Shattered Memories, Just as Canon as any other Silent Hill?

Post by **leftshoe18** » 01 May 2010

But it was never explicitly stated to be RPT, so it wasn't really a retcon of that since that part wasn't actually changed. Although, I agree that they were implying that it was the RPT within the context of that game.

Post by **Yuki** » 01 May 2010

leftshoe18 wrote:But it was never explicitly stated to be RPT, so it wasn't really a retcon of that since that part wasn't actually changed. Although, I agree that they were implying that it was the RPT within the context of that game.

This is what I meant. It definitely seemed to be Pyramid Head, but it's less of a retcon and more of a clarification, in my opinion.

I do have a question: when did they start having the ideas for the storyline of SH4?

Post by **Harrys_Girl** » 01 May 2010

When SH3 was in final production, I'm sure. They started work on it before SH3 was released, as I remember it.

Post by **Kenji** » 01 May 2010

Actually, the way I understand it, The Room started development right after SH2 was finished and was developed concurrently with SH3. I can't, for the life of me, recall the source, though.

Post by **alone in the town** » 02 May 2010

According to Silent Hill 4: The Room Chief Designer Masashi Tsuboyama:

We wanted to make a sequel after Silent Hill 3 and you could say that was the initial concept, but upon that we needed to implement a lot of new flavour to the sequel, otherwise it would have been the same old Silent Hill. So for that, we created "The Room" as the concept for the game, so that we could use to represent the contrast between the normal and the abnormal life which changes suddenly.

http://archive.videogamesdaily.com/feat ... _sep04.asp

Post by **The Adversary** » 02 May 2010

SH4:TR began being written in 2001, immediately following SH2.

Post by **Yuki** » 02 May 2010

The Adversary wrote:SH4:TR began being written in 2001, immediately following SH2.

If this is true, and it wasn't began after SH3, how do we know that it wasn't their intention to make it ambiguous and LATER expand upon it?

Post by **NanayaShiki** » 03 May 2010

The Adversary wrote:How much different is a "clarification" from a "ret-con"?

Very different. Clarifying something means your intention never changed, and you are just telling people what you meant. Retconning means you decided to change what you originally intended.

The newspaper does indicate Walter accused "the red devil" of "trying to kill me. He's trying to punish me. The monster . . ."

You left off the last part, which is pretty important.
"Forgive me. I did it, but it wasn't me!"

It suggests a split personality as opposed to Pyramid Head. However, red devil CLEARLY is meant to make us think of Pyramid Head. But that is what we call a red herring, because we later learn that Pyramid Head is something personal to James. Once we know that from the end of SH2, and compared to the line about "I did it, but it wasn't me!", we can put two and two together to realize he didn't mean Pyramid Head after all. Book of Lost Memories then confirmed that, and Silent Hill 4 went even further to tell us exactly what he DID mean.

It was never intended to be Pyramid Head he was talking about. This was not a retcon, it was a clarification of the details after they used Walter for a red herring so we didn't figure out Pyramid Head was part of James given life.

Post by **The Adversary** » 03 May 2010

>we later learn that Pyramid Head is something personal to James.
When? b/c the r.p.t. never was, nor has been, exclusive to James.

Post by **Silent Fantasy** » 03 May 2010

The Adversary wrote:>we later learn that Pyramid Head is something personal to James.
When? b/c the r.p.t. never was, nor has been, exclusive to James.

You forget people love to think this no matter what the facts are. They forget "R.P.T" is tied to the town itself and is the form James' guilt/punisher takes. Its embodyment. Its representation is unique to James, not the figure itself.
I could be wrong on some of those details though.

Post by **Yuki** » 03 May 2010

The Adversary wrote:>we later learn that Pyramid Head is something personal to James.
When? b/c the r.p.t. never was, nor has been, exclusive to James.

Except, in this instance (and I think this is what Shiki meant), this exact Pyramid Head monster was James'. There have been other pyramid-headed monsters, but this specific one is what I'm guessing Shiki was referring to.

Again: if SH4 was being written during/right after SH2, how do we know that it was not their intention initially that this Red Devil was not Pyramid Head, though it possibly seemed to be at first?