I'm going to take a step back and say this: I originally came into this thread to clarify on the meaning of canon. Unlike what many people perceive, "canon" does not mean the official stance of the creators. By definition, "canon" is what the fanbase accepts as being official. Canon doesn't mean that it's always correct, but it's still the best effort. No-one should confuse asserting theories for asserting canon. Canon is something that most of us agreed to be true.
I already acknowledged to you the possibility of certain concepts being less relevant in the grand scheme of things.
My position is that the creators take precendence unless there's a discrepancy between the creators. Then, unless the creators can somehow sort things out, we have to fall back on canon. The fanbase makes a universal effort to decide what's canon i.e. to be accepted as official.
This is not unique to Origins as you're suggesting. Like Edea says, it happens for the Japanese games, too. But it's through discussions that the fanbase decides on what to accept as official.
Whether we agree on the presence of the discrepancy is a non-issue, in my opinion, because that's simply the process of canonizing. We're arguing which side of the "discrepancy" we should drop. You're suggesting that the power of the town to manifest is irrelevant. I, on the other hand, see it as problematic that Travis sees a manifestation of his mind before the events of the original.
It's a matter of how you look at things, but we're both trying to drop an official stance from one of the creators.
If I happen to agree with you (which I don't), we would still be falling into the fallacy of taking a potential canon over an official stance.
As to answer your other question:
Ryantology wrote:If the passage was a clear statement, or any other evidence, anywhere, supported the idea that the manifestations definitely could not have ever occurred before the events of the first game, then I could understand why you'd interpret it that way.
You know there's going to be no other evidence or support. Origins is not simply unique because it's the first game that a western developer made. It's unique because it's a prequel. The guidebook that we're quoting was written at the release of
Silent Hill 3, when there was no other game that happened before the original.
When the guidebook talks about certain powers that are the cause of what we see in SH2 and 3 and explicitly state the large-scale shift as that cause, you'd really have to read into things to think that this power may also have existed at a smaller scale before the original even with terms like "distorted" and "transfigured" just so that Origins could be justified. There's nothing in Origins to even suggest that we're dealing with a smaller scale. It's every bit as menacing and aggressive as its predecessors.
Homecoming, whose developers were smart enough to place it post-SH1, doesn't have this issue. Although the guidebook says that Silent Hill is the only town with this power, the shifts and manifestation in Shepherd Glen is justified because the creators said that it was still due to the influence of Silent Hill when the pact was broken.
I've always had the impression that Homecoming is solely brought into question because it conflicts with itself (according to some fans anyway), and not because it went against an official stance.
If Climax was in communication with the original team, and the original team agreed with you on the meaning of that statement, I think the very concept of Silent Hill: Origins would have set off alarms, as the entire game would contradict their intentions. Obviously, that did not happen, so obviously, either that's not the meaning they intended, or they didn't consider it very important.
Well, I'm not going to pretend to know what happened. Maybe you're right. But let's not kid ourselves here. Konami is not going to hold off on a release of a game simply because they think there might be some discrepancy that only nerds like us will care about.
My point is that a discrepancy is a discrepancy no matter how you sugarcoat or downplay it. In that case, "official trumps canon" doesn't make any sense.