Silent Hill Analysis | Magic Rituals & Alessa's Burns
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ต.ค. 2024
- #silenthill #sh #sh1 #silenthillps1
Learn more about the history of magic, and a possible reason why Alessa was burned in Silent Hill.
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I agree, it has never made sense to me that it was accidental. I really don't think Alessa was supposed to survive even without taking Origins into consideration, because her only importance to Dhalia and hence the cult, was her part in giving birth to God. Bringing a god into existence isn't something you just without some meaningful sacrifice in pain and/or life.
Also, considering Claudia needed Heather to feel pain and hatred to be able to birth God, I too assume pain was somehow necessary in Alessa's case.
There is a newspaper, that you can get, under curtain circumstances, that was removed in North America, that explains it was a boiler explosion that caused a fire that affected much of old Silent Hill.
If you combine, this with other notes that can be found, like the mysterious deaths of other public officials, the implication is that this was a cover story that was fed to the media. To keep what actually happened a secret (or silent).
This narrative choice, has left the cause & reason for the fire to be ambiguous.
From the early 2000s on Silent Hill Forums, people have been contesting the nature of the fire.
One theory that gained the most traction is the idea that fire was involved with the ritual with Alyessa, however the fire spread was accidental, thus a cover story was needed.
We don't know the nature of the ritual, it is suggested fire was used, since the Alter bursts into flames when it is discovered in the Antique Shop by Harry.
The reason I love Silent Hill 1 so much, is due to the ambiguous nature of the plot, and how what you discover, changes the narrative of the story.
[This is treating Silent Hill 1 as its own entity without influence from titles that came out after the fact.]
I always thought the fire was deliberate for the purposes of angering her into activating her powers (The angsty teen manifesting telekinisis).
Lol, or to scare her to death and maim her?? There are other ways of provoking people.
@@trommnorse None other so as long lasting as being burned alive.
@@johntrevy1 Where are these wild theories coming from? She could have reacted in a millions ways. She could go katatonic, she could develop a crippling PTSD or a psychosis or even plain die. Whatever happened there, I think, was meant to kill her as a sacrifice in order to bring about god. I'm not sure how come that the presence of the god fetus within Alessa after the botched ritual made her immortal. The whole purpose was for her to die in the process. Did The Order fuck up the research or did the god mock them?
@@trommnorse Alessa was only one half of the puzzle, the cult needed her to suffer to draw her twin into the world.
@@johntrevy1 What twin? It is Alessa who divided her soul, the cult had nothing to do with it.
It's astounding to know just how much research went into the first two SH games. There's no way this stuff wasn't intentional.
Every time I watch a Gaming Muse video I learn something new. Thank you for doing all of that research, it's fascinating stuff!
Great video. I always was of the thought that the fire itself started accidentally due to Alessa's powers igniting it, and the Dahlia took advantage of the situation and left her so the pain of the burns would aid the ritual. Your research sheds a lot of light on it.
I thought Dahlia did it, to feed Alessa's pain and hatred in her sick obsession that the more Alessa suffered, the more benevolent "god" would be.
Boiler explosion was in the Japanese manual I think. Chalk it up to canon confusion like Walter dying in prison and his body being hidden in 302.
The game has a memo that explains Walter dug up his body and dragged it to 302 after his death. Iirc, it's only present in the Japanese version, I think it has two extra memos.
A boiler explosion is mention in Origins in a optional building, but the game describes is after a completely scratched off paragraph, so it could be a front to the burning.
23min. late but i am.
In Slavic Culture was tradition to burn bodies of the dead to full release souls from them. I can't say for sure but i think Slavic Culture was inspired some kind from Vedi Culture. The water was entrance to Nawia the spirits world.
I always thought it was deliberate so that her powers would have to manifest at their strongest to keep her alive
Well that was educational as hell
This is excellent! Learned a lot of histories from it. The next episode to translate :-]
I completely disagree. Here's why:
1] They have access to the hospital basement. If fire is expected, why use a wooden house instead of a nice fireproof basement?
1a] ... which is also your family home, ouch talk about a needless waste
1b] ... and is also very, very visible to the entire town's law enforcement
1b i] ... who's currently investigating a drug ring your co-conspirator doesn't want them getting any more suspicious about
1b ii] ... who's the kind of guy to leave a vial of liquid in an unlocked office knowing you'll smash it only to convince you that he didn't hide an alternate inside a motorcyce, and be right about it
1b iii] ... and certainly doesn't want a newspaper cover-up added to his list of things to take care of
2] They have cult members. If a need to keep Alessa desperately alive is expected, why use a civilian?
2a] ... unless she's an emergency choice of closest manipulable person because you did NOT expect to have to care for a burned girl
3] And even if, for no good reason, you were going to organise it like that, why a house all the way across town from the place you're hoping she'll end up at anyway?
3a] ... and why the top floor?
3b] ... and why not be ready with an ambulance and some cult members dressed as firefighters, to immediately move her? Thankyou Travis, I guess?
All that's way more convincing to me than the fact that some old alchemy books kinda-sorta equivalate fire and sacrifice. Which Alessa wasn't even supposed to be (the only people calling her a sacrifice are people whose narration perspective is naturally flawed within the story). I really liked the fascinating stuff about old cult tendancies you uncovered here and I gave the video a like if just for that, but there's really nothing to specifically connect it to this particular story. Sorry, it ended and I just went "wait that's it?" because you began by suggesting there can be no other conclusion, and so I was expecting something conclusive. To me the above logic remains convincing, and conclusive. Let's hear it countered. Silent Hill challenge. :)
The cult is the most powerful entity behind the town, and they even killed the mayor and the police members trying to investigate them. Yes, Alessa being moved to the hospital wasn't planned for all the things you mention, but I don't think they even cosidered her survival, remember that a third party (Travis) Intervines in the middle of the ritual, so they had to improvise. Is non-sense that they did'nt killed Travis, but you could say Alessa moved him to the Fog World before they could, starting the events of Origins. As for Koufman, he is first a bussines man, and the Aglaofotis was his way to ensure his gain of power, so obviosly he would have more than one bottle of that liquid. Sorry for the english, is second lenguage and is all right to think that is accidental, there are proffs to that, like a note in SH3 that mentions that high priesstes are the ones to be burned. Is all interpretation at the end of the day
@@iSaggitariusYT don't worry at all for the language. Some people are fussy about stuff like that on the internet, but I disagree with them. I think it's amazing when people speak multiple languages. It's more than I can do.
My point with Kaufman was that in doing that plan, he revealed himself to be a paranoid and calculating guy. I don't think a guy like that would be accepting of a reckless plan like burning a house down. I think he would insist on the better, more obvious alternative of performing the ritual in the hospital.
Alessa must have been expected to survive. She wouldn't be able to birthe their God otherwise, and that's the whole point (to Dahlia). Plus, they had to go to a lot of trouble to keep her alive (revealed from Lisa's experiences). I don't think they would go to all that effort if the original plan was for her to die.
@@Torthrodhel they weren't keeping her alive, she couldn't die. They were only keeping her contained.
@@lluviathewolfgirl interesting thought, but at the end of the game she does die, which would surely have to mean that she can? Haven't heard of her being supposed to be immortal before. I guess you could say birthing their god breaks that. However there's also the issue of why they needed a hospital? If all they're doing is keeping her contained, they could surely do that anywhere. Why would they need a nurse for it? Moreover, a nurse that isn't in on the plan and instead has to be controlled by drugs in order to go along with it. See in my mind, the only thing that fits with Lisa being involved is if, 1] she is needed, and 2] it was an emergency. If she wasn't needed for her medical skills, then there'd be no point involving her - it's a needless extra risk. If it wasn't an unexpected emergency, then they'd have tutored one of their own in nursing ways instead of controlling an outsider, being a group of people who typically plan ahead.
I'm sure that somewhere in the game Harry says something akin to "she's being kept alive in a living nightmare". You can't necessarily go by what a character says since they have their own perspective (and indeed, Harry definitely gets a couple of things wrong) but it strikes me as odd to include that, if what you're going for is to give the impression of an immortal girl being contained. It would be a weird choice. What you're saying isn't impossible, but it does seem like extra steps of complication to achieve basically nothing of narrative value.
AJ you always be making fire content, especially about silent hill!!!
I never understood why people would be really adamant about the boiler explosion being the cause of the fire, as if the very same game didn't make it clear that the local authorities were collaborating with the cult, or at least some portions of local town authorities did, and already established a precedent for publishing lies to cover up cult-adjacent activities, such as the police chief dying "mysteriously" from a supposedly random cardiac episode, and Kauffmann himself falsifying records to hide the fact that they were holding Alessa in the hospital's basement when she was believed to have died elsewhere.
The logic behind that memo being "proof" is the fallacious belief that because the memo exists, it must be a confirmation of something on a meta level directed towards the player, rather than simply being lore to establish corruption within the town's various institutions. It being an 'accident' is really dumb either way because the game's official supplementary materials all point out that the ritual itself was 100% deliberate and the 'god' needed to be born from suffering, it wasn't just some serendipitous moment that Dahlia decided to capitalize on.
Go read the comment I made. That should illuminate the multiple practicalities that utterly convince me of a genuine boiler explosion resulting from Alessa's powerful reaction to a ritual which did *not* involve fire by design.
But *was* law enforcement actually collaborating with the cult? That isn't how I remember SH1. Exploring the police station finds memos suggesting that the cult, the drug ring, and the unexplained murders were all being actively investigated by police. In fact, if I recall correctly, one of the detectives investigating the drug ring was killed by a mysterious heart attack analogous to the one that killed the mayor. This suggests that a detective, doing a legit investigation, got too close and was executed for it. I don't recall any memos, documents, or dialogue in the game that suggests the police were working to cover up the activities of the cult, and everything that I do remember says the exact opposite.
Did I miss / forget something?
In fact, even the hospital staff seemed largely ignorant of the cult activities happening there. Lisa sure as heck didn't know, and she says that other staff and nurses would talk about rumors of weird stuff going on in the basement, which suggests they didn't know what was going on either. As far as we know, Kaufman was the only member of the hospital staff who was conspiring with the cult.
All this suggests to me that the cult had very limited control (if any) over Silent Hill's government and authority, and that the *police* legitimately believe that the fire was caused by a boiler explosion. Now, I suppose it's possible that Dahlia could have deliberately rigged the boiler to explode in an attempt to both perform ritual immolation and also simultaneously cover up the ritual as an accident, but that seems far fetched. Especially if the birth of the god was supposed to be imminent after the immolation. After all, if god is promptly born and begins making paradise (which is what Dahlia believed would happen), then there's no need for a cover story to begin with.
@@MegaBearsFan I never said specifically just the police were *all* on the take, when I said local authorities I was referring to any institution which contributed to the continued governance and wellbeing of the town, ostensibly anyway. There is no need for any of these institutions to be fully compromised and in fact would not make any sense if they were. Both the first game and others clearly establish that the cult had members who were parts of many other organizations, both out of pragmatism and salacious reasons such as subterfuge and such. This is in line with how they're portrayed in the series' lore, they always had a decently-sized membership and always had members who could have direct connections to important institutions and people to bolster their own security, whether financial or judicial.
A police detective investigating the explosion is pretty normal, but it doesn't have any significance beyond that (it's a completely normal thing and happens IRL to curb things like insurance fraud.) There's no reason to posit that Dahlia would have deliberately rigged the boiler either. SH3's account seems to imply that the boiler exploded simply because the initial fire that Dahlia began had spread uncontrollably and eventually made its way to the boiler. As to whether or not Dahlia arranged for the investigation to be made public or to happen at all, is of course up to speculation, but I don't see any need for her to have it falsified, if anything if she did have it created, it was to give an excuse for the house being destroyed vis a vis the *source* of the fire, not that there ever was one.
@@Housesider I didn't mean to imply that the whole police force was corrupt either. I simply meant that I don't recall there being any evidence in the game that that the police investigation was corrupt or compromised in any way. The fact that the cult had to resort to murdering investigators implies that they had little-to-no power or influence within the police force, and therefore little-to-no ability to influence the "official story" that the police would give. So unless I'm missing something, I don't see any compelling reason to NOT take the boiler memo at face value, and don't think that it should be dismissed so readily.
@@MegaBearsFan Lost Memories and Koshiki Guide Book state the source of the fire was Dahlia, for the ritual, and Origins, despite how many "fans" have whined it's non-canonical, depicts that. I don't think the cult killing an investigator has any bearing on the efficacy of their 'agents', because the game makes it clear that they could easily get key figures in the town on their side, as shown with Kauffman and the other doctor in that flashback/projection that Harry witnesses in a dream towards the end of the game. Them deciding to off a guy doesn't inherently mean they had no capability or need to have documents/efforts falsified or hindered, as is often the case IRL.
The other document that precedes the actual boiler memo is one that basically spells out that the cult was responsible for an investigation into PTV becoming "stalled", so there's no reason to assume they couldn't get a falsified report made for the cause of the fire either.
Interesting. As a religious person, learning about the symbols on which people attributed power to since the humble begning of civilizations and their supernatural pursuits is very rewarding. Having a survival horror tackle all of this so loosely is inspiring to know more about it.
I love how much content youre dishing out for these games.
My favorite element of the silent hill mythology is the idea that there was a civilization or ancestral race of the natives with a lost history
Muse always be giving us the full details, i live for this content. 🛐
That was great very creepy and educational cheers and thankyou muse
I still think it's accidental, SH3 states only high priests would be set on fire.
There's another good point to add to the pile. Had forgot about that.
Whether the fire was accidental(as Twin Perfect claims) or not, i don't think God impregnation necessarily required fire, but it required suffering. Or hatred as we see in Silent Hill 3, when fetus is growing within Heather due to her hatred for Claudia.
Just wanted you to know, youre sooooo awesome !!!!!!!
It makes sense though. The fire builds up the energy and the spill of life is to be equated to the new God.
Great video!
why didn't I see this channel before!
Hi ! Excuse me i would like to correct a major error you said.
Mesopotamia CAN'T be the founding place of civilization. Since we found in south Africa traces of complicated mathematics, arts, sciences such as astro-physics and that all of that was a sacred places in EGypt, which described itself as a descendant of the ancient african knowledge.
It is simply obvious that civilization, and spirituality started were homo sapiens sapiens were born : Africa.
Plus, I would like to ad that every people of the ancient civilizations learned from Africa, Mesopotamia only brings war and domination
We might just get our new SILENT HILL announcement.
Awesome stuff i like the silent hill trilogy there awesome games. This vide is awesome aswell 😊
¡Gracias!
If the fire was an accident then silent hill origins have problems with the story
conclusion: Silent Hill Origins have problems with the story
Yep.@@Torthrodhel
I’m curious which grimoire
Anyone know what song was used in the middle of the video?
I think this is stretching it a bit. Going so far in-depth about real-life occultism is well and good, but there needs to be something from the actual game to tie it in. A single symbol within the Halo of the Sun that has dual meanings doesn't quite convince me.
Ultimately, I think it's splitting hairs. I get that it's a sticking point within the fandom, but I'm not sure it matters whether the fire was an accident or not. It doesn't change any events or characters so far as I can tell.
Agreed. I would like to have seen some discussion of the boiler memo in relation to the other documents found in the game. Just hand-waving it away with no attempt to rationalize or explain its existence (even as an in-universe cover story) seems a bit disingenuous to me. I see the fire at the beginning of Origins as being an act of retconning that is not necessarily representative of the intent of the writers of the first game. Especially considering that the memo is bugged and doesn't appear in all versions of the game. Was it intended to be there? Was it intentionally included in Japanese release, bugged in the US release, and then fixed in the PAL release? Or was it supposed to be removed from the game, but its appearance in Japanese and PAL releases is a bug?
It doesnt make sense burn the girl thatvis gonna give birth to good the ritual uses fire like candles but the explosion was causes by alessa powers and the boiler
❤️
Accident (boiler explosion)
Using origins as evidence invalids they whole video, because we all know that this game is not cannonical with the first one
But Origins is cannon and the Good Ending sets the begining of 1. The non-cannon games are all the non-console releases, Shattered Memories and Book Of Memmories.
@@iSaggitariusYT Origins contradicts much of the established lore set up by the first game. This is why most people don't consider it cannon.
@@silverg2862 I didn't said that doesnt introduce problems xD Just that its a Cannon game. I understand that a lot of people don't want it in there, but for the context of the video: The game is cannon and what it shows can be used in a theory.
Origins takes place in 1976 AND the first game in 1983 by default, according to the "Official" Timeline....but in the first game, there are many information and elements in the game that say it takes place between 1987 AND early 90s.
Like everyone said, Origins contradicts many informatio, like the origin of the Ghost Town, the Alessa's Intentions and Sacrifice AND the Flauros' Powers.
In conclusion:
It was a boiler explosion....the developers of Origins NEVER found the Fire Article, i Guess.
@@raitobasakura Masahiro Ito confirmed Silent Hill took place in the early 80s. And the developers of Origins were well aware of the fire memo, they wouldn't have said it was a cover up if they didn't know about it. Origins does not contradict as much as fans thinks it does.