's Magical Exorcism-flavored Kool-Aid. None of what he has experienced, learned, or uncovered by this point suggests to him that this stuff will in any way either disable Cybil or rid her of her parasite.

[mr. mason]

The scene where he concludes it's dope is canon, so he can't not make the connection. We're also aware that the bottle has no cap, but that doesn't allow for some "get behind Cybil and throw it on her" bullshit.

why is it not cannon ?

[leftshoe18]

The scene where he concludes it's dope is canon, so he can't not make the connection. We're also aware that the bottle has no cap, but that doesn't allow for some "get behind Cybil and throw it on her" bullshit.

why is it not cannon ?

Aura said it WAS canon.

[mr. mason]

The scene where he concludes it's dope is canon, so he can't not make the connection. We're also aware that the bottle has no cap, but that doesn't allow for some "get behind Cybil and throw it on her" bullshit.

why is it not cannon ?

Aura said it WAS canon.

sorry for not being clear, i mean why is the non dope one not cannon ?

[Kenji]

You mean, "Why's the scene where Harry concludes it's something other than dope not canon"?

Because there is no such scene.

[mr. mason]

no, you make it seem like harry figures it something else on the spot, in the scene he just dosent think about it as drugs. he dosent think about it at all. it dosent come in till later.

[Kenji]

Okay, so... what are you asking about canon?