The letter that Mary wrote to James goes like this,
"In my restless dreams, I see that town,
Silent Hill.
You promised you'd take me there someday,
but you never did.
Well I'm alone there now...
in our "special place",
waiting for you...
waiting for you to come to see me.
But you never do.
And so I wait, wrapped in my cocoon of pain and loneliness.
I know I've done a terrible thing to you.
Something you'll never forgive me for.
I wish I could change that, but I can't.
I feel so pathetic and ugly laying here, waiting for you.
Everyday I stare up at the cracks in the ceiling
and all I can think about is how unfair it all is...
The doctor came today.
He told me I could go home for a short stay.
It's not that I'm getting better,
it's just that this might be my last chance...
I think you know what I mean...
Even so, I'm glad that to be coming home,
I've missed you terribly.
But I'm afraid, James,
I'm afraid that you don't want me to come home.
Whenever you come see me, I can tell how hard it is on you...
I don't know if you hate me or pity me... or maybe I just disgust you,
I'm sorry about that.
When I first learn that I was going to die,
I didn't want to accept it.
I was so angry and I struck out at everyone I loved most,
especially you, James.
That's why I understand if you do hate me.
But I want you to know this, James...
I'll always love you.
Even though our life together had to end like this
, I still wouldn't trade it for the world.
We had some wonderful years together.
Well this letter has gone on too long so I'll say goodbye.
I told the nurse to give this to you after I'm gone.
That means that as you read this,
I'm already dead.
I can't tell you to remember me,
but I can't bear for you to forget me.
These last few years since I became ill...
I'm so sorry for what I did to you, did to us...
You've given me so much, and I haven't been able to return a single thing.
That's why I want you to live for yourself now.
Do what's best for you, James.
James...
you made me so happy."
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Why I'm lovin' Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2 is a survival-horror game created by Konami and Team Silent. It is beyond awesome and freakin scary, how do I know when I didn't even play the game? YouTube, my friend. L0rdVega, the youtube user, plays all sorts of games, Resident Evil, other Silent Hill games, just to name a few. He played Silent Hill 2 and I dared to watch because he makes funny comments throughout the whole game, except during cutscenes. It looked completely awesome, the graphics, the soundtrack and the storyline! Well, the graphics was indeed scary and totally gross but still, it was very realistic. The soundtrack, composed by Akira Yamaoka, is EXTREMELY AWESOME!!! Especially Promise(Reprise) and Laura Plays The Piano. The song, Angel's Thanatos, is completely headbanging awesome!!!! It is not angelic AT ALL, it is rock and ROLLL!!!! And as for the storyline, one word, AWESOME-NESS!!!
The story is about this man, James Sunderland, and his wife, Mary Shepherd-Sunderland. He arrives in the town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife, Mary, despite that she had died from an illness three years ago. The letter states that Mary is waiting for James in their "special place," but this confuses James as the whole town of Silent Hill was their special place. After leaving the town's observation deck and walking towards Silent Hill, James briefly meets Angela Orosco, a teenage girl who came to the town to search for her mother. When James reaches Silent Hill, he discovers that it is not the same, beautiful town from his past. In addition to the strange, omnipresent fog, the whole town seems to be rotting away and abandoned. Bizarre, vaguely humanoid monsters are wandering the streets, waiting to attack James. With the path to his first destination, the lakeside Rosewater Park, cut off, James enters an apartment complex to reach what he believes could be the "special place" Mary mentioned in the letter.
Inside the apartments, James meets an obese young man, Eddie Dombrowski, vomiting in one of the apartment toilets. Eddie responds in a very defensive manner to questions regarding a corpse in a refrigerator in the same apartment. James also has a brief encounter with a little girl named Laura, who is apparently immune to the effects of the town and has a yet unexplained loathing of James, as well as a hidden past with Mary. James finds Angela again, who had warned him of the town's bizarre nature, lying in one of the apartments with a knife, suicidal. James persuades her to hand him the knife for her own safety, after which she flees in panic. James also encounters "Pyramid Head", a humanoid monster whose head is completely covered in a giant, metal, pyramid-shaped helmet that protects him against anything James will possess in his arsenal. However, Pyramid Head leaves when a siren starts to sound in the distance after battling James for a short while.
When James finally reaches Rosewater Park, he meets a woman called Maria who is almost identical to Mary, but donned in a more provocative outfit and possessing more of an attitude. During their travels, she reveals insight into matters that only he or Mary would know and acts in a very seductive manner towards James. Maria accompanies James in his attempt to reach his second suspected "special place," the Lakeview Hotel. James enters Pete's Bowl-O-Rama where he meets Eddie again, yet refuses to come with him. He also spots Laura, who runs away from James. When James exits the bowling alley, Maria claims to have seen Laura and, out of concern for her, she has James try to reach the girl. Their pursuit ends at Brookhaven Hospital, where Maria becomes sick and has to rest in one of the hospital rooms.
James finds Laura in one of the hospital's rooms, but becomes angry at her for claiming to have known Mary for the past year, in clear contradiction to his belief that she has been dead for three years. Laura responds by locking him in a room filled with covered monsters stuffed in hanging cages under the pretense of looking for a letter from Mary. After they are defeated, the hospital undergoes a sudden, dramatic change to the Otherworld, where Maria is missing. Fortunately, James finds Maria in the hospital's basement, however, she is angry that he abandoned her, and after calming down they press on to find Laura. Pyramid Head, however, chases James and Maria in the hospital's basement and he slaughters Maria while they make their escape to an elevator, leaving James alone again. Maria's death saddens James, but he refocuses on his original task of finding Mary. He leaves the hospital and finds a key behind a statue in Rosewater Park, which leads him to the Silent Hill Historical Society.
The Historical Society becomes an exploration of two levels not noted on the town map: Toluca Prison and a labyrinth in which Pyramid Head resides. In this area, James finds Maria, who greets him with disillusions of Mary, miraculously alive and locked in a prison cell. He is unable to rescue her as she is killed by Pyramid Head again. This area also provides back story as to why Angela and Eddie are in the town as well. A newspaper clipping indicates that Angela killed her father, who abused her with the complicity of her mother. James saves Angela from a monstrous representation of her father, but she is still hostile towards James. Eddie is revealed to have snapped after years of verbal abuse by his peers. He killed the dog of a football player and then shot the dog's owner in the leg. It becomes clear that, upon his arrival in Silent Hill, he has gone insane, seeing everyone as making fun of him, and has resorted to killing anyone he encounters. He first attempts to explain the path of bodies he has left, but ultimately he turns on James as well and must be killed to progress through the game. James feels ashamed for killing Eddie, a human being, and after this point, James seriously questions his perception of the events leading to his arrival in the town. As well, the letter that he supposedly received from Mary goes blank, indicating that the letter itself was something that James himself thought up, and that it never actually existed in the first place.
James exits the labyrinth and takes a boat to the Lakeview Hotel in hopes of finding Mary. In the hotel, he finds Laura once again and she gives him the letter she claimed to be seeking earlier, which reveals that Mary wanted to adopt her while confirming Laura's claims of knowing Mary for the past year. The final truth is shown to James when he watches a video tape he apparently left at the hotel three years ago, which shows that he killed his terminally ill wife himself, smothering her with a pillow to stop her suffering. Laura, who is ready to leave the town, finds James, and he chooses to reveal the truth to her; Laura becomes angry with him for killing Mary and she leaves, disappointed. The radio James has been carrying to warn him of the approach of monsters sends a message from Mary, asking him to find her. James explores the rest of the hotel, which has undergone an Otherworld transformation in which it is damp and leaking everywhere. James finds Angela on a burning staircase and she asks him to return her knife so that she can commit suicide, but he declines. James states that the room is hot as hell, to which she replies that it's always like this for her; her life was always a living hell. Angela ascends the burning staircase and walks into the flames.
The climax approaches as James finds yet another resurrected Maria, bound and screaming for James' help, but is promptly killed by two Pyramid Head monsters; James realizes that they have been created to punish him for his sins. James fights the two Pyramid Heads, and after they are severely weakened, they commit ritual suicide with their own spears as if to indicate that their purpose has been fulfilled. James is led to a hallway where he listens to a previous conversation that he and Mary had while she was still alive; in this conversation, James brought Mary some flowers, but she did not accept them, stating that she is too disgusting to deserve flowers and yells furiously at James. At the end of this conversation, Mary desperately pleads to James for him to be with her. James enters a large metallic complex with a long staircase, and at the top of this staircase, he finds a woman (depending on the ending, the woman will be either Maria or Mary herself) who transforms into the manifested pain of Mary. After James defeats this final demon, the game comes to a close.
In the "Leave" and "In Water" endings, the woman in the room is Maria once again, making a final attempt to get James to take her. James rebuffs her, however, and she turns into a monster similar to the hanging monsters in the hospital, becoming the final boss. Upon her defeat, James will either leave the town with Laura in tow after being granted a final meeting with a dying Mary, shown in "Leave", or kill himself after Mary dies before he can properly make peace with her, as shown in "In Water". A replay ending entitled "Rebirth" will also have James kill Maria, but afterwards he will then attempt to use new objects collected in the game to resurrect Mary by confronting the "ancient gods of Silent Hill", with an unknown result.
The "Maria" ending, however, is radically different from these three. If the player spends a lot of time with Maria and protects her well from monsters (also from Pyramid Head in the hospital basement), the woman in the room will be Mary, who has not forgiven James for killing her. She will then turn into the final boss as the same monster Maria becomes, and after her defeat James dismisses her as being just another hallucination. He then discovers Maria, inexplicably resurrected again, and leaves town with her. As they leave, however, Maria starts coughing, implying she has the same illness Mary suffered from and the events that drove James to the town may repeat themselves.
Mary's letter will be in the next post.
The story is about this man, James Sunderland, and his wife, Mary Shepherd-Sunderland. He arrives in the town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife, Mary, despite that she had died from an illness three years ago. The letter states that Mary is waiting for James in their "special place," but this confuses James as the whole town of Silent Hill was their special place. After leaving the town's observation deck and walking towards Silent Hill, James briefly meets Angela Orosco, a teenage girl who came to the town to search for her mother. When James reaches Silent Hill, he discovers that it is not the same, beautiful town from his past. In addition to the strange, omnipresent fog, the whole town seems to be rotting away and abandoned. Bizarre, vaguely humanoid monsters are wandering the streets, waiting to attack James. With the path to his first destination, the lakeside Rosewater Park, cut off, James enters an apartment complex to reach what he believes could be the "special place" Mary mentioned in the letter.
Inside the apartments, James meets an obese young man, Eddie Dombrowski, vomiting in one of the apartment toilets. Eddie responds in a very defensive manner to questions regarding a corpse in a refrigerator in the same apartment. James also has a brief encounter with a little girl named Laura, who is apparently immune to the effects of the town and has a yet unexplained loathing of James, as well as a hidden past with Mary. James finds Angela again, who had warned him of the town's bizarre nature, lying in one of the apartments with a knife, suicidal. James persuades her to hand him the knife for her own safety, after which she flees in panic. James also encounters "Pyramid Head", a humanoid monster whose head is completely covered in a giant, metal, pyramid-shaped helmet that protects him against anything James will possess in his arsenal. However, Pyramid Head leaves when a siren starts to sound in the distance after battling James for a short while.
When James finally reaches Rosewater Park, he meets a woman called Maria who is almost identical to Mary, but donned in a more provocative outfit and possessing more of an attitude. During their travels, she reveals insight into matters that only he or Mary would know and acts in a very seductive manner towards James. Maria accompanies James in his attempt to reach his second suspected "special place," the Lakeview Hotel. James enters Pete's Bowl-O-Rama where he meets Eddie again, yet refuses to come with him. He also spots Laura, who runs away from James. When James exits the bowling alley, Maria claims to have seen Laura and, out of concern for her, she has James try to reach the girl. Their pursuit ends at Brookhaven Hospital, where Maria becomes sick and has to rest in one of the hospital rooms.
James finds Laura in one of the hospital's rooms, but becomes angry at her for claiming to have known Mary for the past year, in clear contradiction to his belief that she has been dead for three years. Laura responds by locking him in a room filled with covered monsters stuffed in hanging cages under the pretense of looking for a letter from Mary. After they are defeated, the hospital undergoes a sudden, dramatic change to the Otherworld, where Maria is missing. Fortunately, James finds Maria in the hospital's basement, however, she is angry that he abandoned her, and after calming down they press on to find Laura. Pyramid Head, however, chases James and Maria in the hospital's basement and he slaughters Maria while they make their escape to an elevator, leaving James alone again. Maria's death saddens James, but he refocuses on his original task of finding Mary. He leaves the hospital and finds a key behind a statue in Rosewater Park, which leads him to the Silent Hill Historical Society.
The Historical Society becomes an exploration of two levels not noted on the town map: Toluca Prison and a labyrinth in which Pyramid Head resides. In this area, James finds Maria, who greets him with disillusions of Mary, miraculously alive and locked in a prison cell. He is unable to rescue her as she is killed by Pyramid Head again. This area also provides back story as to why Angela and Eddie are in the town as well. A newspaper clipping indicates that Angela killed her father, who abused her with the complicity of her mother. James saves Angela from a monstrous representation of her father, but she is still hostile towards James. Eddie is revealed to have snapped after years of verbal abuse by his peers. He killed the dog of a football player and then shot the dog's owner in the leg. It becomes clear that, upon his arrival in Silent Hill, he has gone insane, seeing everyone as making fun of him, and has resorted to killing anyone he encounters. He first attempts to explain the path of bodies he has left, but ultimately he turns on James as well and must be killed to progress through the game. James feels ashamed for killing Eddie, a human being, and after this point, James seriously questions his perception of the events leading to his arrival in the town. As well, the letter that he supposedly received from Mary goes blank, indicating that the letter itself was something that James himself thought up, and that it never actually existed in the first place.
James exits the labyrinth and takes a boat to the Lakeview Hotel in hopes of finding Mary. In the hotel, he finds Laura once again and she gives him the letter she claimed to be seeking earlier, which reveals that Mary wanted to adopt her while confirming Laura's claims of knowing Mary for the past year. The final truth is shown to James when he watches a video tape he apparently left at the hotel three years ago, which shows that he killed his terminally ill wife himself, smothering her with a pillow to stop her suffering. Laura, who is ready to leave the town, finds James, and he chooses to reveal the truth to her; Laura becomes angry with him for killing Mary and she leaves, disappointed. The radio James has been carrying to warn him of the approach of monsters sends a message from Mary, asking him to find her. James explores the rest of the hotel, which has undergone an Otherworld transformation in which it is damp and leaking everywhere. James finds Angela on a burning staircase and she asks him to return her knife so that she can commit suicide, but he declines. James states that the room is hot as hell, to which she replies that it's always like this for her; her life was always a living hell. Angela ascends the burning staircase and walks into the flames.
The climax approaches as James finds yet another resurrected Maria, bound and screaming for James' help, but is promptly killed by two Pyramid Head monsters; James realizes that they have been created to punish him for his sins. James fights the two Pyramid Heads, and after they are severely weakened, they commit ritual suicide with their own spears as if to indicate that their purpose has been fulfilled. James is led to a hallway where he listens to a previous conversation that he and Mary had while she was still alive; in this conversation, James brought Mary some flowers, but she did not accept them, stating that she is too disgusting to deserve flowers and yells furiously at James. At the end of this conversation, Mary desperately pleads to James for him to be with her. James enters a large metallic complex with a long staircase, and at the top of this staircase, he finds a woman (depending on the ending, the woman will be either Maria or Mary herself) who transforms into the manifested pain of Mary. After James defeats this final demon, the game comes to a close.
In the "Leave" and "In Water" endings, the woman in the room is Maria once again, making a final attempt to get James to take her. James rebuffs her, however, and she turns into a monster similar to the hanging monsters in the hospital, becoming the final boss. Upon her defeat, James will either leave the town with Laura in tow after being granted a final meeting with a dying Mary, shown in "Leave", or kill himself after Mary dies before he can properly make peace with her, as shown in "In Water". A replay ending entitled "Rebirth" will also have James kill Maria, but afterwards he will then attempt to use new objects collected in the game to resurrect Mary by confronting the "ancient gods of Silent Hill", with an unknown result.
The "Maria" ending, however, is radically different from these three. If the player spends a lot of time with Maria and protects her well from monsters (also from Pyramid Head in the hospital basement), the woman in the room will be Mary, who has not forgiven James for killing her. She will then turn into the final boss as the same monster Maria becomes, and after her defeat James dismisses her as being just another hallucination. He then discovers Maria, inexplicably resurrected again, and leaves town with her. As they leave, however, Maria starts coughing, implying she has the same illness Mary suffered from and the events that drove James to the town may repeat themselves.
Mary's letter will be in the next post.
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