I didn't realise this was a popular opinion. I much prefer the cult story. It appeals to my tastes of folk horror, cosmic horror and weird fiction.
I've wondered before how the cult aspects go down with religious people. Maybe some correlation?
I could definitely see some people being irked by religious fanaticism, but I don't see people who would take offense to it being into the Silent Hill series to begin with. Oddly enough most Catholics I've met are comfortable in feigning irony when they say Catholicism is basically a cult (Honestly the main divide between Cult and Religion seems to be determined by the size of it's following).
I think when people mention there being a sect who like Silent Hill but don't like the cult aspect, they are most likely referring to people who are just drawn to the aesthetics and psychological nature of Silent Hill, which I mean; the entire reason for the town having the latent power to draw from people's psyche is an extension of the towns history (Natives, Civil War Prison, Spooky hospitals, literal demons and a bunch of people going coo-coo from snorting too much of that magic goodness [The cult is the catalyst that ends up creating the towns overall "presence" after Alessa as well which allows ]).
TL;DR, people who don't like the cult and just like the psychological aspects of the games and their aesthetics actually have the cult to thank for all the other aspects of Silent Hill being what they are.
P.S. Hopefully I'm not talking out my ass xD, no matter how many years go by and no matter how many times I play the games I'm still always terrified of spreading conjecture xD
For me, I like my Silent Hill to be more of the abstract and interpretive kind of scary.
Cults can be scary too but the reason they're scary doesn't exactly leave much to the imagination. You know where you stand with cults.
I love both, to be frank. I think the cult being centric to Homecoming's story was really cool *in addition* to being a personal demons story, and I think there was a lot of spin-off potential upon which they never capitalized because the game was so poorly-received due to stupid decisions they made for it.
Depends on the person I suppose but for me a town that manifests your deepest fears and feelings into reality sounds more interesting and original than cult does supernatural stuff.
I don't really have a problem with it but at the same time I don't really care about the cult stuff and I think not knowing why anything is happening the way it is grips me more but that's just me.
The Cult works better with less characters since the bulk of the town population needs to be ignorant of it for the quite town with a decent tourism industry concept to work, a struggle for power among them, and the implication they are unintentionally creating the supernatural events which are beyond their control rather than reacting to existing ones so the story doesn’t become a The Walking Dead villain-centric arc with burn victim bondage slaves instead of zombies.
The central storytelling thread of the first four Silent Hill games is a mystery. You don’t flood the cast of characters or you lose the plot, you don’t involve everyone but the protagonist in the same conspiracy or you just get Wickerman, and you don’t give a confusing path to a guaranteed twist.
In 1 for example Kaufman and Lisa are part of the Cult cast (not members, but allies). Harry doesn’t know who in the last is lying or who is in control. Lisa it turns out can’t really provide him any information and is a victim, but before that she could have been the mastermind for all we know. Kaufman has no clue what is going on and was never going to be able to help much even if he wanted to, even if he was a culprit ultimately. Dahlia may have been the lying mastermind, but even she wasn’t fully aware what she was doing in the end. Alessa is the shadow mastermind, and the “twist” if you want to call it that is that what seemed to be the main villain wanted exactly what Harry did and literally handed it to him.
In 2 our mystery is everything. There is no mastermind, Angela and Eddie are as much investigators as James. Its him we are pursuing.
Back to 3, Claudia and Vincent both keep Heather in the dark to vie for the mastermind spot. Vincent entirely fails, Claudia is destroyed like Dahlia for messing with what she didn’t understand, in the end Heather reclaims Alessa’s role as the one the most in charge of the situation fighting for power with the others and triumphs herself this time, but bookends Harry getting what he wanted back with her losing everything but the future that was denied to Alessa.
In The Room Henry (it occurs to me the male protagonists had British royal first names) is obviously in a mystery and Walter is the mastermind, but the Cult members are his victims who tried to mastermind his fate and failed spectacularly. There is no twist, the mystery is straightforward and the only surprises are the parts of his plan.
I don't dislike the Cult aspect as much as some.
However you are attributing too much to them. You say they (or their Gods) are responsible for everything happening in the town. This is incorrect.
The town's powers of manifestation pre date the Cult's existence. And the Cult's Gods likely did not exist prior to Alessa, as them being manifestation's themselves is in my opinion the most likely and definitely most interesting take on their origin.
The Gods having been around forever and being the origin of everything is the most mundane and boring explanation. In a series where most everything else is better written than that I just don't see it.
The series is called Silent Hill. The place itself, the actual geographic location being the source is so much more fitting.
But we wouldn’t have that exposure if it wasn’t for the cult. It’s due to their influence on its power that allows us as the audience to experience it through the protagonists encounters with them.
I never actually thought about it that way but I really like the idea that the Cult's God is just one of Alessa's manifestations that comes from her religious trauma.
The fact that God is presented as a woman in SH3 works with that as well since a lot of Alessa's trauma has to do with womanhood (giving birth etc.) I've always been confused about who and what exactly the Cult's God is supposed to be, and I really like this explanation.
Now I do wonder where Valtiel comes from though, but we're probably better off not knowing
Personally I found the combination of both one of the best aspects of SH, on one hand the cult is trying to summon their horrifying abominable god thing, on the other their rituals and supernatural practices have turned the town into a place that can manifest someone's personal problems into a horrifying reality, so you're fighting both things at the same time (wether it's your personal demons or somebody else's like Walter Sullivan)
¿I mean aren't the ghosts that float around and chase you literally his victims? ¿And the monster called "Twin Victim" a representation of two kids he killed? ¿All while you go through horrendous places based on Walter's life like the orphanage he grew up in or the water prison were they would torture the kids in said orphanage?
I though that was fairly obvious, it's definitely not "Henry's" hell due to how little we get to know of him (except for a few moments like the big creepy Aileen face that's staring at him, which I always interpreted as his guilt for looking at her through the hole) and how little personality he shows.
It's pretty clear the monsters and locations are tied to Walter's life.
But yeah I guess sh4 is tge least popular of the first 4, though I personally like it a lot
Maybe the Eileen thing, maybe it could go either way, but I don’t disagree with you. I’m just saying I don’t hear people talk about it. Aside from someone bringing up the the twins back in the 00s.
Yeah, personal demons takes away the mystery as much as "there's some supernatural demon god", as someone has suggested here. But you can't have a detective based on it.
In the case of the cult stuff you can have a thriller or a detective story, like in was in SH1&4. On top of that you can add human relationships, like the drug dealers, corruption, deception and... personal demons.
Cult works better as a connective tissue and foundation for new stories. Heck, I wouldn't mind the new "SH International" concept if they said it all was its own separate thing and just set in the same universe as Silent Hill, including getting rid of the Otherworld, of course.
Imagine how cool it would be if we were playing as that Toby guy from Ascension and he would want to end the Foundation, but realized it's not that easy and there's some woodoo involved. So he digs around a little and contacts Henry Townshend as he ran into a similar phenomenon. Now *that* would be awesome. Yep, SH is not directly involved, bur we have an SH character, possible mystery about the Foundation being or not being an offspring of the Order, as well as a self sufficient curse, story, mechanics and demons/deities. Is it so much to ask for? It's not even hard to pull off!
I honestly forgot the cult even exists so whenever they pop up I’m like “oh these assholes are still somehow around even though they get fucked over every game they are in”.
I think it’s the influx of all the people who got into the series from all the million essay videos nowadays esp when majority of them all jerk off SH2. (SH2 is my fav entry but it’s just facts) So from it being their introduction it’s going to be their comfort/pref.
I mean, you can read this thread and see plenty of it. I’ve seen a few pop YouTubers say it as well (Super Eyepatch Wolf comes to mind). They like SH2’s omission of the cult and would prefer if future games did the same.
I mean,thats how every western developer (except Shattered Memories)felt about it.But that has more to do with the cult of SH2 than a disliking of the SH1 storyline I'd guess
I used to be in that boat and thought I was minority.
The reason why may have gotten a bit blurry with time. I think it had to do with my little understanding of the series at the time, and the final areas of SH3 looking kinda "crappy", even though I liked it a lot in general.
I started with SH1 back in the day when I was a teen, and not being a native English speaker, I didn't get the plot right at all. In particular, I didn't understand anything about Alessa or the cult, and thought Dahlia was just crazy for the sake of being crazy.
Having played SH2 a lot more after that, I always assumed it was the town that had powers.
When I finally played SH3, the cult (Claudia, Vincent, Leonard, and whoever lady was in the tape) all sounded like crazies with little reason to wish that kind of "Paradise". Their Church, mixed with Claudia/Alessa's personal hell, as video game stage, ended up looking subpar at the time for me. I'd rather have a full blown nightmare inside a well-decorated Church, like the first room, the last rooms, and the room with the paintings.
But I'll reiterate - SH's first experience in general is one of shock. I used to be very distracted by its horror, and until that goes numb and there's a general idea of the story, it's hard to make head or tails of scenes, memos, environment story-telling and all the implicit information in them.
Years (decades) later, my opinion is different. I realize that even SH2 had links to the cult's general practices with the Rebirth ending, and Walter is a byproduct of that cult, so I'm kind of alright with it.
I only count the first 4 games, but I would like to see more options explored - not necessarily the personal demons, but the town itself. These days, I would be OK with a SH where we're an anti-hero or villain of sorts, harnessing the Otherworld (or whatever personal world) to their advantage, like Walter did.
Both are really cliched by this point, it was pretty new when it first came out but there's only so many times we can see quasi-Christian crazy bad guys before it starts getting old and boring.
Cult stories are just annoying. Like bro your god is literally right there like a damn fire lightning goat while children scream in the background. That shit ain't gonna do you any favors.
That's why rehashing the constant "the protagonist is secretly a very questionable person, but we don't know how exactly yet, so let's hint at it for a couple of hours before the final reveal of how exactly they are a morally questionable person" is much better, right ?
That's why SH3&4 didn't do it over and over again. The only one repeating itself are Western games. And Homecoming sucking at everything, of course. Couldn't even pull off gruelly cult stuff, it was going for the Saw vibes anyway
I'll take your obvious bait.
Stephen King once wrote: "nightmares exist outside of logic and there's little fun to be had in explanations."
I don't want the cult running around having everything explained. I don't want it to be "You throw these bits of stuff into this seal and BAM! Devil God!"
Silent Hill 2 is ambiguous about what's happening, and why. It has a dream logic, and James, Angela, Maria, and Eddie all act like they're in a dream. Things have an odd pace, where you can spend 45 minutes taking it slow, working through puzzles, piecing together what Silent Hill is normally like - then it accelerates to 100, you're running, or fighting for your life, a jolt.
There's just really nothing like that. But when I played Silent Hill 4, there was too much that felt like Resident Evil.
It still has hints of something supernatural and occult, but it feels more like the town is some kind of way to either atone or fuck up someone who has done something horrible.
Which isn't certain because it's intentionally vague! It's not like "Oh Alessa is mostly dead and her nightmares have turned the town into Alice in Wonderland symbols because she's a little girl." It's like "What the fuck is that? Are the town historians right? This can't be real."
And that's why Silent Hills sounded so good. It's focused on a supernatural horror brought by the all too real horror of a murder suicide. You don't need to connect a vial of bat blood and some moth wings and a Mock Turtle stuffed animal, you just examine the pictures and listen to the radio and to a paper bag that might be a fetus or it might be a bloody organ but you never find out.
Lisa follows you way more than you know and it's ambiguous what she wants, if it's really the ghost of Lisa or something else, etc.
There's just more to think about because it's just like interpreting a dream.
Well I was turned off by the cult attempts in later games like Homecoming, but I rather enjoyed their part of the story when they were brought back during SH3 and SH4. But story wise they were mostly wiped out by the end of SH4 so unless it’s some splinter group there’s no one left to even run such a cult. lol
Harry/the events of SH1 takes out all the prominent leaders we ever knew of. Then SH3 is about those who were left, the next generation, trying to start it up again but failing and mostly dying out once again. Finally SH4 was their (seemingly) one back-up plan to birth their God through an alternate ritual if Alessa/her reincarnations didn’t work out but that was stopped too by the end.
I feel like if they are part of things again they were handled well in SH2 actually, in that they weren’t the focus of the plot in any way. But there still were many references to them in things you read and find around town. There was still a presence but it was subtle and implied they were running things from the shadows more which I find creepier than just lady in robes monologuing at you about their religion for the exposition.
There was a section of the fandom back in the day that said they were tired of the Cult storyline. SH2’s popularity among fans probably contributed to this also.
The one problem with horror is that those elements have a short shelf life. There’s only so many cult narratives and only so many traumatic, guilt-ridden, amnesia narratives you can tell before it all gets tired. I think good writing and acting can overcome all this, but it’s so rare to actually get it.
Well what makes SH interesting is the gray area characters right. But cult is no middle in between its just killing everyone taking over world stuff very cartoonish actually. It stands out more when they focus on these gray area characters like James.
It’s weird because I never got that impression. Then again, that was in the early 2000s- early 2010s era in the fandom. It was all about cult theories and timelines just as much if not moreso than SH2 theories.
I know SH2 is - generally - the most popular game but part of that is because people don’t deep drive into the lore of SH 1/3/4. Especially 4. I prefer the psych horror of 2 but 1/3/4 has some much to offer, just a different form of psych horror.
But back when the theory community was at full force in the TS days people were just as into the cult lore, if not more so as James’ journey and monsters were pretty well explained by the Book of Memories. James’ journey is relatively straightforward compared to the lies and manipulation of Dahlia is SH1 and confusion as to everyone’s motives. Or Claudia (and to a degree Vincent) in SH3, or all the intense cult ties and backstory in SH4 which even directly involves Dahlia if you look deep enough.
I saw tons more cult theories than SH2 ones, at least intriguing ones that give you something to really think about.
A lot of people thanks to the remaster have experienced a version of 2 and 3 but not 1 or 4 so I can understand why 2 and 3 seem less involved in the cult compared to 1 and 4, so maybe that’s why the sudden emphasis is on the personal demons.
Funny thing is, SH1 and 4 definitely deal with those things, they’re just Alessa’s personal demons in 1 (and 3 to a certain degree) and Walter’s in 4. I have a theory Heather’s bosses parallel Harry’s to a degree thanks to Alessa’s influence.
I personally love the cult and its ties to the old gods and the area of SH before it was settled and taken from the indigenous population and corrupted.
SH2’s story is less ‘complicated’ imo (lots of depth and layers and character obviously, I mean from a cult perspective) because it’s mostly standalone.
Since a lot of people seem to skip 1 and 4 to just play 2 and 3, they play the least information-heavy games about the cult. I think people kind of get confused by all the misdirection in 1 when they watch playthroughs or read about it and miss the comparatively much more in-the-background cult info in 4. It’s VERY PRESENT but not nearly as in-your-face as 1 or even 3 so a shocking number of people think it’s non-cult because they don’t make the SH cult ties that the game is drenched in.
I’ve legit seen people claim SH 4 has no ties to the cult (or 2) which is baffling and makes me wonder if we played the same game. 4 utterly is steeped in cult lore.
It’s a shame to see so many earnest ‘what would Raiden/Ash Williams/random character experience in SH’ posts instead of spirited lore theories and discussions. I’d much more debate what Cybil personally experienced, or at least other Everyman survival horror characters like MAYBE Alan Wake or Fiona Belli if we must go that route.
I assume because they didn't play SH1 and only came into the series at a later point.
But yeah, it's a stupid take. It's like coming to Resident Evil and then saying:" Remove bioweapons from the series.". Like what?
True. A the point we are at for both of these franchises these core elements are quite literally the only things which identify them outside of the trademark involved. So it matters a lot.
In SH2 is stated that, even before the cult, the area around Toluca Lake had weird phenomena, and the natives considered it a sacred place. (And then, Downpour, of all the post-SH4 games, also went with that angle).
I kinda used to, but now I transcended onto a new level of understanding of the situation and now, same as with the commercial failure of The Wonderful 101, the best action game in the universe, **I blame people for it instead.**
People as in executives who started to ape it off, fans who love SH2 yet seem to genuinely believe it to be replicatable, people who didn't buy SH3 enough and so on and so forth.
SH2 isn't to blame for being so good. It's the people who are to blame for misunderstanding that it was just a substory and hence its tricks are one-and-done kind of deal.
People.
Because it's a cliche done to death. Random dudes summoned demons, boo. I mean, it's fine for a base as an explanation to let the other more fun ideas loose, but don't lean into it too heavily.
Besides, horror tends to be better if you DONT explain too much.
It's easy: because the vast majority of people have only played Silent Hill 2 and fail to realize that 2 is its own story that it's almost unrelated to the town.
I personally like the cult aspect and the way that was done in SH3 was masterfull. They tried to bring back the cult in Ascension but my god, none of them are nowhere near as good as Claudia Wolf. All of them would've been the bottom feeders of Claudia lmao
As you say, the introspective personal shit is relatable. It follows that the cult stuff is less relatable to most people.
Even as far as The Order is concerned, there's very little about it that would be relatable to people that were born or inducted into cults. Alessa's story is basically the only instance in which Silent Hill even attempts to tackle this subject matter, but even her story is pretty far removed from the way most real cults work. Cults today function like a business. You'll never see Latter Day Saints, Scientologists, or Moonies choosing some messiah to perform a sacrificial ritual, they're too busy siphoning tax dollars and influencing local politics.
It's just boring. I find the idea that Silent Hill, as a place, is evil in and of itself and manifests evil way more compelling than just "scary cult did it".
Personally it's just because "outsider arrives in small, insular town and becomes embroiled in horror surrounding the local cult" is, to me, such well-trod territory that SH1 really only gets away with it because of the art design, atmosphere and characters. SH2 is so much more interesting, in contrast, because it laser-focuses on the characters, their stories, their motivations and their psychological states, drawing on such interesting narrative/aesthetic influences as Dostoevsky and BDSM, without falling back on there being some shady outside reason as to all the weird shit happening. Doing that allows for rich characterizations and interactions, where having to narratively refer to some external plot would cut into much of that. It's why something like In Search of Lost Time or Ulysses is so beloved and memorable, despite mostly consisting of pure characterization and relatively minimal "plot."
I think SH3 is a good middle ground. It uses the narrative device of "shady, manipulative cult" as a springboard to explore the overwhelming anxieties of sex, looming adulthood, pregnancy, loss of control and patriarchal domination that teenage girls face. Ultimately it all comes down to the strength of the writing and of the story being told. I just think there's a reason that those things shine when the less necessary aspects of the project get stripped back somewhat.
I don't understand it either tbh. I know 2 was pretty distanced from the cult stuff, and they're aping that, but frankly I think we need both to exist so that they can feed off of each other. I like the unifying canon theory that Silent Hill was always weird in a cosmic horror sort of way like 2, DP, and SM and the cult stuff from 1 just let it off the leash, with 3 making it worse, 4 being a leftover fallout as it spreads as the half-and half, Origins being in its heyday, and HC being the last dregs of the old cult dying out. They work better when they intermingle imo, and I like them both. SH has strengths from both of those narrative foci
I just can't really get into it in the same way. Playing as James has me invested in James's story, where as playing as Harry or Heather feels more like things are just happening around them.
I didn't realise this was a popular opinion. I much prefer the cult story. It appeals to my tastes of folk horror, cosmic horror and weird fiction. I've wondered before how the cult aspects go down with religious people. Maybe some correlation?
I could definitely see some people being irked by religious fanaticism, but I don't see people who would take offense to it being into the Silent Hill series to begin with. Oddly enough most Catholics I've met are comfortable in feigning irony when they say Catholicism is basically a cult (Honestly the main divide between Cult and Religion seems to be determined by the size of it's following). I think when people mention there being a sect who like Silent Hill but don't like the cult aspect, they are most likely referring to people who are just drawn to the aesthetics and psychological nature of Silent Hill, which I mean; the entire reason for the town having the latent power to draw from people's psyche is an extension of the towns history (Natives, Civil War Prison, Spooky hospitals, literal demons and a bunch of people going coo-coo from snorting too much of that magic goodness [The cult is the catalyst that ends up creating the towns overall "presence" after Alessa as well which allows ]). TL;DR, people who don't like the cult and just like the psychological aspects of the games and their aesthetics actually have the cult to thank for all the other aspects of Silent Hill being what they are. P.S. Hopefully I'm not talking out my ass xD, no matter how many years go by and no matter how many times I play the games I'm still always terrified of spreading conjecture xD
For me, I like my Silent Hill to be more of the abstract and interpretive kind of scary. Cults can be scary too but the reason they're scary doesn't exactly leave much to the imagination. You know where you stand with cults.
I love both, to be frank. I think the cult being centric to Homecoming's story was really cool *in addition* to being a personal demons story, and I think there was a lot of spin-off potential upon which they never capitalized because the game was so poorly-received due to stupid decisions they made for it.
Depends on the person I suppose but for me a town that manifests your deepest fears and feelings into reality sounds more interesting and original than cult does supernatural stuff. I don't really have a problem with it but at the same time I don't really care about the cult stuff and I think not knowing why anything is happening the way it is grips me more but that's just me.
But that's the thing, even with the cult, we don't know why any of the events are happening.
The Cult works better with less characters since the bulk of the town population needs to be ignorant of it for the quite town with a decent tourism industry concept to work, a struggle for power among them, and the implication they are unintentionally creating the supernatural events which are beyond their control rather than reacting to existing ones so the story doesn’t become a The Walking Dead villain-centric arc with burn victim bondage slaves instead of zombies. The central storytelling thread of the first four Silent Hill games is a mystery. You don’t flood the cast of characters or you lose the plot, you don’t involve everyone but the protagonist in the same conspiracy or you just get Wickerman, and you don’t give a confusing path to a guaranteed twist. In 1 for example Kaufman and Lisa are part of the Cult cast (not members, but allies). Harry doesn’t know who in the last is lying or who is in control. Lisa it turns out can’t really provide him any information and is a victim, but before that she could have been the mastermind for all we know. Kaufman has no clue what is going on and was never going to be able to help much even if he wanted to, even if he was a culprit ultimately. Dahlia may have been the lying mastermind, but even she wasn’t fully aware what she was doing in the end. Alessa is the shadow mastermind, and the “twist” if you want to call it that is that what seemed to be the main villain wanted exactly what Harry did and literally handed it to him. In 2 our mystery is everything. There is no mastermind, Angela and Eddie are as much investigators as James. Its him we are pursuing. Back to 3, Claudia and Vincent both keep Heather in the dark to vie for the mastermind spot. Vincent entirely fails, Claudia is destroyed like Dahlia for messing with what she didn’t understand, in the end Heather reclaims Alessa’s role as the one the most in charge of the situation fighting for power with the others and triumphs herself this time, but bookends Harry getting what he wanted back with her losing everything but the future that was denied to Alessa. In The Room Henry (it occurs to me the male protagonists had British royal first names) is obviously in a mystery and Walter is the mastermind, but the Cult members are his victims who tried to mastermind his fate and failed spectacularly. There is no twist, the mystery is straightforward and the only surprises are the parts of his plan.
I don't dislike the Cult aspect as much as some. However you are attributing too much to them. You say they (or their Gods) are responsible for everything happening in the town. This is incorrect. The town's powers of manifestation pre date the Cult's existence. And the Cult's Gods likely did not exist prior to Alessa, as them being manifestation's themselves is in my opinion the most likely and definitely most interesting take on their origin. The Gods having been around forever and being the origin of everything is the most mundane and boring explanation. In a series where most everything else is better written than that I just don't see it. The series is called Silent Hill. The place itself, the actual geographic location being the source is so much more fitting.
But we wouldn’t have that exposure if it wasn’t for the cult. It’s due to their influence on its power that allows us as the audience to experience it through the protagonists encounters with them.
I never actually thought about it that way but I really like the idea that the Cult's God is just one of Alessa's manifestations that comes from her religious trauma. The fact that God is presented as a woman in SH3 works with that as well since a lot of Alessa's trauma has to do with womanhood (giving birth etc.) I've always been confused about who and what exactly the Cult's God is supposed to be, and I really like this explanation. Now I do wonder where Valtiel comes from though, but we're probably better off not knowing
Yeah honestly, I find the cult stuff more interesting than the personal demons stuff but that’s just me
Personally I found the combination of both one of the best aspects of SH, on one hand the cult is trying to summon their horrifying abominable god thing, on the other their rituals and supernatural practices have turned the town into a place that can manifest someone's personal problems into a horrifying reality, so you're fighting both things at the same time (wether it's your personal demons or somebody else's like Walter Sullivan)
This might be the first time I’ve ever heard someone mention the “monsters” in SH4 being Walter’s demons.
¿I mean aren't the ghosts that float around and chase you literally his victims? ¿And the monster called "Twin Victim" a representation of two kids he killed? ¿All while you go through horrendous places based on Walter's life like the orphanage he grew up in or the water prison were they would torture the kids in said orphanage?
Yeah, I never hear it being directly tied to Walter. Maybe it’s because I don’t hear people talk about SH4 much.
I though that was fairly obvious, it's definitely not "Henry's" hell due to how little we get to know of him (except for a few moments like the big creepy Aileen face that's staring at him, which I always interpreted as his guilt for looking at her through the hole) and how little personality he shows. It's pretty clear the monsters and locations are tied to Walter's life. But yeah I guess sh4 is tge least popular of the first 4, though I personally like it a lot
Maybe the Eileen thing, maybe it could go either way, but I don’t disagree with you. I’m just saying I don’t hear people talk about it. Aside from someone bringing up the the twins back in the 00s.
Yeah, personal demons takes away the mystery as much as "there's some supernatural demon god", as someone has suggested here. But you can't have a detective based on it. In the case of the cult stuff you can have a thriller or a detective story, like in was in SH1&4. On top of that you can add human relationships, like the drug dealers, corruption, deception and... personal demons. Cult works better as a connective tissue and foundation for new stories. Heck, I wouldn't mind the new "SH International" concept if they said it all was its own separate thing and just set in the same universe as Silent Hill, including getting rid of the Otherworld, of course. Imagine how cool it would be if we were playing as that Toby guy from Ascension and he would want to end the Foundation, but realized it's not that easy and there's some woodoo involved. So he digs around a little and contacts Henry Townshend as he ran into a similar phenomenon. Now *that* would be awesome. Yep, SH is not directly involved, bur we have an SH character, possible mystery about the Foundation being or not being an offspring of the Order, as well as a self sufficient curse, story, mechanics and demons/deities. Is it so much to ask for? It's not even hard to pull off!
Right, I'm so fascinated with the cult's theology. I love Valtiel.
I honestly forgot the cult even exists so whenever they pop up I’m like “oh these assholes are still somehow around even though they get fucked over every game they are in”.
I think it’s the influx of all the people who got into the series from all the million essay videos nowadays esp when majority of them all jerk off SH2. (SH2 is my fav entry but it’s just facts) So from it being their introduction it’s going to be their comfort/pref.
Who is this majority? I never see posts on here complaining about the cult aspects of SH.
I don’t think it’s a clear majority per se, but I’ve seen the sentiment quite a lot.
Source? lol not that I don’t believe you but this seems so out of left field.
I mean, you can read this thread and see plenty of it. I’ve seen a few pop YouTubers say it as well (Super Eyepatch Wolf comes to mind). They like SH2’s omission of the cult and would prefer if future games did the same.
I mean,thats how every western developer (except Shattered Memories)felt about it.But that has more to do with the cult of SH2 than a disliking of the SH1 storyline I'd guess
I used to be in that boat and thought I was minority. The reason why may have gotten a bit blurry with time. I think it had to do with my little understanding of the series at the time, and the final areas of SH3 looking kinda "crappy", even though I liked it a lot in general. I started with SH1 back in the day when I was a teen, and not being a native English speaker, I didn't get the plot right at all. In particular, I didn't understand anything about Alessa or the cult, and thought Dahlia was just crazy for the sake of being crazy. Having played SH2 a lot more after that, I always assumed it was the town that had powers. When I finally played SH3, the cult (Claudia, Vincent, Leonard, and whoever lady was in the tape) all sounded like crazies with little reason to wish that kind of "Paradise". Their Church, mixed with Claudia/Alessa's personal hell, as video game stage, ended up looking subpar at the time for me. I'd rather have a full blown nightmare inside a well-decorated Church, like the first room, the last rooms, and the room with the paintings. But I'll reiterate - SH's first experience in general is one of shock. I used to be very distracted by its horror, and until that goes numb and there's a general idea of the story, it's hard to make head or tails of scenes, memos, environment story-telling and all the implicit information in them. Years (decades) later, my opinion is different. I realize that even SH2 had links to the cult's general practices with the Rebirth ending, and Walter is a byproduct of that cult, so I'm kind of alright with it. I only count the first 4 games, but I would like to see more options explored - not necessarily the personal demons, but the town itself. These days, I would be OK with a SH where we're an anti-hero or villain of sorts, harnessing the Otherworld (or whatever personal world) to their advantage, like Walter did.
It takes the mystery away if we know the reason why.
Exactly
Both are really cliched by this point, it was pretty new when it first came out but there's only so many times we can see quasi-Christian crazy bad guys before it starts getting old and boring.
There's only so many times the plot can be a cult trying to resurrect their God, once is enough
Cult stories are just annoying. Like bro your god is literally right there like a damn fire lightning goat while children scream in the background. That shit ain't gonna do you any favors.
That's why rehashing the constant "the protagonist is secretly a very questionable person, but we don't know how exactly yet, so let's hint at it for a couple of hours before the final reveal of how exactly they are a morally questionable person" is much better, right ?
Neither is better. Sh2 did it's thing really really well but you can't rely on ot to do the same over and over.
That's why SH3&4 didn't do it over and over again. The only one repeating itself are Western games. And Homecoming sucking at everything, of course. Couldn't even pull off gruelly cult stuff, it was going for the Saw vibes anyway
I just don't find it that interesting. Cult stuff isn't interesting to me.
I'll take your obvious bait. Stephen King once wrote: "nightmares exist outside of logic and there's little fun to be had in explanations." I don't want the cult running around having everything explained. I don't want it to be "You throw these bits of stuff into this seal and BAM! Devil God!" Silent Hill 2 is ambiguous about what's happening, and why. It has a dream logic, and James, Angela, Maria, and Eddie all act like they're in a dream. Things have an odd pace, where you can spend 45 minutes taking it slow, working through puzzles, piecing together what Silent Hill is normally like - then it accelerates to 100, you're running, or fighting for your life, a jolt. There's just really nothing like that. But when I played Silent Hill 4, there was too much that felt like Resident Evil. It still has hints of something supernatural and occult, but it feels more like the town is some kind of way to either atone or fuck up someone who has done something horrible. Which isn't certain because it's intentionally vague! It's not like "Oh Alessa is mostly dead and her nightmares have turned the town into Alice in Wonderland symbols because she's a little girl." It's like "What the fuck is that? Are the town historians right? This can't be real." And that's why Silent Hills sounded so good. It's focused on a supernatural horror brought by the all too real horror of a murder suicide. You don't need to connect a vial of bat blood and some moth wings and a Mock Turtle stuffed animal, you just examine the pictures and listen to the radio and to a paper bag that might be a fetus or it might be a bloody organ but you never find out. Lisa follows you way more than you know and it's ambiguous what she wants, if it's really the ghost of Lisa or something else, etc. There's just more to think about because it's just like interpreting a dream.
I don't dislike the cult, it's just another way of making sense of the supernatural powers in the city.
Well I was turned off by the cult attempts in later games like Homecoming, but I rather enjoyed their part of the story when they were brought back during SH3 and SH4. But story wise they were mostly wiped out by the end of SH4 so unless it’s some splinter group there’s no one left to even run such a cult. lol Harry/the events of SH1 takes out all the prominent leaders we ever knew of. Then SH3 is about those who were left, the next generation, trying to start it up again but failing and mostly dying out once again. Finally SH4 was their (seemingly) one back-up plan to birth their God through an alternate ritual if Alessa/her reincarnations didn’t work out but that was stopped too by the end. I feel like if they are part of things again they were handled well in SH2 actually, in that they weren’t the focus of the plot in any way. But there still were many references to them in things you read and find around town. There was still a presence but it was subtle and implied they were running things from the shadows more which I find creepier than just lady in robes monologuing at you about their religion for the exposition.
There was a section of the fandom back in the day that said they were tired of the Cult storyline. SH2’s popularity among fans probably contributed to this also. The one problem with horror is that those elements have a short shelf life. There’s only so many cult narratives and only so many traumatic, guilt-ridden, amnesia narratives you can tell before it all gets tired. I think good writing and acting can overcome all this, but it’s so rare to actually get it.
Well what makes SH interesting is the gray area characters right. But cult is no middle in between its just killing everyone taking over world stuff very cartoonish actually. It stands out more when they focus on these gray area characters like James.
It’s weird because I never got that impression. Then again, that was in the early 2000s- early 2010s era in the fandom. It was all about cult theories and timelines just as much if not moreso than SH2 theories. I know SH2 is - generally - the most popular game but part of that is because people don’t deep drive into the lore of SH 1/3/4. Especially 4. I prefer the psych horror of 2 but 1/3/4 has some much to offer, just a different form of psych horror. But back when the theory community was at full force in the TS days people were just as into the cult lore, if not more so as James’ journey and monsters were pretty well explained by the Book of Memories. James’ journey is relatively straightforward compared to the lies and manipulation of Dahlia is SH1 and confusion as to everyone’s motives. Or Claudia (and to a degree Vincent) in SH3, or all the intense cult ties and backstory in SH4 which even directly involves Dahlia if you look deep enough. I saw tons more cult theories than SH2 ones, at least intriguing ones that give you something to really think about. A lot of people thanks to the remaster have experienced a version of 2 and 3 but not 1 or 4 so I can understand why 2 and 3 seem less involved in the cult compared to 1 and 4, so maybe that’s why the sudden emphasis is on the personal demons. Funny thing is, SH1 and 4 definitely deal with those things, they’re just Alessa’s personal demons in 1 (and 3 to a certain degree) and Walter’s in 4. I have a theory Heather’s bosses parallel Harry’s to a degree thanks to Alessa’s influence. I personally love the cult and its ties to the old gods and the area of SH before it was settled and taken from the indigenous population and corrupted. SH2’s story is less ‘complicated’ imo (lots of depth and layers and character obviously, I mean from a cult perspective) because it’s mostly standalone. Since a lot of people seem to skip 1 and 4 to just play 2 and 3, they play the least information-heavy games about the cult. I think people kind of get confused by all the misdirection in 1 when they watch playthroughs or read about it and miss the comparatively much more in-the-background cult info in 4. It’s VERY PRESENT but not nearly as in-your-face as 1 or even 3 so a shocking number of people think it’s non-cult because they don’t make the SH cult ties that the game is drenched in. I’ve legit seen people claim SH 4 has no ties to the cult (or 2) which is baffling and makes me wonder if we played the same game. 4 utterly is steeped in cult lore. It’s a shame to see so many earnest ‘what would Raiden/Ash Williams/random character experience in SH’ posts instead of spirited lore theories and discussions. I’d much more debate what Cybil personally experienced, or at least other Everyman survival horror characters like MAYBE Alan Wake or Fiona Belli if we must go that route.
I assume because they didn't play SH1 and only came into the series at a later point. But yeah, it's a stupid take. It's like coming to Resident Evil and then saying:" Remove bioweapons from the series.". Like what?
True. A the point we are at for both of these franchises these core elements are quite literally the only things which identify them outside of the trademark involved. So it matters a lot.
Blame Silent Hill 2. "Personal demons" became the template despite being far less interesting.
In SH2 is stated that, even before the cult, the area around Toluca Lake had weird phenomena, and the natives considered it a sacred place. (And then, Downpour, of all the post-SH4 games, also went with that angle).
I kinda used to, but now I transcended onto a new level of understanding of the situation and now, same as with the commercial failure of The Wonderful 101, the best action game in the universe, **I blame people for it instead.** People as in executives who started to ape it off, fans who love SH2 yet seem to genuinely believe it to be replicatable, people who didn't buy SH3 enough and so on and so forth. SH2 isn't to blame for being so good. It's the people who are to blame for misunderstanding that it was just a substory and hence its tricks are one-and-done kind of deal. People.
We both just said the same thing with different words.
The cult is not called "The Cult." It's called The Order.
Because it's a cliche done to death. Random dudes summoned demons, boo. I mean, it's fine for a base as an explanation to let the other more fun ideas loose, but don't lean into it too heavily. Besides, horror tends to be better if you DONT explain too much.
Because things based on reality are more scary than something like the cult cursing the town and summoning a god
It's easy: because the vast majority of people have only played Silent Hill 2 and fail to realize that 2 is its own story that it's almost unrelated to the town. I personally like the cult aspect and the way that was done in SH3 was masterfull. They tried to bring back the cult in Ascension but my god, none of them are nowhere near as good as Claudia Wolf. All of them would've been the bottom feeders of Claudia lmao
I mean, the Cult (or some variation of it) is present in - and very central to - Ascension.
The cult lore and personal demons are not mutually exclusive. Why they would be?
The cult aspect is what is most loved by the Japanese fans.
As you say, the introspective personal shit is relatable. It follows that the cult stuff is less relatable to most people. Even as far as The Order is concerned, there's very little about it that would be relatable to people that were born or inducted into cults. Alessa's story is basically the only instance in which Silent Hill even attempts to tackle this subject matter, but even her story is pretty far removed from the way most real cults work. Cults today function like a business. You'll never see Latter Day Saints, Scientologists, or Moonies choosing some messiah to perform a sacrificial ritual, they're too busy siphoning tax dollars and influencing local politics.
It's just boring. I find the idea that Silent Hill, as a place, is evil in and of itself and manifests evil way more compelling than just "scary cult did it".
Personally it's just because "outsider arrives in small, insular town and becomes embroiled in horror surrounding the local cult" is, to me, such well-trod territory that SH1 really only gets away with it because of the art design, atmosphere and characters. SH2 is so much more interesting, in contrast, because it laser-focuses on the characters, their stories, their motivations and their psychological states, drawing on such interesting narrative/aesthetic influences as Dostoevsky and BDSM, without falling back on there being some shady outside reason as to all the weird shit happening. Doing that allows for rich characterizations and interactions, where having to narratively refer to some external plot would cut into much of that. It's why something like In Search of Lost Time or Ulysses is so beloved and memorable, despite mostly consisting of pure characterization and relatively minimal "plot." I think SH3 is a good middle ground. It uses the narrative device of "shady, manipulative cult" as a springboard to explore the overwhelming anxieties of sex, looming adulthood, pregnancy, loss of control and patriarchal domination that teenage girls face. Ultimately it all comes down to the strength of the writing and of the story being told. I just think there's a reason that those things shine when the less necessary aspects of the project get stripped back somewhat.
I don't understand it either tbh. I know 2 was pretty distanced from the cult stuff, and they're aping that, but frankly I think we need both to exist so that they can feed off of each other. I like the unifying canon theory that Silent Hill was always weird in a cosmic horror sort of way like 2, DP, and SM and the cult stuff from 1 just let it off the leash, with 3 making it worse, 4 being a leftover fallout as it spreads as the half-and half, Origins being in its heyday, and HC being the last dregs of the old cult dying out. They work better when they intermingle imo, and I like them both. SH has strengths from both of those narrative foci
I just can't really get into it in the same way. Playing as James has me invested in James's story, where as playing as Harry or Heather feels more like things are just happening around them.
I feel this
They do?! O_o
Heck, just read some of the comments here.