Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S**

Poor Alex ... his momma don't seem to like him much. We wonder why in here ...

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LastScion
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Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S**

Post by LastScion »

****S FOR [VERY MILD ALMOST NONEXISTENT] SPOILER***

I'm not ashamed to say that from the day I first played Homecoming, I've been adamant about one thing: "Come on, man... this isn't canon. If anything, this takes place in the FILM universe." How many damn hospitals and prisons can you fit into one quiet New England resort town? The Order's destroyed and we literally "get the memo?" SILENT HILL IS NOT ON FIRE, GORRAMIT. There's a lot of inconsistencies here...

l think I feel different after playing Downpour... (side note - I'm not crazy.) First of all, the book in the Centennial Archives
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
talks extensively about the specifics of how colonists who could tell the area was sacred integrated their religions with the Native beliefs
which to me not only legitimizes the Order's Judeo-Christian roots in the original game, not only makes the order seem like one small and insignificant incarnation of the area's worship that we can finally get over, but makes it sound almost perfectly normal that a fringe sect would try to pull their Juju somewhere else.

Not to mention we re-visit Overlook Penitentiary and we find that it looks NOTHING like it did to Alex.

What do you guys think? I'm a stone's throw away from allowing Homecoming into my heart. It wasn't a BAD game, it was a great GAME. It was just a bad SILENT HILL game... until now?

Those who said it wasn't canon - what if we let it into the Silent Hill family, but accept the ending
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
that Alex never left the Asylum
and the town's power is screwing with him across generations of fringe Order rituals. It'll make up for all the inconsistencies. Alex was just crazy and under-informed.

Double-Helix should send Vatra a thank you letter for taking them seriously, as far as I'm concerned.

Thoughts?
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DistantJ
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by DistantJ »

Consistency never bothered me. Not only will pretty much any long series passed from team to team going to gather some inconsistencies along the way but this is Silent Hill, the very nature of which is confusing, intentionally inconsistent and maliciously disjointed.

Homecoming's aim is to be a sequel to whichever you choose. It can be Silent Hill 5, or it can be a videogame set after the Silent Hill movie. It's intentionally vague enough about the Order to allow this, and it includes nods to the previous games and the movie at the same time. Don't forget that Homecoming featured Travis, and Origins couldn't in any way tie in with the movie and, inconsistencies aside, could only possibly be considered a prequel to the game canon and not that of the movie or anything else. Homecoming tried to sort of bridge the gap by including things from both universes whilst being vague enough about them to let the player pick, based on which medium they joined the series via. Travis could easily be any random trucker, made to look like Travis as fanservice, and the gas-mask cult members could easily either only exist in the Shepherd's Glen branch of the Order or have been there unnoticed all along.
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Aldo
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by Aldo »

I never had a problem with Homecoming and whether or not it was canon (I believe it is).

Silent Hill can get away with a lot, considering that it deals primarily with the paranormal. So it's easy to rationalize that the town can reconfigure itself based on whoever happens to be there at the time, while at the same time having the same basic layout.
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LastScion
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by LastScion »

I agree to a point (I was mostly just speaking to people who radically denied Homecoming, a population which seems to have gone mysteriously docile over the past few years lol)

It's possible that it could still be Silent Hill with different street layouts, different architecture, different development status, different landscape, and the same buildings having different floor plans -- but to slap "Silent Hill" on anything that f**ks with your mind and shares a town name would drive me batty. You could change the town name and slap the logo on The Suffering, Obscure, Amy, Fatal Frame, Alone in the Dark, etc. etc.

To draw a comparison - Final Fantasy XIV Online came out without any of the classical job titles, no classic item names, no Cid, no Chocobos... it was just Generic Medieval Fantasy Online -- and people lost their sh!t (with good reason.)

For that reason, Homecoming drove me nuts (Origins, too) when the things we "can justify" changing were blatantly contradictory to the few strands that tied SHs together (in the eyes of some.) Those are the people I'm really wondering about the perceptions of Post-Downpour -- but I guess they're extinct.

/blush
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Aldo
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by Aldo »

I'm not sure what you're getting at though. The street layout of Silent Hill in Homecoming used the same layout as the other games, it's just that some buildings were altered a bit. Besides, Homecoming didn't really utilize that much of Silent Hill anyways, it was mostly set in Shepherd's Glen.
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Comes two more souls to the call, for all, and in time!
Three more more souls to the call, they fall...
Unknowing that four more souls to the call, won't be all, and you know it!
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DistantJ
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by DistantJ »

I don't think the street layout should be a factor really... I was amazed when I was playing SH3 and I realised I was in one of the same areas I visited in SH2, literally the same layout, and the fact that Origins and Homecoming did the same thing was even more baffling, but I never expect this level of continuity from a video game series... I mean it's a nice feature but we shouldn't *expect* it, because it limits the level design and forces developers to either bolt 'extra parts' onto the town (eventually the place is gonna be HUGE, lol) or keep trying to find reasons to spread the 'curse' into out-of-town areas a la SH3 and Homecoming.

I mean look at series' like The Legend of Zelda, they just include places with the same name and backstory as earlier entries. They can be the complete other side of the map, and have a totally different look and feel, or in some cases (Twilight Princess) they can have a ROUGHLY similar layout but with more detail (this makes sense, don't forget how limited things were when SH1 came out), and that's enough continuity for most video game fans.

It is nice that it helps Silent Hill to feel like a real place, like it actually exists or something, but it can also shatter the sense of being lost in a strange place, which is how the game should feel. It's more important to me to connect with the protagonist's fear than to have a consistent town, and if it means moving stuff around completely to make you feel lost again I'm all for that.
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by AuraTwilight »

I'm still not accepting it as canon. Fuck Homecoming.
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by NanayaShiki »

Aside from the beaten-to-death Pyramid Head argument, I'm perfectly fine with accepting Downpour as canon. It's silly as hell, but I have no real major problems. It established that The Order as we knew it was pretty much gone, which I am fine with. The cult of Shepards Glen was obviously a very different offshoot of The Order in the first place, so what they did never "effected" my view of The Order. And the only really stupid thing in regards to the map (the location of the Prison) is retconned in Downpour, which I consider as the town warping itself to Alex in Homecoming, which it has done in the past.

Although I do admit I am a little surprised to see that out of all the games in the series, Downpour seems to reference and love SH4 and Homecoming the most. I'd say Downpour is way better than both of those games, yet it's filled with references to them. Odd.
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by AuraTwilight »

I know that Tom Waltz really loved SH4. Don't know what to tell you about Homecoming, though. I guess it's the newest 'canonical' game or something that preceded Downpour?
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by Tillerman »

DistantJ wrote:It is nice that it helps Silent Hill to feel like a real place, like it actually exists or something, but it can also shatter the sense of being lost in a strange place, which is how the game should feel. It's more important to me to connect with the protagonist's fear than to have a consistent town, and if it means moving stuff around completely to make you feel lost again I'm all for that.
I agree... I think Silent Hill should be treated as more of a concept than a place, and each new game should try to put their own spin on that concept, even if that means portraying a completely different town. This is the best way to keep the series fresh, and also makes a lot of sense considering that each new game tends to have a different developer's voice.
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Re: Downpour's Effect on the Canonization of Homecoming **S*

Post by Falconv1.0 »

I honestly kinda just went "ehhhh" and just got over it. I mean, I already accepted Konami backed it as "canon" even though it was so...dumb.

BUT HEY THAT'S JUST MY OPINION WHATEVER MAN.
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