^When I first played through it, I assumed everything except the end was supposed to be Cheryl's delusion and that they were going off of the Bad ending of the first game. (Yeah, I know it's not that NOW! Don't flame!)

I guess there was a lot of stuff left to interpretation there, so feel like that all you want.

It's reasonably plausible, sort of. You have to ignore Cheryls' age, I think, but the rest fits.

Not quite. It's a fact, for instance, that Harry and his wife /found/ Cheryl in SH1; in SH:SM, she is confirmed to be their biological daughter.

But what if that whole thing was just a delusion by the bad ending. The whole game intro could have been the dream - seeing as bits of Dahlia and others are seen in the intro, it could be that the scene where Harry and CM (Cheryl's Mother) picked up the baby was part of the dying dream.

Except Ørigins kind of fucks that to Hell, doesn't it?

^Yep. That final scene was bittersweet, eh?

Oh, and thanx Yuki. Forgot that part.

I don't understand why they wanted to completely remove the metaphysical aspects from SM. Yes, I know about the interview, but from a game only perspective, the whole thing was just a psychological journey.

Idk. I guess we're just reading too much into stuff. I know I was really confused by it on the very first playthrough because I was trying to make connections that were never there to begin with.

That, and there's no fucking way in the Nine Hells Cheryl would ever even entertain the idea that Harry isn't really her father.

^you mean from a love perspective, right?

Maybe Origins was Travis's dying dream after getting into a car crash.

The same goes for James, Heather, Henry, everybody, etc. Teehee!!!!!!. I'm clever like that

I mean in any perspective. What possible reason would Cheryl have to try and convince herself that she was adopted? Dahlia is one thing, but ALL her delusions revolve around her desperate need to preserve her idealization of Harry.

Also, Harry contemplated killing Heather multiple times. Is that part of her delusion too? Why the hell did she kill him off if her delusions are all about denying his death? It just doesn't work.

I've not seen the game intro in a while, but if I remember correctly, this is a completely pre-rendered cutscene that takes place /before/ Harry's car crash, not to mention it wouldn't make any sense to suddenly think his biological daughter is adopted. If you call into question something that's concrete fact, then we may as well say the Dog Ending is the correct ending of the series, and nothing else matters.

@AuraTwilight-No, I forgot I was in the SM thread. I was thinking of Heather instead of Cheryl and was getting ready to argue that she knew all about it from the car ride with Douglas. My bad.

But she didn't "kill him off" until after she had realized he was dead, so I actually still don't understand where our wires are getting crossed. But they apparently are.

::SPOILERS::
@Yuki-I don't agree with sim's theory either, but in his defense (just for the sake of argument, I don't actually think this)...the home movies could've been Cheryl's creation, too. We never saw them in the doctor's office, did we? And although the various ending "home movies" were from these same time periods, the ending is determined by Cheryl's actions, not Harry's, so they could've just been the accumulation of Cheryl transferring her own screw ups onto her father, upon the realization that she "never knew him." Like one last little psychological hiccup of the delusion she was in.

By the same token, it could be a bit of repressed memory coming through that explains why she's like she is. The man she idolized and worshiped behaved like this, and even though she didn't actively realize it, it shaped her life into what it became.

^That's always a possibility, too, within the frame work we're talking about.

Damn. We did all of Sim's arguing for him. He got off easy this time. <3

The intro is a collage of many things that occur through the timeline before Harry's crash yes, it shows things like Harry and Mrs. Mason finding Cheryl, Cybil's bike on the side of the road, Lisa quiting, etc. They stretch from several yr.s before the crash to min.s before.


The thing is, IF SH: SM was a continuation of Harry'd delusion in the BAD ending of SH1, why would it be based around Cheryl's P.O.V. It is basically impossible to say that SH1 was Cheryl's delusion in the bad ending. It was Harry's. Honestly, after I finished that game (at 10, mind you) I foolishly decided in an upset uproar that Harry had created all of it. There was no Cheryl. Hell, there was no Silent Hill. His mind threw a bunch of plot lines of movies or books together and created EVERYTHING. He was just a single middle-aged guy that got into a crash, suffered major head damage and in his final moments of semi-consciousness, concocted this drawn out heroic storyline. His brain was overheating and he somehow ended up on a mental odyssey through a storyline.

Looking back, I see all the flaws of that theory, of course and the fact that it negates the rest of the series, which is ok w/ me. I don't feel the ridiculous need to categorized everything into canonical terms.

Ironically, or perhaps just a funny coincidence, this IS how the developers pretty much made Silent Hill. Perhaps your grasp of underlying currents at 10 was far better than most of us. If 'I'd been 10 when the first game was released, I'd have thought "Kill the monsters kill the monsters kill th-- WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?! Oh just a cat in a locker... Kill the monsters... Big monster!! KILL IT!! End credits." ... "I killed a lot of monsters with a rusty pipe and a pick axe. It was cool."

I believe that - SH1, SH3 and SHSM (not really 100% sure about SHO) is EVERYTHING- just Cheryl. Agree with Harrys_Girl- I also don't mind that it negates the rest of the series.

In fact in makes it even better- It explains that Silent Hill is not a paranormal fiction bullshit- it's a real world, with people with real problems: loss of a father, adultery, illness, difficult teenage life; and these problems are transformed into deep emotions: hate, love, jealousy, confusion... and those are manifested so deep, in a way we can't even immagine, but just guess, and it's what we are doing right now. I'm talking about manifestations of deep complexed stories that contain symbolism and allegory in every angle.. Because it's what we do when we don't want to accept something, always searching another, easier way out.

It still doesn't really work without cheapening everything involved.

Cheapening everything involved? You mean the facts?
Now.. I'm just going rote:

* Cheryl in SHSM- same appearence as in SH1 and Sh3
* Kaufman, a doctor that tries to reppeal Cheryl's fantasyses- Kaufman, a doctor that tries to reppeal God from Alessa's womb
* Dahlia, Cheryl' mother with same intentions as Dr.K's + hated by her daughter- Dahlia, a mother, a cult member, also hated by her daughter
* Locations in SHSM (mall, Midwich, Balkan church/nightlub, Alchelmilla hospital, etc..)- same as in SH1
* Midwitch High school- Midwich school
* Lisa, a nurse that nurtures Cheryl+ self medication may cause hallucinations- Lisa, a nurse that nurtures Alessa, freaked out because she sees her world and hatred
* Cheryl steales some stuff in the mall and kills Malcolm- Heather slashing monsters in the mall and taking different stuff to help her get through the "Otherworld"
* students mocking Cheryl for sleeping with a profesor- kids mocking Alessa for beeing a witch
* topic title-- Dr. K. threws a glass to shake off Cheryl- Dr.K. threws the Aglaphotis to cause the premature birth of God
* Lisa dying of overdose (bleeds out from her head)- Lisa's mutation (bleeds out from the head)
* People trying to help Cheryl- the Order
* rejecting the truth- preventing the birth of God

These banal examples, that I even didn't have to mention, didn't seem to me like nodds. I doubt that the developers put them there as nodds to the original game. To me they seem more like connections. We are all trying to develop theories, not establish them. To develop a theory we don't always have all the 100% true facts, we use what we have; it doesn't mean we are cheapening everything envolved. If I was, like you said, "cheapening everything involved", then all the theories that are not a 100% true are, as you say: "cheapened". But that's not the point. It's always easier to testimony for an easier fact "Silent Hill Shattered Memories is cannon, a diffent universe. Bam! Period"; but sometimes we have to try to think about something that may seem insoluble, especially in SH which is a complex game. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that every piece in SH must be an enormous, complex, insoluble riddle. But we have to examine every point of view.

Well, except hair color, and facial structure, and such.



Except one is his job and is a normal part of Not Being An Asshole, and the other is some selfishly motivated, only incidentally good action using hollywood voodoo all for the sake of getting back to drug pedalling and fucking nurses.



Alessa does not hate Dahlia. She loves her to a fault, otherwise SH1 would've never happened.



This is called mythology reference. Infact, if anything, this hurts your argument since they're not actually the same places.



"Self medication may cause hallucinations?" That's pulled out of your ass, Lisa just dies hardcore.



Reference.



Reference.



Reference.



This doesn't work. You've already compared God to the fantasies of Cheryl's that need to be destroyed, and the Order were people trying to give birth to God, so...



See above.



The thing is, none of these things actually establish a connection in continuity. They're just symbolic of a past game to drive home the "Reimagining" thing. I mean, unless you want to argue Silent Hill is a sequel to Carrie, this argument is just dumb.



You're arguing that two or more entire Silent Hill games never even happened and are thus emotionally drained of any significance to the player and storyline. They don't give any insight into Cheryl, and infact contradict what we learn in Shattered Memories, so we don't even gain any insight into it.

There's no exact reference that cheryl slept with the professor, but there is an intimate photograph with what looks like them hugging ( could be just them shielding their faces from the camera flash )
It is a fact that kids were mocking cheryl for the closeness with the teacher.
here:
http://www.silenthillmemories.net/sh_sh ... ges_en.htm
That's proof