Tillerman wrote:That's overstating your case, though. You're using a shotgun approach to evidence which doesn't really make sense. What is canonically true can only decided by the creators of the game. You agree with that, right?
I do, but whenever someone points to the Book of Lost Memories stating in plain language that Good is the ending which leads into Silent Hill 3 (indeed, this is basically the seed which gave birth to the very idea of Silent Hill canon), this simply isn't good enough for some people.
Then "internal logical consistency" is irrelevant. For one thing, it's questionable whether the developers would see it as internally inconsistent. There's no evidence that they do. For another, there are many games where a true ending is the most obscure path, and yet is considered canon for the story. So there's a lot of precedent to say that such "internal consistency" is unimportant. Now you might say "the writers of Silent Hill are different, they care about consistency!" But there's not really any evidence of that, is there? And in fact we know that it's apparently unimportant to Toyama, as he prefers to see the Good+ ending as true. So that's one of them who clearly doesn't care about it, at the very least.
Internal consistency is always relevant. It is one of the most important factors that decides the quality of a work of fiction. Without consistency, it's just worthless nonsense.
As for Toyama, he was involved only in the first game, if memory serves? It ceased to be his matter to decide once the series went on without him.
As for the circumstantial evidence of her not being around... well you said it yourself, it's circumstantial. It only really matters in one game, SH3, and it only shows that they chose to leave it open ended for that game. We have to actually go to interviews and the guidebook for more information than that.
The circumstantial evidence aids what is established as fact by the hard evidence. If all you have is circumstantial, that's not enough to say one way or another. I've got the hard evidence, though.
In regards to fiction, the only thing that works as "hard evidence" is the words that come from the creators' own mouths. One of them prefers to see the Good+ ending as canon, that's enough to throw a fly into the ointment.
The rest of the evidence overwhelms this, rather emphatically.
And of course, it's fiction... so people are allowed to see it however they want, regardless of what the creators say. I think Toyama's statement is an important reminder of that.
Sure. But, if you're going to believe in something that is 99% contradictory to the evidence, why bother arguing about it?
No it's not. That's a horrible analogy. Arguing religion is arguing about facts that can be measured. We are arguing about fiction, and how a person chooses to interpret it is much more subjective. There is no "wrong" interpretation, although some may be more convincing than others.
Your interpretation is ignoring a slew of facts. Of course, you have the right to do that, if you want. But, to complain that others find it objectionable (and justifiably so) is absurd.
It's not really like that at all, because SH3 doesn't actually show any evidence of Cybil's death. All the evidence comes from interviews with the games' creators, and even those conflict. What actually is shown happening is a fact. We can't argue what literally happened. But if any interpretation is required, then you have to be a little more open minded. It's just like you said: it's not that fiction can be interpreted in only one way. On that, you are completely right, and that definitely applies here.
Silent Hill 1 shows evidence of her death. Official literature confirms it. If this isn't enough for you, it's because you don't want it to be. Again, that's fine, but it won't be the source of any compelling counterargument.
I mean, if the creators intended Good+ to be canon, there would be some kind of positive indication in future games that she lived. There isn't anything, in any game, that qualifies as a hint that she made it out alive. There isn't anything that even stokes the fires of ambiguity. So, if that was their intention, why doesn't the series reflect any of that intention?
Since you didn't care for my first analogy, here's another: Let's say that Cybil worked on the 97th floor of World Trade Center II on 9/11. It is confirmed that she was in the building that day, but they never find her body in the wreckage, and nobody ever sees or hears from her ever again. That presents technical ambiguity, and you can come up with as many reasons why she might still be alive as your imagination can concoct, but how many of them would sound even remotely plausible?
This is a fictional scenario I invented, and since I did, I can say "She decided to run away and change her name and live in a commune for the rest of her life." In the context of this being my work of short fiction, I have the right to do that, but if I did, nobody in their right mind should take me seriously as a fiction author, because by doing that, I have ruined the piece with bad, contrived plotmaking. On TVTropes, they call this "asspulling". There is no way to resolve Good+ to the remainder of Silent Hill canon without so much asspulling that it would permanently stain the reputations of the writers who produced it.