Is Mary's Body in the back of James car?(Spoilers)

[captain crowbar]

The God of the Order is a Native American deity. Only unbelievers call God demon names. By logic, God cannot be Samael if it's root is Native American.

Is it that K name? Or is that possibly a red herring?

Also, just a point of note, I like this conversation. Lot's of interesting stuff today.

[astro]

I don't think there's a real canon ending, but there are a couple of indicators that at face value elude to In Water being perhaps the favorite, or at least most likely ending according to Team Silent. You can explain each indicator in different ways, but they're a lot more In Water than they are anything else, and why even mention it in such a way at all if it's just empty information?

I'm not really willing to argue about it, because it's left for the player to decide and the evidence isn't strong enough to totally support any one of the endings, also because of the nature of the narrative you can come up with any kind of ridiculous bullshit psychoanalysis arguments, still, it's worth considering.

[captain crowbar]

I like the Rebirth ending, personally. Why would James kill himself if he could get Mary back?

Also this could alude to the body being in the car...if he needed her body for the ritual.

[astro]

I like the Rebirth ending, personally. Why would James kill himself if he could get Mary back?

Also this could alude to the body being in the car...if he needed her body for the ritual.

I agree, but the body in the car isn't really much of an indicator for In Water.

Rebirth to me smacked of desperation though, I never felt he was actually going to get Mary back and it would surprise me to learn that the feeling wasn't intentional.

[NarooN]

Well I actually meant the town, in his adult life...I don't think it's completely confirmed anywhere that he lived in South Ashfield Heights but James is about 5 years older than Walter and Frank has always been the caretaker, so it's heavily implied. But as far as that goes, 4 also pretty much confirms In Water is canon, Frank says his son and daughter-in-law went missing in Silent Hill.

There's no canon ending to SH2. Even though Owaku didn't work on SH4, I'm sure the scenario guy knew most of the story and wouldn't disrespect his wishes like that.

Pay attention to his word choice. "Went missing" is a pretty vague phrase, I think we can all agree. Even if we choose the 'Leave' ending, there's no way James could adopt Laura or even return to his normal life. He'd have to explain where Mary was, and that wouldn't be easy because everyone knows she was terminally ill. He wouldn't be able to lie himself out of that.

The only thing he could do is get an entirely new identity. Abandon all his old family and friends. Hence, even though he could be alive, no one would know, so people would say he went "missing" in the town and never left it or something.

Also just because her body is indeed in the car, doesn't really lean towards any specific ending. It's more in line of him remembering what he came to the town *for*; To see Mary? Or to kill himself? He convinced himself she was there, and technically she was. She was with him the entire time. I think the body being there in the car was just to enforce that, not to give credence to a certain ending.

Personally, besides the true canonical UFO ending, my favorite ending would be Rebirth.

[schlaufuchsMIKE]

I would say that since both James and Mary went missing in Silent Hill, it does suggest that he did take her body with him. He probably killed her, freaked out and tossed her in the trunk.

[Q. Valintyne]

The only thing he could do is get an entirely new identity. Abandon all his old family and friends. Hence, even though he could be alive, no one would know, so people would say he went "missing" in the town and never left it or something.

I smell a sitcom!

[Purramid_Head]

Sometimes I wonder if Ito didn't know what a trunk in English was and was freeballing it.

[Q. Valintyne]

Sometimes I wonder if Ito didn't know what a trunk in English was and was freeballing it.

I totally agree. "Trunk" could be the "back of the car" to some people.

Just like "Shopping carts" are "buggies" in the southern US and how some people refer to all sodas as "Coke," "Pop" or "soft drink."

[Augophthalmoses]

Each ending has its own way that James could end up missing. Leave sees him surviving the ordeal, but perhaps he vanished to evade the authorities over what he had done. Maria indicates that Maria could encounter the same illness as Mary. As a result, James could have to go through the entire ordeal he went through in SH2 all over again. He may not survive the next go around. In Water is self explanatory. Rebirth, like Ito mentioned in his twitter in a separate topic somewhere on this site, could have Mary killing James in retribution after she is resurrected a la Pet Sematary.

There's enough ambiguity and opened doors with each ending for James to "disappear" in all of them. So you really can't say one ending is canon.

And SH2's novelization means nothing. SH1 tells us Harry's wife died of a car crash. But SH1's instruction manual specifically says she died of disease, and this is heavily implied in Harry's conversation with Cybil after saving her. Whichever ending is used in novelizations is irrelevant to the overall storyline of the games.

[Devoured]

My point was never that In Water is canon, I just said that SH4 only implies James grew up in South Ashfield Heights, just as it only implies that James died in Silent Hill. And I'm being generous there, because in any other ending [bar Rebirth] Mary's body would still have turned up, and only James would've been missing.

I'm sure that even amidst all the heat of the 8-or-whatever year nationwide FBI investigation regarding the man and his terminally ill wife that disappeared in a town notorious for unexplainable disappearances, on a trip that was supposed to be Mary's last trip anywhere, James probably would've found one moment while the swat team was on a coffee break to visit his old man , whom he was still close to, seeing how he obviously told him he was taking Mary to Silent Hill for the remainder of her days. Connecting all this to the SH4 t-shirt of a watery James ghost as far as I'm concerned they've decided on an ending.

The novel, like the creators always have, states that James went to Silent Hill to take his own life in a place of memories, and that Mary's body is in the trunk of his car. It doesn't contradict anything, and it does not matter one bit if he did or didn't end up killing himself, her body was still in that trunk all the time, getting another ending that doesn't allude to it doesn't suddenly change everything that happened before that.

[Q. Valintyne]

Are you suggesting that the FBI would actually return from Silent Hill?

A person running from the law will not compromise their safety to visit family. It's been done in literature, but realistically, would James want to put his father in danger?

The SH4 watery James ghost t-shirt... I've never seen this. I'm curious. Think you can find a pic of it?

[NarooN]

I don't see how a t-shirt truthfully unrelated to the game besides having the game's title on it is them "deciding on an ending".

And it really doesn't matter whether or not her body was in the trunk since A) it's been established and B) well, she's obviously dead, any of the endings could still happen.

[schlaufuchsMIKE]

Okay, so whoever the god is, what I'm saying is based on the belief that a demon is masquerading as a god to trick the cultists into incarnating it into a mortal-ish existence. In any case, while they may think the ritual brings back the dead, it actually fills it with whatever demon it may be. That's what I'm suggesting is about to happen with Mary's body in the Rebirth ending.

[Noname6]

To be honest, I always thought that SH2's connection to The Room was tenuous at best. Stories are written as they go, which means that the original intentions behind SH2 may not necessarily have anything to do with The Room. I always thought that Walter was supposed to parallel James, Eddie, and Angela's story. Here is this guy who committed sins and was punished by the town before them. It's also implied that the town drove him to take his own life. Of course, he shows up again in The Room with a much more fleshed out back story, but his original purpose in SH2 was to act as a sort of symbolic parallel to James' story and to show players that the town has punished "sinners" before.

Which is why his tombstone shows up in the room with James, Eddie, and Angela's tombstones. Walter is like them. He is also someone who had darkness in his heart and the town punished him for it.

I haven't played The Room all the way through in quite a while, so I don't know all of the plot points of that game. It's just, I don't take anything stated in The Room as canon to SH2's storyline. Who knows what happened to James? It's possible that if he left he is simply living somewhere safely anonymous.

I still think that it is intentionally left open. A lot points to In Water, but if you are the optimist it's just as easy to rationalize James leaving the town with Laura.

[Purramid_Head]

Okay, so whoever the god is, what I'm saying is based on the belief that a demon is masquerading as a god to trick the cultists into incarnating it into a mortal-ish existence. In any case, while they may think the ritual brings back the dead, it actually fills it with whatever demon it may be. That's what I'm suggesting is about to happen with Mary's body in the Rebirth ending.

There's no evidence to suggest this or that the ritual even worked. It also sounds rather Christian.

[jam6i]

Though it saddens me to believe that James Sunderland committed suicide, i still think that "in water" is the most fitting conclusion to hist story.

SH2 had an utterly f*cking depressing story, it was fitting to have a similar ending.

[what]

I dunno. I believe that the entire point of Silent Hill 2 is getting any ending but In Water.

[astro]

I couldn't disagree more with your take on In Water. It's worth noting that:

a. Good characters and narrative take precedent over having an internal sense of self-preservation or whatever, beyond 'people don't normally do things to put themselves in danger' it's likely that it wasn't even considered. Not only that, but James does dumb suicide-things all the time as a requirement to progress. It also wouldn't be a very interesting game to play if you didn't have to make some kind of conquest through the Otherworld or over the creatures of Silent Hill.

b. Nothing in a story has to be gained by the characters to consider it a valuable story. The beauty of the In Water ending lies in the tragedy of James, he struggled so fiercely with his wife being ill that he killed her, he was so conflicted over his deep love for Mary and his guilt over killing her that it broke him and it shows all throughout the game. The ending is primarily about love, I've seen the point made that it's a selfish ending but I've yet to hear a good argument for it. James doesn't ever say "I hated you" so therefore he killed her, he said "a part of me hated you and I couldn't watch you suffer". He didn't want to live anymore, which isn't inherently selfish or bad, because of his love for his wife, after he passed the trials of Silent Hill.

c. The anti-suicide thing to me had always, before I had even finished the game, sounded like James was projecting. He was doing it with Angela in their second encounter, because he didn't want to consciously acknowledge that he wanted to die for obvious reasons, so having an out-of-place knee-jerk reaction to the concept of suicide isn't unusual and his anti-suicide spiels shouldn't be taken at face value because of this. James also vehemently denies that he ever did anything to his wife in a similar manner, but we know that isn't true. What he was trying to do with Angela when he first met her is raise himself above her level by saying "no, I'm not like you" in a reactionary tone, because it's evident that he was having similar thoughts and he didn't want to see himself in Eddie and Angela, which is reoccurring throughout the story. You can interpret it a certain way, but without any solid evidence to support your interpretation, it's not valid to use it in support of an argument.

Not to be rude, but most of your points come out of this weird impulse to see something gained in order for a story to be valuable. The "he may as well not have bothered" point was especially odd to me, it isn't about how productive his experience in Silent Hill was, it was about telling a story for the player, and nothing in that requires a journey that allows the characters to gain something.

[what]

Ignore the tone of what I'm saying, though. A lot of that is just me being playful with my personal dislike of the ending.

The reason James does not simply drive into the lake five minutes after arriving is, what? The answer is obvious: there is a significant part of him that does not want to do this, that wants some other kind of outcome. He has major doubts.

If this wasn't true, this story would not have multiple possible outcomes, all but one of which involve his survival. There are stories in which an outcome is certain and the inability of the protagonist to deviate from this path is understandable, but since James can achieve one of four paths, and each have advantages and disadvantages, if he chooses the path which is precisely identical to the one he started out aiming for (especially when that path is his demise), then the experience he has had no significance, as he affects no change to himself and nothing significant to anyone else, except putting a premature end to Eddie's fake murder fantasies.