Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book club reminder. We will be going into major spoilers this time, so if you want to avoid that, start a previous episode, play along and come back once you finish the game.

So just to start, even the name labyrinth itself already conjures up for me images of minotaurs, elaborate puzzles and schemes, and having experienced what we’ve seen so far in Sh2, probably many, many more horrors to fight our way through by the skin of our teeth and hopefully escape from.

Needless to say, it’s practically inevitable to get lost in a labyrinth. I think that’s the whole point, which isn’t ideal in Silent Hill. Not sure how you felt coming up into a place called that.

[00:00:42] Speaker B: I got lost a couple times.

Yeah, I got lost a couple times with the monsters that are chasing you or you’re trying to avoid.

It had sometimes some consequences.

[00:00:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s to say the least. And you know, I think it’s.

You descend the elevator right from the prison and you end up at a save point called a labyrinth. And so my first thought is, okay, the. Okay, I guess it really does make sense to call it labyrinth right from that starting point because, you know, the apartment is really windy and seems to be kind of disappearing hallways into each other and all that kind of thing.

You especially see it when Angela just runs across something and there’s just a wall there. But once I. Once you get to the true labyrinth with the rotating cube and all that stuff, it becomes even more unusual. But like in that first section, in that first section, when you’re walking just through this weird version of an apartment that you’ve seen a bunch of times, that mumbly whispering coming from the locked hallway doors makes you feel like something’s gonna jump out.

But also you remember that none of the monsters have really ever made any noises that could be even close to what you’d think is actual talking. So I was like, okay, maybe we’re OK for now. Of course you still tiptoe all the way down the hall. You know, throws you off a bit because every other noise has been like a squelchy thing or a grumble or a groan or maybe a shriek. But no talking.

[00:02:13] Speaker B: No, exactly. Yeah, it was, yeah, a bit off putting.

[00:02:18] Speaker A: You end up coming across Angela again, who’s under attack by a terrible freak of a monster. But she’s saying, daddy, please no. So is that her dad? It looks like to me it looks like the worst possible outcome of what happened to Han Solo when he was frozen in carbonite.

[00:02:35] Speaker B: It’s like Han and Chewie together merged in, frozen in.

[00:02:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Not the injured image you want to be seeing. And especially flying at you. Yeah, it was really, really creepy looking and. Right. And so you see it pop out. You end up kind of. I ran away and found a room with a little more space and really just dodged around it and whacked it with a pipe and. And got rid of it. It kind of like melted into the floor, disappeared. Then you keep following Angela. She runs into that closet full of newspapers, disappears into the wall. And I really like the level design here that the at least this early apartment section of the labyrinth is just the exact same apartment a million times over. But so windy and not making any sense.

And then you have. Coming. Yeah, yeah, it’s just. It’s a mind. Mind f. Just to not get the adult language tag on our podcast here.

[00:03:34] Speaker B: But of.

[00:03:37] Speaker A: Just really trippy.

It only was like inception in like a creepy way.

[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. Yes, I agree on that.

[00:03:46] Speaker A: And right. So you end up fighting this and finishing off like after you. How did the boss battle go for you? I mean I thought it was super easy because it was just, you know, souls like experience or action game experience. You just kind of dodge around, like didn’t have to use any bullets and dodge around smack with the pipe over and over and over again and it goes down.

[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that was how it was for me. Just was able to dodge every attack.

Thank God. Like would be able to get two to three hits on him with the pipe and then just keep doing that until it finished which.

[00:04:18] Speaker A: And really, you know, between the piece of wood with nails in it and then the pipe that. That has been my strategy with every new enemy I’ve come across. It’s like, how well can I dodge this thing and hit it melee without wasting bullets, knowing it’s a survival horror before realizing, oh, it’s gonna F me up, so I’m going to start shooting. And this one I didn’t have to shoot. Pleasant surprise. But. So after you finish off the abstract, Han Solo Daddy, as it’s called in the officially, Angela seems to think you’ve either already abused her or will abuse her like the monster you just killed did. And yes, she clearly has some form of trauma induced schizophrenia that causes her to hallucinate, etc. But then she just like Laura talks directly about James and Mary and says you loved Mary for a time, but then accuses you of wanting her to leave or go away. So not everything was sunshine and rainbows for James before Silent Hill either.

[00:05:12] Speaker B: No, it was not. No.

[00:05:15] Speaker A: And I think we won’t jump to the end yet, but it’s a very slowly unraveling mystery here.

[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It’s definitely, definitely unraveling. Definitely giving us some more. Some more context clues, I guess. Sort of the past or. Yeah. What’s happened with Mary and James.

[00:05:37] Speaker A: And you end up. Right. So you get. You get past the boss. Angela kind of just goes away and you end up in the true labyrinth or the entrance to the true labyrinth. Right. So you see the.

The giant wall of wiggly arms thing that looks like it’s out of a medieval painting remind me of that.

[00:05:57] Speaker B: It also remind me of the painting from Ghostbusters 2.

[00:06:01] Speaker A: Oh, God. Okay, I gotta rewatch that because I don’t remember that exactly.

[00:06:05] Speaker B: I guess I only think it. Cause the dude who was in the painting like kind of came to life. But I swear it also becomes like a portal later on in the movie.

[00:06:15] Speaker A: Okay, so Ghostbusters 2. I didn’t think I was going to add that to my October movie list, but maybe, maybe here it is.

[00:06:26] Speaker B: Those are the movies where one or two I just. I can put them on.

[00:06:30] Speaker A: One is fantastic.

Yeah, it’s like a Home Alone for Halloween.

So you get past that doorway, you get a save point, you walk down a little stairwell, and Maria’s alive.

She’s locked up. She doesn’t remember being stabbed by Pyramid Head, but apparently doesn’t have a care in the world that she’s in a cell. She says she’s here for you, James. But also mentions a videotape you both made together in a hotel, which has to be referencing something that James did with Mary. Because James asked Maria, how do you know about that? And she says, I’m not your Mary.

And at this point, James is just totally confused. And the blank expression on his face again nails the fact that he’s confused as hell. Kind of creeped out, definitely in shock and just trying to process what the hell is going on. My thought at this point was that maybe Maria is what James wanted Mary to be like when they were together. So he’s imagining her here as if that were the case.

That’s kind of how I started to interpret it at this point. He’s like, I don’t know if there’s actually a physical person there or if he’s just imagining things, but how else would she be alive?

[00:07:41] Speaker B: I don’t know. But yeah, when I went into that room and she was in there, I was like, What? That completely caught me off guard. And she was, she has like a creepy smile smirk like on her face too. Like she has that. But then she looks dead in her eyes and I’m like.

I was like, I don’t like this person.

Like I don’t know who. Who really this Maria is.

[00:08:05] Speaker A: She’s gonna stay away from her.

Yeah, yeah. Like, like either. You know, zombies can’t talk, so it’s clearly not that. And she doesn’t seem to have any injury. So is she a demon and just haunting you? You know, but anyway, you know, you just. I just backed off and walked away and then all of a sudden there’s a giant frickin cube floating in the abyss and a little mini cube with faces on it.

And I think the order of those areas is always the same of what it lets you do. So you end up in the rotten area I mentioned last time. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more bugs in this game because of how many bugs we had seen and holes filled with bugs and all that. Well, wouldn’t you know there are more bugs. Indeed.

[00:08:50] Speaker B: There was definitely a lot of them in the rotten area. Yep.

[00:08:54] Speaker A: And at some point, you know, were you able to ever sneak by those hardly visible steel mesh underhanger type enemies that I. When I, when I first came across them, I expected them to look like lickers from Resident Evil. The way that they attack with a tongue type thing since you can barely see them. But I finally got a good look and it’s like a weird sloth thing that swings like a monkey. Under the grading, I got hit every single time. Even if I was trying to sneak by.

[00:09:22] Speaker B: Yeah, they’re Mandarins I think is what they call them.

It was too early or something.

[00:09:30] Speaker A: There were. Yeah, there were two in the game in one of the tunnels in the city.

[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I was able to just run past that one. Those two.

[00:09:39] Speaker A: I tried running, I tried sneaking past them, I tried running past them but no matter what they’d shriek or hit me or whatever.

[00:09:46] Speaker B: Yeah, no, these ones, this is where I said earlier, like I got lost a couple times while I went around a corner and got stuck and then I just got hit by a Mandarin by the shriek or then it’s tongue or whatever it is that darts out at you and hits you. There are a couple times that when I’d hear it the shriek or when not the full shriek, but when they do an attack they also make a noise. So when I’d hear it I just hit the dodge button and just hope to get missed by attacks. And there were a few times where I. It worked. I would dodge and then I’d just somehow time it right and the attack would miss to the. To a different side. So.

But there’s. I. I tried to shoot one in that area a couple times and it seemed like it didn’t do anything. I used it like 10 round or whatever. I was like, I don’t want to waste rounds on this. I’m just gonna.

[00:10:35] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:10:36] Speaker B: Just sprint past. And if I take damage, like just use health. I have a good, goodish amount of health.

So.

[00:10:43] Speaker A: Of health.

[00:10:43] Speaker B: Like of bottles and syringes. So if I have to. But yeah.

[00:10:48] Speaker A: In one of the later sections of the labyrinth, when you come across them again, I was able to dodge them pretty consistently and dodge the attacks unless they did the shriek stun.

But I think if I ever. If I do a new game plus or another playthrough of this, I’ll keep that in mind to dodge during the yell. But yeah, I was getting hit every time when I was trying to sneak. So don’t sneak with those guys. What’s the point?

And then, you know, unrelated. But considering how many times James had to stick his whole arm into disgusting holes in walls and toilets, I can’t believe nothing bad ever happened to him while that was going on. Not once. He didn’t get.

I’m expecting him to get an arm amputated. Yeah. His hand comes out clean, doesn’t it? That’s unusual.

[00:11:33] Speaker B: There doesn’t seem to be any clean water anywhere.

[00:11:38] Speaker A: Have you seen the rusty syringes he’s using? I don’t think there’s clean anything.

[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, dude’s just got a huge immune tolerance to everything. He’s got a great immune system.

[00:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah. That would require an immediate hospital visit for anyone else. But hey, lucky guy. He didn’t get his arm ripped off, damaged, mutilated in any way.

That’s unheard of. Also. So while you’re going through the labyrinth, I think that random office desk with the nurse guarding it is where they really sent Milton from office Space when he asked about his stapler too many times.

Have you seen that?

[00:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I have.

[00:12:17] Speaker A: It’s like, yeah, that’s pretty funny.

That must be where they put him, you know.

But he had a guard.

[00:12:25] Speaker B: He’s gonna put you down in the basement. The Way Way Basement or the labyrinth as we used to call it.

[00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And he just keeps asking about the stapler. Maybe he used a stapler to fight the. The nurse.

[00:12:35] Speaker B: A stapler. Stapler.

[00:12:39] Speaker A: My first reaction to the desolate area of the labyrinth was. No, not more spider mannequins. I should have known they would be back. But you. You walk. I think they did a good job there because a couple times in that section, you walk up to where the save point is, and I. So far in this game, you don’t ever get attacked in save location, but you walk in and you see a spider mannequin crawl across the wall on the ceiling. And I just think, did they just break their own rule? And fortunately, it didn’t, but they sure set up the expectation you’re gonna run into more of them.

[00:13:14] Speaker B: Mm. I did. There were a few times in this and in an area later on where I will tell you, the mannequins and spider mannequins got me. They got me good. Like, I was not expecting one to be where it was. And yeah, there was a few times I.

I jumped straight. Jumped, like, stood up slightly from the sofa because I was like, oh, my God. Yeah.

[00:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:13:39] Speaker B: They do a good job of placing things in places where I honestly, like, I was just, like, so in the mood, like, in the zone and being, like, just running here, grabbing that, and then.

Yeah, for this here in the labyrinth, and then later on and the area we’ll talk about. Yeah, just jumping and getting me.

[00:13:57] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s. There’s a lot of. I think the mannequins are the best jump scare of all time. Yeah, I have a comment on that too, actually. But the way that they just completely break the rules of the radio static not working and they don’t move and they hide around corners and then just pop into life is.

[00:14:14] Speaker B: Yeah, but.

[00:14:17] Speaker A: Yeah, so you keep working through this labyrinth and the Pyramid Head chase, and getting into his office or workshop is pretty good at ratcheting up the tension. I definitely got broadsworded twice in the back, which is no fun. Now I know what it feels like to be on the other end of Cloud Strife’s attacks.

[00:14:36] Speaker B: Oh, okay.

[00:14:37] Speaker A: Ouch.

[00:14:38] Speaker B: I didn’t actually. I was able. Yeah, I was able to get through that little section. Like, I remember ran in and I ran to the left and I ran, like, right into Pyramid Head. And I was like, oh, no, wrong way. And I ran the other way, made it round into his office area, which I liked how there’s, like, a little trophy of you just finding, like, his personal space.

[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:14:58] Speaker B: And then I, like, looked back for a second, the door, and I was like, okay, I don’t hear him. So I started knocking down the wall. And right as I finished the last, like, last bit of the wall to knock it down. He came through the door. So I had just enough time to squeeze through the crack without getting.

[00:15:15] Speaker A: Oh, you got.

Yeah, I got. I got. I didn’t get hit on the run into the office. I got hit when I was trying to leave because there was a lying figure, like a venomous one, I think, in that. Just like roaming around that area after you get the. Whatever it is you needed to get in his office and.

Oh, I think it was like the wire cutters.

[00:15:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, wire cutters.

[00:15:36] Speaker A: Right. And. And so I ended up just getting smacked because I ran to the other thing I was trying to avoid.

Is funny though, because. Yeah, I don’t know if I called it his workshop or his workspace, but it kind of just makes me think, what if he just wandered in there and he just like takes the helmet off, you know, puts on some glasses and just starts typing away? That’d be funny, you know, at this point. Yeah. Okay, so you escape, use the wire cutters as fast as you can. And then pyramid head’s looking at you while you go further down.

I’ve also lost count, aside from the arms and holes, lost count by now of how many holes we’ve jumped into and how deep we are.

I mean, we must be on the other side of the Earth by now.

[00:16:19] Speaker B: I know, it just keeps. Yeah.

[00:16:22] Speaker A: Like you’ve hit either the earth core or you’re on the other end. There’s. There’s no alternative because also.

[00:16:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we jump into the bottomless pit here, but then we end back in the original center of the labyrinth with where the cube is.

So it’s such a trip. It’s weird, but yeah, obviously.

[00:16:45] Speaker A: And Twilight Zone.

[00:16:47] Speaker B: Twilight Zone.

[00:16:48] Speaker A: It is absolutely a Twilight Zone, you know, most likely of your own making.

So. And you get.

After you do that, there’s the gauntlet. I think the third section, right, of the ruined area is the gauntlet of three combat rooms in a row with no save was crazy. I fortunately was able to survive my first try. But that’s not to say, I mean, I’m glad they. All those rooms are stocked with some items because I used a lot of health items and so many shotgun shelves, especially against those underhanger. I mean, I called them underhangers for the Mandarins in that third room.

But even worse in this, in this three room section, worse than the enemies is that damn alarm that makes a noise that no alarm should ever make. That drove the intensity up by infinity.

[00:17:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a. You know, that Alarm and I had.

[00:17:51] Speaker A: My headphones, and it just like.

[00:17:53] Speaker B: I think it also comes through your controller as well. It was coming through my controller because I. Well, maybe it doesn’t if you have headphones, because I don’t have headphones. Yeah, probably it’s come through TV and controller. And I was like, oh, my God, this is so loud. I had it. Actually, I had to pause it because I had, like, the controller volume up high. No, I had. Yeah, I, like, turned it down. And then I had to close the front door because I was like, it’s probably just blasting out, echoing out, so I’m just gonna close this.

[00:18:22] Speaker A: It’s creepy. It was creepiest alarm of all time. Creepy.

[00:18:25] Speaker B: People probably been like, what is this guy watching?

[00:18:27] Speaker A: Or.

[00:18:27] Speaker B: Or what?

[00:18:28] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:18:29] Speaker B: Yeah.

No, but, yeah, those three rooms were.

I think I got through the first room pretty easy. The second room was a. I could have got through it better. There were a few times where, like, I was trying to use in the pipe and knock some stuff over or for the mannequin, where I’d, like, put two handgun shots into the knees and then hit it. But I don’t know what. But I’m curious on this might be a thing because maybe just further in, like, the gun sway for me was getting, like, heavier.

[00:18:59] Speaker A: And yes.

[00:19:00] Speaker B: James became so inaccurate.

[00:19:02] Speaker A: I was. You know what? That’s a good.

[00:19:04] Speaker B: I was missing way more shots in this. In this section.

[00:19:07] Speaker A: I’m glad you mentioned that. That must be a, you know, a manicured thing, because I thought that I was starting to get joy Con. Like, not joy Con, but joystick stick drift. I started. I was like, am I just getting stick drift out of nowhere right now? But no, there must have been some, you know, intentional reflection of him losing his mind.

[00:19:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it was. It became hard of trying to, like, just aim precisely onto, like, legs or some parts. And so I just. As you did, like, I just take the shotgun out where it has this big screen. I just would go for the chest and just be like, let’s just, you know, damage them and hit him.

[00:19:44] Speaker A: In the first of the three rooms, I realized how many enemies were in there, and so I immediately switched to the shotgun. I mean, I tried, I think, with a handgun. Noticed how drifting drifty it was and didn’t want to deal with it. So I pulled the shotgun, and I was. You know, I. At that point, I realized I had, like, 40, 50 shotgun shells. So I just, like, eff it and started blasting away. And. And, you know, once you get a little bit more ammo you get a couple more shotgun shells and you realize that there’s going to be more than one room. I just kept it out and just kept using it.

[00:20:13] Speaker B: Yeah.

I will say I tried the rifle.

I did not like the rifle.

[00:20:18] Speaker A: Hmm. I like the rifle.

[00:20:20] Speaker B: The right sway was worse for me. It felt really quite inaccurate.

[00:20:25] Speaker A: I didn’t use the rifle there, but I’ll mention that in a few.

[00:20:29] Speaker B: I didn’t use it there either. I’m just mentioning it.

[00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I meant to.

Don’t love it.

So. And okay, so after you go this through this three room gauntlet, you end up in a boss fight. Not a boss fight, but you end up encountering Pyramid Head in a very narrow hallway. Can’t do anything about it. You’ve got the weird, creepy, wiggly arms in the back, which, you know, if you. I don’t know if you tried this, but if you run into those arms, they.

You get slowed down and pushed backwards so you can’t go where you want to go. And then. Right. You know, the solution to that is they’re afraid of Pyramid Head or something.

And, you know, as he gets closer, they start opening up. So I kind of just turned. I was realizing he’s walking way faster than they’re moving. So I turned around and just like walked backwards.

And then the second I realized there’s no more arms behind me, I turn around and sprinted.

[00:21:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So for me on this. Yeah, I.

I didn’t realize that they were going to just like, sort of like dissipate and go away. As he got closer, I thought like, he’d have to touch him.

So I tried to. It’s a small hallway. So the first time I tried to dodge around him and I ended up dying because there’s no room to really dodge around him. He takes up most of the hallway.

[00:21:45] Speaker A: And you wanted the Dodger and have him like, swipe at him or something.

[00:21:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And so. And then I went back in a second time and I just was. Yeah. Back facing the. The hands on the wall. And as he came closer to me, I just like, thought. I just kept backing up because I thought maybe they just. Because, like, just go away. So I kept backing up and I was able to just keep backing up, backing up, backing up without taking. He didn’t even swing at me. He didn’t even.

[00:22:13] Speaker A: Oh, that’s good.

[00:22:14] Speaker B: I was able to keep a distance where I was able to keep a distance where I was backing up enough where the arms were going away. He was still close enough, the arms would go away.

And then they all go away and then all of a sudden the labyrinth or whatever caves in like on top of sort of Pyramid Head.

[00:22:31] Speaker A: And. Yeah, so I didn’t see that because I turned around and bolted. But you had mentioned that it collapses, which makes sense because, you know, you end up finding his sword just kind of hanging out next to your cube area. But so you know, when you leave that boss fight or that boss chase, you escape and end up in Maria’s cell and you know, she’s lying there dead on the bed. I immediately was not convinced that she was dead this time, considering last time, and just kind of moved on and said, well, good riddance, you know, I’m sure we’re going to be haunted by you again. But. Yeah. So you pick up the giant Buster sword that Pyramid Head was using and. And then it switches your control scheme.

[00:23:15] Speaker B: It’s awful.

[00:23:16] Speaker A: To survival, horror, tank control. So that’s how the original game was. Was controlled. Ouch. You know, I played a bit of Resident Evil 1, the original one on. I guess it was the remake on GameCube. And in the GameCube version they still had tank control anyway.

Yeah, yeah. Not. At least you’re not in a combat scenario and you’re just grabbing the sword and walking to the door.

[00:23:42] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:23:43] Speaker A: You know, so. So it’s not like a double stress, it’s just a single stress and that’s why you’re walking so slow.

I kind of wanted to use it as a weapon.

[00:23:51] Speaker B: Turn it. I know, I was hoping to, but to be honest, it would. Yeah. No, it would swing it once and then.

[00:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:23:59] Speaker B: I’d be like, okay, I’m done with this. Can I drop this?

[00:24:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:24:02] Speaker B: Unless it’s a one hit kill.

[00:24:04] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:24:05] Speaker B: On every enemy.

[00:24:08] Speaker A: And so. Right. You get past the arm door because they think you’re pyramid head.

When you come up on Eddie in that first room, the corpse he’s talking to and shooting sure does look an awful lot like James.

[00:24:25] Speaker B: I’m glad you mentioned this. Yes.

Yep. You have the talk with Eddie. You look at it and then before I went into the freezer to like chase him.

I don’t know if you. I looked around the rest of the room and I’m looking around the room and there’s like six bodies around on.

[00:24:42] Speaker A: The floor or five. Whatever. Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:45] Speaker B: And I’m looking at him, I’m like.

[00:24:47] Speaker A: It’s like. I’m pretty sure they all have the.

[00:24:49] Speaker B: Same jacket, the same haircut and the same boots. And I’m like looking at myself and I’m like, that looks exactly like me.

[00:24:57] Speaker A: There may be a little bit more grayed out, but yeah, it is five versions of you, and he’s shooting at you.

[00:25:04] Speaker B: So that. That made me think of how many times it just. It did put that thought in my mind of how many times has James been back here?

[00:25:11] Speaker A: And are we in a time loop? Because people talk about things like they somewhat know you have this. Is this just like a time loop where you’re just completely doing this over and over again in a torture cycle?

[00:25:23] Speaker B: It’s literally a nightmare. Groundhog Day. Yeah, that’s what it made me think.

[00:25:27] Speaker A: Of what it was. Yeah, for sure.

[00:25:29] Speaker B: And like, Eddie’s killed you however many times, but then this time we go into the freezer and we fight Eddie.

[00:25:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I did not expect to have a boss fight against Eddie, of all people, just considering how much they made him look like the.

That, you know, really immature kind of kid in an adult’s body kind of thing.

This is where I did finally use my rifle, though. And I almost exclusively used my rifle against Eddie because I was able to kind of get a beat on him moving around, hitting the hanging corpses to take shots at him. So that. That’s. Was my main strategy against Eddie was using the rifle.

[00:26:10] Speaker B: Okay. I did use it a couple times in here, but as I said, for me, it like to zoom down and in. It was. Took a little bit to get the reticle to perfect, like for me to get a good shot on him.

But I use it a few times the more I used more of the handgun. But then there were a few times where if I saw him sort of running towards me, I switched the shotgun and I just. The second, like I saw him get close, just blast him with a shotgun and then I dodge away before he could get. I did get hit a couple times. I didn’t die.

[00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah, he hit me a couple times in this fight.

[00:26:41] Speaker B: I did get hit a few times.

He took out quite a few of the pigs and other bits of meat that are hanging.

[00:26:49] Speaker A: He said to break it to you, Alex. I don’t think those are pigs. I think they were people.

[00:26:51] Speaker B: Oh, they’re not pigs.

Well, then all the people, he took chunks out of them. Moving on, shooting them a few times.

[00:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah, but I ended up shooting a couple of them too, just to get a clear. More of a clear line of sight.

[00:27:06] Speaker B: Oh, okay.

[00:27:07] Speaker A: So I did it like, purposefully a couple times.

Did you move around much? I basically found my way into a corner and then turned off my flashlight.

[00:27:19] Speaker B: I didn’t have. Yeah, I turned off my flashlight and no, I moved around. I kept kind of dodging or dodging.

[00:27:24] Speaker A: Around, like found where he was more or less and then had the rifle like prepped and was just waiting for him to start moving around. At some point though, like, I don’t know, you get through a couple phases of this fight and at some point he just started going in this loop of saying the same two lines every 10 seconds. And I wasn’t moving and he wasn’t moving. So I was like, all right, I guess I got to do something because the AI is busted on this right now.

But he eventually gets his health down far enough and he starts, he turns on the conveyor belt for the bodies and yeah, that’s where he started getting more hits in on me. But eventually was able to just take him out by knocking out more of the hanging bodies.

[00:28:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it was easy. Well, when it starts moving around, I could see him obviously like when he’d run into the bits moving around.

[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:28:12] Speaker B: And so I’d be able to sort of track him there. As I said, there were times, yeah, I’d stay far reach away, but I could track him with a rifle, all with a handgun, get a couple rounds and then dodge the side. And then there was a few times where he’d sort of run up to the platform where you first enter.

And I knew sometimes when he was going that way that he’d be there. So I could just have my shotgun out and ready. And right there he’s an opening clearing and I had a clear shot on him and I just take it and then move away. There was also a couple times where I got close enough to him, like semi sneaking behind him and other stuff where I was able to hit him with a pipe, but just not very many. It was mainly with. It was mainly with weapons this fight. But a couple times I was able to get him with a pipe and then dodge and run away quickly before getting shot by his revolver.

[00:28:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, I’ll say I found this gameplay of this boss battle to be really fun, you know, a bit different and interesting. I think it kind of draws a comparison for me for anyone that’s played Bloodborne. A lot of people seem to most enjoy the fight. Bloodborne has a bunch of large, oversized, you know, building size bosses. But some of the best fights in Bloodborne are against other human sized people or actual humans. But because they’re more agile and entertaining, I think they did a really good job here. It also reminded me a bit of the end, which is A boss fight from Metal Gear Solid three in terms of just trying to sneak around and both of you are very stealthy and trying to stay out of each other’s sights. I. As gameplay wise, it was a great fight.

[00:29:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. I did. I enjoyed it. There was a couple phases to it. It was a good fight.

[00:29:49] Speaker A: This, you know, story wise, this is the first time James has killed an actual person, not just some monster, at least in the story of the game so far.

Unsure of otherwise, considering how unreliable he is as a narrator. But the trophy for beating Eddie is even called a human being to hammer that fact in.

[00:30:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And then you can see also obviously, like, the little cutscene afterwards, like, he’s looking at his hands that are just like shaking because he’s killed.

And I do notice in this fight, they did it. It’s definitely.

And this one too, you sway more.

Even more than what we were swaying before. Because it’s a real person you’re attacking. You’re not attacking a monster. He’s not.

[00:30:32] Speaker A: Yeah, he’s startled by the whole.

[00:30:35] Speaker B: Yeah, so I like that. I think that that’s a cool.

Yeah, it’s a cool little thing that they did. Makes you. Still makes you feel like James is human in that. Yeah, it’s a video game, but it’s still human fighting another human.

[00:30:49] Speaker A: All of the little touches and little details, you know, between sound and lighting and something as simple as. Yeah, he’s more. He can’t handle himself so much, so he’s swaying around more in a stressful situation. It’s really, really well done.

[00:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.

[00:31:04] Speaker A: And after leaving Eddie’s meat packing freezer boss room, you end up having to cross Toluga Lake to continue.

The same lake where so many people have capsized and disappeared before, along with the thick fog going after the light in the distance. It’s funny because it pops up a tutorial prompt for how to grow the canoe and the fact that they built this very unique mechanic into the game for what amounts to about three to five minutes total gameplay. And it’s never used again.

You know, they could have very easily just had it be a cutscene where he leaves and then arrives on the other side. But it just reinforces how much they wanted you as the player to go across the ominous fog lake yourself, like that long staircase down into the prison. It also came to mind if we were doing a video podcast rather than clips throughout each section of the game. It would be so funny to just have a looping three minute video of James just Rowing and just never end.

[00:32:01] Speaker B: Never end.

[00:32:01] Speaker A: And then walking downstairs for the other episode, another funny thing, while rowing, I realized, okay, I’m safe here, just had a boss fight and I just. So I put the controller down and picked up my phone, you know, went to the bathroom, whatever, and when I came back, I had a trophy for being on the lake for 10 minutes.

[00:32:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I got that as well. I think you had texted me and told me about that. So then I just. Yeah, I rode around for a few, like paddled around for a few minutes. And then you did the same thing, put it down, went away and then came back, got the trophy. And then I actually, though I will say I actually did get lost on the lake. As in I was following the light.

And then you keep going and I didn’t actually realize that it moves. So I just kept going in the one direction. But then it kind of like puts you into a denser fog and then it resets you with the light back ahead of you. And then you have to just keep following it. So that did happen to me. I did.

[00:32:54] Speaker A: It was one of those lakes that’s large enough to have actual waves.

[00:32:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I did make it across.

[00:33:02] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah, I sure hope so.

Wouldn’t want to leave James paddling forever.

We were just talking about how well those little details are. The sound of wood creaking while you walk on the dock on the other side with the water lapping at the dock was just another really good example of that.

Arriving at the hotel also answers my question from last time too, about will we ever make it to the other side of the lake. I guess Willy Wonka wasn’t waiting for us after all.

[00:33:33] Speaker B: No, it’s a nice, sort of nice looking on the outside, but completely deserted hotel.

[00:33:41] Speaker A: I mean, you end up getting a handful of minutes without anyone attacking you. But more importantly, when you finally escape the labyrinth and we’re back outside and especially arrived to this bright and airy hotel garden, did you also just let out a long type exhale? It felt like we finally came up for air after almost drowning or something.

[00:34:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I get that. No, but I totally get that. I think I did feel.

I don’t know, I felt though, yeah, there wasn’t any enemies, but I didn’t know that. So there was a part of me that still felt like it’s just too quiet.

Like, what is gonna.

[00:34:21] Speaker A: That tension of why is nothing coming for me?

[00:34:24] Speaker B: Like I’ve put enough hours into this game now to know that, like it’s too quiet and something’s gonna pop out or do. But. Yeah, but you’re right for a little bit here in the hotel where it’s kind of night, it’s just. There isn’t anything.

[00:34:39] Speaker A: It’s. You know, I think for me, why it was such a relief to be in the garden there. That stretch from being dragged into the Otherworld hospital, then going through the Otherworld version of town outside in the streets, then this fully dark prison, then the labyrinth. Just everything seemed breezy after that for a little while.

[00:34:59] Speaker B: Especially after the prison. God, that prison was.

That part was crazy.

[00:35:07] Speaker A: On the second floor of the hotel, when you walked into the room full of posed mannequins, were you like me and immediately start taking shots at every single one of them?

[00:35:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, I’d walk up slowly and just swing to see if I could hit them.

[00:35:23] Speaker A: There are.

[00:35:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Because there were a couple mannequins in there, a couple actual ones that we had to kill.

[00:35:27] Speaker A: There were.

[00:35:28] Speaker B: I was. But.

[00:35:29] Speaker A: But. But all the ones that I. I was shooting them anyway just in case they made a new mannequin because they all had heads and arms, not just double legs, but they. Of course, they hide them in the back corner where you get a false sense of security after none of them reacting to you. And then, bam, there’s two.

[00:35:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. I. It’s. It’s a good. It’s smart, as you said. Some have sheets over them. You can’t tell if it’s.

[00:35:53] Speaker A: Can’t tell.

[00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I was trying to swing. I shot at a couple just to be like, okay, please. Then one did pop out. It didn’t actually get me, but I, like. I, like, had just seen, like, a bit of its leg right before it popped out.

[00:36:07] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:36:08] Speaker B: Yeah. But the Lakeview had a lot of puzzles.

This was a very puzzle quite puzzle heavy section, but they’re pretty unique.

[00:36:20] Speaker A: They had a lot of fun puzzles. I had a lot of fetch, you know, fetch an item to make the puzzle even work moments. It, you know, but it was a.

It felt kind of like a.

Like a bit of relief. Almost like you’ve been through this crazy, intense section for many, many hours now.

It’s a little bit more relaxed.

You’ve got a bit more puzzle solving.

There’s still plenty of enemies in here, but you’re able to kind of find things out.

And. Yeah, I mean, I, I, for the most part, enjoyed all the puzzles in this. In the hotel, I will say. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:01] Speaker B: I was just gonna say this. The main part, I enjoyed all the puzzles. And the main puzzle was just when we get in there, it kind of. There’s like a little note I think right at the start being like, meet me in 3:12 or something. Yeah. So I’m waiting for you. All right. As you pick up the map, it says, like, I’ll be waiting for you at 3:12.

[00:37:20] Speaker A: And there’s a message on the. On the reception desk too, saying the videotape you left is in the safe.

[00:37:28] Speaker B: That’s right. Yeah.

[00:37:29] Speaker A: So you get. You get a couple hints, right, of what you need to do and where you need to go, but what you need to do.

It’s. It’s mostly linear here. So they throw you a bunch of things you need to get to. And they have walls in place to make you go everywhere else first. And I’ll say, you know, picking up all the notes and the memos, the cleaning crew of this hotel has their work cut out for them both between being discussing. But all those notes for management or whoever with it, with so many orders, pretty over the top.

[00:37:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Very much a micromanager.

[00:37:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. For real.

And you know, actually, now that. Now that I’m thinking about this, that’s a faceless manager.

I’ll just jump ahead. There’s. You don’t ever find out more details about who the hospital director was.

There was one more, I think Rick voice recording about how he was working on or working with or working on Mary, but I wanted to know who he was and I never found out.

[00:38:27] Speaker B: No. Yeah, it never.

Never fully told and told us who it was.

[00:38:35] Speaker A: So, you know, you’re going through the hotel, you end up in the conference room, you open the fireplace, and then you have the Mandarin boss fight, and you can finally see what they look like. And it’s weird. I mostly dodged around the tongues, used a bit of shotgun and a lot of pipe.

It was pretty easy, though.

[00:38:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it wasn’t too bad. I think I did the same. I used the shotgun.

Definitely use the shotgun on this one. And then, yeah, just was able to sort of dodge. You could kind of. They telegraphed sort of their attacks, right. You could tell, like, it would swing backwards before it would swing forward to lunge at you. So you could definitely just dodge out of the way on that. And then if you want to, you could hit with a pipe as that. I didn’t. I was just like, no, I have some clean shotgun shots. I’m just gonna.

Gotta take you out with that.

[00:39:24] Speaker A: And you know, you get the. And you start realizing, okay, there’s multiple princess statue or figurine things that are going to Be part of some puzzle somewhere. And obviously the original, in most cases, the original stories that inspired all those Disney movies, which I think is our generation’s frame of reference for those stories, are really dark stories to begin with.

[00:39:44] Speaker B: They are way darker.

[00:39:46] Speaker A: The Disney, I’m surprised that they end up here, but that’s neither here nor there. After the Mandarin boss, I found it really funny that you end up finding a room with a blood red paint can color. It’s almost like one of those mystery detective movies where someone was trying to cover something up by throwing out a bunch of red herrings. It makes you wonder if the same applies here. There’s no explanation for it ever, but came to mind.

[00:40:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.

[00:40:16] Speaker A: And you go through kind of like a series of Mandarin encounters here because the stealth only section in the employee basement where you have to ditch all of your items in a locker before taking the employee elevator when you end up with no way to fight back, was not as tense as I was expecting. Mostly because the Mandarin rats were pretty predictable and there was enough space in the hallways if you did run into them that you could just kind of dodge and run by.

[00:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah, they. Yeah, I was, I was a little worried going down. I was like, oh, I, I was expecting like to be sort of covered, but it was only about one or two Mandarins really in each section. So it wasn’t. Yeah, as you said, it was pretty predictable to figure out their paths.

Yeah, I was very easy to predict, figure them out. There was one time somehow Mandarin, like, I guess sort of saw me and I’m not 100% sure how. I, I don’t, like, I didn’t bump into it, I didn’t really get close to it, but like I was in the middle room and it actually like attacked me and I was like, okay. And so I kind of just hid in a corner in that. In like the middle room area.

[00:41:24] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:41:25] Speaker B: First part of the employee place.

[00:41:27] Speaker A: Oh, I know.

[00:41:27] Speaker B: It kind of just went back to. Yeah. And then it kind of just went back and then I was able to just sneak around again and get to where I needed to go.

But yeah, it wasn’t too bad. I mean, we did. I think in this first part, what is it you have to sneak around to find these. Is it. They’re like gemstones, I think in this part.

[00:41:45] Speaker A: Yeah, you find some gemstones and you end up plugging them into a box and then you end up with the safe code and then from there you.

[00:41:54] Speaker B: End up for one of the gem. Yeah. Stuff for one of the gemstones, if you remember, in the kitchen, you have to get past, like, an acid lying figure.

[00:42:02] Speaker A: Mm.

[00:42:03] Speaker B: And I was able to. It, like, came into the room that you’re in before the kitchen, and then I just dodged around it and I just ran. I just sprinted. I was like, I’m sprinting. I saw the gemstone. I was like, pick it up. Exit out.

[00:42:17] Speaker A: Nope.

[00:42:18] Speaker B: Because I was like, I have nothing to deal with you.

[00:42:20] Speaker A: So right as I jumped through that window to escape the acid figure, it was a bit. It was. It was enough in the distance that I saw it about to round a corner and was able to pop into kind of an alcove to not let it see me. But, yeah, that.

That would have been fun.

[00:42:41] Speaker B: You get the random trophy when you’re running away from the kitchen called. It’s bread.

[00:42:46] Speaker A: Oh. From looking at the rack of bread.

[00:42:48] Speaker B: Just looking. Just looking at the rack of bread. I, like, was running, and I saw, like, a little action, like, thing, and I was like, okay. And I pressed it.

[00:42:55] Speaker A: I was like, okay. Yeah, it’s exactly one of those. It’s like a fomo. Like, oh, there is.

The action prompt is available. I gotta go click it even though this thing’s breaking down my neck. Exactly.

It’s the completionist thing. You see something available, you gotta do it.

[00:43:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I actually enjoy it. Yeah. And then after that, the whole gemstone puzzle, it was just a small little puzzle. 1. I enjoyed placing the gemstones until you get the picture to line with the.

[00:43:18] Speaker A: Picture that’s on the wall. Rotations. Yeah. It was, like, weird.

[00:43:22] Speaker B: And then it gives you the code to that safe that’s in the break room area. The safe area.

[00:43:28] Speaker A: And the numbers burnt into a piece of paper. Like someone who’s got a brand just burning things.

[00:43:33] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:43:34] Speaker A: Creative.

[00:43:35] Speaker B: But ran out of pens.

[00:43:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, no more pens. Let’s just remove from the paper. Yeah.

It was. As you continue. I mean, even before this, it happens to. It was unusual to see the hotel become more and more damaged and decrepit as you go through certain sections. And you mentioned Groundhog Day, and that’s like the whole time loop thing, but I guess we were time traveling here maybe. Even though James is just not flustered by it at all and sees things in normal time, or at least his idea of it all. Because you end up going. You know, you walk into the hotel, it’s well, pristine, but empty. And then it gets a little more damaged, and then it ends up on fire and.

And flooding.

[00:44:19] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:44:20] Speaker A: So it’s like you’re Jumping through time just by doing random things. But, you know, whatever. I will say. So going back to that princess puzzle. So the music box, where you have to get all three princess figures, attach them into this music box thing, they’re all in these tracks and you spin them around. Thought that was pretty creative. And then afterwards you end up with another kind of poem thing. So whoever, you know, the developers of this game and the director are poets, I guess, because they sure loved using them in their puzzles.

[00:44:52] Speaker B: Yeah, they love little.

Like the poems or the limericks, like little. Little riddles, everything like that. They really.

Yeah, someone’s a big fan of those. Putting them in there. And it was. Yeah, the puzzle was fun. It was.

Took me a few tries to get the first section of it of getting them on the right track to get to the door.

[00:45:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Fortunately, it doesn’t reset you too hard or like break anything. And so it’s like a trial and error at a certain point, but you kind of map it out. But then sometimes it doesn’t quite work out.

[00:45:23] Speaker B: No. And then. Yeah, again, just the little poems on the bottom to figure out how many times you have to turn each key and then it all works out.

[00:45:33] Speaker A: Which was.

[00:45:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it was just another creative, another.

[00:45:37] Speaker A: Really puzzle and you know. Okay, so your reward for that, I think was the room. The room key. No, you already have the room key. The VHS tape, possibly.

[00:45:48] Speaker B: No, the.

I thought. Didn’t we get the VHS tape?

[00:45:52] Speaker A: I thought that exactly. The. The. Oh, you’re right.

[00:45:55] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:45:55] Speaker A: That was in the safe.

[00:45:56] Speaker B: You get something the safe had. The safe had a. Like a stairwell key and then whatever. And then. And the videotape. But yeah, we did get. Then you get something else out of the. What was out of the.

[00:46:06] Speaker A: Either way, you end up getting. Was the key to access the gate, the security gate to get to the room 312.

[00:46:12] Speaker B: That’s right. To get to the. Yeah, the third floor on that side.

[00:46:15] Speaker A: And. Yeah, I mean, you already have. You know, you walk in, there’s just the couch ominously sat right in front of the tv, the old CRT tv. And you got a good old fashioned VCR on the floor and the VHS tape you already picked up. I guess they couldn’t update the remake to have streaming instead of vhs instead of VHS probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

But you watch the videotape and. Well, James is an asshole. He killed Mary all along, but she’s still talking to him, saying that she’s waiting, you know, she should really rip him a new one if she actually shows up. That’s what I was thinking in that moment.

[00:46:55] Speaker B: Yeah. That was a crazy, crazy videotape. I know. Yeah. I’m watching it, and then it kind of like flashes in and out. It looks like he, like, puts a pillow over or what? Yeah, yeah.

Kills her. But then I was also thinking, like, is he actually killing or was a videotape showing something that, like, he had thought about, like. I don’t know, like.

[00:47:14] Speaker A: Like, thought about doing.

[00:47:16] Speaker B: Yeah, he thought about doing. And so I was like, well, we’ll probably find out closer to the end. But I did. My original thought was, oh, my God, he killed his.

[00:47:25] Speaker A: Right. And. And. And of course, you know, Laura walks in at that point, and you end up immediately losing that friendship, or let’s say loose companionship of Laura because he just admits, no, actually, I killed her.

And now after watching this videotape evidence, you end up in Otherworld.

And as I mentioned before, the Otherworld Hotel is totally burnt to a crisp. And it’s surprisingly devoid of enemies for large sections. And once you do eventually find them, they just kind of stumble and then keel over without someone just laying a finger on them. It did feel pretty good to be able to run for a bit and stretch the old legs.

[00:48:04] Speaker B: I shot one, killed one. Mainly because there was one specific trophy that I had seen, like, from a while earlier, and I just hadn’t done it. And it was basically, you have to kill an enemy with every type of weapon. And I just hadn’t killed anybody with a rifle yet. I had damaged, but never finished something with a kill.

[00:48:25] Speaker A: I killed it with the rifle. So that’s how I got that. Yeah.

[00:48:28] Speaker B: Okay. I just. Just put one shot into one, and that’s it. That was it. That was the only one. I. It was just. I came out, I saw one monster. I was like, I know I have to do this. And then everything else, I just ran past because. Yeah, they just kind of died on their own.

[00:48:41] Speaker A: You’re. You’re getting them when they’re already down. That’s. That’s not very nice.

[00:48:44] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it was just one. I think it was a nurse, too, a bubble nurse.

[00:48:48] Speaker A: So.

Yeah. And you end up. Right. I think right after that is where you end up. Coming up on Angela, if I’m not mistaken.

[00:48:59] Speaker B: No, that might have been.

[00:49:01] Speaker A: Isn’t it? I think that is. I think that’s where, like, you go down into the basement from there, if you’re not already there, and you end up finding Angela.

[00:49:09] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, you’re right.

[00:49:11] Speaker A: The fiery staircase.

[00:49:12] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:49:14] Speaker A: And you know, nothing good. Right?

[00:49:19] Speaker B: She’s like, hung up, abstract daddy.

[00:49:22] Speaker A: As if he is a. I think there were two. It looked like one was on each wall, but.

[00:49:26] Speaker B: Okay, it was definitely one. Yeah.

And then she’s climbing the stairs. But then it makes you think, like, because she says, like, you can see it too, or whatever now, like, does he see the fire fully?

[00:49:38] Speaker A: Yeah, he sees.

Because you see the fire. He sees the fire.

So I guess it’s her fire. And I think, you know, I, I. Okay, I’ll jump ahead a tiny bit because it kind of applies here. Right. So I think it’s really heavily implied that most, if not everything that’s happening specifically in James’s mind and all these things are manifestations of his own guilt or emotions.

It shed a lot of light and recontextualized things for me. You know, I know I said before that it looks like Angela’s hallucinating because she keeps talking to things that aren’t there, but now she mentions, oh, you see the fire too. But considering that the. The town of Silent Hill seems like it’s. And drawing people to visit to then force them to face their demons, it looks like she’s not hallucinating. She’s just in her own version of the otherworld. And you’re wandering through it.

I mean, she is. So is James, so is Eddie.

And she just starts yelling at things because that’s what she sees. So, like, I don’t know, not a good place to be. It also kind of makes sense why Lauren never seemed to be too bothered by anything and she’s just willing to run off into dark hallways full of monsters with no care in the world.

[00:50:52] Speaker B: Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

[00:50:54] Speaker A: But I guess the things she’s yelling at don’t exist in James’s reality, except for the abstract. Daddy. At this point, she also asked for your for her knife back. So it looks like she’s still considering offing herself, even though, you know, you’ve helped to get rid of her tormentor.

Yeah.

[00:51:15] Speaker B: When she first sees you, she says, mama. Mama, she calls you.

[00:51:18] Speaker A: So she thinks you’re my son.

[00:51:20] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:51:21] Speaker A: She’s odd.

[00:51:22] Speaker B: Which was odd. And then she just kind of. She goes upstairs.

[00:51:29] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:51:29] Speaker B: And that was kind of it. And I was a little disappointed because I was hoping to get a little more on Angela. Like, I don’t.

[00:51:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s the last time you see her. Yeah.

[00:51:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s the last time you see her. So I was, I was kind of like hoping, like, who really is she? Like, we’ve seen her Multiple times through this.

[00:51:45] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:51:46] Speaker B: Like, is she. Is she alive or is she actually dead already?

[00:51:51] Speaker A: Beats me.

[00:51:52] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:51:53] Speaker A: Your guess is as good as mine.

[00:51:54] Speaker B: I know.

[00:51:59] Speaker A: But, Yeah, I. You know, I don’t think we’ll ever find that. The answer to that out. But she was clearly a troubled person, and.

[00:52:05] Speaker B: Yeah, she was. Yeah.

[00:52:06] Speaker A: A very troubled prison. She needs some help, and she’s the one that’s been around since before you even find any enemies. Right. In the graveyard. So she warned you not to go into Silent Hill, and you just went and did it anyway.

[00:52:17] Speaker B: That’s why this party wonders if she is, like, a girl. She’s something because she. You see her out there and she gives you a warning, but it’s more of like, a. Like, she’s trying to pull you into it. Like, don’t go.

[00:52:28] Speaker A: But, yeah, it’s almost, you know, now that you mention that, it makes me think it’s like she’s an embodiment of the town of Silent Hill in the first place because you have a chance at that point to leave, but she kind of, like, makes you FOMO want to go in anyway. And, you know, James said, I’m gonna go no matter what, but maybe she kind of did that on purpose. That’s like. But then why was she abused and miserable?

So maybe only one of those is true.

[00:52:56] Speaker B: I don’t know. She. Then she had. Yeah, she has, like, her closet area, too, which is her safe space that we was in the labyrinth and all that back earlier.

[00:53:04] Speaker A: If anyone has other thoughts on this, let us know on Discord, because I’m very curious if anyone has some insight there.

[00:53:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Anybody has this extra lore that they know about Angela. It’s just curious to just know because it was just kind of like she walks up the stairs and just leaves abruptly, and it’s kind of like. Oh, with a bit of, like, a open ending of what could be.

[00:53:26] Speaker A: You know. Moving on from there, there’s the double pyramid head boss fight. And yep, they’re. They’re both wielding spears instead of greatswords. I don’t know if that’s because he dropped it in the labyrinth collapse, but. Holy hell.

1. If one pyramid head is bad, two is obviously double that. I guess up until this point, I hadn’t realized there was more than one pyramid head. I thought it was just one guy and not a family.

Like, it’s like his twin. Also. I mean, the boss fight itself was relatively simplistic. They stab at you with the spear, eventually start throwing them at you. I kind of just made Them run into each other and then shotgun them in the side the entire time. I did I run out of ammo, I think. I didn’t run out of ammo, but I use a lot of health because I did get hit a fair amount.

[00:54:11] Speaker B: Okay. I. I didn’t. I also. I like the beginning of this. Obviously, you come in and they have Maria again.

[00:54:18] Speaker A: There’s Maria again. Yeah. Upside down in a cage.

[00:54:20] Speaker B: Upside down in a cage. And then they kill her again because it closes up on her face and there’s blood dripping down. They obviously stab her with one of the spears through whatever part. So it’s like, okay, well, that’s what sounds like.

[00:54:34] Speaker A: I’ve lost track.

[00:54:34] Speaker B: What time is that now?

[00:54:35] Speaker A: How many times shoving it in your face that she’s gone and you can’t do anything to stop it, I guess over and over again. And also, why do they skewer their own heads?

That.

[00:54:46] Speaker B: Okay, so, yeah, I will say because you said you. I. I did well on the boss fight. I had to use some health, but I was actually proud of myself. I was able to dodge pretty, like, with pretty good time of, like, their spear throws and the thrusts to dismiss them. And then I was like, I don’t know how far I am through this fight. Like, I just keep shooting with shotgun, Switching between shotgun and handgun. And then all of a sudden they just both stop. And I was like, uh, oh, what’s coming next? And then they just.

[00:55:13] Speaker A: They’re gonna Power Rangers Mechazord into a giant pyramid head.

[00:55:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. And then they just stabbed themselves both through the head with their spears. I was like, oh, okay. They just skewered themselves.

[00:55:25] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, pyramid head.

[00:55:27] Speaker B: To the reference of skewering earlier of.

[00:55:29] Speaker A: Where they, you know, we wanted pizza before. Now I want some kebabs. Yeah, I’m a hungry person, apparently. I’m always talking about food, but yeah, Pyramid Head. Pyramid Heads, plural. Now, you continue to confound me, and I applaud you for it because it’s really weird. But fun fact, did you know that the character is officially called Pyramid Thing, not Pyramid Head?

[00:55:51] Speaker B: I did not know that.

[00:55:54] Speaker A: Apparently that’s the official name by the devs and everyone just started calling him Pyramid Head, so that’s. Literally everyone refers to it as that.

And okay, you know, you just saw Maria get skewered for the upteenth time, and then you end up fighting Maria as the final boss.

It was definitely trippy. I do have some lingering questions too. Like, why was Maria attacking James in the first place?

Is it just if I can’t have you, then die type obsessive thing.

[00:56:26] Speaker B: I like how this final boss fight starts. Like you walk up there and it’s Mary. It starts as you’re talking to Mary.

And then obviously for like, all games I have subtitles on as well as the talking. But, like, you see, and it’ll say like, Mary. And then what they’re saying and all that. And then all of a sudden it changed to Maria. And then you can see the face changing. And I was like, that’s.

That is cool.

[00:56:49] Speaker A: It’s Maria in Mary’s clothes, Mary’s body. And then she just says, you don’t need that one.

And, you know. But the boss fight itself was pretty fun.

It had a couple phases. There’s like the weird moth attack thing. Then you end up fighting against the Mandarin version of her in a really dark room that was pretty small, and then. Then back up on the roof again.

So I enjoyed it. It was easy enough though. Got it first try.

[00:57:24] Speaker B: Yeah, same. It was easy enough. This was where, like, I saw a good amount of ammo left on my stuff and I just was like, well, what’s the point? Like, I know. Like, I’m at the end. Like, this is the finale. Yeah, like him.

[00:57:36] Speaker A: Yeah, just. Just using it all the ammo. Yep.

[00:57:39] Speaker B: Actually for the first, there’s like three sections of the fight. The first section, I use basically all handgun ammo when she’s in the cage kind of coming at you.

And then that’s the funny part, you fall through the roof. But then she’s a Mandarin type thing that’s climbing through the roof.

[00:57:56] Speaker A: So roof comes back and then you end up back on top of the.

[00:57:59] Speaker B: Roof and then you end up back on top.

[00:58:01] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:58:01] Speaker B: The second part, I used the shotgun because it was more of like you can follow her tracer. And then when she dropped down close, just boom. Like, just put a shot right into her. And then.

And then the third section. Yeah, the moths also weren’t too bad because you could dodge, like, they flash red. And if you time it right, you can dodge their attack and not get. I got hit a couple times.

[00:58:18] Speaker A: I just. I just kept running in a circle around it the entire.

[00:58:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I just. Yeah, I just had to. She almost got me a couple times where it gave me, like, the actual, like, medical symbol.

And I was like, just holding down to give. To give myself a syringe to fully heal up. But yeah, I got through it and then.

Yeah, what is it? At the end? She just kind of is in like lying there, get to the last part. She’s like lying there in the cage. It’s like a flesh lip type, Mandarin cage looking thing. And walk up and she goes like, James and all that. And like, no. And then I just pulled out my rifle and said nope and just shot it straight in the face.

And then it.

And then that’s basically the end. That was the end. And then you get your final cutscenes, your actual.

Depending on what you do, I guess you’re ending.

[00:59:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And so, you know, I don’t think I realize it until right before the credits roll. Right after the credits roll and you see your stats screen of, you know, how many times you’ve shot, how many health items you used and which ending you got. And there’s multiple endings. And, and I guess we’ll, we’ll talk about both of ours because they were different. We found out.

You know, I think in mine, I mean, I guess I’ll just jump in, in. In mine, you end up having a conversation with Mary on her bed when she’s all diseased. And throughout the conversation she basically comes clean and apologizes in this kind of monologue between the, you know, that long walk down the hallway before the Maria fight and then in this conversation for just being an asshole to James during her sickness. So I guess she, when she got sick, realized she was going to die, started just becoming really rude and aggressive against everyone that she knows. But he says, I’m so sorry for killing you. And she basically just says, it’s okay. I want. I told you I wanted the pain to stop. But then he turns around and says, it’s actually because I hated you.

And when you hear that, that’s the first thing he says.

And he clarifies it a little bit that he wanted, you know, since he became sick, he wanted his independence back.

Like, not to leave her necessarily, but he didn’t want to be constantly taking care of someone who was constantly lashing out at him.

So he felt basically trapped in the whole situation.

You know, at the end of the day, she kind of, kind of asked for it.

But you know, in my thoughts, Mary deserved better than her disease and definitely better than James, who’s kind of a piece of trash.

Meanwhile, he seems to have gone to Silent Hill in the first place, trying to find her in search of forgiveness, but he definitely does not deserve it. And you know, she apologizes, apologizes for being an a hole, but I don’t know why not? You know, instead of suffocating with a pillow, why not just use like simple injected euthanasia method.

The interesting thing is he walks out into the streets of Silent Hill again, hands the letter to Laura, who’s painting on the wall, and then they both. The next thing you see is they’re in the graveyard from the beginning of the game and then just leave. So they’re walking out of town like he’s. I don’t. I don’t quite buy that Laura would leave town with James after he admitted earlier that he killed Mary. And then she was friends with Mary.

I don’t know why. Why she’s just going to be like the adopted daughter of James at this point. But also. Yeah. Still no clue about what happened to Angela.

[01:02:01] Speaker B: I’m also. Laura is the other one where you saw her in the hotel and she disappears and we don’t see her again. And obviously, I guess you see her then in your ending, but.

[01:02:10] Speaker A: Oh, you didn’t see her. Okay, who is it?

[01:02:13] Speaker B: No.

Yeah. Who is. Like, I didn’t know. Like, is Laura for some reason? Like, is it a daughter? I don’t know if there’s of some point inside, I don’t know. Or is it, as she said before, just like a really good friend of Mary’s? And I feel like there’s more to Laura, too, but unfortunately, just not. There’s as much clarification. But yeah, that’s interesting, your ending. Then you walk out. So, okay, so you got the ending because you just said so then you leave. I think the ending that you got is actually called leave.

[01:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so.

[01:02:44] Speaker B: If I remember rightly, there are.

I didn’t watch them. I didn’t. I don’t know all of them, but I looked it up quickly because I saw. I think there’s like eight different endings to this game.

[01:02:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And supposedly two of them are joke endings. And. Okay, everything besides yours and mine and one other are all new game plus only.

[01:03:03] Speaker B: Okay, that’s what I was gonna say. Yeah, a few. Yeah, a couple. Yeah. New game plus only.

So my ending was we finished the fight and then it kind of flashes to James right at the beginning of the game where you’re outside Silent Hill and he gets back into his car.

He gets back into his car. He turns the car on and.

Well, he doesn’t turn the car, he just goes. Gets in his car. He sits in his car. And then he’s like kind of looking himself in the.

In the little mirror and then looking around the car too, and basically saying, like, I’m sorry for what I did to you, Mary. Sorry I hated you Like, I can’t do this anymore.

I miss you.

I can’t be myself. Like, I can’t be without you.

And a few other things. Just basically saying, like, I don’t think I can. You know, can’t. Don’t think I can do this anymore. I can’t be without you.

And then it goes darker screen, and you just hear him start up the car, reverse out quickly, and then peel off.

And then you hear a big crash. Kaboom. And then a bunch of water going.

[01:04:24] Speaker A: Overview, isn’t it?

[01:04:25] Speaker B: And then all of a sudden you just see. Because my ending was called in water, the letter, like it’s being. Then Mary reads out her letter to James, but it’s floating down in the water.

So basically James crashes his car into the lake and kills himself because of his guilt.

[01:04:46] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:04:46] Speaker B: So, okay, so it was a dream.

[01:04:48] Speaker A: Or a hallucination the whole time. And then he just like, all right.

[01:04:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So I got. You got considered. Was considered the good ending. I got what is considered a bad ending, but not the worst ending through what the playthroughs, I guess, are.

[01:05:07] Speaker A: To be honest, I’m surprised they weren’t all bad endings.

[01:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So I did look up like the third ending or I guess that you can get. It’s called Maria. And it’s. If you really. I don’t know what you have to do. I’m assuming you have to really engage with Maria, like a lot in the game.

And it’s basically I.

From what I saw, I saw just a very quick clip. I didn’t watch the full blown ending, but it was like you’re walking and starts with you walking out of Silent Hill with Maria and being like, yeah, let’s go, and all that. And then she like gets to a point, like outside, close to the car, and then she starts to like, freak out. It’s like she can’t leave Silent Hill. And then I think she drags you back in.

[01:05:52] Speaker A: You get dragged back into Silent Hill by Maria. The one that’s been super creepy the entire time.

[01:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that’s. And that’s. I think it’s the batting because then you’re just in a loop over and over if you get that one.

[01:06:06] Speaker A: But no, thanks.

[01:06:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I know, but I still got a bad ending, but it was just. I was like, I actually didn’t catch it.

I actually had to. I youtubed my ending again because the first time, like, when I did it, it didn’t actually really catch, like, what he did, like driving off the bridge right into the lake.

I was just like, why is it floating in water for a split second? Like, it just didn’t hit me. And then. And then it kind of hit me. And then I just rewatched it like. Like 15 minutes later. I, like, just found someone on YouTube. I just googled the ending and rewatched it. I was like, oh. Because then I, like, really heard, like, the car, because he’s sort of talking to. Is talking over it. The car peel out and then crash, and you can hear the water splash. I was like, oh, no, James.

I was like, no.

So, yes. So that was my ending.

[01:06:54] Speaker A: I’m curious what you did differently to end up with that situation.

[01:06:58] Speaker B: I am, too. I don’t.

[01:07:00] Speaker A: Like if I don’t. I’m sure we could. That sounds like something that’s easily enough, easy enough to look up, and we can look at it, but if anyone.

[01:07:08] Speaker B: Else let us know, I’m sure there. Yeah, there are certain things.

[01:07:12] Speaker A: I mean, I think there’s a lot of subtle things here that probably affect it more than, like, the obvious things in some other games that have multiple endings.

[01:07:19] Speaker B: As I said, like, I looked up the third, the Maria one. I’m pretty sure to get the Maria one, you probably have to engage all the time, constantly talking or checking on her and everything. Like, constantly.

[01:07:32] Speaker A: That sounds like something that you do deliberately when you know it exists as an ending. Because I did not want to do anything to do with Maria.

[01:07:40] Speaker B: I saw her for.

I had her for the bit at the beginning, and then when she was in the jail, like, I saw her once in the jail cell, and I was like, I’m not. Like, I checked on her once, I think, in the hospital. And that was it earlier in the game.

[01:07:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that was before you realize how creepy she is. I mean, she’s obviously very, like, pushy and trying to seduce James, but then eventually she just flips a switch and turns ultra demonic. So. Okay, so when the credits start rolling, at least I’m curious now, because if you got the same one, because the song that plays there, I’d call it Melancholic, but it was like a hopeful kind of tone to it. I mean, I wonder if you just got a dark, sad song the entire time, maybe, or if you. If you. If you remember. It was interesting, though, because it played this, like, you know, sorrowful but hopeful song. And then. Then eventually after like, a minute or two, it switches into a couple of really awesome heavy, heavy metal instrumental songs. If you just. When I just sat on the results screen long enough kind of Just analyzing what the stats were.

[01:08:46] Speaker B: No, I think, yeah, I think it’s the same music because I remember songs. Yeah, I don’t think mine was much. Was much different.

[01:08:54] Speaker A: So. Yeah. So, okay, I think, you know, we’ve gotten through the credits here. There’s a lot of room for interpretation now after all the story revelations and you know, we.

First off, we want to hear from you all on Discord, what you think it all means.

But Alex, what the hell do you think was going on?

[01:09:15] Speaker B: I don’t even know.

[01:09:18] Speaker A: To give you more of a leading question. What do you think the Otherworld is supposed to be exactly? And why do you think we kept bouncing back and forth between the regular Foem Hill and the dark, you know, inexplicably tinged in red all the time.

Otherworld, rather than just ending up in Otherworld and staying there until you escape.

[01:09:37] Speaker B: I feel like the Otherworld is the guilt. It’s his guilt of killing his wife.

I feel it’s just the guilty darker side of Jane that’s the other world. I don’t know. I guess it’s a version of Hell.

[01:09:55] Speaker A: It’s his version of hell.

[01:09:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s.

[01:10:03] Speaker A: That seems like a reasonable thing to do to expect, I guess. Yeah. I was curious about why he’s bouncing back and forth. I mean, maybe he. After he spends some time in the other world, like if that’s true, if it’s his version of hell, like which either he meaning mentally or he’s already dead. Or if it’s just a various stages of his losing his sanity, you know, subconsciously or consciously.

I mean, I guess maybe, maybe it relates to him going through the other world a fair bit and then like kind of getting some strength out of overcoming something and then kind of getting semi back to normal and then he ends up losing and spiraling again and going back there. That’d probably be my explanation.

But yeah, he spent a long dark time in the other world and would not like to join him.

[01:10:55] Speaker B: No, the Otherworld was not a fun place.

[01:11:00] Speaker A: Something that I also started to do and did it a little bit here and there throughout the game, but then did it in that last hallway where the monster just die on their own. I think there’s some degree of meaning behind what the monsters are. You know, obviously they designed something really meaningful, terrifying and grotesque and all that. But when you look up close at their faces and just their forms in general, except for Pyramid Head and the abstract daddy, they all look like women. This might hint at all the enemies being some sick representation of women in general that James has, or more specifically about how he thinks about Mary, Whether it’s physical aspects or the way her disease affected her physically and emotionally and how she lashed out at him. She.

Because you didn’t get this scene in your ending when he’s talking to her on her deathbed, her face is all like.

Has a bunch of like, black scars or almost something like that. So the disease is clearly taking hold. And I guess he saw her deteriorate physically.

[01:11:59] Speaker B: So I’m. I’m assuming. Does she get.

Obviously, I don’t know. And I don’t think it’s.

[01:12:03] Speaker A: I thought it was.

[01:12:03] Speaker B: She have the plague that’s mentioned in the game where all those people die?

[01:12:07] Speaker A: That would make more sense. For some reason.

I had always just assumed it was cancer, but a dark plague makes more sense.

[01:12:15] Speaker B: But yeah, she has what first hit.

[01:12:18] Speaker A: Side, whatever they were talking about there.

[01:12:19] Speaker B: Whatever. Yeah. In the history of it. Yeah.

[01:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And yeah, that probably makes sense because you see Marielle all messed up, basically. So maybe some of these enemies are just what James kind of like, projects onto some other people. Enemies, Whatever.

But, like, all the ones have very specific details. So, like, the lying figures look like they’re in a body bag. Like, because Mary was in deep pain and couldn’t escape from her own death, she. He was imagining body bags and, you know, they’re constantly, like, writhing around in pain, trying to get out of them.

[01:12:57] Speaker B: CSQs. You think it’s one. There was part of me that thought sometimes maybe they’re also bits of James.

[01:13:02] Speaker A: Okay. Interesting.

[01:13:03] Speaker B: Some of those types of enemies, the lying figures and like, his, like, his.

[01:13:07] Speaker A: Own, like, inability to.

To escape or kind of forgive himself. I mean, that’s definitely a possibility too.

[01:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, however many times he’s just turned into some.

[01:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:13:20] Speaker B: How many times he’s done this or how long it’s been he’s turned into a horrible monster, like, over and Right.

[01:13:25] Speaker A: That’s true.

[01:13:25] Speaker B: Just like a. Yeah.

I don’t know though. It could be the bubble nurses. Yeah, I could.

[01:13:32] Speaker A: So, yeah.

[01:13:32] Speaker B: So the bubble that I could definitely see as a thing of Maria Mary.

[01:13:36] Speaker A: It could have been the bobblehead nurses. Right? Yeah. They’re very sexualized.

They look like what you would find if you googled nurse costume and, you know, have seen many times at Halloween parties. Like, it says something when you don’t even have to type in sexy nurse costume. You just type nurse costume and it pulls up. Basically the outfit from that is it candy striper. It’s like the candy striper short skirt options only.

You know, it has to also be the way that James was most likely ogling the nurses in the hospital when Mary was a patient and she was looking sicker and sicker.

[01:14:10] Speaker B: That’s a good thought. Yeah.

[01:14:12] Speaker A: The name bubblehead and you mentioned this because of the way they’re, the weird way that their heads look. So this one I looked up out of curiosity and the reason they’re called bubble heads is because they have a full head mask on and it’s actually half full of liquid and blood so it makes it kind of balloon out. But on top of that, the fact that they’re trying to avoid suffocating in the liquid is why they jerk their head around all the time in like that really unsettling way.

Okay, so yeah, there’s that, I mean a couple of the other ones. So the under the mandarins, to me they just seem like kind of creeps that lurk beneath the shadows and strike when they find an opportune moment. But they might be James’s intrusive thoughts of killing her as Mary got worse and was treating him poorly. See, I kind of, I wrote some of these down because I was just, you know, curious, like trying to keep my, my thoughts straight here. The flesh lip is trapped in a cage, right? Seems to be Mary’s hospital bed. The lips part kind of resembles some form of communication because none of the enemies before that had mouths. They all had their heads obscured or non existent. Not sure that I track what exactly is going on there.

[01:15:24] Speaker B: I don’t know. Flesh lips to me is. The mouth is in a very, very weird place. And I think that’s just, I don’t know, there’s a part of me that thinks that that’s just some developer or.

[01:15:34] Speaker A: Graphic designer who just, just, just wanted to get there.

[01:15:37] Speaker B: They have something like James on in their head psychologically that fight, when I first saw that, I was like, what in God’s name is this? And who ever thought to create this?

[01:15:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so you. Okay, there’s the abstract daddy, right? Angela’s monster and her worst nightmare. It seems to be an embodiment of being trapped in a sexual abuse situation. You know, there’s very clearly two human body shaped things that are fused together and covered in skin and framed in a cage. So I think of all the enemies, this one gave me the creeps the most and it’s just so effed up.

So I mean here, if not throughout the entire game, here is where it definitely earned its trigger warning message that pops up Every time you load the game up.

[01:16:30] Speaker B: Definitely.

[01:16:32] Speaker A: There’s the. Let’s see the mannequins. I didn’t really. They’ve got to have some kind of meeting, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then pyramid.

[01:16:39] Speaker B: I just think they’re just terrifying things that jump out at you. Like the. That was my thing. I didn’t say it in the hotel. They just. Many times I ran into a room to go look, and they just jump out from somewhere, and it’s just caught me completely off guard and scared me.

[01:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah. I will be forever hunted by the mannequins.

[01:16:56] Speaker B: I think they’re more there.

[01:16:57] Speaker A: I don’t want to see one in the store anytime soon. Yeah, I think so, too.

And then. Yeah. Okay. Pyramid head. So he’s labeled as an executioner in the Silent Hill Historical Society painting. And pyramid Head seems to be the executioner who’s ready to punish James for the guilt that he’s feeling and the guilt that he’s suppressing and in denial over about killing Mary.

But he gets a chance to execute James time and time again and doesn’t do it by chasing James or throwing him or scaring him, and which he does many times. He just keeps forcing James to continue on the path to maybe redemption, maybe judgment, maybe death, or at least stop denying what he did and accepting it. I think this is maybe where the double pyramid boss comes into play, because up until that point, you had seen a single pyramid head the whole game, and all of a sudden, there are two.

So my theory is that each pyramid head, like, person represents the need for judgment. And the one who followed you all throughout the game is doing it for killing Mary. But the new second one is for killing Eddie, the other real human.

[01:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:18:05] Speaker A: Which may also be why they both end up impaling themselves, because James just blurts out at the end of the boss fight, I don’t need you anymore.

And it just kind of really just abruptly ends.

[01:18:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it does really abruptly end. Is that, like, calm me off guard at the end of that boss fight?

[01:18:21] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, we were both expecting phase two, and then they just end and themselves.

[01:18:27] Speaker B: I think the pyramid heads. I think you’re right on that. I also think between what would be real Silent Hill and Otherworld, Silent Hill, I think they actually were in real Silent Hill during that time of the plague and other stuff.

It was like. It’s like an executioner you’d see back in the medieval times, where they wear that mask of, like, a black. Just a black rag mask over their Head. But these guys just had these pyramid things over their head and they were just the executioners and. But in the other world, I don’t know. I don’t know if maybe it’s a little bit more fused onto them or.

I’m sure there’s, like, some slight difference with it, but I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe they’re the same both in.

[01:19:12] Speaker A: My big question is, how do they see with those things on? There’s no window in there.

[01:19:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s true.

[01:19:18] Speaker A: It’s like Dark Helmet from Spaceballs. Gotta slide open a window and. Yeah, I mean, that kind of covers most of it, I guess. Oh, the last enemy was like, those little cockroach things that go after you once in a while.

Is there meaning behind that? Or is it just, like, a phobia of insects?

Whatever.

[01:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I don’t know.

[01:19:41] Speaker A: Probably inconsequential.

All right, well, we’ve been through the game. What would you rate this one?

Oh.

[01:19:52] Speaker B: So starting this off, I was a little, like. I was skeptical for us to play and start this game because I’m not, like. I like survival horror, but I’m not a big survival horror fan. Like, I love Dead Space.

It took me a little bit to get into this game, and I’ll admit it, I was a little nervous and scared to play this game. I played most of it for a while during the day, not at night.

But the further I got into the game and more comfortable I got, I ended up, like, playing stuff at night, I think, beat the final boss, everybody at night, or whatever.

[01:20:22] Speaker A: Or.

[01:20:22] Speaker B: Yeah, beat it all. Yeah. And I was really enjoying the game. And I found myself, actually, after beating it the next day, wanting to go back in, but I was like, I’ve beat it. But then wanting to potentially start a new game. Plus, because I was like. It was just unique and a lot of fun, and that was terrifying. Like, I just. I. It was a good story, and I had a really good time, and I was like, silent Hill is trying to pull me back.

[01:20:53] Speaker A: Yep.

[01:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I did not.

[01:20:56] Speaker A: That’s not a good sign.

[01:20:58] Speaker B: No, I started good.

[01:20:59] Speaker A: Or it is. It’s a good sign of great game development, but it’s not a good sign.

[01:21:03] Speaker B: It is.

Yeah. But, no, I was thinking maybe one day I might try a new game. Plus, maybe not right away. I’m not gonna do it right away, but it was a. By the end, I really. I really enjoyed it. I really.

It was a phenomenal remake. I mean, I can’t. I don’t know. I’m sure the original was also incredible, but this just as a remake. How it looked, the sound, everything, it was incredible.

I would probably give this the little. Some little. Very little mechanics is what I don’t like. Like, it’s. Dodging was a little iffy, but then I got pretty good at dodging at the end and figuring it out. Like with the dual pyramid head battle, I was getting pretty good at dodging their attacks and not getting hit as much.

The only thing was like the action button of sometimes just trying to pick stuff up where the circle would fill itself and then instantly unfill itself. Like that was a little bit.

And then a couple times of like, if you try and hit something a few times with a. Like there are a few times with enemies, try and hit enemies or run up to an enemy, hit with a pipe. And James would just swing way early and miss.

[01:22:10] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:22:11] Speaker B: And then I’d get hit and I was like, oh, like that. But it’s a very minor, minor thing. So I would. I would rate this high. I’d probably say a 9.5 out of 10. I didn’t think it would. I thought. I thought for me it might be like a 7 or 8. But I enjoyed my time with this Silent Hill 2 remake. It terrified me. It made me jump, but it kept me intrigued the whole way through.

Like the whole story, everything. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

[01:22:42] Speaker A: That is a solid review right there.

Yeah. Yeah. And okay, you’re. You’re in luck because Bloober team is. I don’t think. I don’t know what. There’s a defined release date, but they’re working now because of the success of this remake. They’re working on Silent Hill 1 remake. So we’ll have some more to get to if before or after we play Silent Hill F.

Yeah.

[01:23:06] Speaker B: If that’s true. In the yard, making like I’m. I will be very. I’ve never played the first Silent Hill either. Obviously Noob. I’ve seen the movie and all, but I would be. I would jump into that pretty quickly. I don’t think that would be as long on my backlog. I think I’d be really excited to.

[01:23:22] Speaker A: Nice play. Nice. So Silent Hill grabbed you and didn’t let go.

[01:23:28] Speaker B: Silent Hill F looks incredible. It looks great from what I’ve watched little bits of gameplay footage of people on Twitch playing it. It’s completely different compared to, like what we just played. It might be one, though, that’s on a little bit. Still on the. Yeah. Stay in the backlog for a bit.

[01:23:44] Speaker A: Right.

[01:23:45] Speaker B: Just because it’s also like, I think, yeah, brand new story and all that. So all different times. So. But it looks good.

[01:23:51] Speaker A: Wow. Okay, I’m impressed. I’m glad you enjoyed it so much.

[01:23:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I did.

[01:23:55] Speaker A: And you mentioned the original Silent Hill 2, which I owned way back when, but haven’t had it in a long time. And it is either incredibly difficult to find or incredibly expensive to get in its original format now. But I did, out of curiosity, after finishing this a day later, hopped on YouTube and because it’s a much shorter game, I had read about that already, they added a lot of sections and a lot of detail obviously here in the remake. But I watched some of the original and yes, of course it’s dated, that’s why they made a remake to begin with. But it’s almost kind of just funny. I mean, some of the items are in different places and things are a lot smaller.

Like I’d be watching and you’d go down like three hallways and be in like one of the major puzzle or moment sections of the apartments. And I just feel like, what? How are we there already? And so I mean also some of the animations are hilarious. Like there’s no like realistic swing combo for the.

The wood with the nails. It’s really just a bop on the head on the enemies and he just kind of. And it has like a springboard thing where he just like goes down and then immediately bounces back up and it’s that the only attack animation and. Right. It has tank control. So anyway, it’s not like super user friendly unless you like that kind of thing or are a fan of the original releases. Probably won’t visit it at any point. But still kind of fun to watch the full. I’ll probably finish watching the full play through just to see how, how it ends up comparing to this, you know, 20 plus hour game. @ least it was about how long it took me. Yeah, I mean, I think I’d agree. I’d probably put this at a nine, nine, nine and a half. I think on my end you hit most of the good points that really the. The fluidity and consistency of the controls is my only real drawback. I got to a point and it was. It happened a lot in the.

Both in the two final bosses where I would dodge, like do a really good dodge and then I would hit L2 or hold L2 to like pull up my shotgun and nothing would happen. And it happened like 20 times or something. So it was really starting to bother me. So like that kind of thing right the. The action button wouldn’t show up because it was a really small window. Like those kinds of details were a little annoying. But great game, great story, really happy. We chose this as our horror game for the podcast because I think we were thinking of some Resident Evil ones. And I probably will jump Into Resident Evil 3 Remake at some point soon because I had that on my list for a bit.

It was, it was great. Parting thoughts. Getting to the end of this game really made me want to watch the movie Shutter island again, which I haven’t seen since it came out. Mostly just because of. Right. All the weird psychological hallucinations and misunderstandings and all that. Really good movie means. Scorsese does great. Departed is probably one of my favorites of all time. I’ve only seen Shutter island once though, so I gotta check it out.

I can say at this point I definitely will also watch the Return to Silent Hill movie based on Silent Hill 2 Whenever it comes to streaming, even if it ends up being a terrible B movie like most people expect.

Just out of morbid curiosity.

[01:26:56] Speaker B: Yeah. I’m going to be very curious on. Obviously they’re not going to put all the stuff that’s in this game obviously into the movie. You can’t fit all that.

[01:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah, they can’t.

[01:27:05] Speaker B: But I’m curious on what they’ll like if there is like Eddie and Angela and all that. Like, it’ll be fun to Laura. See who we’ll see in there and how they do the story.

[01:27:16] Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah. I’m curious again. So I confirmed it too. Is Laura, the actress that played the voice, acting and mocap for Laura in Silent Hill 2 remake is playing Laura in the movie.

[01:27:27] Speaker B: Awesome.

[01:27:29] Speaker A: So, yeah. Should be interesting.

[01:27:31] Speaker B: I like that.

[01:27:32] Speaker A: Good, good.

[01:27:32] Speaker B: I’m glad they did that.

[01:27:33] Speaker A: That’s cool.

What was your favorite thing about this game?

[01:27:39] Speaker B: Ooh, favorite thing.

[01:27:44] Speaker A: And, and. Okay, my follow up question, just in case it overlaps, is what was the scariest part for you?

[01:27:50] Speaker B: Scariest parts are the.

[01:27:51] Speaker A: The one.

[01:27:52] Speaker B: The prison was definitely the best. Scariest place for me. It took me.

[01:27:56] Speaker A: Spoiler alert.

[01:27:57] Speaker B: Took me a while to get through. Yeah. Spoiler alert. The prison is terrifying.

[01:28:01] Speaker A: Just. Just for me. It’s just pure darkness and the chittering of the spider mannequins.

[01:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah. That was not fun.

[01:28:09] Speaker A: It just gets you. Yeah.

[01:28:10] Speaker B: But I. I know what I liked about it. I don’t know. I. I liked a lot. I mean, I ended up enjoying sort of the combat at the end. I did enjoy.

I enjoyed the boss fights. I’ll say that. They were all they’re all kind of unique. I did enjoy the boss fights.

I did think those were fun.

I also like that they weren’t too, too difficult where I’m getting killed within seconds like every time. And I had to do them like over and over and over. I’m glad they weren’t massively difficult. I’m sure. Obviously. I mean we were both playing on standard difficulty for both that and the puzzles.

The puzzles were a lot of fun too. Figuring it all out.

[01:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Access, accessibility wise for this type of survival horror. I think it was fantastic to separate the difficulty of combat and puzzles which really gives it that extra customizability. And you know, I think they did a good job with the puzzles where they make it intuitive enough to not need to think that you need a guide of any sort and just figure it out and it makes you feel smart for doing it.

[01:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I will say if I do a new game plus I might actually, I don’t know, I might keep it on standard. I don’t think I do the battle, the combat harder.

[01:29:19] Speaker A: I keep combat at normal but I, I just turn the puzzles to hard.

[01:29:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I would turn the puzzles up to hard to. Because I do know.

I believe if you do hard it’s different answers. So all they give you or certain things have more lines or more words or whatever to.

To figure out more clues to figure out. So which would be fun. I mean after playing. We love the Uncharted games, all that, everything that has all these puzzles. Tomb Raiders, all these types of games. Like I love on the Indiana Jones games. I love doing puzzles and games. I don’t, I don’t mind it so I love it. So I would definitely on a new game plus turn that up. But yeah, those are, those are definitely some of the things I really liked about it.

[01:29:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean I think I, you know, prison, absolutely most terrifying. My favorite things. Yeah. I think some of the puzzles, some of the puzzles specifically don’t have any examples in the moment. But really enjoy.

[01:30:09] Speaker B: I like the coin one. The first coin one where you picked between the guy, the girl and the snake.

[01:30:15] Speaker A: Yeah. You make a decision. Yeah, that was cool.

I think just like walking through the fog in town was cool and then I don’t know, it’s just like blanket statement as a whole. Just like really gets under your skin or into your head in a way that like you know how creepy and scary it is but it’s still. You just can’t stop thinking about it. Which is unique effect that not all the games do.

[01:30:43] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:30:44] Speaker A: I just really like how they did it. And I really. I think my favorite thing, and I’ve mentioned it multiple times throughout these episodes is those little details. You know, the sound effects, the sound design, the lighting just did so well.

[01:30:57] Speaker B: Totally agree. Sound effects, soundtrack, it’s great.

[01:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:31:01] Speaker A: I won’t be buying it on vinyl because I do not want to hear that stuff at all on a regular basis. But it was great while playing.

[01:31:10] Speaker B: I actually have it on vinyl.

[01:31:12] Speaker A: Do you?

[01:31:13] Speaker B: Okay, I might maybe I’ll put it on vinyl for Halloween and blast it outside so people. Kids come up to the door.

[01:31:19] Speaker A: You know that’s a bad idea. You better hope they don’t have the labyrinth gauntlet rooms alarm in there though. God, that was terrible. Oh, that would be.

[01:31:30] Speaker B: Yeah. The second they would walk up to the door, the alarm just goes off. Just.

[01:31:34] Speaker A: Jesus. Yeah. Instead of the, you know, ha ha ha ha that they have it at the stores and. Yeah, don’t do that. You’re going to get banned from the neighborhood. You know, I’ll say. The game took me to a lot of places, types of places and environments I wasn’t expecting at all. You know, I figured the foggy town and the apartment and the hospital and other buildings like that in a normal town would feature heavily, but didn’t even before starting, didn’t even know an otherworld existed or definitely didn’t expect to be in the prison in the labyrinth that are just so intense and so out there conceptually that I’m really impressed at how they come up. Came up with it to begin with when they first made the game. Another big question mark that I still have. I want to know about the numbers on the backs of the strange photos and the weird flashback type remembrance items around the world. What are they for?

Does anybody listening know? If yes, let us know on Discord. If no, then just go.

[01:32:29] Speaker B: I think I know for the rem. I think I know for the remembrance ones like the little glimmers like the past.

I think they’re glimmers of the past as in the pre. The old original game. I think they’re little odes to the original game.

[01:32:43] Speaker A: Things that don’t exist in this one.

[01:32:45] Speaker B: So yeah, like there’s.

I remember because I looked up one of them. I looked up and it said like oh, this glimmer of the past is like this is where whatever it was, I think it was the night the Haven or Heavens, whatever nightclub was in this location in the original where it’s different in the remake.

It’s just like that’s what it was. So I think those are little. I don’t know about the strange photos. Maybe I should have gone back and looked because they have the numbers and.

[01:33:11] Speaker A: I’m assume because the strange photos are not. They’re optional. You don’t have to. I figured they were part of a large, elaborate, optional puzzle that you piece together once you have all of them and unlock something.

And I guess that’s possible because I don’t think I found it 100% of them. But I also get the feeling that they’re just there to add vibes.

Yeah, but if anyone knows, let us know.

[01:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah, let us know. I was thinking the exact same thing. I was going to be able to like piece them together in order by number and it’ll create some big photo or something. Yeah. Some big.

[01:33:43] Speaker A: Some giant puzzle. Yeah. I mean maybe, maybe not. I will say, and I just noticed today that I’ve been doing it while speaking about the events of the story and our actions through gameplay. So there’s a phenomenon in social psychology, psychology that often comes about when people are talking about sports due to the natural desire to kind of positively associate with events whenever possible. So many people, usually subconsciously, when their sports team wins a game or a series or a championship, they say we won. But when their team loses, they say they lost despite not being part of the team or in any way affiliated besides being a fan. People want to feel like they have contributed positively, but when the team loses, they dissociate to a third person perspective since they weren’t part of why that negative result happened. So I think I’ve been doing that here, mentioning I or we when we’re making progress. But then James is the one doing something when he does it. Something really effed up in these terrible situations. Kind of odd, but just food for thought.

[01:34:45] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:34:46] Speaker A: Another fun fact that I found out actually about the fog in the Silent Hill series.

So in the original release, since they didn’t use pre rendered backgrounds like so many games in that time period, they had to find a way to hide the fact that the draw distance of the horizon was terrible. So they used fog to cover it up. If you ask me, that’s just about the best accidental creation of the perfect atmosphere I’ve ever seen in the game.

[01:35:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s just smart. Yeah, that’s good.

[01:35:13] Speaker A: But yeah, I mean, at this point I’ll say this game will stick with me. At this current moment, I think it’ll be my new benchmark for horror games.

At least as far as the overall mood and atmosphere of how I measure horror is. I’m sure other games in the Silent Hill series will also give it a run for its money. And I can’t necessarily say the gameplay itself is perfect by any means. I think it’s probably one of the least enjoyable aspects, but I think the combat of other series of other survival horror series is better. Resident Evil is a great example. There are some other ones that are quite fun.

[01:35:47] Speaker B: Dead Space I think is a bit.

[01:35:48] Speaker A: Dead Space is probably the top, now that you mention it. And finally, there have been some rumors swirling around about a brand new DLC for Silent Hill 2 remake called Born From a Wish where you play as Maria that may or may not actually exist. I think people data mined the code and saw that in there. If it’s true and does exist, it might release pretty soon. If that does happen, we’ll be sure to revisit the game and add a bonus episode to this season about it and we can all discover what it’s about together. I guess technically at that point it’s not a backlash vlog item, but it was a continuation of this season.

Are there any other things you wanted to touch on?

[01:36:26] Speaker B: No, no. Just I had a really good time here playing Silent Hill 2. As I said, I was a little, not nervous but a little hesitant about playing it, picking it just like as much for survival horror and be like oh, am I going to massively enjoy it? But no.

Hooked me.

I really enjoyed it and I’m so glad that we did play it and that we did pick this as our horror slash like Halloweeny October game. Same thing. Yeah.

[01:36:56] Speaker A: And it, you know, it tells you something across all levels, especially the story level, that this is by far our longest episode to date of the podcast. There really is so much to unpack in Silent Hill 2, and we’re sure there are official Konami answers to certain things or other fan theories, but we want to know what you got out of the story. So let us know on Discord and otherwise tune in next time to find out which game Season seven of the Gaming Backlog Book Club will be about.

[01:37:24] Speaker B: Thank you everybody for listening and yeah, we can’t wait to hear all your guys feedback of finishing Silent Hill 2 with us and what you guys all think of everything within the town, the characters, everything. So thank you again for listening and have a good one.

If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of nave games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice, Spotify Apple Podcasts iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram under the same name. Thanks.