Some questions

[untamedbananaslug]

1. Why does the Glowing Woman/Demon inevitably die, even if you don't fire a single shot? I could interpret this as:

- Some sort of error occurred during the summoning which made the resulting product unstable. This would make sense in the Good/+ endings, where the Aphaglottawatta is used.

OR

- The destructive powers the Glowing Woman/Demon utilising causing injury to itself.

OR

- The death of the summoner (ie. Dahlia) resulting in the disruption of the ritual.

OR

- The developers providing you with an out in case you had wasted all your ammo earlier.

2. Exactly how intelligent is 'God'? God always struck me as not being sapient. Instead, it appears to be a physical manifestation of hatred, which is why it mindlessly attacks those closest to it. This is also why 'God' never talks. At best, I see God as being merely an enraged animal, much like Alessa's other monstrous creations.

3. Is God a 'deity' in the sense of the word? That is, does a divine entity actually exist in spirit prior to the summoning, or is God simply the manifestation of the Cult's will and Alessa's anguish, given physical form by Alessa's spiritual power? I refuse to believe that 'God' is any more divine than any of Alessa's other creations, which are also quite easily killed with a rifle. It is the hatred and pain of Alessa given spiritual shape by the cult, and then given physical form by Alessa's powers.

[AuraTwilight]

1. Why does the Glowing Woman/Demon inevitably die, even if you don't fire a single shot? I could interpret this as:

It's a gameplay mechanic. You need bullets to beat the God, and without ammo you're totally screwed.

2. Exactly how intelligent is 'God'? God always struck me as not being sapient. Instead, it appears to be a physical manifestation of hatred, which is why it mindlessly attacks those closest to it. This is also why 'God' never talks. At best, I see God as being merely an enraged animal, much like Alessa's other monstrous creations.

Pretty much, yea.

3. Is God a 'deity' in the sense of the word? That is, does a divine entity actually exist in spirit prior to the summoning, or is God simply the manifestation of the Cult's will and Alessa's anguish, given physical form by Alessa's spiritual power? I refuse to believe that 'God' is any more divine than any of Alessa's other creations, which are also quite easily killed with a rifle. It is the hatred and pain of Alessa given spiritual shape by the cult, and then given physical form by Alessa's powers.

This one's left open to interpretation, but there's really no evidence for a real deity or anything here, so most people go with the idea that the God Harry encounters is basically a product of Alessa's imagination. But given Alessa's and the Otherworld's powers, it could STILL be capable of destroying all of reality.

[Tillerman]

On number 1, I think it's a mistake to read too much into something into that. I believe it's impossible to use melee attacks on the final boss, which means that if you don't have enough ammo the game would be put in an unwinnable scenario. The developers obviously had enough foresight to prevent this by having that boss die on it's own if your ammo count is zero.

[Monster]

It's because the God is always the imperfect human concept of what God is. To me, the stories of 1, 3 and 4 represent people trying to conceive God conceptually and failing because God is a naive human idea. So the God is always born imperfect, which would make 'Paradise' even worse. That's why it's the role of Harry Mason to interfere and bring everything back to reality. The cult wants Alessa to birth their idea of God, Harry just wants to give her a normal life grounded in reality.

Basically I've always felt the story of Silent Hill is an atheistic one, but that's just my interpretation.