Alex' dad dropped him off at Alchemilla

[Kupomee]

Finished the game, awesomeness and more. Very 'western' in many places but they actually gave really good plot reasons which I never expected. That'd be my review.

Theories:
Alex makes Joshua die, goes into some sort of shock, drifts about for a couple of hours on Toluca lake. Who knows how long he drifted and what happened. Thing is, you hear this noise of a bell at the door with wave-sounds coming from it and you hear that same bell near the end of the game, just before the final savepoint. Sounded to me like a ferry, maybe a ferry on Toluca lake, maybe the ghost one from SH Arcade.
Adam goes to look for Alex and Josh with his boat, finds Alex and a dead Josh. Figures out things have gone horribly wrong since the wrong guy got sacrificed. He decides to act like he killed Alex by knocking him out and dumping him at the (abandoned or not) Alchemilla madhouse over in Silent Hill.
Alex stays a while, goes completely insane strapped to his bed, then somehow escapes a couple of months later. Wanders about an abandoned town, maybe follows the roads into the woods, then gets picked up for a lift by Travis the trucker.
In the meantime, things in Shepard's Glen start to go bad, mom and daddy Shepherd immediately understand it's their fault. Every one of the cult-leaders in Shepherd's Glen goes to check on the sacrifices they made and are haunted by their ghosts. Adam Shepherd, after another fight with his wife, prepares to check on his son Alex, whom he left in Silent Hill. His wife goes down to the basement to fetch a gun to kill herself. Alex comes home, goes upstairs, Adam closes the door thinking that's his wife...etc.

Evidence:
None. Except the doctor placing Alex in the operating room at the start of the game dies from being split in two (you find his two bodies later on in the hospital), like Alex' dad. Also, there has to be a reason his parents dumped every picture of him so as to act like he's dead. Also, everyone he meets early on in the game seem surprised he even exists.
Mostly it's just a feeling I have that things happened like that.

Love that feeling after a first playthrough of a Silent Hill game. All the theories rushing through ones brain. I'll go and read up on this forumsection now that I can, then play the game again and probably a third time. Post some more evidence-based theories then.

[redrum]

I think SHH takes place a couple of years later on from the lake incident btw

[Chrism~]

I always wondered how he got out of the madhouse, it's not like you are discharged and free to go just like that. Everything that happened in Alchemilla at the start of the game didn't feel like it was part of the story at all, everything was so changed from the previous games and this game itself in an odd manner that I think it was a tease from Double Helix. Not even the atmosphere was right. Alex wakes up in the truck as if it was all just a dream.

Spoiler*
Still, I don't know how he got out, how he got his father's jacket and dog tags or how he met Travis. I don't think he was trapped in the fog until he reached Shepherd's Glen but that he was rather transiting.

[Lostkitsune]

As for how he escaped, there IS that note about a patient escaping after a confrontation with another during the Nightmare sequence, perhaps his father, feeling somewhat bad for him fro once gave him the jacket and dog tags when he went to stay there?

[nobody]

I think SHH takes place a couple of years later on from the lake incident btw

Correct. Four years, to be precise.


As for the dogtags/jacket thing: We already discussed that in another thread. I can't remember the name, but I guess it can be found with the search function.

[silentpyramid0023]

good theory mine is that josh died on the boat to sh and alex went crazy in the hospital cause of it and he never escaped he's just dreaming or crazy

[Kupomee]

Don't like that theory that it's all just a dream, because that would make the story obsolete. I did get an ending to the game that supports it though.
Just read the blogs that were on the SHH website and yeah, Alex has been in the mental hospital for a couple of years. Also, Silent Hill was, and maybe still is, very much populated. Seeing as how Alchemilla has become a mental hospital since we'd last been there and with all the new buildings and such.

[cedar grove]

on the shh website it has alexs journal saying that he snuck out of the hospital when he was outside getting some fresh air.

[AuraTwilight]

Alex is also delusional and we really can't trust a damn word he says.