Warning: This post may contain scenes of violence and gore.
Insert Silent Hill related rant here, since I found out they're making a sequel I've been fuming. Doesn't make much sense, but I feel better.
Dear creators of the Silent Hill movie.
This is my rant. It's gonna be long. Infact it's not really aimed at you. I just wanna write this down so I feel better.
1998. A good year. I was fourteen years old. I hung out with my bff's Cheryl and Jonathan all the time. We got a version of Silent Hill, Jon put it on his PSX and we sat down to play. After about fifteen minutes, Jon gave up. He couldn't find the key to get in the house on Levin street. Didn't think to look in the dog kennel next to it. I did. So I played, Jon and Cheryl happilly watching. I got through Midwich Elementary school whilst literally peeing in my pants the whole way. It took four hours to finish the school- maybe because the piano puzzle was a pain and in the end we drew it on paper and worked it out. I laugh at it now, it still requires me to think about it, even though I know the trick.
After beating the split headed lizard slash dragon, I was tired. My fingers hurt. I was traumatised from metal grating, walls that peeling and pulsed, and what can only be described as mutant children with butchers knives. I gave the controls to Jon, who then proceeded to go through Alchemilla hospital. We were further traumatised by nurses with pipes, doctors with knives, and Kaufmann's bad acting. We all sat there- "HE'S TOTALLY A BAD GUY". And Lisa. Poor Lisa. She only got a cameo in the film, but lol it made me happy for 20 seconds.
The hospital took another four hours to beat, and after 11 odd hours of playing we saved it and went to sleep, deciding a sleepover was in order so we could play again next day. And we did. I did the mall/antiques shop area. Jon did the sewers/lakeside amusement park, and I did Nowhere. We all cried when Lisa went. We were all totally confused, just as much as Harry who we'd all come to like. He wasn't like most other heroes in games: he never knew what was going on, he wasn't strong, from the military, had leet powers. He was just some guy looking for his little girl.
(Harry and his missus found a baby by the road. "Let's keep it!" he said, unaware of the fact she was gonna lead him literally to Hell. You freakin' gullible twit.)
And then we beat Alessa. Alessa in white robes zapping us with lightning. And the ending we got? An FMV of Harry still in his car. Dead. We sat there like "WTF?" before looking up online that there was actually four endings. Bad. Bad+. Good. Good+. It'd taken us a total of 27 hours to get the bad ending. So we restarted and tried again, taking our time to explore areas completely. We found more stuff out. Kaufman was responsible for bringing the white claudia drug into Silent Hill. This is where one of the age old arguments began. It still goes on today. We never did agree.
I reckonned Kaufman wasn't a bad guy, but a sort of good guy. The aglophatis was found in his room in the hospital. I felt the WClaudia was being used also to make the aglophatis. Aglophatis is what sort of, beats off the evil in Silent Hill. If you use it on Cybil, she's healed. You use it on Alessa and she's not healed, but it brings Samael out. Heather even has it in SH3. Jon reckonned Kaufman was just selling the White Claudia, keeping everyone doped up like Lisa. Where did the aglophatis come from and why does Kaufman have it? No clue, but he's bringing in the drug therefore he's a bad guy.
If you look at Alessa waking up in the introduction, you see she's wearing a grey jacket over her bandages. That looks similiar to the one Kaufman wears. It's my belief Kaufman is actually Alessa's father, regardless of the fact Dhalia and Kaufman bumping uglies makes me go EW.
Jon thinks it's bullshit. After knowing each other for over ten years, we still haven't agreed on it, we can't even agree on what's actually going down in Silent Hill. He reckonned everyone was on drugs and hallucinating it because WClaudia causes hallucinations. I reckon it's a more supernatural cause and the Claudia was thrown in there as a sort of herring. Who knows?
Either way, the fact a game can cause such long discussions between friends is a good thing. i could grab Jon on MSN now, even though I haven't spoken to him in months, and bring up this question and we'd have a right good debate.
Then Silent Hill 2 came out. it can only be compared to the SH storyline as sort of a filler episode. but one damned good filler episode. Even if I did feel James was like a Harry clone and Harry was my ONE TRUE FIRST LOVE OMG MY HERO!!! But after twenty minutes of playing I discovered a horrible but true fact- whatever graphics they had used to make the fog on this new shiny PS2 game- it was giving me some serious eyestrain. I thought it'd pass, but it didn't. I got migranes. So I called Jon. he would sit and play, I'd direct. The puzzles in that fucking game! OH MY GOD. I still couldn't do them now if I fucking wanted to. But still! it had a good storyline. And of course, Pyramid Head. The creators of the game knew outright violence wasn't the key. One scene I'll always remember. Jon and I were sat there, and we were in a hallway in the game. We had to go through a door. at the end of the hallway it was covered with jail like bars. Behind the bars, PH was stood there. Watching. We sat there for half an hour debating whther we should go through the door, or go back and save cos omg that thing would kill us. It didn't, it just stood there. But it still freaked us.
(James the Harry wannabe. Pyramid Head was brought to you by James!vision.)
When SH3 came out? I begged my mom on my knees. "PLEASE GIVE ME SOME MONEY SO I CAN BUY IT OR I'LL DIE." I got home. Played it. Loved it. It continued from the story of Silent Hill 1. Harry was in it. Alessa was in it. Cheryl was in it. Even Lisa got an appearence, and Cybil got a mention. I felt like I'd died and gone to SH!Heaven. The monsters were surreal, creepy, horrific and did I mention creepy? They pushed all the right buttons. not to mention, my favourite song in the whole world from SH one had been given lyrics. That was an mp3 I downloaded so fast I probably left scorch marks across google.
(Even Heather was horrified by the shitty acting in the movie.)
Silent Hill 4 I never finished. It scared me so badly with something so stupid, I put it down and swore at it, and never got around to finishing it. I know the SL to it though, it sounds good, and seems based off of Silent Hill 2. So it's like 1>3, 2>4. 5 has been announced, I've seen clips, and it too looks epic.
SO PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THE FILM WAS ABOUT??
When they announced it? I squeed. When I found out Harry was replaced with a woman called Rose? I was like "Oh you fuckers." However, I forgave them as the trailers looked good. I was second in queue on release day and went in with high spirits.
That got crushed.
The first 20 mins of that film? PERFECT. Then you brought in this stuff with Christabelle. Witches. Burning at altars. Chris who? Who's she? Some leader of the cult? Dahlia was leader of the cult. Oh wait, there she is. She's gone from leader and conspirator who burned her own daughter so her daughter would become mother of God, to some bedraggled sorry pathetic excuse of a woman who was outcast cos she said "noes, don't burn my daughter cos you think she's a witch!".
Feeling sorry for Dhalia is like, against the grain so like, er, no.
Anyway. You changed Cheryl's name to Sharon. Why? Are we stupid? Point?
I heard somewhere that you made Harry a woman because ingame he screams, runs around, etc and you felt if you kept it like that people'd go "lol he's gay". Nooo, you'd probably have found a lot more people would have sympathised as who the fuck wouldn't do all that when finding rotting bodies chained to fences and killer things with knives coming for you??
("WTF? I HAVE BOOBS?")
So this whole thing with witches. The only witch in Silent Hill game-wise is midWICH Elementary school. I mean is it that hard to keep the storyline of a demonic cult where they're trying to get a girl to give birth to a God who would lead them to Paradise? how hard was that? instead you made it so Silent Hill hell version was Alessa's inner world. GOOD. T hat's GOOD. That's what it is meant to be. Except all the people there where trapped there because Alessa wanted sweet and bloody revenge cos you burned her at the stake you fuckers. And she couldn't do it herself so she dragged Rose in.
Er. In the game? Alessa was a poor, scared, seven year old girl who wanted nothing more than to be with her mommy. So yeah, okay, what the fuck? You all sit there in your interviews saying you played the games when you did the concepts and scripts and made it so it was true to the game, and game fans would be happy. Infact, you quoted that you were being careful because Silent Hill fans were actually overly protective of their game. Yeah. because fuckers like you would get hold of it and MAUL IT TO PIECES. You couldn't even get Pyramid Head right. You only threw him in there as a cameo to keep us happy. The whole point of PH was he was the embodiment of James's desire to be punished. As soon as James realised he didn't need to be punished anymore, PH killed himself and was no more. We haven't seen him in any other games, he was James' own embodiment of Silent Hill.
So why was he running around YOUR version of Silent Hill being as much os a pain in the ass as a moth buzzing around and bashing into the side of your face? he looked awesome. but that was about it. You couldn't even get Pyramid Head right. Infact, you called him the Red Pyramid.
(You couldn't even get his helmet right, though it is hard to see in the pic I made...)
Red Pyramid. Words fail me. Well technically I got told that's the official canon name, but you just try telling that to everyone.
Sure. The war sirens were chilling, and I liked the idea that it's from the chapel as a warning. That was great. I loved watching the transformations from misty to hellish Silent Hill. The janitor was creative, and rumour has it that team SH who makes the games liked him so much they're incorporating him into SH5. Great!
But, you fucked up the storyline. It had a classic SH style ending to it no doubt. But you killed off Cybil. Er, the only person who gets to kill her off is Harry or no-one. Not "lets turn this lesbian looking cop into BBQ". that's a crappy way to go, even for Cybil. And I don't even like Cybil.
And Rose? Don't get me started. She was too calm, too like "I AM THE HEROINE" for my tastes. You would have gotten it better with Harry, someone everyone could sympathise with. You don't need someone to be butch and heroic to actually be a main character. And Sean Bean's role was pointless. He just ran around going "Sharon? Rose?? WTF??"
(Instead of Harry, you gave me "Miss I touch Your Boobs" and "Miss Puss Blonde in Boots")
And I've just heard you're doing a sequel. I'll watch it. Though like, I dread it. I know people who watched the film then came to me like "Lols you played that shit?" I was embarassed to even admit it by that point. You took one of the most amazing games I've had the pleasure of playing, even though it meant sleepless nights, and shoved it into a 90 minute jumbled mess.
Thanks for that.
Not even Jon or Cheryl will sit and watch the dvd with me. I know they won't- I asked. Says it all really. I offered to put SH3 in the PS2 and they both jumped up like "I'll get the food and drinks and cushions!!".
Says it all.
(Valtiel says he knows what to do with the film. And it involves a valve....)
Dear creators of the Silent Hill movie.
This is my rant. It's gonna be long. Infact it's not really aimed at you. I just wanna write this down so I feel better.
1998. A good year. I was fourteen years old. I hung out with my bff's Cheryl and Jonathan all the time. We got a version of Silent Hill, Jon put it on his PSX and we sat down to play. After about fifteen minutes, Jon gave up. He couldn't find the key to get in the house on Levin street. Didn't think to look in the dog kennel next to it. I did. So I played, Jon and Cheryl happilly watching. I got through Midwich Elementary school whilst literally peeing in my pants the whole way. It took four hours to finish the school- maybe because the piano puzzle was a pain and in the end we drew it on paper and worked it out. I laugh at it now, it still requires me to think about it, even though I know the trick.
After beating the split headed lizard slash dragon, I was tired. My fingers hurt. I was traumatised from metal grating, walls that peeling and pulsed, and what can only be described as mutant children with butchers knives. I gave the controls to Jon, who then proceeded to go through Alchemilla hospital. We were further traumatised by nurses with pipes, doctors with knives, and Kaufmann's bad acting. We all sat there- "HE'S TOTALLY A BAD GUY". And Lisa. Poor Lisa. She only got a cameo in the film, but lol it made me happy for 20 seconds.
The hospital took another four hours to beat, and after 11 odd hours of playing we saved it and went to sleep, deciding a sleepover was in order so we could play again next day. And we did. I did the mall/antiques shop area. Jon did the sewers/lakeside amusement park, and I did Nowhere. We all cried when Lisa went. We were all totally confused, just as much as Harry who we'd all come to like. He wasn't like most other heroes in games: he never knew what was going on, he wasn't strong, from the military, had leet powers. He was just some guy looking for his little girl.
(Harry and his missus found a baby by the road. "Let's keep it!" he said, unaware of the fact she was gonna lead him literally to Hell. You freakin' gullible twit.)
And then we beat Alessa. Alessa in white robes zapping us with lightning. And the ending we got? An FMV of Harry still in his car. Dead. We sat there like "WTF?" before looking up online that there was actually four endings. Bad. Bad+. Good. Good+. It'd taken us a total of 27 hours to get the bad ending. So we restarted and tried again, taking our time to explore areas completely. We found more stuff out. Kaufman was responsible for bringing the white claudia drug into Silent Hill. This is where one of the age old arguments began. It still goes on today. We never did agree.
I reckonned Kaufman wasn't a bad guy, but a sort of good guy. The aglophatis was found in his room in the hospital. I felt the WClaudia was being used also to make the aglophatis. Aglophatis is what sort of, beats off the evil in Silent Hill. If you use it on Cybil, she's healed. You use it on Alessa and she's not healed, but it brings Samael out. Heather even has it in SH3. Jon reckonned Kaufman was just selling the White Claudia, keeping everyone doped up like Lisa. Where did the aglophatis come from and why does Kaufman have it? No clue, but he's bringing in the drug therefore he's a bad guy.
If you look at Alessa waking up in the introduction, you see she's wearing a grey jacket over her bandages. That looks similiar to the one Kaufman wears. It's my belief Kaufman is actually Alessa's father, regardless of the fact Dhalia and Kaufman bumping uglies makes me go EW.
Jon thinks it's bullshit. After knowing each other for over ten years, we still haven't agreed on it, we can't even agree on what's actually going down in Silent Hill. He reckonned everyone was on drugs and hallucinating it because WClaudia causes hallucinations. I reckon it's a more supernatural cause and the Claudia was thrown in there as a sort of herring. Who knows?
Either way, the fact a game can cause such long discussions between friends is a good thing. i could grab Jon on MSN now, even though I haven't spoken to him in months, and bring up this question and we'd have a right good debate.
Then Silent Hill 2 came out. it can only be compared to the SH storyline as sort of a filler episode. but one damned good filler episode. Even if I did feel James was like a Harry clone and Harry was my ONE TRUE FIRST LOVE OMG MY HERO!!! But after twenty minutes of playing I discovered a horrible but true fact- whatever graphics they had used to make the fog on this new shiny PS2 game- it was giving me some serious eyestrain. I thought it'd pass, but it didn't. I got migranes. So I called Jon. he would sit and play, I'd direct. The puzzles in that fucking game! OH MY GOD. I still couldn't do them now if I fucking wanted to. But still! it had a good storyline. And of course, Pyramid Head. The creators of the game knew outright violence wasn't the key. One scene I'll always remember. Jon and I were sat there, and we were in a hallway in the game. We had to go through a door. at the end of the hallway it was covered with jail like bars. Behind the bars, PH was stood there. Watching. We sat there for half an hour debating whther we should go through the door, or go back and save cos omg that thing would kill us. It didn't, it just stood there. But it still freaked us.
(James the Harry wannabe. Pyramid Head was brought to you by James!vision.)
When SH3 came out? I begged my mom on my knees. "PLEASE GIVE ME SOME MONEY SO I CAN BUY IT OR I'LL DIE." I got home. Played it. Loved it. It continued from the story of Silent Hill 1. Harry was in it. Alessa was in it. Cheryl was in it. Even Lisa got an appearence, and Cybil got a mention. I felt like I'd died and gone to SH!Heaven. The monsters were surreal, creepy, horrific and did I mention creepy? They pushed all the right buttons. not to mention, my favourite song in the whole world from SH one had been given lyrics. That was an mp3 I downloaded so fast I probably left scorch marks across google.
(Even Heather was horrified by the shitty acting in the movie.)
Silent Hill 4 I never finished. It scared me so badly with something so stupid, I put it down and swore at it, and never got around to finishing it. I know the SL to it though, it sounds good, and seems based off of Silent Hill 2. So it's like 1>3, 2>4. 5 has been announced, I've seen clips, and it too looks epic.
SO PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THE FILM WAS ABOUT??
When they announced it? I squeed. When I found out Harry was replaced with a woman called Rose? I was like "Oh you fuckers." However, I forgave them as the trailers looked good. I was second in queue on release day and went in with high spirits.
That got crushed.
The first 20 mins of that film? PERFECT. Then you brought in this stuff with Christabelle. Witches. Burning at altars. Chris who? Who's she? Some leader of the cult? Dahlia was leader of the cult. Oh wait, there she is. She's gone from leader and conspirator who burned her own daughter so her daughter would become mother of God, to some bedraggled sorry pathetic excuse of a woman who was outcast cos she said "noes, don't burn my daughter cos you think she's a witch!".
Feeling sorry for Dhalia is like, against the grain so like, er, no.
Anyway. You changed Cheryl's name to Sharon. Why? Are we stupid? Point?
I heard somewhere that you made Harry a woman because ingame he screams, runs around, etc and you felt if you kept it like that people'd go "lol he's gay". Nooo, you'd probably have found a lot more people would have sympathised as who the fuck wouldn't do all that when finding rotting bodies chained to fences and killer things with knives coming for you??
("WTF? I HAVE BOOBS?")
So this whole thing with witches. The only witch in Silent Hill game-wise is midWICH Elementary school. I mean is it that hard to keep the storyline of a demonic cult where they're trying to get a girl to give birth to a God who would lead them to Paradise? how hard was that? instead you made it so Silent Hill hell version was Alessa's inner world. GOOD. T hat's GOOD. That's what it is meant to be. Except all the people there where trapped there because Alessa wanted sweet and bloody revenge cos you burned her at the stake you fuckers. And she couldn't do it herself so she dragged Rose in.
Er. In the game? Alessa was a poor, scared, seven year old girl who wanted nothing more than to be with her mommy. So yeah, okay, what the fuck? You all sit there in your interviews saying you played the games when you did the concepts and scripts and made it so it was true to the game, and game fans would be happy. Infact, you quoted that you were being careful because Silent Hill fans were actually overly protective of their game. Yeah. because fuckers like you would get hold of it and MAUL IT TO PIECES. You couldn't even get Pyramid Head right. You only threw him in there as a cameo to keep us happy. The whole point of PH was he was the embodiment of James's desire to be punished. As soon as James realised he didn't need to be punished anymore, PH killed himself and was no more. We haven't seen him in any other games, he was James' own embodiment of Silent Hill.
So why was he running around YOUR version of Silent Hill being as much os a pain in the ass as a moth buzzing around and bashing into the side of your face? he looked awesome. but that was about it. You couldn't even get Pyramid Head right. Infact, you called him the Red Pyramid.
(You couldn't even get his helmet right, though it is hard to see in the pic I made...)
Red Pyramid. Words fail me. Well technically I got told that's the official canon name, but you just try telling that to everyone.
Sure. The war sirens were chilling, and I liked the idea that it's from the chapel as a warning. That was great. I loved watching the transformations from misty to hellish Silent Hill. The janitor was creative, and rumour has it that team SH who makes the games liked him so much they're incorporating him into SH5. Great!
But, you fucked up the storyline. It had a classic SH style ending to it no doubt. But you killed off Cybil. Er, the only person who gets to kill her off is Harry or no-one. Not "lets turn this lesbian looking cop into BBQ". that's a crappy way to go, even for Cybil. And I don't even like Cybil.
And Rose? Don't get me started. She was too calm, too like "I AM THE HEROINE" for my tastes. You would have gotten it better with Harry, someone everyone could sympathise with. You don't need someone to be butch and heroic to actually be a main character. And Sean Bean's role was pointless. He just ran around going "Sharon? Rose?? WTF??"
(Instead of Harry, you gave me "Miss I touch Your Boobs" and "Miss Puss Blonde in Boots")
And I've just heard you're doing a sequel. I'll watch it. Though like, I dread it. I know people who watched the film then came to me like "Lols you played that shit?" I was embarassed to even admit it by that point. You took one of the most amazing games I've had the pleasure of playing, even though it meant sleepless nights, and shoved it into a 90 minute jumbled mess.
Thanks for that.
Not even Jon or Cheryl will sit and watch the dvd with me. I know they won't- I asked. Says it all really. I offered to put SH3 in the PS2 and they both jumped up like "I'll get the food and drinks and cushions!!".
Says it all.
(Valtiel says he knows what to do with the film. And it involves a valve....)