Nine save points

[Burning Man]

That's a neat find. I had no idea all these years.

Strange that the endings (In Water, Leave) seemed to have altered the window. The curtain may be obscuring it, of course, but there's no shadow either to indicate that this is a paneled window.

...Or, perhaps, it's no longer paneled because James has no reason to.

[The Adversary]

Well after looking into it, the clip in the intro isn't the same room in which James kills Mary. It appears to be her actual bedroom. The beds are completely different, and one that isn't seen at all in the game outside of that clip.

But I still maintain the nine save points could be a rusted version of the window Mary was always looking out of. The diary on Brookhaven Hospital's roof, which I also maintain is Mary's, begins with "Rain. Stared out the window all day."

Seems like windows might be more relevant than we thought.

[Jonipoon]

All the more reason to appreciate the small poetic links between SH2 and SH4, where you spend a good amount of time staring out through windows.

[VermantHest]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LCl2_DK6QU

At 0:51 in the intro sequence, the camera pans out from Mary's sickroom window. It begins with a 3-paneled window, then we see 6, and then it fades into the crawling Mannequin mass. I believe there is a third set of panels, barely visible, making it a 9-paneled window.

This could be what the nine save points are suppose to reference. After all, as I believe, the save points are windows from James' head into us, the player, as we're the ones "groping around in [his] skull."

While I do agree that the nine save points may relate to windows, I'm 90% sure the ones in Mary's bethroom don't have the third set of panels. This is a 6-paneled windows because of a) the subtle shadow it casts, and b) the architecture used during the times SH2 was set in - 6-panneled horizontal windows were more commonly used. It either has to be 6 or 12 panels (aka twin windows), and I doubt it's the second.

[The Adversary]

After watching again, and pausing and unpausing and pausing again, to get the right spot, it appears there is definitely a third set of windows, making it a 9-panel. There is certainly a source of light coming through above the upper edge, all but guaranteeing another set above what's seen.

https://imgur.com/R9oM3ec

[VermantHest]

The slight white line at the very top that you think is a third set of windows is too even in its brightness. If you look closely, there are no divisions in-between, so at the very least it would be a long piece of glass.
Still, the shadows are cast from the top of a second row (because of how they are angled on the left side), meaning there is no direct light coming from above.

I have also found an unmodified version of the intro which cuts this scene a bit later. We can see the top part of these windows clearer https://imgur.com/a/WEAqjXl from this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tysvNGGFN3M
The second row ends with a wide frame.

[alone in the town]

Perhaps there are nine save points because Dante, sans Virgil, has finally arrived at Cocytus, "a frozen lake in which are punished those who betrayed people with whom they had a special bond of trust".

[NanayaShiki]

If anyone is curious, Ito's Twitter has indeed addressed this exact question. He doesn't fully explain it but it's related to there being 9 creatures created within SH2. Creeper is excluded presumably because it comes from Alessa/SH1. I'm sure there can be a link created between the 9 squares representing these things appearing right before the two Pyramid Heads, whose task involves "removing delusions", as Ito has put it in the past.

https://twitter.com/adsk4/status/1559099059008585729

https://twitter.com/adsk4/status/1559810680441962497

[The Adversary]

I still don't buy a lot of Ito's explanations. If it were related to the number of creatures, why only count one red pyramid thing?

Secondly, he's tried explaining the 9 squares as being related to the number of holes James jumps down, which, for me, also doesn't really hold up, though I haven't bothered actually counting.

I think the most important thing about the save points is that, as I've addressed before, when James first examines one, he says, "When I look at this, it feels like someone is groping around in my skull. It gives me a weird feeling." Immediately following, the screen is James staring at you, the player, over a red filter, implying it's literally a window from our world to his.

Thus the nine save points make a complete window.

[NanayaShiki]

Same reason we wouldn't count every instance of a Nurse in the hospital, I imagine. Each enemy type only gets counted once. The vague exception being "Mary" only appearing in one ending since otherwise it's just Maria. Yet he specified Creeper doesn't count and yet Boss Mary does.

Also, does James jump down 9 holes in the game? I don't think I ever actually counted them but I don't see why all three things can't be related. 9 enemy types, 9 save squares, 9 holes. If the save squares represent someone peering into Jame's mind and the holes represent diving deeper into his subconscious, the connection seems pretty clear. The enemies are also a representation of his mind as well, after all. It doesn't seem a leap to connect all of these things. Makes more sense to me than it being a representation of a window or any of the things people were saying years ago about demons or what have you. Almost everything in the game comes back to James so it makes sense for any lingering mysteries to be rooted in him.

Also Ito is pretty honest when he doesn't know something or people are asking him a question that would be for someone else. I see no reason to doubt him when he expresses what his intention was with the game. He was literally one of the core people who made the game.

[The Adversary]

Ito was the monster designer. Core member, sure, but he’s not the be-all/end-all when it comes to the series.

He also said SILENT HILL 2 is set in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. VHS recorders weren’t a thing then.

[alone in the town]

tbh this was all a little bit more fun before people started bothering members of the creative staff, because it has killed some interesting debates. Figuring this out ourselves, or even creating little headcanons, was such a good time.

[Jonipoon]

A cat has nine lives.

But then again, James isn't a cat.

[Lifetolifeless]

I asked a Japanese friend of mine whether there's anything that stands out to her about the arrangement here. No clear indication the creative decision had anything to do with superstition, but her response was interesting.

"Very similar to the number 4, a big reason so many of us view the number 9 as ominous is because of its Japanese pronunciations “Ku”. Its pronunciation “9 (Ku)” is associated with the word meaning agony, suffering, or even torture “苦 (Ku)”, which is pronounced the same way as 9 in Japanese."

[NanayaShiki]

Ito was the monster designer. Core member, sure, but he’s not the be-all/end-all when it comes to the series.

He also said SILENT HILL 2 is set in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. VHS recorders weren’t a thing then.

That's a little dismissive towards someone who literally had a major hand in the creation of the game. He was only a "monster designer" in SH1. In 2/3 he was promoted to Art Director, which is a hell of a lot more than just designing the monsters. He was the lead on the entire art direction for those two games. In doing so he also contributed significantly to creating the story and the world. Artists on games like this aren't just being told what to draw and then they draw it. He's as vital to what SH2 is as Hiroyuki Owaku and Masashi Tsuboyama. To try and downplay that because he's revealed some details that don't like up with our favorite fan theories is kinda insulting.

And as for the SH2 date thing, he did say he considered it to be 70s or 80s but the only thing he was adamant about was that it wasn't the 90s. He acknowledged the VHS recorder thing and agreed that it rules out the 70s. It was clear from the way he was talking that he didn't have a specific date that the game took place in, he just knows it wasn't the 90s. That's a completely different situation from him giving a hint towards what his intention was with a thing he literally made himself.

tbh this was all a little bit more fun before people started bothering members of the creative staff, because it has killed some interesting debates. Figuring this out ourselves, or even creating little headcanons, was such a good time.

To an extent, I agree. I had the same problem with the Zelda series, I used to be really into timelines and theorizing when I was a kid but then they put out a bunch of official lore books that completely ruined the fun, often with worse versions than what the fans had put together. But on the other hand, this has always been the case with Silent Hill. The devs were giving out interviews and talking about a lot of major stuff as early as right after the first game. One of the first conversations I've ever had here was an argument about the Lost Memories lore book and how much we should or shouldn't take it as gospel. Overall, the fanbase agreed to take Lost Memories as canon. And we've hung on the words of interviews from the early 2000s this entire time. Masahiro Ito's twitter should be no different.

But yeah, I get it. That's kind of the downside of us mostly being here for the same three games we've been talking about for the past 20 years. Would be great if we got a new game just as good to start the theorizing and debates fresh...

[Burning Man]

If anyone is curious, Ito's Twitter has indeed addressed this exact question. He doesn't fully explain it but it's related to there being 9 creatures created within SH2. Creeper is excluded presumably because it comes from Alessa/SH1. I'm sure there can be a link created between the 9 squares representing these things appearing right before the two Pyramid Heads, whose task involves "removing delusions", as Ito has put it in the past.

https://twitter.com/adsk4/status/1559099059008585729

https://twitter.com/adsk4/status/1559810680441962497

Thanks for sharing this. I'm quite sure the red triangles are Ito's brainchild. So, he should be the right person to say what they mean.

I've never given the number 9 that much thought as I assumed it was a simple extension of 3, that is, 3-squared. I have wondered why there were nine squares in that specific location as you mentioned. But linking 9 to the number of delusions doesn't really help explain that.

Then again, maybe significance of the location isn't important. Ito sometimes says very anti-climatic things: for example, the reason there being Abstract Daddy monsters in the hotel is "because it's a game."