The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - FREEMIUM LIVE： Journey to the East #0 ｜ Silent Hill

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to this the very first episode of our brand new series journey to the east

00:00:06.600 i am your host and i am very very happy to welcome samson to the table this is the first time that

00:00:13.420 we have been able to sit across the table from one another like this samson has already made

00:00:18.580 his debut on brokonomics showing his face but for those of you who haven't watched that yet

00:00:23.920 this will be your formal introduction yes hello everyone you probably know me from arena chat

00:00:29.100 or from the mystical voice behind the camera if you haven't already watched dan's brokonomics where

00:00:34.000 i talked about warhammer um intentionally got you all very angry by my making things ever so slightly

00:00:40.740 incorrect making things up no no no no i wouldn't dream of that no i don't know what we're talking

00:00:46.800 about uh no i'm here in the flesh now so get used to it yes and uh we decided we wanted to do a series

00:00:54.500 following up comics corner which obviously i used to do with connor uh but not exactly just doing

00:01:00.280 the same thing again and so we decided because we both have a mutual interest in the pop culture that

00:01:05.620 originates from the east particularly japan to focus it more on stuff that was coming from over there

00:01:11.620 and we didn't just want to make it purely about pop culture so as a broader view this series will be

00:01:17.300 looking into a lot of stuff regarding the history and general culture of japan as well and i'm learning

00:01:24.760 a lot about it and we hope that if you join us on this journey that you will learn a lot as well i'll

00:01:29.820 be learning as we go samson's already a lot more well informed on a lot of things yeah i am so we've

00:01:35.920 we spent a little bit of time in the office talking about various weeb things like i've recently as as

00:01:40.900 people might know they might have seen on twitter i've been watching all dragon ball recently and it's

00:01:44.400 i've been like i've been like a 12 year old kid watching it on um bloody what's the name of that

00:01:49.900 what's the name of the television show the pro um america uh adult swim oh yes uh what everyone

00:01:57.720 seemed to watch dragon ball when they were younger and i certainly did i somehow missed it even though

00:02:03.580 i'm the probably the biggest weeb that most people in this office have ever seen um i haven't watched

00:02:08.860 it i can't believe you'd missed it up until this point but that stay tuned for that for a few

00:02:12.320 we will do dragon ball because while we are trying to make it more about broad culture

00:02:16.600 obviously we'll be looking at a lot of pop culture as well i'll probably be finishing off

00:02:20.660 the berserk series that i started with connor way way way back when with comics corner um so we

00:02:27.560 decided we wanted to do this series we weren't going to start with the silent hill episode but

00:02:32.420 we decided given that it's halloween given that we want to start it off with a bang and given that it

00:02:36.940 is a very prestigious popular well-regarded japanese series that's also experiencing a big

00:02:43.180 resurgence at the moment with all of these new games that have been announced there's a new film

00:02:47.460 coming out in january and um and because also this is uh frankly long overdue from me we thought that

00:02:56.080 we would start it off with this one and make it free for all of you wonderful folks at home regarding

00:03:00.700 it being overdue i would like to say to one very special person in particular general hi ping a

00:03:09.060 former subscriber i think he's a former subscriber i don't know if he's still around i hope that he is

00:03:13.880 and i hope that he gets to see this i know that this is three years late i'm really sorry that it took

00:03:19.420 this long for those of unaware general hi ping was been requesting for a silent hill 2 video for years

00:03:25.660 at this point i never got around to it but in preparation for this i have not only played

00:03:32.700 silent hill 2 and i played it last year so samson's played it a lot more recently than i have but in the

00:03:37.600 weeks leading up to this i played silent hill 1 silent hill 3 and half of silent hill 4 as well

00:03:44.540 and so i'm hoping to make up for time lost with this so again why is it that we wanted to cover

00:03:52.360 silent hill outside of it returning to the zeitgeist well there's a few reasons that i've

00:03:56.920 noted down for myself here which is that first of all it's a very japanese game series which is ironic

00:04:01.680 given that most of the games are set in america particularly small town new england america because

00:04:07.040 the town of silent hill itself is set in maine um it's very very japanese somebody in the office asked

00:04:14.260 me what does silent hill have to do with japan and i had to tell him that it's a japanese series

00:04:18.380 developed by and published by konami the other thing is it's very very heavily influenced by western

00:04:25.840 media and can in that way act as a bit of a bridge between east and west and show some of the

00:04:32.380 cultural uh differences whilst also showing the way that the japan perceives the west through its own

00:04:40.080 media it gives that perspective and also it's probably the second bigger biggest horror gaming series

00:04:46.560 of all time next to resident evil which is also a japanese series which we'll probably cover again

00:04:53.400 in the future as well somewhere further down the line and i also wanted to take an opportunity because

00:04:59.740 of its reintroduction to the zeitgeist to examine the whole phenomenon of silent hill as a cult series

00:05:06.800 because i do think that it has somewhat of a mythology around it both in terms of cult both literally

00:05:12.780 literally and figuratively yes yes so it has a cult narrative around it particularly regarding the development and creation of the series as well as its general perception in the public mind at this point because many of you know that silent hill 2 received a remake which we'll cover later on and just so that to let you know we're not giving ourselves a deadline cutoff point at 4 30 for this stream

00:05:42.620 uh we know we've got the webinar later but we'll go as long as we need to and as long as we can to cover everything here

00:05:48.900 but the second game has had a remake last year which brought a lot of people back into the fold because it had been a dead series for a long time

00:05:59.000 but it had also particularly the second game became become a very very popular series and there was a strange paradox generated by this

00:06:07.740 which was the guy whose favorite game is silent hill 2 despite having never played it

00:06:15.700 because these people only know the series through its cult popularity a lot of them were too young to play the series when it first came out

00:06:24.020 the first game is now 26 years old silent hill 2 the most well regarded is now 24 years old

00:06:29.960 and so he only has experienced it through video essays i wasn't even born when the first game came out

00:06:37.600 that's disgusting yeah that's disgusting and disturbing i was three i was three when the first game

00:06:43.960 came out but because of that like i say they've experienced it through video essays telling them

00:06:49.200 what a great game series it was particularly how the second one was the most amazing thing ever

00:06:54.040 and so i think that one of the reasons that it's become so popular with the remake is that a lot of

00:06:59.620 those people who missed out on the series got to experience what they think is the second game

00:07:05.140 through the remake and i'm going to have a lot of critical things to say about the remake and the

00:07:10.220 other recent game that came out in the past two months silent hill f because i want to analyze this

00:07:15.240 series as a whole as much as we can so this whole thing was an opportunity for me to play through all of

00:07:20.620 the original games familiarize myself with them and their creation and to properly critically examine

00:07:26.340 their legacy and impact as well as observing the current resurgence samson in preparation for this

00:07:33.120 has done a fair amount of research as well and has played silent hill 2 which you can see on stream

00:07:38.720 and we actually have the stream up here the first episode of it so that we can use it for reference

00:07:45.460 as well yeah don't forget don't forget to go and subscribe to my personal youtube channel here

00:07:50.220 i've i've done a small streaming series six parts um playing through the entire well my first ever

00:07:57.200 playthrough of silent hill 2 um i got one out of the four potential endings but we will cover that

00:08:04.240 later um it was very very good i've never enjoyed a horror game quite like this one every other horror

00:08:12.320 game in the past has never never got me in the feels never made me feel proper emotions before

00:08:18.880 because i've always found things like oh this is predictable jump scare coming up now i know what's

00:08:24.580 going to be behind this corner this game none of that it it was it makes me feel sad for what was

00:08:32.000 what once was in the gaming industry they are well regarded for a reason and i'll just say it straight

00:08:39.900 away right now uh we're going to be reviewing silent hill 2 and analyzing it and discussing

00:08:45.780 our thoughts on it but this will be a full spoiler stream straight from the off so if you do want to

00:08:51.800 play these games without having the entire narrative and lore behind them spoiled then you can do what

00:08:57.880 we did i know that the first four in particular are more difficult to get a hold of these days i'm

00:09:03.060 lucky enough to own physical copies of all of them but i got them 10 11 years ago from cex in england

00:09:09.540 when they were still available for about 10 or each in the box disc versions i had a look over the last

00:09:16.420 two weeks as i've been playing it i was like oh i'm really enjoying these i should buy physical copies

00:09:21.140 too um chat can you guess how much a copy of silent hill 2 on playstation 2 is now worth

00:09:27.060 i'll give you about a minute we'll continue yes um but if you do want to experience them they're not

00:09:33.880 that difficult to experience these days if you have a playstation 2 emulator i was using one that

00:09:39.820 even worked on my macbook called pcsx2 that you can use and i have to recommend as well if you're

00:09:47.240 looking for the rom that you obtain one legally you should not look for a rom illegally you should get

00:09:53.280 one off of a physical copy etc but they're not that difficult to um to play these days if you know

00:09:59.240 how to get hold of them and as experiences particularly the second one they are well worth

00:10:06.400 it so uh shall we see what some of the people are suggesting well we have 40 dollars from hectarex i'm

00:10:13.240 sorry that's a bit of a lowball spartacus i think they were 200 pounds that is a little bit too high

00:10:18.600 um california refugee i think you're getting closer to the mark with 100 dollars um i don't

00:10:24.860 know what 250 aud means i know it's australian money but that's a fiat currency so i can't really

00:10:30.180 that isn't i can't translate in my head that's like robux to me yes uh so sam weston has stated

00:10:36.420 anywhere from 150 to 200 pounds i didn't look into this let us know samson what is it no it on ebay

00:10:43.440 it was going from anywhere for like 70 quid for a tattered copy with really damaged bots all the way

00:10:48.280 up to like 150 for like pristine condition um there were some for more some for less but um the ones

00:10:54.360 that looked like legitimate um listings were between 70 and 120 yeah and i got a bargain on it 10 years

00:11:02.440 ago getting them all for a tenner each and i didn't think that it was going to be an investment i just

00:11:06.900 wanted to play the games and eventually got around to it um so that's how much they're worth these

00:11:12.620 days but again you can still play them if you know how it's not very difficult and so i really

00:11:18.760 really do recommend that you play through these games with as little context as possible so that

00:11:24.540 you can experience them fresh yes i i for content for context i played silent hill 2 for the first

00:11:31.340 time ever on this on this little playthrough again go check it out on my channel the i hadn't i knew

00:11:36.440 nothing about silent hill 2 i hadn't watched the films i had never played any of the games i hadn't

00:11:40.420 watched any reviews on youtube um that was the best way to do it not knowing anything about silent

00:11:46.760 hill is the perfect way to start so if you're watching this for the first time and you've never

00:11:52.620 consumed a bit of silent hill 2 content or any of the silent hill games for that matter just go and

00:11:57.380 pick one up um yes scary horror game but you're in for the time of your life playing those so yeah horror

00:12:03.880 games aren't for everybody but these are well worth playing as an emotional experience as well

00:12:08.020 so before we get into the direct creation of the games and the narrative around the team

00:12:13.560 team silent that created the first four games at least within the mythologized narrative that we have

00:12:21.260 these days we should look into the actual inspirations for them because silent hill is quite wonderful in

00:12:28.300 that we know a lot about the direct inspirations and lore of the series because the original creators

00:12:35.820 have come out and told us a lot some of the creators can be found on twitter like masahiro ito

00:12:41.860 and other uh and other people such as uh for instance uh hiroyuki owaku who was the writer and

00:12:48.880 co-writer for the first three games they've been very candid with their influences they've been very

00:12:53.560 candid with what was driving them what their intentions were with making some of these games and

00:12:58.820 you can find it very easily online for instance on the wiki page the inspirational works of silent

00:13:03.640 hill and also what is easily the silent hill law master bible for anybody who wants to know what's

00:13:11.540 going on in these games in great detail is the book of lost memories now this is really interesting this

00:13:17.860 came out in 2003 alongside the third game and what it was on the japanese copy of the game guide you

00:13:26.800 could flip it upside down and the second half of the book would be this the book of lost memories

00:13:32.860 which was a lot of context and detail about things like the history of silent hill the maps of silent hill

00:13:40.580 explaining some of the characters explaining the thought process and everything behind them and that

00:13:45.920 was originally only available in japan in japanese but some absolute hero got a hold of a copy

00:13:52.660 translated it into english and put it all up online so you can find online the book of lost memories

00:13:59.840 if you just google it and it will give you everything that you need to know as regards the creation and

00:14:05.300 lore of the first three games while still keeping things vague enough to maintain their interest this is

00:14:12.760 one of those series as is appropriate for horror that keeps a nice level of vagueness around the details

00:14:21.240 some of the details are still very fuzzy but by maintaining the mystery it just keeps you coming

00:14:28.620 back it keeps the discussions going very much like one of the series that one of the filmmakers that i'm

00:14:36.440 a huge fan of who was a big influence on this which is david lynch and we can go through some of the

00:14:41.520 i mean if you click on inspirations in films the first thing that comes up is david lynch and

00:14:47.380 particularly relevant for the second game which we'll get into deeper into this conversation you

00:14:53.700 have lost highway was a huge influence on it eraser head was a big influence on the kind of style and

00:15:00.180 atmosphere that they were building blue velvet was a big influence on the suspense and the sexual

00:15:06.880 erotic psychologically disturbing parts of the second game and twin peaks and just to list off some of

00:15:13.940 the other things that you can imagine and guess at from the um from the inspiration that he gets from

00:15:20.360 the games get from david lynch you know you like like in twin peaks you have a mysterious u.s town

00:15:26.000 with multiple sides and layers you have this idea of the dream logic where you're going between

00:15:31.260 different layers of a dream and with that you get the surrealism the transitioning in kind of

00:15:36.920 mulholland driveway excuse me from one scene and place and time to another without much logical

00:15:44.880 connective tissue in the same way that you do in a dream uh there's the strange and otherworldly

00:15:50.220 performances given by the voice actors and motion artists who are capturing everything

00:15:54.620 and from from a lost highway in particular the narrative of the second silent hill hinges around

00:16:03.500 the use of videotapes to reveal an untold secret to the main character as a kind of revelation

00:16:13.080 and it also influenced the idea of a dual love interest with this kind of light and dark motif so

00:16:19.500 i will say once again this is your final warning this videotape stuff will be massive spoilers when

00:16:25.860 we actually start talking about it so this is your final chance chat oh yes your final chance this

00:16:30.060 video this videotape is probably the biggest spoiler out of the entire game so if you really don't want

00:16:34.760 to learn spoilers for silent hill 2 pause this and come back later yeah but by listing all of these

00:16:41.860 influences and being so open about them i think one of the interesting things that you learn about

00:16:46.840 silent hill is the breadth of influences that it had and how few of the influences were directly from

00:16:54.440 video games themselves most of what they took as influence for these games were from films they were

00:17:01.020 from literature they were from music one of the big influences is alice in wonderland there's a lot

00:17:06.660 of imagery that goes through going down the rabbit hole so that you can psychologically dig deeper and

00:17:12.000 deeper and deeper into these characters that's a recurring motif throughout it a lot of the puzzles

00:17:17.280 throughout all of the games are all focused around literary tales like alice in wonderland like

00:17:23.100 even shakespeare shows up in the third game yeah which which is the um puzzle you said where you

00:17:29.620 have to know in extreme detail several works of shakespeare which one was that again well one of

00:17:35.380 the that's the third game and it's the first puzzle of the entire game so to go straight into it in the

00:17:40.220 third game it starts off in a shopping mall in small town america and you need to get through a

00:17:46.360 locked keypad door one of the interesting things about silent hill starting from the second game onwards

00:17:51.380 is that you can actually choose a difficulty level not only for the combat but also for the puzzles

00:17:56.940 and if you have the com if you have the puzzle difficulty set on easy when you go into the room

00:18:03.540 with the keypad door you need to get through doors already open don't need to solve it if you go into

00:18:08.500 it on normal mode you need to arrange the works of shakespeare in an order that lines them up to give

00:18:16.720 you a code that's written on the spine that will get you through the door right but that's a really

00:18:23.000 easy way of doing it because you can just see what where the numbers are divided on the spines themselves

00:18:28.400 because it's scrawled in pen or something so you can just line them up without knowing much about the

00:18:33.460 clue on hard mode you get an enormous shakespearean uh monologue as the clue that each paragraph of this

00:18:44.240 monologue gives you a clue as to which shakespeare story and it's quite obscure the way they do it as

00:18:50.420 well and then you don't get a description you don't get the the volumes aren't told to you exactly which

00:18:56.120 volume has which story in it so you don't just go volume one romeo and juliet you get volume one and

00:19:01.880 it gives you a description of say like a tale of star-crossed lovers doomed to tragedy

00:19:06.980 now you need to match these up and be able to logically source source out which is referring to

00:19:15.760 which then put them in order and then you get the code to open the door is basically impossible to

00:19:22.340 brute force the puzzle because it is expecting the same way that the creators of the series had a deep

00:19:30.820 respect for literature both japanese and western because you'll notice a lot of its western literature

00:19:37.720 western films influencing all of this it expects you to have a deep knowledge and appreciation and

00:19:43.960 understanding of literature as well if you want to go that hard with it silent hill is a series that

00:19:50.620 will not only not hold your hand it will respect your intelligence in the way that it tells its stories

00:19:56.600 which is why me knowing nothing about shakespeare um unlike a lot of people in this office i decided

00:20:02.380 well i've decided when i do silent hill 3 at some point in the near future yeah i play the first one

00:20:07.280 first three is a direct sequel to it yes so when i get to that i will not be playing the puzzles in

00:20:12.320 hard mode i played them on normal mode by the way i just after i solved the puzzle i looked online at

00:20:18.760 a walkthrough to see what the hard puzzle was like and i went oh my god oh my god

00:20:25.680 i probably would have been able to figure out but it would have taken me like half an hour and even

00:20:31.160 on normal mode there were some puzzles that required me because they were logic and number

00:20:36.000 puzzles to get out a pen and paper and write things down and figure them out that way really i i was

00:20:42.840 really very impressed with it my silent hill 2 playthrough um for reference was puzzle mode hard

00:20:48.140 because proper horror show goaded me into it at the start on the start the first stream but combat

00:20:53.680 difficulty normal because it was time constraints because i was trying to finish it before this

00:20:56.920 stream but the puzzles were still very interesting and i was very satisfied each time i solved the

00:21:02.240 puzzles um unlike most other puzzle games which i never feel the same sort of sense of sense of uh

00:21:07.840 well yeah achievement yeah yeah yeah and somebody in the chat has pointed out rob has a very good

00:21:13.680 point which is that it was nowhere near as easy to look up the solutions online back in the day in 2003

00:21:19.580 when silent hill 3 came out if you didn't have an already well established knowledge of shakespeare

00:21:25.840 if you didn't have the works of shakespeare on your bookshelf and you didn't have access to an online

00:21:31.720 guide telling you exactly what the solution was you were screwed but again it's that kind of

00:21:38.920 no compromise mentality the uh to uh not holding the player's hand to treating the player as an

00:21:46.040 intelligent person who can figure this out which i i really do respect and again all of the literary

00:21:51.360 all of the film references everything in here uh really does add to the depths and layers that you

00:21:59.880 can find within these because the reference works that it's referring to also if you know them it adds

00:22:06.080 even more depth to it but you can see as well you know stanley kubrick and you've got the creator

00:22:11.020 comments uh comments here by masahiro ito who was the character designer he was the guy who came up

00:22:16.340 with the design for pyramid head probably the most famous and iconic visual from the entire series

00:22:21.620 is pyramid head but that's not his real name is it no amusingly in the in silent hill 2 his actual

00:22:27.100 name is red pyramid thing pyramid heads only a colloquial nickname that the game gives him and uh given

00:22:34.300 that he was only supposed to be a vision specifically meant for james the protagonist of silent hill 2

00:22:40.980 the fact that he's since been co-opted by konami as a mascot for the series and used again and again

00:22:48.000 in parts of the games where he wasn't appropriate because it's not about james sunderland anymore it's

00:22:53.720 about somebody else uh he said in interviews he said well i created red pyramid thing red pyramid thing

00:23:02.880 is what shows up in silent hill 2 all the other games where he shows up that's not red pyramid thing

00:23:08.120 that's pyramid head that's something else that i had no involvement in he has alternatively as well

00:23:13.760 said that he wishes he never created pyramid head in the first place because he thinks that the image

00:23:19.120 of him has been bastardized he has also said that back when he was attached to return to the series in

00:23:25.300 2013-2014 to help develop one of the games that he expected konami would not want him to make another

00:23:33.060 game without pyramid head's involvement so he decided that if he was going to get that opportunity

00:23:37.520 that one of the first things that he would do is kill pyramid head off the first time that you see 0.97

00:23:42.220 him that game fell through so that never ended up happening uh but it is interesting and it will get

00:23:47.500 onto later on the way that konami has handled the franchise to be honest konami in general they are a

00:23:56.020 shell of their former self obviously their gracious leader now no longer a part of the company after

00:24:02.140 various shenanigans uh sony and other people pulled um but to be honest the overuse of pyramid head is

00:24:09.960 almost like a met is almost like the same metaphors that pyramid pyramid head themselves represent in 0.77

00:24:16.960 silent hill 2 which i think we might be able to get onto later oh yes we certainly will but just to

00:24:21.120 go over some of the other ones uh you've got stephen king particularly the mist a lot of people

00:24:26.300 don't know that the game was not originally an original work it was going to be an adaptation of

00:24:31.180 stephen king's story the mist because that's what konami originally wanted from the creators

00:24:36.780 and they just didn't manage to get hold of the rights to it but they kept a hold of the idea of the

00:24:42.460 mist or as it deter as it developed into in the game series the fog as a happy thing to as a happy

00:24:49.120 accident so that they could manage the technical problems with uh really with um having an entirely

00:24:57.320 3d real-time rendered game world that you were existing in which we'll get into in a moment uh

00:25:04.040 you've also got again quite like david lynch there's a small town americana the game is set in maine which

00:25:09.640 is where most of stephen king's stories are are based uh the horror is very very character based

00:25:16.760 particularly in the second one and his pen name his pseudonym richard backman inspired the name of

00:25:23.260 backman road in the game series and let me see if i can if it's on this page because there is a part

00:25:28.860 where they just discuss how the um how most of the names of the streets that you explore in silent hill

00:25:35.560 two and well something one two three four etc are all named after their favorite horror authors

00:25:42.120 including um stan including stephen king with richard backman you've got kunz road which is

00:25:49.060 named after dean r kunz who's one of the authors that they really respect uh one of the other big

00:25:54.120 influences that they have here is the film hellraiser and you can really see it particularly in the first

00:26:01.900 third and fourth games because i tell you what last night i watched the film in preparation for this

00:26:08.120 the 2006 silent hill film starring um sean bean doing an american accent was very very well it

00:26:15.620 barely it barely starred sean bean he was sort of like a it was the most pointless i'm here guys

00:26:20.760 i'm here to set up the sequel the shit sequel that everybody hates you're not going to talk about that 0.86

00:26:26.720 that's that sequel film here at all it's it's not even worth watching i don't think um yeah but uh the 0.95

00:26:32.460 the film reminded me because of how gory and bloody it was that oh yeah these games are really gory but

00:26:41.260 not in the same kind of over-the-top way that like a film like a game like resident evil is yeah it's

00:26:48.220 it's gory in the way that's inspired by hellraiser with the use of body horror uh with the use of a lot

00:26:54.380 of occult symbols a lot of the environments are made literally from flesh and skin it's much less so

00:27:00.360 in the second game because as we'll explain later the other world which is one of the realms that

00:27:06.260 you visit whilst you're in silent hill varies depending on who is projecting their subconscious

00:27:12.040 into the other world so in silent hill one and three because you are experiencing an other world

00:27:19.360 that's projected by the subconscious of a girl who's been in hospital who's experienced severe burns

00:27:26.160 and who has been involved in the cult of the town for a very long time who the cult are known to have

00:27:32.920 committed human sacrifices and engaged in a lot of pretty brutal practices as part of their rituals

00:27:38.180 the first and third games have a lot of that kind of imagery in the fourth game you're experiencing the

00:27:44.680 nightmare of one of the former members one of the dead members of the cult who also was indoctrinated

00:27:51.580 into it from a childhood uh from childhood so you get a lot of that same kind of fleshy gory imagery

00:27:58.240 there the second game you're experiencing the subconscious delusions of a suicidal man who was

00:28:06.120 intending on drowning himself and therefore there's a difference in the way that it's projected

00:28:11.320 because it becomes very waterlogged everything's very drowned and it gets progressively more so

00:28:19.080 the further down the rabbit hole you um well you get especially in the latter halves of the game

00:28:25.600 when everything gets quite literally waterlogged lots of the levels that weren't flooded now are

00:28:31.860 flooded um yes and there's some very very really interesting um environmental storytelling they do

00:28:39.160 with that oh yeah but they they um some of the other influences just to go through one of the big

00:28:43.920 ones one of the really big ones is uh jacob's ladder um which is a film that i have watched it's a it's a

00:28:50.940 good film it's a good film but frankly frankly very disappointing because the ending has no climax

00:28:57.980 it's just a film where the main character goes through a few spooky situations realizes that everything

00:29:05.260 that he sees is a dream and an illusion and then maybe goes to heaven without any big climax where he

00:29:12.360 has to face something about himself or he doesn't he has to overcome and overpower the demons that are

00:29:18.760 trying to trap him in this purgatory that he's in but it was a big influence on silent hill particularly

00:29:25.440 a very famous scene from jacob's ladder where jacob is being carried on a hospital stretcher into a

00:29:31.020 hospital and as he's brought further and further into the hospital the environment begins to change the

00:29:36.720 people who are the patients of the hospital become more and more physically deformed all of a sudden 0.92

00:29:42.240 the walls start to turn to rusted chain link there's gore everywhere and there are men whose

00:29:48.300 heads and it was a very inventive effect for the time heads are shaking uncontrollably to the point

00:29:53.840 where they're just a blur which if you've played the games you can see immediately the transition from

00:29:58.300 one world to another very much used in silent hill the use of rusted and gory backdrops used in silent

00:30:05.580 hill and the use of a shaking head enemies which was at first very specific to jacob's ladder and

00:30:13.840 then into silent hill as well um has actually become kind of a horror staple these days in lots

00:30:20.300 of indie horror games you'll find enemies where their heads are shaking uncontrollably because it

00:30:24.720 looks disturbing and it gives that uncanny valley appearance and then some of the more japanese 1.00

00:30:31.260 influences are things like the ring the idea of using the tibetan book of the dead and cycles of

00:30:39.160 life and rebirth and suffering a lot of the actual spirituality that's shown in the games and is

00:30:45.080 shown through the ordeals that the characters have to go through is very eastern in its philosophy again

00:30:50.500 particularly related to buddhism the ring there's loads of enemies that show up that have the long

00:30:57.160 draping black hair over their faces and the use of videotapes as a storytelling device is not just

00:31:04.700 something specific to lost highway and david lynch it's also something that you can get from the ring

00:31:09.860 uh you've got kazuo umez a horror mangaka junji ito who was potentially going to be involved in pt

00:31:17.680 yeah 11 years ago that was pt is such a shame um again you have a copy of pt installed on your

00:31:23.540 playstation i've been hunting for a long time to try and get my hands on one obviously that's

00:31:27.780 very expensive and there are there are some ways you can potentially get it but junji ito involved

00:31:32.420 in a video game also with gmail del toro as well potentially well i mean he was going to be involved

00:31:38.600 in pt as well but you know we'll get onto it but that got cancelled and also obviously if you're going

00:31:44.520 to talk about the game of it then resident evil and let's just discuss the differences between silent

00:31:51.380 hill and resident evil for a moment so this is mainly between the original ps1 era resident evils

00:31:58.500 and the first four silent hill games after the first four they start to diverge a lot from what

00:32:03.420 they started as and everybody knows that from resident evil for the resident evil series changed

00:32:09.460 a lot but a lot of people think that silent hill was kind of a rip-off a very unique rip-off and the

00:32:15.840 two are kind of competing for the top level horror video game series which resident evil let's be

00:32:21.460 frank comfortably occupies in terms of sales and in terms of its continuity because silent hill was

00:32:27.960 dead for about 10 years and for throughout all of my young adult teenage life there's always been

00:32:34.180 another resident evil game coming out and uh silent hill has always slipped under the radar until very

00:32:39.080 recently when the remake of silent hill 2 came out and everyone was like oh oh i remember silent i can

00:32:45.760 play these games now i remember i remember silent hill now i've officially played silent hill 2 you

00:32:51.580 haven't i'm sorry to break this to you you haven't but either way there are some big differences despite

00:32:57.220 the fact that konami did want a resident evil clone that they could piggyback off of because the first 0.64

00:33:03.360 resident evil comes out is a huge smash success becomes a huge best-selling series for capcom

00:33:08.760 konami want their own right and as well as before that there were other 3d horror games that were

00:33:14.980 very pioneering like alone in the dark but resident evil was the one that really showed that this can be

00:33:19.740 a huge money maker but there are a lot of differences in the gameplay so for instance

00:33:25.180 in resident evil you have a purely fixed camera setup and this is because of the fixed static 2d

00:33:32.960 backdrops that were featured in the first three games silent hill differed because the developers

00:33:39.020 wanted to have a fully rendered 3d real-time background at all times that implements the

00:33:46.080 limitation of having all of the fog to hide the incredibly limited draw distance if you watch videos

00:33:52.840 where they say remove the fog and just run around the town you'll see just how little of the game is

00:33:58.820 actually being rendered at a time and that how the fog helps to carry that illusion but it also

00:34:06.360 obviously helps with the horror by hiding the enemies from you and making you feel more isolated

00:34:11.520 but also because of the fully 3d rendered background while you are not in control of the camera in the

00:34:18.040 first four games or have very limited control of the camera they're not purely fixed camera angles

00:34:24.420 especially when you're running around the town itself they're kind of this floating fixed perspective

00:34:29.780 that follows you and allows for very dynamic camera movements and this can be seen in the very first

00:34:36.300 game one of the first things that you do in the first game to explain the plot very briefly you play

00:34:42.000 as harry mason and he is driving to the town of silent hill with his daughter cheryl who has asked him

00:34:47.900 to take her there for some unknown reason but she says it's important so he does on the way there

00:34:53.200 they almost run over a little girl who looks suspiciously like cheryl and crash the car at

00:35:00.160 which point harry mason wakes up cheryl has disappeared and he needs to go into silent hill

00:35:04.820 so that he can retrieve her and as he does so there are a lot of secrets he finds a lot of revelations

00:35:11.100 as to who cheryl is what the town is why it is the way that it is but the first sequence in that

00:35:18.820 you're walking through silent hill you go down a back alley and as you're going along because the

00:35:24.920 camera has the freedom to move unrestricted it frames and draw it frames the scenes in a way where

00:35:32.760 you're walking down this corridor in this back alley and the camera floats above and first shows you

00:35:40.380 from this kind of like overhead shot that then turns into a bird's eye view and it creates this very

00:35:46.260 disorientating feeling one thing you'll find as you play these games because they can play with

00:35:50.440 the camera camera and you notice this as well is that the camera most of the time when you enter

00:35:58.540 anywhere won't be facing out to what your character is looking at it will be facing the character

00:36:03.660 yeah the camera is i think one of the most it well in silent hill it's one of the most masterfully

00:36:09.600 um done well masterfully masterful uses of cameras to force you into a sort of state of uh extreme

00:36:20.400 anxiety especially when you enter an area where you you're pretty sure there's a monster coming up

00:36:24.760 um there are several points where you're walking along a path or you're walking through a corridor

00:36:31.500 and then the camera angle changes completely suddenly um you were you thought you were in control but

00:36:37.620 the camera has changed therefore you are now walking into the camera whereas before you were

00:36:42.680 walking away from it um so so harry is this showing up on the screen at the moment

00:36:47.140 yeah can you bring this up so this is from samson's playthrough of the second game the second game

00:36:55.060 opens with this wonderful long walk into the town which emphasizes how isolated the town is but also

00:37:02.240 gives you this feeling that you're being watched and to a certain extent because the town is

00:37:07.000 kind of its own sentient entity the town is watching you as you come in and again it highlights the

00:37:14.300 isolation not only of the town but of james himself in the fog while also giving you the opportunity to

00:37:21.760 see how the controls work how the camera will shift from angle to angle as you're going through and this

00:37:28.060 will be a perfect demonstration of what i'm talking about here this is a very famous opening to the game

00:37:34.160 by this point samson hadn't yet figured out how to run yeah so yeah i hadn't figured out the button

00:37:39.500 to run yet so i was i was doing probably what i would actually recommend people do walk along this

00:37:45.920 route immerse yourself in the feeling of the game entirely before i had walked along this i was like

00:37:52.780 i wasn't really sure what was going to happen but everything i experienced on this slow really

00:38:00.320 jankily controlled walk because again tank controls this is before modern

00:38:04.580 controls the funny thing is i pointed this out to you and you refused to do it silent hill 2

00:38:11.080 silent hill 1 is the only silent hill game that you actually have to play with tank controls because

00:38:15.460 it was a ps1 game silent hill 2 was a ps2 game and if you go into the options menu you can choose

00:38:23.020 control schemes now the tank control is listed under 3d if you change that to 2d it will be normal

00:38:29.980 analog stick movement without the tank control so it'd be full ironically enough it'll actually be

00:38:35.520 3d analog stick movement without the tank controls samson refused to do that because he wanted to

00:38:40.620 experience it in full tank control glory but you do get used to the tank controls and this walk as

00:38:47.480 well as everything else that i've said does provide a great gameplay opportunity to get used to how

00:38:52.360 the tank controls work and i would i would honestly recommend you play the entire game of silent hill

00:38:57.700 2 if you play the original version um to play it with tank controls not only does well it's it provides

00:39:05.360 a different gameplay experience on a very base level to things you might be playing in the modern day

00:39:09.160 which just that's just more interesting in general but it also makes everything you do more anxiety

00:39:16.800 driven because you're not used to these old-fashioned style of controls sorry sorry chat sorry

00:39:22.220 sorry for the people who are much older than me in chat um but yeah walking along corridors um

00:39:28.220 walking through town everything through the lens of tank controls is more anxiety driving especially

00:39:35.280 when you're in tight corridors when there's an enemy that you are forced to walk past because you've just

00:39:39.620 deposited all your weapons inside of a box and you can't do any damage to it so you have no choice

00:39:44.360 but to mask the tank that's one of the best parts of the whole second game yeah when the game says 0.95

00:39:48.680 fuck you put your weapons away you will be completely vulnerable yeah you're not allowed 0.98

00:39:53.140 any of the bullets or guns you've been collecting no health packs no nothing um you now have to run 1.00

00:39:58.240 past some mannequins yeah so um i'll just leave this playing in the background as we continue

00:40:04.900 discussing because already hopefully you'll be able to see how the camera is shifting with the

00:40:09.360 character you are not in control of this camera to any great extent it will shift depending on where

00:40:15.020 you're looking but it is floating around you there are they're in the lot more open sections of the

00:40:20.420 game and sometimes in the larger areas of the hotel or in your inside of a building there are ways you

00:40:26.840 can sort of trick the camera into looking where um james is looking but that won't last for long

00:40:33.260 because the moment you go for a door and you walk back out the cameras reset and you are now all you

00:40:38.040 can do is hear the enemies you can't see them you have no choice but to walk into the camera and let

00:40:43.660 the enemies attack you basically well yeah you have to walk into the unknown and it's just a

00:40:48.680 wonderful way of generating tension but uh just to discuss some of the other differences between the

00:40:54.960 uh the resident evil and silent hill stories i've noticed the chat has already said one person said

00:40:59.660 that they reckon reckon they're entirely different kinds of horror i would say yes but people do collate

00:41:05.580 the two because of the more superficial similarities that those earlier games had so resident evil for

00:41:12.460 instance is a resource manager you have to go through and you have to carefully see what resources

00:41:18.860 you pick up what resources you use you have to manage the whole thing so that you're not out of ammo

00:41:23.660 but uh by uh tricky parts of the game uh even in the first games you have to be careful with how you

00:41:30.420 manage saves because you don't just have static save points in the typewriters in the first game

00:41:35.480 you also have ink ribbons which allow you to save so if you don't have any ink ribbons

00:41:40.620 you can't save silent hill 2 and silent hill 1 and the rest of them are not resource management games

00:41:48.080 they in fact give you an abundance of resources the whole way through because the tension that they

00:41:55.240 are generating is not through the micromanagement of the items that you're given throughout the

00:42:00.500 playthrough the tension is from the atmosphere the narrative the characters the monster designs

00:42:07.240 and most and most and most importantly akira yamioka's amazing music and sound design if you

00:42:15.880 play these games play them because even if we explain everything that's going on there's no substitute

00:42:20.860 for playing them yourself play them in a dark room with headphones on so you can experience the sound

00:42:27.740 design and the atmosphere in the best possible environment because they are wonderful let's let's just i know

00:42:34.720 you'll be talking over it but let's just have a little one thing one thing i will say before you

00:42:38.240 do that actually no let's let's listen to this first but afterwards it's an open area okay

00:42:42.420 let's uh let's let's go back there's an open area a little bit oh i think i was notions in the fog

00:42:48.040 it's freaking me out ah i'm this is embarrassing not being able to rotate the camera with the right

00:42:55.240 analog stick as well that's painful

00:42:56.720 i can only stay on the path oh if you're listening carefully chat there is a there's droning the

00:43:07.260 footsteps are loud and noises are getting louder unnerving there's a sound coming from the wilderness

00:43:12.760 that you can't you don't know where it's coming from the camera angle change makes it seem like

00:43:17.000 whatever's in the woods it might be watching you yes yeah especially this one where you you're not

00:43:23.320 expecting the camera someone needs to tell harry that i'm i'm actually live playing he said he

00:43:27.580 might watch okay but yeah when it changed from you're looking down on james from the direction of

00:43:36.100 the lake um you're like okay this is fine but then the moment it swaps to looking at you from the

00:43:41.560 trees i was that freaked me out i was like okay this is masterful i i i'd never quite experienced

00:43:50.520 something like that and had to have all of this happening in only like the first 10 minutes of

00:43:54.060 the game i was honestly blown away and that set up with the mystery as well so silent hill 2 the

00:43:59.800 mystery that opens up is you're playing as james sunderland a widower whose wife died three years ago

00:44:06.760 out of the blue he's received a letter from her which is saying to meet her in silent hill where they

00:44:14.000 spent so much good so many good times together before she died of her illness james doesn't know

00:44:22.140 what's going on and so he decides that he's going to go there and try to find her and you're introduced

00:44:27.800 to him in the very iconic opening scene where he's in the bathroom and he's looking at himself in the

00:44:36.980 mirror here almost checking to make sure that he's real pulling his hand over his face so already just

00:44:44.700 from the opening moments you can tell that this is going to be something special and you can see

00:44:50.720 straight away some of the uh the camera angles that are chosen very artistic very atmospheric

00:44:57.280 they're drawing your eye to exactly what the creators want and it's a brilliant building tension

00:45:05.880 i would almost argue that him looking at himself in the mirror and then you the player walking away

00:45:11.100 from it as the very first thing you do is the moment he detaches himself from his past most recent

00:45:19.600 actions and that is the moment he loses himself and well loses him loses his memory we shall say or

00:45:27.360 suppresses it yeah so just to go straight into the narrative here of what's happening uh james's

00:45:35.260 wife didn't die three years ago james's wife died we don't know exactly when but at the very least

00:45:41.840 within the week prior to the events of this game happening and james is the one who killed her

00:45:47.840 the reason that he attributes it to being maybe three years ago that she died is because that seems

00:45:53.820 to be the time when whatever illness that she was suffering from became worse and got too bad for

00:46:00.180 her to be able to look after herself anymore so in the three years after that james has been looking

00:46:06.800 after her had no life bear in mind this is a man in his 20s who was married at a very young age

00:46:13.220 expecting to have a life a very happy and long life ahead of him with his wife and not only is she

00:46:19.660 completely invalid and unable to look after herself but she as the illness gets worse becomes more and

00:46:28.260 more abusive she becomes verbally abusive she has no respect for him and this to be fair is not

00:46:34.380 necessarily her fault she's suffering unimaginable pain she's put in a humiliating situation where she

00:46:41.500 can't look after herself and she's having to stay in hospitals james can only do so much but he was

00:46:47.700 already a kind of a weird guy it said that before any of this happened he was a very stoic

00:46:52.780 no-nonsense kind of stressed out person it becomes overwhelming for him too much for him her illness

00:47:00.260 has already progressed to the point where the doctors don't think she's got much long left 0.96

00:47:03.980 anyway so he makes an awful decision to put a pillow over her face and kill her at which point he's

00:47:12.400 overwhelmed by guilt puts her body into the back of his car and drives to silent hill the last place

00:47:19.260 that they spent together those three years ago where they had good times before her illness got

00:47:24.480 too bad and he intends to drive his car into the lake to luca lake at silent hill and kill himself

00:47:32.580 carrying her body with him in a fit of guilt what he doesn't know is that in the first game of silent

00:47:41.420 hill and you see a lot of the law regarding this and again you can get a lot more background and

00:47:47.300 context to it if you read through a lot of the stuff that's in here like the history of silent

00:47:53.640 hill in the book of lost memories what he doesn't know is that two years before after he'd spent the

00:48:00.420 time there the local cult of the town had attempted to resurrect a god this was part of the first game's

00:48:07.840 narrative and as part of that the town which was already mystical already the site of great magic

00:48:13.740 going back to before the colonial settlers arriving classic native american magic ritual stuff going on

00:48:20.880 here nobody ever said that these games weren't derivative in certain ways um he doesn't know

00:48:27.520 that because of that the town's power has been amplified to the point where if you have great

00:48:33.880 darkness and guilt weighing in your heart then it will project your subconscious onto the world

00:48:40.520 and manifest it so as he gets closer and closer to silent hill he suddenly begins to lose himself

00:48:47.240 to forget his memories and to concoct a new set of memories this idea that she had died three years

00:48:55.120 prior and he'd received this letter and he goes into the town of silent hill and goes on what is

00:49:02.480 essentially as pointed out by the jacob's ladder and silent hill connection a journey of self-discovery

00:49:10.120 and a journey to see if he can redeem himself forgive himself and discover what kind of man he will be

00:49:18.600 before he passes into the next stage of his life whether that will be somebody who can make up for

00:49:24.220 the horrible awful thing that he's done or whether it be somebody who ends up going through with his

00:49:30.240 suicide or maybe even somebody who gives into a new temptation personified by a character that you meet

00:49:37.760 in the game called maria james's wife was called mary maria is a manifestation of james's idealized

00:49:45.040 version of mary which has all of the qualities that he wished that she had she's sexually outgoing

00:49:52.460 she's confident she needs him to rely on her but in a way that isn't completely destructive to his ability

00:50:00.920 to function as an individual as well there is an ending where you leave with her and there are other

00:50:06.980 endings as well there's another ending that's only available on a new game plus where you go through

00:50:12.140 a certain amount of steps and you use the magic of the town to attempt to resurrect mary that's the

00:50:17.900 rebirth ending so that's a lot of the context for the narrative but that bit there that you were saying

00:50:23.640 yeah the character motions the framing of it once you know all of that the first time you play the

00:50:30.340 game it just seems a bit mysterious and confusing and it draws you into the mystery when you know what

00:50:35.380 happens and what has happened before it adds so much more context and if anything the realization of

00:50:42.120 what he's doing in this could to some make it even more horrifying yes which is but i would highly

00:50:48.300 recommend you again play the game first without reading any of the context if you want the best

00:50:53.080 experience then i mean we have to spoil the whole thing oh yeah so it's a little bit late for that

00:50:56.720 yeah but go play the game then go read about the experience uh the everything else and then go and try

00:51:04.500 and get one of the other endings using that um other and we'll get into it but it has a very very

00:51:09.920 interesting system for determining what ending that you get that isn't like most of the games

00:51:14.900 it's actually very dependent on how you play not just follow it's not just find a series of steps

00:51:21.480 open the secret find the secret key that opens this secret door and get this secret item the ritual

00:51:27.460 ending the rebirth ending is a bit like that but the three main endings are not it's all about how you

00:51:33.160 play either way now that we've gone into a little bit of that and explained it explained that i'll also

00:51:39.620 just mention the last thing as part of this journey you go through a series of environments that seem to have

00:51:45.300 a psychological significance to james so first you go through the apartment building as you're

00:51:51.220 traveling through silent hill which seems to have a psychological significance because it's this idea

00:51:56.540 of a disturbed home a home that is no longer safe a home that is no longer warm and inviting it's instead

00:52:05.140 cold and broken and deteriorating and you can i think you got into it later on here here's the

00:52:12.160 apartment buildings this is after you've traveled through the overworld of silent hill and when

00:52:16.640 you're not in the overworld which is drenched in fog so you can't see anything the game makes a

00:52:21.580 wonderful use of pure darkness now you do get a light once you've explored a little bit

00:52:26.980 but um the light only helps so much with the darkness oh here you go yeah right here and one fun

00:52:35.340 thing about this scene which you may not have noticed is that the mannequin that james takes

00:52:41.020 the light off of is dressed the same way that mary was dressed oh okay in the videotapes sorry i've

00:52:47.480 just i've only just seen that because obviously when i first came across the mannequin i was like

00:52:52.020 oh it's just a woman's clothes i've just clocked that the moment you said that because i that's that 1.00

00:52:57.380 is okay that's that has recontextualized a lot already and one other thing you'll notice going

00:53:02.380 through the apartments and across the rest of the environments is there's a lot of corpses that you

00:53:06.580 come across that you can't see the face of properly those corpses are the same model as james

00:53:12.440 including the same face some people have different theories and interpretations and we'll get into

00:53:17.700 some of them but i like to think it's a manifestation of james's suicidal death drive he went there to try

00:53:23.640 and kill himself and so all of the bodies that he's finding are an expression of that desire for him

00:53:29.720 to die as punishment and it's here that you first encounter pyramid head where pyramid head is a

00:53:36.940 representation of james's desire for punishment for judgment for atonement you have a boss fight with

00:53:45.200 pyramid head later on in the game but for most of the game pyramid head is this kind of boogeyman

00:53:50.020 that follows you around and you encounter i think he sometimes put pushes you in the right direction

00:53:55.700 it might appear very shortly actually he may appear he appears through the bars um just at

00:54:01.900 let's see if we can find it it might be here or maybe in the second it was it was right near i stopped

00:54:08.980 streaming on this first ever playthrough so it was here so this was um that's one of the puzzles that

00:54:14.940 you can do yes there is a i don't think you did encounter him in the first stream i either way

00:54:22.380 the pyramid head um which you should know what he looks like but let's see let's see if i can get

00:54:29.760 up a picture of pyramid head on the book of lost memories so you went past him did i oh red pyramid

00:54:36.560 thing there he is so he's the most iconic villain and monster from the entire series and for good

00:54:43.720 reason is that he looks iconic but also what he does in the in the game is iconic um because as well

00:54:50.420 as being a manifestation of james's desire for judgment and atonement and punishment he's a

00:54:56.160 manifestation of james's id in a freudian sense james has put all of his worst the worst parts of his

00:55:05.160 subconscious that have manifested as this creature that sexually abuses the other enemies and you can

00:55:13.160 see in the in the um monster designs elsewhere that james has a lot of sexual pent-up frustration

00:55:21.140 because he spent three years of his life unable to touch his wife sat by her bedside as she was

00:55:27.640 slowly dying so the first one the lying figure the first enemy that you encounter seems to be a man

00:55:34.880 wrapped in a flesh straight jacket which of course manifestation of james's suffering but also this

00:55:40.520 idea that he has no control no control over his own life there's the bubble head nurse which part of 0.52

00:55:47.340 an expression of james's probably sexual frustrations waiting around in hospital for her

00:55:54.840 all he sees is the body the sexualized body of the nurse in a skimpy nurse outfit face completely blank

00:56:03.340 he's that's because that's not what he's looking at yes he doesn't want the he doesn't he doesn't care

00:56:07.660 out the face that is the just outward those nurses across the entire game are sort of the 1.00

00:56:12.520 the out his outward desire for an attractive woman again and you can see that with the mannequin as

00:56:18.960 well which is literally just a pair of legs stacked on top of one another joined at the waist i think

00:56:25.040 james is definitely a leg man yeah man's got taste man's got taste but throughout the game when you do

00:56:31.880 encounter pyramid head the first two times he's abusing mannequins and abusing them in a very 0.86

00:56:37.680 sexually suggestive way and the scene where you're introduced to pyramid head in cut scene

00:56:43.060 is uh directly influencing since but let's see if we can get it up on here it might be i think it might

00:56:49.460 be part two it is in part two i remember so let's see if i can find the scene

00:56:54.480 apologies folks it is around here somewhere oh you sticking your hand into a hole very suggestive

00:57:06.760 it might be further back than this apologies folks oh wait there's pyramid head yeah so this is the

00:57:16.340 first time you encounter him and he's just looking at you through the bars i thought like the modern 0.86

00:57:22.140 gamer that i am that immediately let's get let's get to it let's try and kill him early do some

00:57:26.960 damage obviously i wasted bullets this did nothing because uh is he really there is he really through 0.62

00:57:35.340 those bars but this this is the first expression the first time you do see him and is very freaky

00:57:40.540 it's it's a brilliant build-up as well and then it is around here somewhere

00:57:47.220 apologies folks i should have found a time stamp for when you find uh for when you first encounter

00:57:55.660 pyramid head in the actual cut scene uh because it's a great showcase of uh what was that is

00:58:03.580 oh bloody hell apologies folks it's all right you can carry on talking while i find this samson

00:58:11.440 yes the the first time you see pyramid head you're not expecting well you're what the first thing i

00:58:21.960 expected was boss fight i'm gonna have to start fighting him um this is not that kind of game

00:58:28.900 yes there are boss fights like you would usually expect resident evil has boss fights and other

00:58:34.600 horror games you go you essentially go for a more modern formula where oh here it is here a level

00:58:40.140 go to a boss fight this is exactly what i thought was going to happen in this moment um but instead

00:58:47.540 you are left to uh experience something else entirely so here it is the introduction let's 0.95

00:58:55.020 let's hear your reaction as well see if i'm freaking out what the fuck 0.91

00:58:59.960 oh pyramid head james immediately shuts the closet locks himself away hiding away from his 0.96

00:59:17.380 deepest um his deepest subconscious also a direct reference to the scene where frank is introduced

00:59:24.560 in david lynch's blue velvet you can really see the voyeuristic sensation that james is getting from

00:59:32.580 this which is taken straight from blue velvet which is supposed to be kind of an erotic thriller anyway

00:59:37.560 you can hear that amazing sound design that akira yamioka was amazing at still is

00:59:46.960 again again wearing headphones yeah

00:59:53.560 well what yeah chat wear headphones if you're playing this game

01:00:01.240 shooting of a gun hasn't seemed to done much all right

01:00:09.460 and he just leaves

01:00:15.620 this was the first time i sort of went okay hang on a second

01:00:22.620 i don't have to fight the enemy if they've just appeared maybe this isn't a normal

01:00:27.740 again it's not like resident evil where it's about um resource management yeah it's about

01:00:34.460 the atmosphere of exploring most of what you'll come up across as difficult within the game itself

01:00:41.340 is the exploration and puzzle solving for instance the apartment building has a number of puzzles that

01:00:47.640 you have to solve to get through it and i've already explained how the puzzles can vary depending on how

01:00:53.460 difficult you've set the puzzle level to but that's one of the big that's probably the biggest

01:00:58.280 similarity that it has with resident evil but i would say it's better than resident evil

01:01:05.400 while resident evil has those wonderful expansive metroidvania style maps in the first three games

01:01:12.360 particularly the first and second one where you've got the spencer mansion and the raccoon city police

01:01:17.660 station um this game has a series of smaller self-contained levels which is the woodside apartment

01:01:26.700 obviously as i've already explained it's very important because of the psychological idea of

01:01:31.180 james feeling without a home without anywhere that is comfortable and safe for him anymore

01:01:39.380 you go through brookhaven hospital which is very important because of james's experiences looking after mary

01:01:45.780 while she was in hospital and it also gets reused that exact location gets reused in silent hill 3

01:01:52.780 and to show what a good job they did with the level design in silent hill 3 i was a moron what you end

01:02:00.820 up doing a lot in these games is looking at the map as samson is doing right now to give you an idea of

01:02:07.280 where everything is somehow in silent hill 3 i was an idiot and missed the map ah brookhaven hospital

01:02:14.800 yeah so that what the map lets you do is it is actually that is is a very useful game mechanic

01:02:21.300 really to stop you endlessly going in and out of rooms you've already been through and cleared

01:02:26.300 it that you get the little like red squiggle or the red door effect when you know you've been through

01:02:31.920 to another room um but this isn't it's not just like a regular map in any game where you can just pull

01:02:39.220 it up immediately and it's just subconsciously the map is a physical item that james finds

01:02:43.540 most usually in the entrance way to most of these levels um so if you miss the map you don't get the

01:02:50.760 map you have to manually search and i missed it i missed it however because i'd already gone through

01:02:58.180 brookhaven hospital in silent hill 2 a year before so i was a year removed from playing the game

01:03:04.720 the map was so well laid out and so memorable that i was able to comfortably navigate it

01:03:11.040 despite not having the map of course then there was the problem that it transitioned into a nightmare

01:03:16.740 other world which was different than the nightmare other world that you experience in brookhaven

01:03:21.240 hospital in silent hill 2 and at that point i became completely and utterly lost and was very

01:03:26.240 frustrated but it was all my fault so i can't really hold it against the game

01:03:29.600 you go through the prison which is not only important for james's feelings of judgment and

01:03:37.540 needing punishment but also gives a lot of law as to the cult and history of the town especially

01:03:43.220 because you go through there through the silent hill historical society which is implied when

01:03:49.520 james and mary went there originally that's one of the places they visited was the silent hill

01:03:55.560 historical society so you actually get to the prison through the historic society because within the

01:04:01.160 law the prison was bulldozed yeah knocked over the historic society built on top of where it used to

01:04:07.500 be so you have to go down an incredibly long underground tunnel to get to the prison and then drop down

01:04:14.700 a series of seemingly never-ending holes that also shift the environment around you one of the holes

01:04:21.540 that you find yourselves in has uh this has the um the walls and the environment is sideways yeah so

01:04:28.860 the doors are on the walls and you're facing down into this never-ending corridor that you need to jump

01:04:34.300 into really brilliantly done yeah and it you do it once and then it makes you do it again and again

01:04:40.980 i think four or five times it makes you do it and yeah it is well probably the the most direct way of

01:04:47.780 saying you're in the rabbit hole now and you're you're going to keep going deeper you're not coming

01:04:52.760 back up from this oh yeah it's very alice in wonderland yeah but in a very dark and twisted

01:04:57.260 psychological way through the prison you get to the labyrinth again the idea of a labyrinth james is in a

01:05:03.920 kind of fugue state he's lost within the deepest subconscious of his own mind as is manifested through the

01:05:10.400 town so therefore a labyrinth is very appropriate which also turns out to be where you can find

01:05:16.480 pyramid head's lair yeah so it's very appropriate the deepest part of his mind his subconscious 0.59

01:05:21.800 is where he finds his id those parts of his own character that he's buried the deepest and the

01:05:28.680 final location of the entire game is the hotel which is of course important because that's where

01:05:32.820 they spent a lot of time when they were in the town together and that's where he has gone to find

01:05:37.440 her you the first thing you see on the map when you find the map in the hotel

01:05:40.440 is that mary has written into the room that they stayed in room 302 was it i think so uh saying i'm

01:05:49.780 waiting for you here so it takes you on this journey with james that takes you through these really

01:05:56.440 well done really atmospheric levels where you have to go through these really interesting puzzles

01:06:03.680 to uh to make progress through them and unlike resident evil which sometimes is just they find

01:06:10.700 the right colored key puzzle although they can get more complex than that a lot of silent hills puzzles

01:06:15.680 are logic puzzles and can be as mentioned very very complex puzzles as well and um i have jumped quite

01:06:28.600 far ahead of where i was originally intending to go but that's where that's a that's a lot of the

01:06:33.760 analysis of the actual gameplay of silent hill you do also get other parts of it like the combat

01:06:38.940 is very prevalent throughout it although i'd say the combat you can avoid yes a lot of it you can run

01:06:45.300 past a lot most enemies you can run past enemies can't follow you through doors so if you manage to

01:06:49.840 run past an enemy and make it into a room without an enemy in it you're safe and you can go in there

01:06:54.940 heal up there's healing items everywhere and various tiers of healing items so you can choose

01:06:59.140 how well well you can play very tactically um you don't have to hold on to all of your bullets

01:07:05.260 either because there are bullets everywhere and different kinds of guns with different kind of

01:07:08.380 bullets um you could easily play the entire game without shooting uh until you get to certain

01:07:14.640 boss fights but um yeah it's uh you do not need to play it like resident evil yeah so so you don't

01:07:22.100 have to play it like resident evil also let's just let's just talk about it now right so the combat

01:07:26.560 in the silent hill games has been very heavily criticized right it's very simple and it doesn't

01:07:34.000 look flashy and i think right now there's a horrible tendency for people to see combat in video games

01:07:40.900 because of all the technology that you can work with that looks flashy but is very simple think and

01:07:47.260 this is a big influence on the remakes combat think god of war 2018 most of what you're doing in that

01:07:54.420 game is hitting the r1 button right but it's animated in such a way that there's this big colorful light

01:08:03.240 show there's all of these fancy animations it keeps going into slow motion and then back into normal

01:08:08.680 motion and back again you get big explosions blood and everywhere is flying out from the it tricks you

01:08:14.800 into thinking this is amazing because it looks good silent hill one two three and four the combat

01:08:22.540 is you walk up to an enemy you hold r2 to ready your weapon maybe you hold l2 to make sure that you're

01:08:31.980 locked on and you can kind of walk around them you can strafe with the bumpers you can strafe

01:08:37.600 and then you hit x and james goes like that yeah and the enemy stun locks especially in this game

01:08:49.240 the enemy stun locks yes um and you can use guns as well but the guns work basically the same way they

01:08:54.820 do in the old ps1 resident evil games if you're familiar with those and to be fair as long as you're

01:08:59.760 not encountering three enemies at once um you never really have to use the guns outside of boss fights

01:09:05.620 due to how the simple stun locking works um but the again the game it's not designed around you

01:09:13.680 needing to clear every enemy on every part of the map and you the combat isn't the intention no and

01:09:20.340 there's no apart from the boss fights there's no real rooms that you get trapped in that you have to

01:09:26.460 beat all of the enemies there's not like devil may cry where the walls will start flashing red and

01:09:32.040 there'll be barriers put up at the doors so that you can't leave no you can get around the enemies

01:09:37.400 unless you're specifically in a boss fight and when you are fighting them you don't have dodge rolls you

01:09:43.540 don't have parrying you use spacing you do the strafing or you walk back and forth towards them

01:09:50.340 to avoid the enemy attacks which is helped by the fact that unlike again today where because of games

01:09:56.420 like god of war you have this kind of stick to target sucking motion where the enemy will attack

01:10:02.900 you from half the room away but as part of the animation they will just slide towards you meaning

01:10:09.760 that spacing has nothing to do with it they will attack you from halfway across the room and they

01:10:14.840 will teleport right next to you and you will do the same thing when you attack them your attacks will

01:10:20.280 teleport you closer and closer to the enemy no this is very much in i don't want to say very much in

01:10:26.860 the like dark souls sense where you hit the attack button and your character stays in place and swings

01:10:32.240 the weapon you have to be the one in control of where your character is to make sure you hit the enemy

01:10:38.800 properly you also have to be in control to make sure that you can avoid the enemy's attacks the first

01:10:44.760 boss fight against red pyramid thing i'll start i'll start i won't i'll i'll stop dead naming dead

01:10:50.200 naming him well that's quite ironic dead naming the what red pyramid head is he you don't have to do a 0.99

01:10:56.980 single attack the entire point of the first boss fight is for you to survive so you don't need to

01:11:04.640 shoot your gun once you don't need to swing your weapon once because he is probably going to kill you

01:11:08.660 in two hits um if not one if you've already taken some damage and don't have any healing items 0.81

01:11:13.540 um no the that's not the point yeah and it's not the most fun thing ever it's not the fanciest

01:11:21.140 looking thing ever it's it works it's five minutes of running from corner to corner of the room

01:11:26.860 as he as pyramid head slowly sorry red pyramid thing slowly drags his giant sword towards you

01:11:33.740 and at the moment he starts his swing animation which he can't really rotate mid combat and slide

01:11:39.440 towards you like a modern game you run around him and run across the other side of the room

01:11:43.780 to avoid being hit or at least that's the tactic i used um i mean it's the tactic that works but part

01:11:48.920 of the tension and because it's a horror game it's supposed to keep you scared part of the part of the

01:11:55.000 effectiveness of it is the game does not tell you you cannot kill pyramid head at that point you have

01:12:00.760 to figure it out it induces a sense of panic induces a sense of the combat feels clumsy to a certain

01:12:07.840 extent especially when you're using yeah tank controls as well but the thing that we'll discover

01:12:13.180 with recent combat heavy horror games perhaps even some in the silent hill series is that the more

01:12:20.900 options that you have to fight and the more the the combat system is developed the more incentive

01:12:29.380 you have to fight and the more incentive the developers have to put you in situations

01:12:36.040 where you have to fight and when the enemies simply become little packages of moves like the way they

01:12:45.200 are in a souls game for instance if they just become a set of moves that you have to dodge around

01:12:50.920 and perfect parry and block then all of a sudden they're not horrifying unknowable creatures anymore

01:12:58.880 that you're just barely understanding how they work suddenly it's just a video game enemy

01:13:04.860 and that's not scary you oversaturate the combat experience and it stops being a horror game it

01:13:12.800 starts being an action game one of the good things the mouse is down on the screen yeah sorry yeah one

01:13:18.880 of the good things about silent hill no matter how much people criticize the combat is for the

01:13:24.680 experience that they were trying to develop as much as the combat is not perfect i think it works and

01:13:30.760 aids the experience right i just want to this the stream managed to get to a certain point

01:13:36.180 this specific room there are no there are no more enemies in this room yet i would like people to

01:13:43.600 listen to the music just to get a quick taste sorry this is oh yeah yeah no go for it

01:13:47.560 can you hear that chat 1.00

01:13:52.200 fuck it why not fall straight on 0.99

01:14:00.300 and that's a puzzle room yes that's a puzzle room there's no enemies in there 1.00

01:14:06.820 no the game will surprise you like that sometimes where in a room that is otherwise just like a puzzle

01:14:12.040 room or maybe there's not much in there at all there will be the most deranged akira yamioka

01:14:18.680 soundtracks going on in the background which sounds like industrial noise and gears grinding up and the

01:14:25.080 sound of scraping metal just to freak you out so actually that's something i would like to bring up

01:14:31.880 later on in one of these tabs we have a trailer for the silent hill the new film i think it's called

01:14:39.420 return to silent hill uh which one is it uh i don't know if it is in here i did i did it might

01:14:46.900 be it might be the next link actually uh silent hill 2 uh no no that's one of the other ones uh let

01:14:53.120 me see if i can you you carry on yeah so there's something he says uh when did i hear it is

01:15:00.800 this one harry uh discussing film is it there i'll be i'm just a

01:15:07.340 oh wait no there it is oh you were right you did load it apologies samson i forgot that it was a twitter link

01:15:13.980 yes there we go so let's just watch this very quickly and when it gets to the

01:15:18.180 akira yamioka speaking and and this will be an adaptation of the second

01:15:22.360 this year this is an adaptation of the game we've just been talking about

01:15:25.060 akira yamioka is not only the composer of the first four original game of the franchise

01:15:35.020 he was also the producer sorry about the french guys akira yamioka through his music has given

01:15:41.440 to the game more than just the sound he gave the soul of the series

01:15:46.140 book amontane one one one作目の時から監督に対しては技術もしっかりですけど

01:15:53.760 重いっていうのは最初本当に初めて見たときにマジ感動して本当に今

01:16:00.180 silent hill 知ってますか一視聴者として本当 cg も何も入ってないんですけどこれ本気で

01:16:07.920 感動してこの映画やばいなディファレンスでも僕の音楽が乗っかってるんですけど

01:16:15.600 いやもうこれこの音楽でいいんじゃないかなとかっていうぐらい思いましたけど

01:16:20.000 まあ結局というか作りの作りの監督のやっぱり silent hillに対する

01:16:25.840 you might need to read the subtitles for this

01:16:27.600 すごいリスペクトも感じますし

01:16:29.840 all the fans of the game know by heart the melodies composed by akira yamioka

01:16:34.720 i have a great knowledge about soundtrack but i don't know any other music

01:16:38.800 which could be like the one of silent hill and he directed the first film which actually uses

01:16:46.400 yamioka's music as the soundtrack rather than doing anything new for it and it works way better

01:16:54.560 each sound in this world create an emotion for humans we feel they are comfortable or not

01:17:00.560 so i create music more as a sound design

01:17:09.840 when i created silent hill that sound design concept was at its core

01:17:18.160 that was the original idea let's not use musical instruments but sound design

01:17:25.120 as an instrument as an instrument the life in that sound as a design

01:17:28.800 as an instrument the life in that sound as a design

01:17:30.640 it's strange people feel uncomfortable

01:17:34.400 we use the unique sound energy in each element as

01:17:43.680 sound design it's very different as using music

01:17:46.800 it's very different as using music but it's more original

01:17:50.960 and very effective it reaches people more deeply

01:17:55.680 more deeply those sounds have a lot of energy i think that that gets

01:18:04.960 the gist of it yeah a really fantastic composer one of the legends of the series

01:18:10.320 and the most consistent contributor to the series since the very first game he's been attached since the

01:18:16.640 first game he's done the soundtrack and audio design for every single one of the games except for

01:18:22.800 2012's silent hill downpour that's the only one that he wasn't involved in every single other one

01:18:28.320 he was so yamaoka is the actual one line of continuity in development of all of these

01:18:35.920 silent hill games whether they were developed in japan or whether they were developed in the west

01:18:42.160 but no i don't think that pedro pascal is in this film i was gonna say i might thank god

01:18:47.680 i i'm going to japan next week if i find out pedro pascal is in this film

01:18:53.120 okay i can't get a chimp i was gonna say i'm insert fed post here insert fed post here

01:18:58.800 yes yeah um but um

01:19:04.480 sorry for that the pedro pascal has derailed my train of thought uh but yeah his music is brilliant

01:19:10.800 it's the greatest content continuity uh throughout the development of all of the games

01:19:16.720 and he has also returned for the most recent ones as well that's in january of 2023

01:19:22.880 um it's being directed by the guy who did the original silent hill film which we'll uh maybe get

01:19:28.320 on to in a little bit but while we're on the creation we've spoken a lot about the second game

01:19:33.520 and how it's amazing we'll get on to the ending the specifics of the endings and which we think is the

01:19:38.960 most appropriate in terms of the canon and whether or not it's um uh and whether or not

01:19:46.800 the game has earned its reputation shall we say but while we're on yamaoka and the continuity of

01:19:51.760 developers let's talk about the actual creation of the of the series because we go back into the 1990s

01:19:58.720 with konami wanting something to compete with uh resident evil we want something that will be able

01:20:04.320 to get this new horror market and capitalize off the success of games like resident evil

01:20:08.400 alone in the dark we want our own thing we want an adaptation of the mist and so they get

01:20:15.760 the the team together and um and they make the first silent hill but for for that let's talk about

01:20:21.760 the narrative this mythologized narrative around team silent the supposed developers the supposed

01:20:29.360 core team that made the first four games and i will say preface this by saying i think there's an

01:20:35.760 argument to be made that a certain core team was involved in the first three games but not the

01:20:41.520 first four and they weren't always consistent right so this idea that the narrative is that the first

01:20:48.160 four games were by team silent a development team that was employed by konami and then after the fourth

01:20:55.120 game they were shut down and they switched to american and other western developers that ruined the series

01:21:01.680 well there is a problem with that first of all there was no such thing technically called team silent

01:21:07.360 the games were developed by a development company called k-set konami computer entertainment tokyo and

01:21:15.920 within k-set there were multiple teams at a time working on silent hill games that's why after silent hill one

01:21:25.200 the first game comes out silent hill 2 has two different development teams directed by the same

01:21:31.280 person working on the ps2 pc and then a separate team working on the xbox version both at the same

01:21:38.640 time silent hill 2 and 3 were worked on by two different development teams where they had um uh which

01:21:46.320 is why silent hill 3 was released in 2003 silent hill 4 in 2004 which is why they were released so close

01:21:52.640 to one another because there were different teams producing them all at the same time and the re uh

01:21:57.840 and um if i carry on so the funny thing is that the original director and creator of the first game

01:22:06.000 was a man called keichi toyama keichiro toyama he was the director and creator of the first game

01:22:14.080 and you would think if there was this team silent unified vision for the first four that unites

01:22:19.600 them all together toyama must be the guy who was heading the all of the games right no he left

01:22:27.680 konami after the first game came out he was not involved in any silent hill games except for the

01:22:33.840 very first one funnily enough he was known before silent hill for his work on konami's game and this

01:22:40.480 is the same for a lot of these developers because they had a vision it was only a very small 10 to 15

01:22:45.680 man team and most of them involved in it were known for konami's game international track and field

01:22:53.680 a sports game before they made silent hill yeah now the graphics might be scary if you go back in time

01:23:00.080 and look at them now they are pretty creepy not in the same way and he wanted to produce a pure

01:23:05.440 psychological horror rather than an action schlock horror game like resident evil was which is where

01:23:11.360 the idea for silent hill came from as well as it originally being an adaptation of the mist but

01:23:16.320 they couldn't get the rights for it right and um he's the reason that the first game and following

01:23:23.440 on from that being a direct sequel the third game have a lot of this really esoteric religious pagan

01:23:31.520 heathen symbolism and a lot of references to old alchemical ideas as well right but he didn't play

01:23:39.840 make any of the other games except for the first one he left pretty much as soon as it came out

01:23:44.400 and later on he went to on to create the forbidden siren games another japanese horror game series which

01:23:51.280 he actually had much more involvement in than silent hill he was much more involved in the siren series

01:23:56.640 than he ever was with silent hill past the first one you know if those are any good actually i've heard

01:24:00.720 that they are very good i've heard that they are very good um one uh i i am ian barrett in the chat has

01:24:08.960 this might be a slight slight tangent but uh what are what are your opinions on the reasons why the

01:24:14.560 japanese specifically is so effective at making horror in all of its medium mediums um personally 0.88

01:24:20.960 for me they have been through a lot to say the least over the last few hundred years that's true

01:24:28.240 ever since uh america forced them to open up to the world and they went through the meji restoration

01:24:33.120 they've done a lot and they've also suffered a lot even though they've caused they've also caused a lot

01:24:38.560 of suffering and they as a culture they are also not creatively restricted in the same ways

01:24:49.360 the west star with modern sensibilities and they also just happen to have really talented people just

01:24:58.080 appearing out of nowhere yeah that they their creative industries are well i think some of the

01:25:05.680 best in the world right now and have been for well ever since um two bombs were dropped on two of their

01:25:13.040 cities and their culture was forced to rapidly change through the immense crippling defeat of the

01:25:19.440 second world war um yes i think that from my perspective they've suffered a lot they've caused a lot of

01:25:25.520 suffering um but they have now that they are no longer focused on world domination um they are now

01:25:33.360 or at least asiatics oh yeah asiatics operation um yeah no that they are they are just really

01:25:39.760 talented at the end of the day they've got a lot of a lot of history yeah well i think i think a lot

01:25:45.200 of it also is to do with just the fact that they have such a unique folklore oh yeah and such a a unique

01:25:51.040 culture and a lot of their understandings of buddhism and shinto plays into the idea these ideas of

01:25:59.600 stagnation of spirits and just the manifestation of these ghosts um in their culture look really creepy

01:26:08.720 frankly and they have this very psychological aspect to them of why spirits linger why certain

01:26:17.040 um concepts of nature exist through buddhism that really plays quite nicely into the psychological

01:26:26.720 horror that game like silent hill is going for and again let's also not uh look down too much on

01:26:33.120 western horror western horror like stephen king like you could argue david lynch like dean kunst like

01:26:40.240 clive barker with the hellraiser series was a huge influence on silent hill so i think with silent hill

01:26:46.880 you get this wonderful convergence of a load of talented people joining together to work on this

01:26:52.720 series where they use all of their outside gaming influences to bring it all together in a way that

01:26:58.560 just ends up really working because they have the talent to be able to pull it off but um if i if i

01:27:06.560 carry on so again you've got the the original creator leaves okay so what happens is that there ends up

01:27:13.120 being different directors for each game silent hill one has a different director than silent hill two

01:27:18.320 silent hill two has a different director from silent hill three silent hill three has a different

01:27:21.840 director from silent hill four overall 180 people worked on the first four silent hill games with these

01:27:31.280 teams changing quite often by the time you get to silent hill four only eight percent of the team

01:27:38.560 had been involved originally from the first silent hill so that's why if you actually play the first

01:27:45.200 four games four in particular they have a different feel and a different style for each one silent hill one

01:27:53.520 has this narrative of yes a man going to try and save his daughter but a lot of it is overlaid with

01:27:59.360 these esoteric understandings of religion of heathen pagan um cult rituals and it's heavily based on the

01:28:08.160 cult as silent hill three is as well but that's why silent hill two because it has a different director

01:28:14.880 and if i get myself up here the details here uh was masashi suboyama was the director for silent hill two

01:28:23.840 he wasn't as interested in all of the esoteric pagan stuff as uh toyama kaiichiro toyama the director for the first one was

01:28:31.680 and he was also working directly alongside takayashi sato who was the cgi director for the cgi cut scenes

01:28:39.920 in the first game and the second game and uh akira akihiro imamora who was the producer and original

01:28:46.800 director for the second one these people didn't have the same interests so what they end up doing was

01:28:52.160 making it more of a psychological thriller based on works like lost highway and he uh imamora and um

01:29:01.360 suboyama said explicitly that they got the inspiration for mary and maria and the division between those

01:29:08.080 characters from david lynch's lost highway and they used instead of pagan imagery a lot of christian

01:29:15.200 imagery because again it's what they were more interested in silent hill three changes again and silent

01:29:20.960 hill three you get a director uh who is kazuhide nakazawa who had been originally a character

01:29:28.160 animator for the second game you've been slightly mispronouncing all these names i'm i'm not going

01:29:33.040 to say anything i am not expecting to pronounce these um it was i think it's pronounced kazuhide

01:29:39.760 nakazawa nakazawa um thank you yes it's it's syllables and yeah no sorry i i've i've been avoiding

01:29:47.200 doing this the entire stream but i didn't want to be like um actually you've mispronounced that a

01:29:51.280 couple times i'm sorry that's that's all right and um and then i would say if you're going to say there

01:29:56.960 was a core team of people who worked on silent hill during the years of k-set and team silent it would

01:30:05.120 be first off akira yamioka the sound designer the uh the composer for the series he's had more involvement

01:30:15.360 in it than anybody else involved in these games including the original creators i would argue

01:30:21.680 without his sound design you couldn't call these games silent hill his sound design is what really

01:30:29.920 sticks everything together it's really what unites them it's it is it is the great unifier it is

01:30:35.680 the i think what i personally think to be the greatest aspect of these games um because it's the

01:30:41.280 only thing i can't stop thinking about the brilliant sound design the music the sound effects everything

01:30:47.040 so alongside him you have uh again pronounced this wrong i'm sure hiroyuki awaku awaku i think that's

01:30:57.680 good well yeah awaku yeah who was the co-writer for the first game and he was the writer for the second

01:31:04.960 and third games as well so you could say if there was a vision for how the story evolved that was him

01:31:13.200 that was him he was the guy who wrote those three games or at least co-wrote the first one the final

01:31:19.040 one of the of this trio i would say is masahiro ito who was the background and monster designer for

01:31:28.080 the first three silent hill games i've already mentioned that he designed pyramid head he even got

01:31:33.280 credited with a big thanks for the fourth game he can speak english which is quite a nice unique thing

01:31:40.080 about him he's a big fan of francis bacon as his favorite artist and main influence and he even on

01:31:47.920 silent hill 2 after designing them helped to keyframe animate all of the monsters in the second game

01:31:55.200 by hand because this is back when games were much smaller in scale and you could just have one guy

01:32:00.080 make all of this stuff which is why takayashi sato yeah yeah takayoshi sato sorry who was a character

01:32:08.000 designer and as mentioned the cgi director for the first two games that's why he is able in the first

01:32:16.160 game to do all of the cgi cutscenes for that game himself it took two and a half years for him to do so

01:32:25.120 so but why is it in that case that konami ended up shutting down k set konami computer entertainment

01:32:34.480 tokyo and with it all of those people who'd been involved in team silent well first of all again

01:32:40.880 the team silent guys masahiro ito uh and all of these people they did not end up leaving the series

01:32:47.120 because they decided they were kicked off by konami they left the series because for instance in the

01:32:52.400 case of the creator keichi uh keichiro toyama he just thought he'd done everything that he wanted

01:32:58.080 to with the first game and wanted to do different things so he went off on his own accord ito felt

01:33:03.840 that he had done too much like already done enough for the series by the time it gets to the fourth

01:33:09.360 game so he bows out bows out as well owaku the writer of those first three games he decides he's done

01:33:17.440 enough as well and then you get amazing things like subuyama the director of the second game he

01:33:24.000 again felt that he uh he he'd done enough he he ended up being the art director and monster designer

01:33:30.720 for silent hill 4 but now he works for a company called feel good incorporated and was art director

01:33:37.440 on the most recent princess peach game princess peach showdown showtime so that's some interesting

01:33:44.080 trivia for you the director of silent hill 2 one of the most well-regarded and popular horror games

01:33:49.520 of all time most recent work was princess peach showtime and that's because there's a formula with

01:33:56.960 silent hill that you really begin to recognize when you go through the first four in sequence and there's

01:34:04.480 only so much that you can do with it and by the time you get to the fourth iteration of a game

01:34:10.080 you maybe want to do different things you don't want to just be doing iterations on the same formula

01:34:16.480 again and again and again but why didn't konami carry on with case sets then well there's a big

01:34:23.280 problem with that as well which is that frankly the first game overshadowed all of them as much as we

01:34:29.360 look back now at the second game as being the crown jewel of the silent hill series even to the

01:34:36.000 point that konami uses it as the basis of the reboot of the series by having it as the first remake

01:34:42.080 right originally silent hill 1 was an insane success it sold millions of copies when it first came out

01:34:54.240 right the first game sold over 2 million copies worldwide smash hit silent hill 2 is the cult classic

01:35:02.160 now but silent hill 1 was the mainstream hit so it overshadowed all of the other games especially

01:35:08.800 because the first game was cheap it was on playstation 1 limited hardware cheap development team of only 10

01:35:17.120 to 15 people that core team did everything in the first game silent hill 2 comes out they've got a lot

01:35:23.920 of expectations the team grows from 15 to 60 people so it quadruples right and then the second game comes

01:35:34.160 out and it sells well but it wasn't as much of a huge seller as the first game and was exponentially more

01:35:44.560 expensive than it and you find the same thing for the second for the third game and then by the time you

01:35:51.280 get to the fourth game konami are realizing they're getting diminishing return on these on this series

01:35:58.560 as such they decide to wrap it up after the fourth one these games weren't profitable enough anymore

01:36:04.560 especially because interestingly enough this may be something that surprises everybody

01:36:08.560 nowadays one of the themes and narratives you get around those first four games is the second one is

01:36:14.640 the best one because the narrative is the most personal it's based around this really compelling

01:36:19.760 psychological drama whereas one three and four two based around the stuff to do with the cult for

01:36:25.600 a lot of people too in depth on the law there's not as much human character that you can really hold

01:36:32.320 on to to drive you to pull you along well ironically enough in japan when the second game came out

01:36:40.240 it was not well received it was not amazingly well received in most places there were some places

01:36:47.840 like in america that found the psychological storytelling to be really good and really

01:36:52.560 interesting and compelling but a lot of people were annoyed it wasn't a sequel a lot of people

01:36:58.800 were annoyed it was kind of this anthology side story that didn't have much connection to the first one

01:37:03.600 if any connection at all which is what led to the third one being a direct sequel

01:37:09.520 and people are very i was very surprised when i learned that because i assumed as i'm sure many

01:37:17.520 people did that the second game must have been a smash hit from the start but the fact that it wasn't

01:37:22.640 as well received it led to diminishing returns the series kind of fizzled out by the fourth game

01:37:30.400 the fifth game there was originally a fifth game but it got cancelled and this is something that

01:37:35.600 happened with loads of horror games in the mid 2000s as you transition from the ps2 to the ps3 era

01:37:42.240 loads of games had already got way more expensive and made less money than the ps1 era because the

01:37:47.920 development time and development teams and this is something that just gets exponentially worse even

01:37:52.240 today you know you hear about uh gta 5 having a development team of over 2 000 people and then you

01:37:59.520 go back to silent hill 1 and the development team is like 15 people tops yeah and sells over till

01:38:04.720 2 million copies you can imagine the profit margins on that were huge and then they get smaller and

01:38:09.280 smaller and smaller and then horror games are not for everyone no that by making a horror game you're

01:38:17.440 already limiting yourself to a an audience of mostly adults which isn't the primary demographic of video

01:38:24.640 game in the first place and then adults a lot well a lot of gamer adults don't really care for horror

01:38:32.720 games it it's a much smaller niche then you realize i have never really been a big horror game fan

01:38:39.280 the only other one i've really or two games i've played properly that are direct horror games are

01:38:43.520 alien isolation and layers of fear um so this is still something new for me and uh i wish i had been

01:38:52.640 born at the time of silent hill 1 coming out because i would have i think i would have really enjoyed

01:38:57.120 playing these when these were brand new um but again it's still small niche it is a small niche

01:39:04.480 and so as these games get more and more expensive is konami as willing to put all of this money and

01:39:10.800 risk and investment into them sadly no yeah and it's the risk of making a side story which is

01:39:18.640 essentially what silent hill 2 is was already gonna be a massive risk because japanese audiences love

01:39:23.600 serialized things if it goes on if a manga series goes on for 200 books 200 individual volumes they

01:39:32.640 love it it's they are incredibly also consumerist they also love detail little trivia details in their

01:39:41.520 stories like for instance in the first game part of part of the symbolism that's used for the cult

01:39:47.440 is you enter this little antique shop in the first game called the green lion right it's just this

01:39:54.640 tiny little detail but it's got a lot behind it because in the game there's loads of alchemical

01:40:01.440 processes that the hospital is even called alchemilla hospital in the first game and within the medieval

01:40:09.120 ideas and arts and science of alchemical processes the green lion was the symbol of being

01:40:17.040 halfway through the chemical alchemical process which was ultimately a science dedicated to

01:40:23.680 discovering and manufacturing the philosopher's stone harry potter fans will be familiar with it

01:40:31.600 the philosopher's stone meant oh that's that clip now that image is on the internet forever

01:40:36.320 don't know chat no i know what you're thinking do it but the the philosopher's stone meant to grant

01:40:41.680 immortal life the green lion is a symbol of being directly halfway through that alchemical process

01:40:49.280 and where it sits in the narrative is that it demonstrates that you're halfway through the

01:40:54.480 narrative and within that cult the idea is to birth the god the god of the cult which is what a lot of the

01:41:02.480 first and third and fourth games are based around they love little details like that

01:41:08.240 they love being able to notice that oh some of the symbols that you're using at the end of the

01:41:13.120 game to get to the final boss fight on the final puzzle you have to fit a door with a sword that

01:41:18.320 resembles a christian cross you have to fit it with the star of david you have to fit it with

01:41:22.960 an egyptian ankh right silent hill 2 has lots of symbolism and imagery in it but it's more

01:41:31.360 straightforwardly christian imagery yeah yeah and again it didn't follow directly on from the first

01:41:36.640 game despite the fact that the first game had a direct narrative that it could follow on from

01:41:41.920 so they weren't huge fans of that so what did they do well they thought the series is kind of dying in

01:41:46.880 japan it was in japan where the market was worst for the game by the fourth game so they decide to

01:41:53.760 move the development studios or use development studios in the west for instance climax studios

01:41:59.520 was an england-based studio that developed silent hill origins and silent hill shattered memories a

01:42:05.680 psp and a nintendo wii game and again they were hoping to be able to capitalize on the american and

01:42:12.160 western markets by using these developers who they hoped would be able to bring a more western flavor

01:42:20.000 to it but what actually happened was people didn't like them as much because part of what they loved

01:42:24.080 about it was the japanese flavor of it they also didn't like how in for instance silent hill homecoming

01:42:29.600 homecoming the first american game in the series one it was too combat focused which is what i was

01:42:35.680 discussing earlier regarding the combat when it becomes too combat focused it takes away from the fear

01:42:41.600 because you're focused more on the enemies as walking game mechanics than you are as them as unknowable

01:42:47.280 monsters yeah the newer entries in the franchise such as the silent hill 2 remake and silent hill f

01:42:55.040 both suffer from this immensely oh yes but as well as that konami starts trying to flanderize and

01:43:03.200 franchise the series turning it into a brand with mascots in the same way that resident evil has the

01:43:09.680 umbrella corporation and and villains like um like who's the blonde albert wesker from resident evil

01:43:17.680 by in homecoming they throw in as mentioned pyramid head who is supposed to be specifically a design for

01:43:27.120 james and his guilt in the second game that's why he's got a pyramid head right because under the

01:43:34.080 pyramid is a head a normal head probably james's head yeah but the pyramid one you can't see his face

01:43:41.120 because james is ashamed of himself two it's made of this sharp angular heavy metal that weighs down on

01:43:48.960 him that cuts into him as he moves that makes it so that he is holding and carrying a burden with him

01:43:56.640 wherever he goes all of those dark temptations all of that darkness within his heart and um that doesn't

01:44:04.800 fit for other characters because as well as that you see through the course of silent hill 2 that he got

01:44:11.280 that whole thing because it was already a painter a portrait within the town's cult that you see in

01:44:17.840 the historical society of a an executioner of judgment you come across a painting in the second game

01:44:24.080 in the historical society of pyramid head so the implication is that james stored that away in his

01:44:29.760 subconscious when they were on holiday in silent hill this foggy uh tourist town with a lake where all

01:44:38.000 the fog comes out into the town every so often so very memorable last time he ever had a good time

01:44:42.400 with his wife he stored that away in the back of his mind and then it came to the forefront when he's

01:44:48.800 when he's manifesting these experiences in the other world of silent hill right it doesn't work for

01:44:54.720 anybody else also it throughout near the end of the story james overcomes two manifestations of red

01:45:04.080 pyramid thing specific which is quite a critical point in the narrative where he this is the bottom

01:45:10.560 of the the end of the descent before the eventual rise at the end of the narrative um that's done

01:45:18.160 that story b is done he has overcome the manifestation of his guilt so he that can't appear and especially

01:45:27.760 as james isn't in the later games as a main character so he does he does show up in cameos in the true endings

01:45:35.520 yes the the but we'll tell you about that in a moment uh but now that so so the series ends up dying off

01:45:44.560 there was going to be pt but konami fell out with tory uh with kojima and that ended up never really happening

01:45:50.720 uh which is an absolute tragedy um but that's why the series died off it's not because konami

01:45:59.920 it's not because konami destroyed the vision of the original team silent so all those guys went off

01:46:06.080 and did their own thing and they could never recapture the lightning in a bottle success of

01:46:11.120 the first game and then you get that wilderness period where the series is dead until it's become

01:46:17.680 such a cult thing a cult hit following that they're able to reboot it because people have

01:46:23.280 been demanding a reboot of silent hill 2 a remake of it for years despite the fact that you could just

01:46:30.800 emulate it this whole time like i did and like samson did but that's neither here nor there if you have

01:46:35.920 to do one thing slightly removed from the laziest thing that you can possibly do well then people aren't

01:46:42.640 going to do it sadly that's just the culture that we live in and then kojima made the amazon delivery

01:46:50.320 driver simulator yes yeah yes he certainly did so do we want to talk about the cult at all do you have

01:46:56.960 any questions regarding the cult because there's a lot of law in the games that is not really shown

01:47:03.120 in the second game very much so yeah that this is the problem i have only playing silent hill 2 i don't

01:47:08.240 know anything about the cult other than brief bits i've read in um law dumps and the bits in the

01:47:15.120 historical society so um i don't think we'll have time to go through all of that tonight

01:47:20.640 yeah well somebody in the chat has just said it would be kind of interesting to see what kind of

01:47:24.240 enemy that would more or less fill the same role as pyramid head but act and look differently to

01:47:28.320 represent the other characters well interestingly we basically have that in silent hill 3 so i'll give

01:47:34.080 you a little bit of detail here which is the cult as established in the first game is called the order

01:47:40.880 they worship a heathen god which within their own mythology was brought about through human willpower

01:47:48.800 to to um end pain and suffering in the world because in their mythology before god was around there was

01:47:59.200 no time there was no death there was no life there was only suffering and through the united willpower

01:48:06.640 of human beings desiring for there to be an end to suffering god is brought into the world and through

01:48:13.280 that god grants them death god grants them time and as part of their mythology god dies

01:48:21.360 and then it's prophesized that god will rise again and bring them to paradise a place where instead of only

01:48:27.040 suffering or a mixture of suffering and life and uh and happiness you only get happiness all right so

01:48:34.000 it's kind of like this cycle they want to complete the first game harry mason's daughter cheryl uh was

01:48:40.400 actually a split part of the soul of a girl called alessa who was the daughter of one of the head

01:48:46.560 priests of this cult the order called dahlia gillespie her daughter alessa gillespie was the carrier

01:48:54.160 of the god because the god needed to be reborn into the world and so as part of the initial ritual that

01:49:00.960 they tried to conduct when she was seven years old an accident happened where a boiler blew up in the

01:49:07.120 house that they were conducting the ritual in alessa becomes highly burned as part of that her soul

01:49:13.040 splits in two because alessa's body only experiences suffering cheryl the baby is born

01:49:19.680 and harry mason and his wife who dies before the events of the game find her abandoned at the side

01:49:25.840 of the road and decide to adopt her because harry is a very very good man and part of the themes of

01:49:30.800 the first and third games are these dual ideas of parenthood it's a beautiful thing harry is a good

01:49:38.000 man a good father who'll do whatever he can for his daughter even if she's not his own flesh and blood

01:49:43.920 he will look after her and raise her as his own dahlia gillespie abuses brutalizes burns her daughter 1.00

01:49:51.760 all for the sake of this horrible heathen cult right and by the end of the game harry has been

01:49:58.880 unable to find cheryl but he does find alessa and he's tricked by dahlia into helping the ritual to birth

01:50:08.000 the god but as part of your journey you can there are a number of there are four endings but you can

01:50:13.680 get to it and you can destroy the god which is represented in its in the best ending is represented

01:50:19.680 in this in the image of baphomet okay yeah the biblical demon is there a specific ending for the

01:50:25.840 first game that is used as sort of as canon for the third it's the good ending okay where as a result of

01:50:32.160 killing the god alessa returns for a brief moment and hands harry a newborn baby which is actually

01:50:41.280 the reincarnation of alessa slash cheryl okay again that harry takes away and raises as his own okay

01:50:49.920 which you play as her that girl in the third game she doesn't all right okay she doesn't know that she is

01:50:56.320 this reincarnation she just knows herself as heather mason the adopted daughter of harry mason who tragically dies

01:51:03.680 through the course of the third game he's murdered by the cult that returns and in the third game

01:51:10.480 what you find out as a result of the cult returning to try to use her to birth their god again

01:51:17.840 is that their god has a caretaker called valtiel which is actually a play on the word valet you know

01:51:26.640 a caretaker somebody who looks after you and they believe that god will be born through a through a

01:51:33.200 lesser again heather in this case and we can show you a picture of heather here if we go on the 0.99

01:51:39.520 character commentary there she is uh you can see her name heather slash cheryl mason and valtiel 0.95

01:51:47.840 does not attack you like pyramid head does but within the lore of the game uh valtiel was also

01:51:54.720 the name of the past sect of the silent hill cult that you find out a lot about in the second game

01:52:00.160 and valtiel is closely related to pyramid head in the second game as exp as explained by this they

01:52:06.960 both wear caretakers um a caretaker's smock and apron and they both fulfill the same kind of role

01:52:14.320 as val pyramid heads trying to guide james to some kind of self-actualization realization a way to

01:52:22.240 in a buddhist sense dispel the illusions of the illusory world around him valtiel is a caretaker for

01:52:29.440 the god within heather's womb therefore he's trying to protect her not necessarily dispel her illusions

01:52:37.440 but he's trying to get her to the point where the god can be birthed okay yes and so they kind of

01:52:43.760 fulfill a similar role in the narrative and they explicitly state that this is another manifestation

01:52:50.560 of that same drive to protect which is why pyramid head showed up in the second game in the first place 0.99

01:52:56.880 and why he was able to manifest yeah it wasn't just that the town comes up with a manifestation of

01:53:02.240 anything at all that's in your subconscious comes up with specific things for specific reasons and it

01:53:07.760 has to be silent hill that does it or in the case of heather because she's carrying the god of silent 0.69

01:53:15.280 hill that's why she's able to manifest these things outside of the town itself but it has to be the town

01:53:22.080 if it's not to do with the other supernatural stuff related to heather so you can do stuff with the

01:53:27.920 pyramid head style character and valtiel is not quite as iconic as pyramid head is

01:53:35.920 but he does still have a very cool appearance there are a lot more uh enemies in these later games they

01:53:46.560 wanted to make sure that they had a greater creature variety in the third game onwards because they said

01:53:52.320 that they were sensitive to the fact that the second game was criticized for yeah the second game had

01:53:57.200 about three to four met what main mob enemies that will attack you um and that was it and i always

01:54:06.400 expected there to be a different type in each new zone but it was mostly the same three and the nurse

01:54:12.400 the mannequin and then the the one that's got the uh straight skin straight jacket on um and that is

01:54:19.200 mostly it for enemies well and you can see that there's only nine specific manifestations of

01:54:25.280 monsters in the second game which are represented through the nine squares of the saving circles

01:54:30.960 at the end of the game so if you were watching the footage before you can see the saving squares

01:54:35.520 were these red squares that you have to go up to and you're able to save james's game

01:54:39.520 through that people have thought for a while what do the red squares mean and i through through the

01:54:45.520 research that i've done the best interpretation i've come across the the games are very very

01:54:52.240 heavily influenced by the psychoanalytic theories of carl jung and his understanding of esoteric

01:54:58.560 um uh cults and uh yeah and occultism in the first place so they seem to be a reference to this

01:55:06.960 alchemical idea of squaring the circle carl jung characterized this as going from the unconscious

01:55:13.520 to the conscious which represents james slowly finding himself and realizing himself through introspection

01:55:21.760 the final save point of nine squares represents james's memories no longer being repressed and

01:55:28.160 that's why you can see there's only the nine monsters which are represented through the game as

01:55:32.720 well everything is trying to bring him from the state of unconsciousness to consciousness through

01:55:38.640 drawing back his memories

01:55:40.240 it's very very clever yes um figuring all of this out post me playing it because i didn't get all of

01:55:47.440 this through playing it because the game is very very good but there's is due to due to how the game

01:55:54.320 doesn't tell you how to play you have to figure everything out yourself inside hill 2 so you are more

01:55:59.360 than likely going to miss things for instance i missed which is the the area i missed was at the bar

01:56:05.120 oh well you missed you didn't miss heaven's night did you you have to go through heaven's night

01:56:10.400 as part of the game yeah one of the one of these areas you you said i had missed completely um i can't

01:56:16.720 remember which one it is but i missed something i can't recall sorry we kill okay uh don't worry

01:56:21.280 don't worry i will figure out but again all of this is mainly a lot of this stuff to do with the order

01:56:26.560 is within the first and third and fourth games but the order does control the prison that you visit

01:56:32.400 in the second game even though it's already destroyed in the other world it still exists

01:56:38.320 um which is why you can find a lot of the more lore relevant stuff in that in the historical

01:56:42.960 society one last thing is that the game is contextualized in the first one as having

01:56:48.720 the order used as this plant called white claudia which induces hallucinations and is implied

01:56:56.480 through the manufacturer through its use in the manufacture of a fake drug called pvt

01:57:01.840 and another another substance called aglophotis that is one of the ways in which the order is

01:57:09.440 able to transition themselves and travel between the two worlds that being normal silent hill and

01:57:15.520 the other world and the other world is where the games take place in and let's talk about the town

01:57:21.920 itself and the law regarding that so from the notes that i've got here it's explicitly stated in the

01:57:29.040 book of lost memories that after the events of the first game the mystic powers that envelop the

01:57:34.400 town have become much stronger it was already a place of magic but after the cult tries to summon

01:57:40.800 their god and fails the town becomes much stronger and much more magical which explains why it can draw

01:57:47.280 in those quote with darkness in their hearts and manifest that darkness as we see in silent hill 2 because

01:57:53.280 it's not just james doing this we also encounter eddie and we encounter angela the two other characters

01:57:58.800 who are going through um hard times shall we say yes in the game and from further on in the book of

01:58:06.160 lost memories it says quote originally silent hill was a holy place to the areas areas former

01:58:12.320 inhabitants it would seem that although the power of the town was not evil in nature due to a number

01:58:16.800 of factors including the spread of an epidemic and executions at the prison the power that this place

01:58:22.080 held was greatly distorted furthermore due to the large-scale shift to the other world that occurred

01:58:28.080 in the first game the town has become a great catalyst for the manifestation of people's

01:58:32.640 unconscious minds it appears to have become a place that beckons to those who hold darkness in

01:58:38.080 their hearts the town calls to those who bear the weight of some crime and shows them what is in

01:58:43.120 their hearts due to the severe burns and endless suffering of a lesser her power runs wild in the 0.81

01:58:49.760 first game her agony is manifested and the entire town is swallowed up by the other world and that's an

01:58:56.960 end quote to that and it creates an other world specific to each person that projects their

01:59:01.440 subconscious onto it and manifests it as monsters so the monsters that you fight in the first game

01:59:06.560 are manifestations of a lesser's worst fears the monsters that you fight in the third game are

01:59:12.400 manifestations of heather's fears for instance here you can see the closer named closer because of its

01:59:20.240 ability to obstruct a root with its huge body it also has the appearance of a mandarin from the previous

01:59:25.760 game that has risen above ground now as a teenage girl exploring the world for the first time this is

01:59:33.440 clearly the idea of a physically imposing male who might want to cause you harm because it's appropriate

01:59:39.920 for a teenage girl's suppressed fears and you can see how it expresses itself that way and in silent hill

01:59:48.080 one as said harry's trapped inside the other world that's being manifest by a lesser in silent hill

01:59:53.920 two the reality being perceived by james is different from the reality being perceived by angela and eddie

02:00:01.680 and the little girl laura the experience laura the character that you meet in silent hill 2 is a

02:00:06.800 little girl who is just friends with mary as such she's not seeing monsters she's not got any darkness

02:00:13.040 in her heart yet angela though uh was someone who's abused who you encounter multiple times through the

02:00:20.320 game who sees the world as dark and on fire she killed her father in defense of herself after he 0.99

02:00:28.160 sexually abused her eddie who was bullied for being fat and ugly and pathetic and shot a dog sees the world 0.98

02:00:37.440 as this cold and uncaring place and each other world is tailored to them we see their other worlds for a 1.00

02:00:44.720 scene each right before they die we have to kill eddie because he goes crazy with bloodlust and we have

02:00:51.520 to let angela go because james has to accept that he's unable to help her and as mentioned james's

02:00:59.280 world is other world james's other world is drowned and waterlogged reflecting that he traveled to the

02:01:04.960 town to drown himself after killing his wife the monsters that he sees are reflective of his sexual and

02:01:10.000 personal frustrations conjoined legs norse's with short skirts and low-cut tops men with their armed 0.57

02:01:16.240 arms bound and pyramid head for james it acts as a transitional dimension testing him to overcome

02:01:22.160 and accept what he's done the question becomes whether he will come to terms with it be consumed

02:01:28.240 by his guilt or succumb to his delusions by accepting the false temptations of maria in silent hill 3

02:01:35.600 she's subject to the manifestations of the other world because she's carrying the god

02:01:38.800 in silent hill 4 the main character henry easily the most boring of all of the main characters

02:01:44.080 is trapped in people's dreams and walter sullivan's nightmares as he performs the 21 sacraments and from

02:01:50.640 the book of lost memories the reason why creatures exist differs subtly in each work of the series

02:01:56.720 while the subject in silent hill was a lesser's hatred the delusions of james were manifested in

02:02:00.880 silent hill 2 as there were also creatures acting under claudia the main villain of this third game 0.97

02:02:05.920 her instruction that appeared in silent hill 3 it can be inferred that there was also a variation

02:02:10.000 in their existence could these truly be monsters as one expects because that's the question the

02:02:15.760 third game raises are these people are these people are these people that you're seeing that are

02:02:23.200 manifest as monsters are these real monsters there's a character in the third game vincent who when

02:02:28.320 who when um heather asks him about the monsters he says monsters they look like monsters to you

02:02:37.040 which brings up so many questions that aren't answered and it again shows this wonderful ambiguity

02:02:42.960 the character of uh laura also lets you experience this in the second game as she is an innocent little

02:02:51.920 child um she is not seeing the monsters around town as james is and is therefore able to skip around

02:02:58.800 freely sit on walls do whatever she wants in the town whereas james is constantly being attacked

02:03:05.680 chased down the in the street and he is fearing for his life as he runs around and every time he meets

02:03:12.560 laura she for some reason just calmly runs away or walks off and it freaks him out every time because

02:03:18.880 he's seeing he's seeing the monsters and she clearly isn't and it took me a little while to

02:03:23.200 figure that out but that you do you do see that again here um because she is completely innocent 0.94

02:03:29.040 as a child she she is not being called by the town she just happens to be she was called by the

02:03:35.280 town because she was important to mary's story yes okay yes and she also seems to have caught a ride

02:03:40.800 with eddie on the way up but they don't like each other and that's where we get to the point of this uh

02:03:46.160 the the other world itself the different layers of the town which express themselves in the fog world

02:03:51.760 the dark world which is just another form of the uh of the fog world the other world and a place that

02:03:57.760 you see in silent hill one and three called nowhere and according to the creators they're supposed to

02:04:04.000 different uh to uh mimic the different stages of rem sleep so the deeper levels of subconscious that

02:04:10.960 you travel into whilst you're sleeping the fog world is the uppermost layer the dark world is

02:04:17.040 descending deeper and the other world is the deepest layer which often manifests as a pure nightmare

02:04:24.320 hence why the world becomes so much more hellish as you descend into it um as shown via the various

02:04:32.080 nightmare versions of the levels you go to as in the i assume the nightmare hospital and the nightmare

02:04:38.160 apartments and then the nightmare hotel yes and the the fog world is also contextualized by the fact

02:04:45.040 that silent hill has to luca lake there oh yes yeah so even in the real world because the other world

02:04:51.920 is basically like a separate dimension that you get pulled into that acts as a kind of dream lynchian

02:04:58.000 style but still exists and it still has effects in the real world for instance if you get the worst

02:05:04.240 ending in silent hill one the final scene of the game is harry mason dead in his car from the car crash

02:05:12.080 at the beginning of the game showing that if he's unable to overcome all of the challenges that are

02:05:16.640 thrown at him throughout it that when he returns to the real world he died and that's the sort of thing

02:05:24.000 that can happen that's why it has effects for these characters and why it's meaningful it's not all a

02:05:28.880 dream because the dream is real and from the book of lost memories again regarding the fog world in

02:05:34.480 particular the mist and darkness have become symbols of the silent hill series it's not

02:05:39.600 the case that these elements are present present merely to frighten the player mist and darkness

02:05:44.560 obstruct the horizon by creating a condition in which visibility is limited in other worlds the

02:05:49.360 boundary between heaven and hell is obscured which suggests a blurring of the line between dream

02:05:55.120 and reality the mist is a symbol of silent hill it can be interpreted as the thoughts of the dead

02:06:01.520 rising up from the lake and settling over the town again very specific to this town of silent hill

02:06:09.600 which is why so much of the book of lost memories is about the history of silent hill itself as a town

02:06:16.240 and the magic that exists there and why it can only exist there due to the specific circumstances

02:06:22.080 areas of the town there's a very good reason as to why harry is sitting here going this is only

02:06:28.720 related to silent hill the town just this specific spot in the world just this specific town in maine

02:06:37.360 yep and and before we do let's just let's just speak of the uh before we get into the more of that

02:06:42.480 let's just go into the uh the endings as well so the the most common ending is the leave ending

02:06:48.640 well for silent hill 2 for silent hill 2 where the uh the game is actually designed to make it the

02:06:54.640 most likely ending for a first playthrough because the way the game is designed means that you don't

02:07:00.160 go through specific like there's not a specific set of actions that you have to do to get each

02:07:04.480 ending right you don't you don't press a different button in a different corridor and that somehow just

02:07:09.760 unlocks a new pathway there is a very specific set of um actions and sometimes even movements

02:07:17.840 that you have to follow in a thematic way not a uh direct physical way yeah so the game starts off

02:07:24.240 with a point system where each of the endings has a certain amount of points allotted to it

02:07:29.520 and depending on your actions in the game the way that you play you get more points for each ending

02:07:36.480 so the leave ending is the most easy one to get because it's already got five points allotted to

02:07:40.240 it because whichever one has the most points by the time you finish the game that's the ending that you

02:07:43.600 get leave is james realizing what he's done accepting it and then leaving the town with

02:07:54.560 laura the little girl and basically it's a it's it's implied that he adopts her you get that one

02:08:02.240 through playing the game kind of normally uh paying attention to the details like law uh like um

02:08:09.360 like mary's letter oh all right there you go yeah here's here's your ending screen so this

02:08:15.040 this is what i got playing silent hill 2 for the first time this is how the game has quantified my

02:08:22.080 experience i got i played obviously action level normal riddle level hard thank you proper horror

02:08:27.520 show ending i got leave which is again the most common one the one that developers intend you to

02:08:33.760 get which it feels like the good ending it is the good ending because you get this beautiful letter

02:08:40.400 read by mary at the end where the letter that oh god it's quite long so i i i stayed silent for

02:08:47.600 most of it because i was just reading it um and uh mary's voice actor these games are kind of

02:08:52.400 shat on for their voice acting for some reason despite the fact the voice acting is perfectly

02:08:58.080 suited to this game in particular um he uh like the the voice actress did it in one go

02:09:06.000 and broke down in tears towards the end of reading out the letter because she thought it was so beautiful

02:09:11.520 and got a little standing ovation from the rest of the cast after performing it and it's a really

02:09:16.080 beautiful and and affecting performance let's just play just a tiny little bit of the end of it

02:09:21.280 here where uh she's explaining uh their life together well this letter has gone on too long so

02:09:34.640 i'll say goodbye

02:09:37.920 i told the nurse to give this to you after i'm gone

02:09:41.360 that means that as you read this i'm already dead

02:09:52.000 i can't tell you to remember me

02:09:58.320 but i can't bear for you to forget me

02:10:01.120 these last few years since i became ill

02:10:08.400 i am so sorry for what i did to you did to us

02:10:17.200 you've given me so much and i haven't been able to return a single thing

02:10:22.480 that's why i want you to live for yourself now

02:10:34.720 do what's best for you james

02:10:40.160 james

02:10:42.960 you made me happy

02:10:44.640 yeah quite affecting it's really it's really quite affecting after you go through the whole game

02:10:56.400 yeah and experience it from james's perspective it was quite the reason i was silent as this was

02:11:01.680 playing as i was just like it was hitting me like a ton of bricks like hearing the emotion in her voice

02:11:07.280 as she was reading this just it full circle for me um this is when i was like okay this is definitely

02:11:14.000 top five game video game endings i've ever experienced yes it is beautifully done and again

02:11:20.720 it is it's the good ending james accepts what he's done he moves on he he's kind of given permission

02:11:28.560 to live for himself he's being judged and the town and mary has judged him worthy of moving on

02:11:37.760 but is that the canon ending well the the actual creators of the game have said that there is um

02:11:45.360 all of them a canon all of the endings are canon because to them this experience represents all

02:11:52.160 different possibilities of what could have happened given that they're all kind of a dream kind of not

02:11:58.080 right so the question as well becomes does james deserve to have been forgiven because at the end of

02:12:05.920 the day whether or not he was suffering whether or not he had his own excuses he killed his wife

02:12:11.520 and regardless of her suffering yeah he's he's just killed a person and at the end of the day

02:12:19.200 in america in a lot of places that is viewed upon as worthy of death yourself and

02:12:26.320 i mean for me i don't think i could justify that on on any on any level other than if they were in some

02:12:35.760 kind of like i mean excruciating unbearable unlivable pain but they were somehow unable to

02:12:40.800 help themselves um or they were um in such a vegetative state that no no science or technology

02:12:49.360 could ever help them um but even then i would that would be the like the most painful suffering i would

02:12:55.520 ever have to force myself through now amusingly guy see he the guy who played james in the original

02:13:02.320 version um was asked in 2012 um for an interview what his favorite ending was and why and he thought

02:13:12.240 the the leave ending for him was his favorite ending and he was asked if if james should feel guilty

02:13:20.240 and uh what his true deserving punishment was and he responded well as a man with four children who's

02:13:28.160 been married and divorced i don't believe that james would have done what he did and been suicidal

02:13:37.520 kind of uh kind of kind of interesting because he said he says like okay you know like you get the

02:13:44.480 one scene in the game where you're walking down the corridor and you hear how mary was abusive to him

02:13:49.680 right and he says okay imagine that but also you've got no social life you've got no connections to the

02:13:57.520 outside you're constantly looking after this woman and this is your life for three years on end

02:14:04.960 and he says then you might be able to be a bit more sympathetic to what james did

02:14:09.920 but you know that's one ending there is the in water ending where if you behave in such a way that

02:14:17.520 you let james's health stay low the whole way through the game or you don't heal him very much

02:14:23.360 if you uh partway through the game you get a knife that angela had been looking at when she'd been

02:14:29.040 contemplating suicide if you examine that knife very often very frequently uh that'll add points

02:14:37.440 and if you go back to an area called bar neely's that's where i was yes yeah i missed this area

02:14:44.000 completely whether it's the the message that says there was a hole here it's gone now if you go back

02:14:49.280 later in the game there'll be a message telling james to kill himself and if you do actions like

02:14:54.240 this you'll get more points for the in water ending which leads to james excuse me after the final boss

02:15:02.080 fight remembering what he's done saying i remember what i came here to do now and he drives his car into

02:15:11.360 taluka lake and drowns himself which some think is the most appropriate ending given what he did

02:15:18.320 there's also the maria ending given that maria is again the manifestation of james's desire for an

02:15:26.080 idealized mary if you are over protective of her when you're escorting her if you make sure enemies

02:15:33.280 don't hit her and if when you find her in labyrinth return to see her um after you've spoken to her the

02:15:43.280 first time these all add points to the maria ending where you leave with her instead the final boss fight

02:15:51.360 isn't maria dressed as mary trying to convince you it's actually mary james sinks further and further into

02:15:59.040 his delusions and leaves with a monster generated by silent hill who knows if will he even be able to

02:16:09.680 leave the other world having done that there are many questions yeah the film touches upon that a

02:16:15.120 little bit how um if you leave with a monster if you probably never actually leaving the other world

02:16:20.800 but if he does if he did successfully leave um yeah he's there is a monstrous um some would call them

02:16:29.120 women true i can't imagine a worse fate than that then there's the rebirth ending the one that's only

02:16:36.640 available on the um on the new game plus again that one's only available to players uh like that that

02:16:42.880 one's more tied into the law of the order and the gods who exist there and some could argue that an

02:16:48.480 interpretation of one of the reasons that james is brought there if you want to tie it into the

02:16:52.880 broader law of the series is that um the town is hoping that he will use the magic rituals available

02:17:02.080 to him to awaken the god's power in the hopes of reviving mary because that one is that one is left

02:17:10.400 very ambiguous to whether it works or not or whether he accidentally just summons the god but

02:17:15.040 this is also you have to have completed the game once on one of the first three endings in order

02:17:19.760 to even attempt that because you have to find by playing new game plus new items that are spawned

02:17:26.320 in the world to even consider getting that ending so yeah yeah and then there's the fun ones because

02:17:33.360 silent hill is a very serious uh series with some very very weighty themes as you can expect from

02:17:41.040 everything we've spoken about but being japanese one of the fun things about it is they have a really

02:17:45.760 goofy sense of humor which means that you can get the dog ending which uh somebody asked is even the

02:17:53.280 dog ending canon then question mark lol yes yes dog ending true ending maybe which is that in a new game

02:18:03.040 plus you can find a dog kennel key and when you're in the hotel at the end of the game there's a door that

02:18:08.720 you normally can't enter if you've got that key you can enter the door and you will find that there

02:18:14.560 is a dog at a computer panel pulling pulling levers that turns out to have been behind the whole thing

02:18:24.960 and james gets to his knees and goes it was you all along and the dog jumps up to him and it's

02:18:32.800 of course a shiba inuit or whatever it's called you but you knew yeah shiba inu and the dog starts

02:18:37.520 licking his face happily and the ending cinematic is the dog barking a song at you it's amazing but

02:18:44.720 there is also the also the ufo ending where uh you have to on new game plus find a um particular object

02:18:54.800 in the opening part of the game which is in the bathroom and then if you try and use it and hold it to

02:19:02.000 the sky in three particular areas when you're in the hotel if you hold it to the sky you'll get a

02:19:08.560 cut scene showing aliens coming to abduct james the wonderful thing about the ufo endings though

02:19:15.920 is that there are ufo endings in all of the games right in the first one second one third one fourth

02:19:23.040 one even in the brand new one silent hill f they have a ufo oh they do okay right and they have continuity

02:19:31.200 harry mason gets abducted in the first game if you get the ufo ending in the same in the second

02:19:36.560 game harry mason shows up to help the aliens abduct james and then if you get the ufo ending in the

02:19:45.520 third game heather mason meets harry and james who both help to abduct her for the aliens at which

02:19:57.760 point people have asked well there's direct continuity between all three this is what

02:20:02.800 unites these first three games as a trilogy to which point in the book of lost memories the writer

02:20:08.160 of those three games hiroyuki owaku says i think that those who have seen it know it connects all three

02:20:15.280 works of the series doesn't it the truth is that this is what really happens confirmed canon endings

02:20:24.240 the ufo confirms it all but on a more serious note the interpretations interestingly in all of

02:20:31.600 the extra law that's in these games if you're looking for it is something that even the developers

02:20:38.480 aren't all entirely certain of so here's some quotes from uh the book of lost memories

02:20:44.560 asked whether he feels that he has a complete grasp of what happens in the silent hill games

02:20:49.840 yameoka says that he wonders if anyone besides owaku owaku however you pronounce it understands it all

02:20:56.240 completely and also expresses his shock at having recently heard that some of it is based in freud's

02:21:02.240 psychoanalytic theories and that's a guy who was involved from the very first game

02:21:08.800 hattakeda thinks that understanding it all might be impossible owaku says that there are things about

02:21:16.240 ito's designs that he doesn't understand himself and that he actually didn't understand valtiel's

02:21:21.920 significance completely until data was being gathered for this book ito says jokingly he'll be sure to

02:21:28.640 explain it to other people from now on he never was involved in any of these games again shingo yuri

02:21:35.360 jokes that when this book is released he and other members of the team will be reading it and saying

02:21:40.080 ah i see which is a really wonderful thing about these games and one of the things that makes them

02:21:48.560 endlessly able to be discussed and debated and replayable which is that they are vague to a point

02:21:56.000 that there's a lot of concrete stuff in them but also there's in there's enough mystery left that it

02:22:03.680 was uh uh that there's so much that it maintains that sense of wonder and and also horror that is

02:22:12.320 necessary for the games to be so effective no it's a uh the the wonderful

02:22:18.400 auteur autist minds of these japanese creatives have yet to be surpassed i don't think it's uh

02:22:28.480 the more i read again i get going ah oh oh wow no look just like what happened on the stream today

02:22:34.640 when harry pointed out the clothes the mannequin was wearing where you find the flashlight for the first

02:22:39.600 time you so much of this game requires you to be interested again it obviously if you're not

02:22:46.880 interested stop playing but if you're interested you go back and play it again it's part of why

02:22:52.720 make playing the games on new game plus you're not you're not gonna have the same experience if you if

02:22:57.920 you if you're trying for the other endings these games are just so expansive and fantastic even in

02:23:05.280 silent hill 2's small scope is a very short game there aren't that many chapters if you weren't

02:23:10.880 like me being a noob and fumbling tank controls you could probably complete it in like an afternoon

02:23:16.080 you can probably complete it in five to six hours yeah my playthrough your playthrough was almost 10

02:23:20.800 hours my playthrough was seven and a half hours and they're all similarly short the first game took

02:23:25.840 me four hours to complete and the third game was not that much longer fourth one was a bit longer but

02:23:31.440 you know um but we are starting to run up against time and i was hoping to go into more detail

02:23:36.640 specifically regarding the more recent games but we'll maybe we'll have to save it for an episode 0.5

02:23:42.800 yes or something so uh we'll finish this off by just saying like i'll give my list of how i rank the

02:23:49.440 games the first four in order bearing in mind i've only played the fourth game halfway through up to this

02:23:56.560 point right so number one i put it is silent hill 2 it is a masterpiece in every sense of the word and

02:24:04.480 i also wanted to ask the question whether these games are art and i would say yes and silent hill 2

02:24:11.760 is the ultimate distillation of everything that makes these games wonderful even despite the limitations

02:24:21.280 of some of the gameplay it coalesces to create this beautiful atmospheric experience that draws you

02:24:28.480 along with the characters and with the narratives and really drills deep into your own emotions and

02:24:35.760 also gets you to question your own values is james somebody that you can empathize with is james somebody

02:24:41.840 that you can um forgive in the way that some of the endings will let you and i think it's the kind of

02:24:48.880 experience that despite how cinematic it is can only be conveyed through games yes and this is also

02:24:56.400 even through the clunkiness of the tank controls and the limitations of the technical hardware of

02:25:01.120 the playstation 2 the fog masking look what is essentially a very short lod and things popping in if

02:25:08.480 if the fog was gone you'd see buildings and um monsters just popping into existence very close by um that

02:25:15.040 all adds up without all of those things being as they are and without the fog being not just

02:25:23.600 technical limitation but then being used as such a core thematic part of the game the sound design the

02:25:31.760 tank controls causing anxiety driven gameplay um every all of these like technical and

02:25:38.720 metaphysical aspects all come together to make what i think is one of the best forms of video game art

02:25:44.240 that i don't i think well not only japan but the entire game industry has ever made i i have yet

02:25:50.960 to play a game that has made me think and feel in the same way um yeah i won't even clarify that with

02:26:00.080 a jokey response that is just yeah yeah um so comes highly recommended even though we've spoiled the

02:26:07.520 whole series the whole story for you still give it a go it's well worth playing you there's only you can

02:26:13.600 only truly experience it through playing it yourself second up i'm going to go with the original silent

02:26:20.160 hill a wonderful game a great blueprint and one of the great games of the playstation era it's not as

02:26:26.560 deep as the second game but as um as a strong first start for an iconic series is brilliant and is still

02:26:36.640 genuinely scary third i'm going to put silent hill 3 and that's not because it's not a good game

02:26:42.240 and it's not even because parts of it aren't as good as or maybe even better in some respects

02:26:49.120 than silent hill 2 it's because fundamentally the combat their expansion on the combat

02:26:58.560 made it a much more frustrating experience most of the villain most of the enemies that you encounter

02:27:04.960 can and will knock you over and that's the first thing that you can do and they will spam you so

02:27:10.240 sadly the enemy design of the third game made it just a much more frustrating experience to get

02:27:16.960 through because when you are getting annoyed at all of the enemies for knocking you over constantly

02:27:22.880 you're not scared of them you see them as a roadblock not scared of that kind of thing always

02:27:27.840 breaks my immersion in any video game when something starts to frustrate you and you realize you're being

02:27:32.240 frustrated that's usually the time i start going what other game could i be playing right now that

02:27:38.560 wouldn't be making me feel like this that being said it's still got some brilliant moments in it and

02:27:43.680 as a follow-up to the narrative of the first game it's a much better story than the first game and

02:27:48.880 heather is a really compelling hero and is one of the most fun heroes that you can play as in these

02:27:55.120 games she's a snarky teenage girl but not in an annoying way not in a woke no in a really endearing

02:28:03.040 way i guess this is an era where um video game feminism hasn't really game again hasn't happened 1.00

02:28:08.480 yet and even though you could make an interpretation that would fit with kind of feminism of the 1.00

02:28:13.680 imagery the idea of forced impregnation being forced to give birth against your will the fact

02:28:20.240 is though that i can understand all of that as an underlying subconscious psychological fear that a

02:28:25.440 teenage girl you would have it's not trying to push a message it's just kind of realistic to the kind

02:28:30.000 of things a girl who's reaching maturity would be afraid it's being done in a purely artistic sense

02:28:36.560 that it's the same thing with all of the especially in silent hill 2 i never felt an ounce of is that

02:28:42.800 a political message i didn't i never thought about that the only time i've ever thought about even

02:28:46.480 considering that is right now in this final concluding part this and that's and that's different

02:28:51.760 with the more recent games yeah but it seems i'll have to save that for another time yeah i i suppose

02:28:59.840 i could potentially play f or the remake of silent hill 2 to get a bit of a context for that but

02:29:05.840 all right maybe it'll be necessary and that leaves as the final place number four of the original four

02:29:12.960 gonna have to put silent hill 4 i am only halfway through so it might improve but frankly there are a

02:29:19.440 lot of gameplay changes made that are really innovative and really daring and challenging and exciting

02:29:27.200 that in execution do not work anywhere near as well as they could and also for some reason they took

02:29:36.720 away most of the esoteric imagery of the first three games which means that there's just so much less

02:29:43.760 depth to everything and for some reason the game's a lot brighter ah yeah the game the environments that

02:29:50.480 you explore aren't dark in the same way that they are in the first place are they still foggy and is

02:29:55.360 the towns you don't visit silent hill in silent hill 4 uh so you only encounter fog in one very brief

02:30:03.360 section of the game up to now okay um that being said it's still a good game it's just on a much lower

02:30:11.520 level than the first three games i still love the actual parts that take place in the room because

02:30:16.400 silent hill 4 silent hill 4 the room has a lot of stuff to do with the titular room where you're in

02:30:23.120 first person it changes up the gameplay there are some cool spooks in that but because of the fact that

02:30:28.240 fact that it's a bit clunky but not in an interesting way as the first three are it's a lot brighter the

02:30:37.520 enemy design is not as good because you don't have masahiro ito doing all the designs for it

02:30:42.720 it didn't grab me and hasn't grabbed me and captivated me to the same level the first three have so if you

02:30:49.600 have time to play them i would say play the first three and play them in order play silent hill one two

02:30:56.320 and three and then if you feel like it play four because despite everything that i have said the

02:31:01.680 story of silent hill 4 so far is following this serial killer walter sullivan killing people to

02:31:08.640 commit some kind of ritual sacrament through people's dreams he's also a character who's brought up in

02:31:14.800 silent hill 2 yes because it uh there is a puzzle where you well you're stuck in a lift and a voice of

02:31:23.280 i don't even know what who the voice is supposed to be that's a that's a goofy spook yeah you're

02:31:28.960 giving a little quiz and one of the question questions revolves around like a game show host

02:31:34.320 but no i i think that having played silent hill 2 there is a little bit of context the only thing

02:31:39.600 i would criticize the game on is there's a little bit of context you kind of want to have played the

02:31:44.080 first game for that's why i'm recommending yeah so play the first i honestly think that's the only

02:31:49.520 criticism i've had of the game because i can accept the dated tank controls and all of that

02:31:54.720 for being periods of the time and also actually enhancing the experience rather than degrading it

02:32:00.080 so yes play the first game first and then two and then three and then give four a go you might like

02:32:06.720 it some people like it more than all the others um i'm not one of those people but it might work for

02:32:11.040 you so yeah uh and whether they're art i think these are these are beautiful works of art which

02:32:18.160 is why sadly i don't have enough time to go into the stuff regarding the resurgence of the series

02:32:25.360 in the past few years where i do think that the artistry sadly is leaving for the sake of franchising

02:32:34.000 and konami selling out the brand in a way that they weren't before when they were just sticking

02:32:40.240 pyramid head as a mascot but that's something that we'll have to explore more suffice to say

02:32:45.200 if you've played silent hill 2 remake i'm going to have to say this you've not played silent hill 2

02:32:52.400 you've played resident evil 2 remake with the silent hill skin silent hill skin over the top of it 0.60

02:32:59.760 silent hill f as people in the chat are pointing out um is not a game that likes you if you're a person

02:33:08.640 that believes in values and family values and thinks that uh people are happiest when they're married

02:33:15.520 and have good families well silent hill for f is not a game that agrees with you but that's something

02:33:21.360 that we'll have to save for another time we're going to have to follow this up with a 0.5 episode

02:33:26.880 perhaps another live stream we might record it but um thank you all very very much for joining us on this

02:33:33.040 inaugural live stream to open up journey to the east i hope you've enjoyed our discussion of the

02:33:39.520 silent hill series particularly the first four and the creation of them and some of the deeper

02:33:43.920 lore aspects of it up to this point i hope if you've not played them before this has piqued

02:33:48.240 your interest and i hope your interest has been piqued for the rest of this series as well for those

02:33:52.960 asking in the chat you know uh china and korea given that we're talking about the east in general

02:33:58.400 i would be open to discussing stuff to do with them as well so it yeah journey to the east we

02:34:04.080 haven't called it journey to japan on purpose because uh korea obviously at some point we're

02:34:09.840 gonna have to talk about um korean horror and yeah obviously things like squid game as much as i'm not

02:34:15.760 personally a fan old boy oh yeah i'll have to mention train to busan at some point korean cinema is

02:34:22.080 brilliant um games korean games are basically just gonna get your games but we

02:34:28.240 maybe at some point maybe um but no china also there they have a lot of culture obviously we can

02:34:36.160 talk about the controversial aspects of what they do but we'll have to save that for another time but

02:34:40.000 we're not locking in just japan although primarily there's a lot of things from japan we're mostly

02:34:45.920 interested in japan but we are broadly orientalists yes yeah we are we are not weaboos we are proud

02:34:53.120 orientalists and uh they we will save we will help save japan we certainly will but thank you all

02:35:00.240 again for joining us and thank you samson i'm really glad to have you in this series so that we can uh go

02:35:05.680 through all of this together everybody in the audience uh please say thank you to samson i think

02:35:10.720 he's done a really great job yeah my first time being i've been live as you could probably see if harry

02:35:15.840 if you're still there could you show my channel i'm going to shill that again go and subscribe to my

02:35:19.840 youtube channel i'll get the channel i have if you want to see if you want to watch a playthrough

02:35:24.160 of silent hill 2 i've done a six-part series where i go through the entire game and get the leave

02:35:29.200 ending so please feel free to check that out subscribe like you know the drill um and then yes

02:35:36.320 this is hopefully going to be something you all enjoy um i've it was i was very nervous coming on the

02:35:42.320 live for the first time i think you've done a great job sitting here doing recording with dan

02:35:46.080 oh that's a couple weeks ago that was that was that was interesting but this this is something else

02:35:51.600 but i'm happy you all enjoyed it and yes thank you for enjoying me yeah so uh thank you for joining us

02:35:57.520 so far hope you've enjoyed it we'll see you next time have a great day goodbye everyone

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 12, 2025

FREEMIUM LIVE： Journey to the East #0 ｜ Silent Hill

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