LogFAQs > #982615108

Blightzkrieg posted...

So I'm moderately familiar with Silent Hill lore (I've read the Wikipedia page) but I don't really understand how Silent Hill the town connects with the Silent Hill 2 dude. Like, this is the base of a satanic cult that wants to resurrect the devil or something (I think?) and it has nothing better to do than make people feel bad for being shitty husbands? Do people actually live there or does it just do this stuff of its own accord?

"Magic shit, fucks with your brain" is a pretty good summary of the entire setting.

More specifically, evil magic shit happened and kind of seeped into the ground, so now there's kind of "psychic fallout" and the town is kind of like a corrupted nightmare that fucks with people. Not everyone, not all of the time, but if you've got psychological issues and repressed crap in your subconscious, it's probably going to start digging it out and forcing you to confront it.

How well this is handled depends on which game you're playing, who wrote/developed it, and how much Konami gave a shit at the time, because it varies.

Normal people used to live there, but that's because the town as a whole used to be fairly normal. Once the really crazy crap started happening, most normal people moved out, so the people who are left are mainly evil, crazy, outsiders drawn in, or hallucinations.

But like most Japanese horror, there aren't really a ton of solid consistent explanations, because having no clue what the fuck is going on makes the horror scarier. Needing everything spelled out and explained is more of a Western thing (and considering it usually results in stupid explanations, it's not necessarily a good thing anyway). Never being entirely sure what's real and what isn't, what's happening or why, all tend to make things feel more unnerving.