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Masahiro Ito debunks past Silent Hill 2 fourth wall breaking theory

Bartski

Gold Member



No, James is not looking at the player in the mirror. Team Silent legend art director Masahiro Ito puts the antique, popular Silent Hill 2 fan theory to rest.

No, the scene was never meant to break the 4th wall. The Bloober Team's remake will likely stay true to the original, rather than to a fan fic conjecture as demanded by some of the bottom-of-the-iceberg Silent Hill analysts on Twitter.

No, it's not worth a thread, but I decided to make one anyway. Good night!




 
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Was Ito even among the main writers, outside of giving context to the monster designs? Or are people asking him these questions, just because he's that one famous SH guy with an active Twitter account? I don't doubt that they did not intend this, but I don't know why people go to him for definitive story interpretations all the time. As if such a story would even benefit from an "official interpretation" to begin with... kinda goes against its point imo.
 
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Drizzlehell

Banned
I've spent a better part of my teenage years and even some of the early twenties talking about these games on online forums, often delving into ridiculous theories about various minor details. And in all fairness, these games kinda invite you to fill in a lot of the blanks yourself, which is what makes it so much fun to discuss them with other people. But even though I've been there myself, I can't help but cringe at people who scrape the very bottom of the barrel with some truly retarded takes on certain elements.

I guess the penis circumsicion theory is one of the more infamous ones but it's pretty much guaranteed that you'd find a lot more of those stupid theories if you'd delve into any random Silent Hill message board circa years 2002 to 2012 when the series finally bit the dust and its fanbase along with it.
 
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SenkiDala

Member
And all the people telling him "huh, who are you to dismiss our true fanz theories?" it's so pathetic... Even a lot of people know who he is but still doesn't believe he was "that important" in the development of SH games.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
Never heard of this theory. But I don't hang around much on internet to know stuff like this. Sounds stupid. And do people not know who Ito is? Are they really Silent Hill fans?
 
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kunonabi

Member
No slight against anyone here but the SH2 iceberg fans need to tone it down a notch.

To me, SH2 is just a Eastern style ghost story that takes place in the West. Nothing all that mind blowing but it is damn good story telling all the same.
I've always been more of a SH1 and SH3 guy so I've never really had the same worship for it everyone else does. It's still excellent and one of the best of the genre but yeah people are a little nuts about it.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
Honestly, this could happen with any fandom. Radical fandom can get pretty ridiculous.

The worst part about all of this is that he STILL had people on Twitter being incredibly shitty with him telling him that he was "wrong." A dev that was a part of the OG team from day 1. A dev that helped create this world, period.

Jesus Christ.
 

Comandr

Member
Wait. This is the same Masahiro Ito that was so wishy washy about whether or not Cybil is canonically alive or not?

The Book of Lost Memories states that that the basic Good ending (in which Cybil also dies) is the "orthodox ending connected to the third game."[1] However, in a section regarding Cybil and Harry's relationship following the Good+ ending in the Book of Lost Memories, writer Hiroyuki Owaku stated that what happened to Cybil was "left to players' imaginations".[1]When asked if Cybil was dead, developer Masahiro Itobluntly responded, "Yes, I remember Cybil is dead."[2]When asked the meaning of Owaku's statement, he replied, "If you choose 'good+' ending among them, she is not dead, maybe."[3]

“James is breaking the forth wall until enough of you nerds harass me about it and then he definitely isn’t, unless you prefer thinking of it like that.”
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
I don't even see how this one makes sense. The camera work doesn't reflect that visual shorthand intention to me.
It kinda reminds me of that meme about the teacher at school saying that blue curtains in the poem are meant to represent the emotional state of the author, but what the author of the poem really meant is that the curtains were just fucking blue.

Same with this - James is just staring into a mirror because I don't know, maybe it's just an interesting visual to start the game off or whatever.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
It kinda reminds me of that meme about the teacher at school saying that blue curtains in the poem are meant to represent the emotional state of the author, but what the author of the poem really meant is that the curtains were just fucking blue.

Same with this - James is just staring into a mirror because I don't know, maybe it's just an interesting visual to start the game off or whatever.

For sure.

A lot of people (like me) were introduced to gaming and caught up to it, I guess you'd say, at the same time, so a lot of my formative gaming years were spent hearing about how much of a psychological mind fuck SH, particularly 2, is.

That kind of mythological status in gaming seems to rile people the fuck up and soon we're painting stripes on every horse in the room.

Like, I know SH is symbolic, but there's a difference between casually noting that the the giant Grey nut sack dragging itself down the street wearing fishnets and heels probably relates to sexual repression, while the color of the counter in Bar Neely's is probably brown because it's wood, and not because of a terrible lumberjack accident James witnessed when he was 12.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
Wait. This is the same Masahiro Ito that was so wishy washy about whether or not Cybil is canonically alive or not?

The Book of Lost Memories states that that the basic Good ending (in which Cybil also dies) is the "orthodox ending connected to the third game."[1] However, in a section regarding Cybil and Harry's relationship following the Good+ ending in the Book of Lost Memories, writer Hiroyuki Owaku stated that what happened to Cybil was "left to players' imaginations".[1]When asked if Cybil was dead, developer Masahiro Itobluntly responded, "Yes, I remember Cybil is dead."[2]When asked the meaning of Owaku's statement, he replied, "If you choose 'good+' ending among them, she is not dead, maybe."[3]

“James is breaking the forth wall until enough of you nerds harass me about it and then he definitely isn’t, unless you prefer thinking of it like that.”
Yeah, that's because they secretly don't give a shit, lol. For the most part, each of those games were being worked on by completely different people so it doesn't surprise me that none of them really care about what you want to consider a "canonical ending" because it doesn't matter. Making SH3 a direct sequel to 1 was a bit of a weird choice anyway, considering that the series always had a bit of an anthology feel to it, with only a few key elements shared between each installment.
 

bender

What time is it?
No slight against anyone here but the SH2 iceberg fans need to tone it down a notch.

To me, SH2 is just a Eastern style ghost story that takes place in the West. Nothing all that mind blowing but it is damn good story telling all the same.

ill-cut-you-addams-family.gif
 

Arachnid

Member
This has been a theory for fucking EVER. I love you Ito, but you could have maybe debunked that a decade ago instead of letting us speculate about non-existent meaning this whole time.

"'I'm fed up with this." Well maybe you should have just said it wasn't instead of getting a thousand tweets from people asking and being a dick about it. Come on, dude.
 
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he was the lead designer on SH1 and art director on SH2 and SH3. What are the odds?
This doesn't answer what his involvement in the writing was. Art director is not lead writer. If you'd want your interpretation of a Kojima story to be legitimized for whatever dumb reason, you wouldn't ask Yoji Shinkawa. And if a creator were smart, he would deny such requests to begin with. btw, I have no stake in this, I never participated in SH2 speculation.
 
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peronmls

Member
I never thought this was real because there was no facts. People will take anything they like this. There are good fans and there there are these who make up things about the game and get mad.
 

Itchy Tickles

Neo Member
I thought that maybe adding the extra scene at the start

Of James washing his hands and shaking etc was a bit silly / on the nose / not exactly subtle. In the original he starts by looking in the mirror after his madness / denial had started, whereas here it felt like he knew exactly what was happening / had happened, as he was showing pain and torment already.


Don't know why that stuck out to me, but yeah. Never thought the high contrast / brightness edit of James looking at the player was legit though.
 
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