The Lakeview Hotel and Silent Hill 2's Subtler, More Personal Otherworld

Comments · 60

• JA

  @jaynajuly2140 · 6 months ago

  this reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode in which a man thinks he's gone to heaven (a casino where he wins the jackpot every game, & is surrounded by adoring women) but turns out to be a hell where he's forced to get exactly the shallow fantasy he desired for eternity

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• NA

  @Nateee09 · 3 years ago (edited)

  The hotel burned down is not the other world version ,it was always burned down but James was delusional it’s only when he learns the truth he sees it for what it really is, there is also a picture of the hotel on fire in the Toluca prison

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• LU

  @lulusfrog · 6 months ago

  I love SH essays and especially SH2 essays because there's so many possible interpretations and a lot of it comes from personal perspective.

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• NE

  @Nepgearaf · 3 months ago

  So grateful to always be discovering or rediscovering different ways to think about these brilliant games, especially 2.

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• CY

  @CyanPulse23 · 6 months ago

  Oh man I love 480i look... it makes Silent Hill games so much more scary because your brain has to fill in the missing details. It also gives it a lost VHS-tape vibe.

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• KH

  @KhumboSharma · 3 years ago

  it's been literally something like ten years since i've read your articles so forgive me if I'm throwing something out there you already posited, but I always took the whole thing of 2 being not just "alessa's power still affecting the town after she's gone" but also that each individual is traumatized. it's a common trope, and i swear on my life there's a note in silent hill 1 regarding this, something about trauma translating to psychic power (i remember it mentioning especially for young girls but whatever). in 2 we see some history that says the town itself is traumatized - it was always there, and each thing amplifies each thing between alessa and the town and now these people with ties to the location (assumption here in angela and eddie's case to be fair). the key is the suffering is power

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• AV

  @AvithOrtega · 3 years ago

  One of your best articles of your blog, now on Youtube. I hope more people can learn about it here!

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• ME

  @MegaSilent · 5 months ago

  Seeing the multiple Abstract Daddies in my first playthrough made me think of all the sexual violence that happens in a place like a hotel. You never know whether any room you walk by has seen violence.

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• GA

  @galaxybrainz · 2 months ago

  I came to the same conclusion back when I first played SH2 in the mid-2000s. Still, I love listening to the interpretations, theories, and speculations of fans since it's either validating or a unique take that I often appreciate, whether I agree with it or not. Thanks for sharing and validating my own take on one of my favorite games of all time. ^^

• DE

  @Deimos_Fresh · 3 years ago

  One thing to remember when Harry explain Otherworld to Cybil, was happened after Harry experienced a different kind of shift. SH1 defined Otherworld pretty clearly actually. It was created by Alessa as a defensive mechanism to hide her from cult. And both Good and Good+ endings shows that fog world and nightmare world both exist separately from each other and from real world as well and without it&apos;s creator those worlds can&apos;t sustain themselves.<br><br>Now with Silent Hill 2 my take would be simple. It was made by different people who had different ideas. So there was some ideas thrown in here like in hospital we hear a siren which was a sign of change in SH1, which led to Otherworld hospital. But one point to note is that Otherworld hospital was like in first game only on first floor. Second and third floors have a totally different look and tone. And as with hotel I always had conflicted thought every time I get here. Like yeah, that picture in prison shows a burning hotel and it&apos;s burnt state hinted at hotel itself. But honestly, until we get a clear proof that hotel was burnt in real life, we can&apos;t really say if either state of hotel indicates the Otherworld state. What it clearly indicates is in what state James is currently. So yeah, he arrived to their &quot;special palace&quot; full of hope to find Mary. And after learning the true, he was hopeless until Mary contacted him through radio, which allowed him to keep going through hotel.<br><br>And about daddies in hotel. If I remember correctly my experiments, not a single daddy will appear until James talks with Laura. So she&apos;s kinda a trigger for their appearance. Think of it what you want, I personally think they are there to simply suck away a 10 star rank from you.<br><br>My personal interpretation of what actually happen in Silent Hill 2 in general is very dependent on what ending can be considered canon. The popular one is In Water is what makes me think if entire journey wasn&apos;t even happen at all. I mean it can be like in SH1&apos;s bad ending. With In Water, the entirety of a journey James still stands and look at the mirror from the very beginning. And every person he met in his delusion was related to his psyche in some way or form. Angela can represent James and how sick Mary abuses him. Or maybe she represents how James&apos; current outlook of his life and of course suicide route. Same thing with Eddie. He may represent some parts of his life and can be considered a reflection of James&apos; resolve to kill Mary. There is really nothing needed to say about Maria. But for Laura. She represents James&apos; hope to find Mary and his hate for himself for what he did to her. Basically all those people are James himself stuck in his Otherworld nightmare that he created in his head. And at the end of his &quot;mental&quot; journey he finally came to In Water conclusion... Even though he did mentally say multiple times he won&apos;t kill himself. I don&apos;t know, it&apos;s just how I currently feel about SH2.<br><br>Of course if James actually fought monster manifested by his subconscious, then there is a lot of stuff that didn&apos;t really make sense. And it&apos;s probably because of a little troubled development of the game. Doesn&apos;t matter in the end. The game is good, but not my favorite.

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• ZI

  @ZimSan · 10 days ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb_AIjdhEu8&amp;t=1193">19:53</a> I always took the Abstract Daddy as James smothering Mary with a pillow, with that mouth meant to be hers while she screamed and suffocated to death. It makes sense it&apos;s there since he&apos;s so close to getting the truth there after killing Eddie, and it&apos;s why the remake fumbled it, because now the Abstract Daddy is more one-sided in how it can be interpreted, mainly being about one thing only since it never appears again. Even if Team Silent put it there in the hotel because they didn&apos;t have time, you could take it as Silent Hill being very upfront now about what James did.

• JA

  @jaydenlobbe7911 · 3 years ago (edited)

  The speculation that Angela could have potentially started the fire in the Hotel is interesting, and if true it would make a lot of sense as to why her final appearance is in the Hotel as it&apos;s burning down, although what&apos;s odd about this is the fact that the Hotel is burning at all, if Angela&apos;s Otherworld Hotel was also the Hotel before being set on fire then why do we see her in a Burning room, it&apos;s entirely possible that the Burning Room is in fact Angela&apos;s Otherworld Hotel, after all the post fire Hotel we see is meant to be the Fog World Hotel<br><br>What I think is the Burning Hotel is Angela&apos;s Otherworld Hotel and the Pre Fire Hotel is Jame&apos;s Otherworld Hotel, the Post Fire Hotel therefore is what the Hotel truly looks like

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