Disappointments and Future Games

Ten years after the original game and Harry's still searching for his daughter.

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Dogg Thang
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Post by Dogg Thang »

AuraTwilight wrote: If Harry Mason was some random LArry Stone character, we'd all be theorizing, "Oh, he killed his daughter Sharon, or he raped her, or she never existed, or some crap like that. Fuck this guy." You never thought that with Harry, did you? Even if you did, I'm sure you didn't want it to be true.
AuraTwilight is spot-on here. The value of having these characters mirror the characters in the original goes far beyond marketing. The parallels in characters and the journey bring preconceptions and expectations that Shattered Memories plays with and, often, plays against. They never would have had that with a whole cast of new characters.
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AuraTwilight
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Post by AuraTwilight »

How is my statement completely missing the point then? Their mistake was keeping the names of the original characters, in my opinion. If they hadn't done that then there would be no connection to the original characters, which would've made SH:SM better. It would've just been another story that took place in Silent Hill rather than a re-imagining (or deconstructing) of the original game.
Because having a connection to the original characters was the point of naming them that way. The entire point of the game on a meta-level is to evoke the nostalgic memories of SH1 fans and then subvert it in ways we didn't expect. The game falls flat without it. It just becomes about a guy we never cared about turning out to not be real. So what?
I realize they probably did this for marketing purposes, and to keep some sort of attachment to the previous games, but that was a mistake... which is what I was trying to convey with my statement.

Regardless, SH:SM didn't kill the original Harry and Cheryl for me. Harry and Cheryl Mason in SH1 are completely different characters to me, and I don't associate them with the SH:SM Harry and Cheryl Mason at all.
I'm not quite sure you're understanding what I was saying.
[quote="BlackFire2"]I thought he meant the special powers of her vagina.[/quote]
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Kenji
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Post by Kenji »

LuLu wrote:If they hadn't done that then there would be no connection to the original characters, which would've made SH:SM better. It would've just been another story that took place in Silent Hill rather than a re-imagining (or deconstructing) of the original game.
See, being "just another story" is always a problem. If what you have can be described as "just another story," then you really have nothing to add and probably should've said nothing at all.

No matter how well-constructed Origins or Homecoming were, they were "just another Silent Hill," and that was boring and meaningless. Climax realized that, this time around, and tried to speak to us directly, using Harry and Cheryl as conduits. Being Harry and Cheryl, and using them in this way, was the difference between "just another story" and smashing the fourth wall to get to us directly.

Infinitely superior to "just another story."
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