- Anon, Silent-Hill-Confessions
. That's saying a lot.
Episode 67
Timecode: 1:35: A clip from Viewtiful Joe (Nintendo Game Cube, 2003), where Sylvia is desperate for attention from her movie-loving boyfriend, Joe:
- Sylvia: Joe, honey, why don't you show me some off-screen action? [puts the mack on Joe]Joe: Whoa, whoa, Sylvia! Cut it out! I said, cut it out! They don't show these old movies all the time, you know. I've been looking forward to this forever!Sylvia: Well, I've been looking forward to this for a long time, too! We haven't been out on a date in forever... [continues kissing Joe, while he protests]
Joe is such a movie geek that he can barely make time for his hot, bespectacled girlfriend. Although, I guess she does kind of look like Sarah Palin, only blonde, and cel-shaded, so YMMV.
The fact that Bayonetta wears glasses just like Sylvia, and was created by some of the same people as Viewtiful Joe, probably isn't a coincidence. Now, as to why the girl that Bob Richards rescues in his ending for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 resembles Sylvia – who knows if that's a coincidence or a Shout-Out? The fact that Bob's ending in TTT2 is superhero-themed, kind of like Viewtiful Joe, seems to point to the latter.
1:54: The pretty cool intro to the PS 1 Inu Yasha game from Bandai. One of the last PS 1 games released, given a boost in desirability by fans of the anime.
3:06: Oh, here we go: the first in a series of clips from almost the end of Silent Hill 3 (multiplatform, 2003). I think that 3 is the weakest of Team Silent's original games, but it still has some interesting aspects to examine and discuss.
In the clip, Claudia Wolf, a high-ranking priestess of the demon-worshiping cult called the Order, fruitlessly argues with Vincent Smith, a benefactor of the cult with a perverse interest in their theology, over whether or not Claudia is truly bringing their “God” to life. Vincent confesses that he “adores” and “fears” “Her”, but isn't oblivious to the obvious evil of the Otherworld that Claudia brought into being in an attempt to resurrect Her, and doubts that She could be brought into the world to remake it in such a way. All he did was say that, if the Otherworld is God's, then She must have really terrible taste. Claudia's response?
- Claudia: You mock God? Traitor. You will go to Hell.Vincent: [shakes fist] Not that again!
I think this is the angriest that Vincent gets in the entire game. Also, think about what Claudia, of all people, who bought the Order's teachings lock, stock, and barrel, would consider to be Hell.
The episode doesn't show the events in sequence, but when Heather, the 17-year-old girl chosen by the Order to “birth” God, enters the room, Vincent turns his back to Claudia, and tells Heather to “kill this crazy bitch”, which is what Heather has been lustfully wanting to do ever since Claudia sent a monster out to kill her stepfather, Harry Mason. But Claudia takes this opportunity to stab Vincent in the back. With his dying breath, Vincent tells Heather to use the Seal of Metatron, an artifact that he believed would stop God from being born, but Claudia dismisses it as a piece of junk before stabbing him again in the chest. Then, she stands up, clasps her hands in prayer, and says, “But God loves even you.” It's evident from her tone, however, that Claudia most certainly did not.
Heather is alone to deal with Claudia, and the weight of sin that her past life as an incubator for God has dealt her. But her father was prepared for such a day, undoubtedly hoping that it would never have to come.
Years prior, he gave Heather a pendant for her birthday, and it became one of her cherished treasures. What she didn't know was the purpose of the red bead inside of it; it was aglaophaotis, a condensation of an herb that is a poultice against evil.
IIRC, if you examine the pendant in the last level of the game, Heather will comment that looking at the bead makes her feel sick inside. So, to finish the game properly, you have to put two and two together and use the pendant. If you attack Claudia instead, you get a glorified Game Over screen where Heather collapses under the weight of the demon inside of her, and you see it rising from her body through its eyes. Claudia, of course, is ecstatic.
6:27: Very early footage from one of the failed prototype versions of Resident Evil 4 (GameCube). The original concept diverged so much from typical Resident Evil that it was retooled into Devil May Cry instead; this prototype was retooled heavily into the final version of RE4.
This prototype implies that Leon “Sassy” Kennedy would have to investigate “the cradle of the Progenitor Virus”. It also shows Leon being menaced by black fog, and there is an implication that he has been infected with a deadly virus. That is a plot point that actually was carried over into RE4, and it was one of the scarier parts of the game. Originally, there were plans to kill Leon off in the story. Kill. Off. Leon! That's one thing I'm glad they didn't revisit. Can you even imagine that?
7:58: A brief clip from Barbie's Horse Adventure (multiplatform, 2004), where Barbie tells an old lady named Mrs. Hepburn that she should stay behind in case someone calls or one of the horses strays. In case that bored you right to sleep, the producers saw fit to roll effortlessly into the moment in SH3 where Heather tells Claudia to “Shut your stinking mouth, bitch!” It's kinda funny as a Take That! to Barbie, and a clever bit of editing in a series starving for such.
9:40: Sonya Blade's Fatality from Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance (multiplatform, 2002), the “Kiss of Death”. The Kiss of Death had been one of Sonya's signature Fatalities, but its incarnation in Deadly Alliance was particularly nasty. The opponent coughs, vomits, then vomits blood, and Sonya finishes them off by stomping on their head. Mortal Kombat sometimes tries to keep things from getting to dark by putting in some downright goofy Fatalities, but this one is pretty dark, and made even moreso when the clip that follows it is...
10:02: ...the scene from SH3 where Heather swallows the aglaophaotis, and struggles mightily to rid herself of the demon within. Claudia watches in horror, and asks what she swallowed. After a bout of gagging, Heather coughs up a crimson fetus that is only vaguely human-shaped. Even Claudia is horrified.
- Claudia: What is this?!
As it lays there, twitching, Heather stands up and quips, “Looks like God didn't make it,” and moves to squish the fetus under her foot, only for Claudia to push her away.
- Claudia: Stop! God is...
Claudia picks up the fetus and does the unthinkable, shoving it into her mouth, ignoring her gag reflex and choking it down. Heather has to look away. The zealot tells Heather, who was her friend Alessa in her past life, that if she won't birth God, then she will have to do it herself.
In a matter of seconds, the fetus causes her great pain, and she begins to transform before Heather's very eyes. Disembodied blood courses across the surface of her skin, as she dazedly moves to the back of the room. She leans over the entrance to a pit that I presume it meant for whoever births God, and the attendant Valtiel drags her down into the pit.
It may have just been me, but in this scene, it looks like Claudia's bare feet begin to transform into something... else. It is possible that the reason why Claudia had bare feet was just for this brief glimpse of her horrific transformation.
14:12: After Heather jumps down into the pit, she sees the lumbering monstrosity that Claudia gave “birth” to; a 30-foot-tall demon, with bloodstained hands, a skeletal lower body and no lower legs. This beast resembles a mature Alessa in the face, because that is how Claudia thought She would look. But where She has skin, the texture is all wrong; She has a strange, netlike pattern across Her face, and Her chest and arms appear bloody and wounded. It is a tortured mockery of the human form, perhaps a side effect of another imperfect birth. She has an inexplicably peaceful expression, and never opens Her eyes to see or Her mouth to speak. (Maybe She can't see?) The arena for the final battle is a circular pit with fleshy coffins lining the walls. If you look closely, Valtiel is draping one of them over Her face so She can nourish Herself with blood. Just imagine what kind of damned souls were kept to feed Her, and how long they were kept waiting...
Heather sees Claudia's discarded black dress on the floor and laments that she was supposed to be the one to kill her. Then, she sees Her...
- Heather: This is God?
The disturbing scene of the demon's reveal is expressed well by the clip that follows it: a series of disaffected closeups played to disturbing music from a game called Gadget: Past as Future (multiplatform).
The God is a horrifying boss, to look at, but “she” is not really all that strong... unless you're playing on Hard or above, where “her” fire attacks get faster and faster, and killing her takes an absolute age. The God is portrayed with a bit of arrogance: she continues to try to feed as you kill her, but somewhat amusingly, her top-heavy form almost causes her to tip over as she feeds, and she is forced to catch herself from falling repeatedly.
Once the final blow is dealt, God hisses and falls to the floor. Heather goes over and kicks her a few times, breaking her neck. After that fit of passion, Heather walks away from the beast.
- Heather: Is this the end? Guess it's time to roll the credits...
But Heather doesn't feel like she has won, for she has lost more than killing any demon could ever give her.
- Heather: Dad...
She sits down and cries for a few moments before standing up and walking again. Before she leaves, she looks behind her, which, from the player's perspective, makes it look like she is staring at them.
Monster designer Masahiro Ito has said that Heather looks back because she hears a baby's cry, unbeknownst to the player. What does that mean? I don't know. It could mean anything. If it's supposed to be something important to Heather, though, then it may signify the rebirth of her father's spirit, an inversion of how he witnessed Alessa being reborn as her at the end of Silent Hill 1. Wouldn't that be nice?
On a darker note, would you like to know the one thing that the producers of this game thought would be too scary to include? A baby crying, randomly heard throughout the levels. That would have been right up there with the notorious mannequin and hospital mirror sequences in giving players a full-on Heroic BSoD. And making it random would have just been mean. I only learned about this from the game's Nightmare Fuel page.
The game doesn't show how Heather escaped the pit. It is possible that Valtiel, who had been watching over her throughout the game, helped her, I suppose. There certainly weren't any ladders or stairs in that pit.
She returns to her friend, detective Douglas Cartland, at the Lakeside Amusement Park. The effects of the Otherworld are gone. There is no more darkness in this place. Douglas was wounded by Claudia in some sort of unseen confrontation earlier in the game, and is in no shape to leave by himself.
When he sees Heather, he is relieved to see her alive, and asks if the ordeal is over. To which she says, in a gruff voice:
- Heather: Not yet... You're still alive...
She points her knife at him, and Douglas is aghast as she inches towards him... only for her to yell “BOO!” at the last second.
Douglas admonishes her for having really terrible taste, but still laughs with her. Since he knows her name from her previous life, and she now recalls her previous lives, he wonders what he should call her now.
- Cheryl: Cheryl. The name my father gave me.Douglas: Are you gonna let your hair go back too?Cheryl: I dunno. Dont'cha think blondes have more fun?
To which my father said, when he was watching me play the game, “Not in your case!” Heh.
The very last thing before the credits is a still shot of Cheryl laying flowers at someone's (most likely Harry's) grave. The tone of the picture is reminiscent of the scene in the intro of the first game showing Harry and his wife picking up the abandoned baby Cheryl.
15:10: The awesome intro to anime-styled, free-floating fighter Psychic Force (PS 1) by Taito, the company mainly known for the Darius series of shmups. I recall the game having a gently positive reception from critics, but dammit, at least it wasn't shipped with only 70 percent completion. However, it did have some mind-bogglingly bad English voiceover, courtesy of Acclaim. If you like, you can hear some of that here.
The plot was like a slightly less angsty cross between Clamp's manga X and Xmen. It was about full-on warfare between independent or good-aligned psychics, and “bad” psychics aligned with a charismatic individual that promised to lead them into a new world, only to drag them into his war against mankind. They included:
- Burn Griffith, the default good guy of the game, an American pyrokinetic with crazy-awesome anime hair. The Red Oni to his nemesis, the blue-clad psychic that turned ice and water into a weapon.
- Keith, leader of anti-humanity psychic group NOAH. The water and ice guy. The Blue Oni to Burns' red.
- Brad Kirsten , the German psycho that used psychokinesis to throw rocks at enemies.
- Genma, the monk that used magic instead of psychic power.
- Emilio Michaelov, a young Russian boy so cute and frail that he almost looked like a girl. Inexplicably possessed angel wings and used “light” as his psy power.
- Wendy Ryan, the young Australian girl who wielded wind as a weapon. Even had “WIND” printed on her hat. Not their most unique idea, if I may say so.
- Sonia, an artificial life form in the shape of a hot chick whose power manifested in control over electricity. Aligned with the bad guys. Her spirit is actually that of a disembodied male named Chris Ryan.
- Richard Wong of China. Member of a trading company, so you know he's evil. Has control over time and space, making him powerful even among other psychics. “Could summon a GIANT sword in battle, and I mean big enough to even make Square Enix say, “Enough!”
- Gates Ottman, an African-American soldier that was cybernetically enhanced. Used weapons to face off against the psychics. Seems to be inspired by the Terminator.
If the awesome theme song for the intro sounded familiar, it's probably because you heard the same singer for Dragon Ball Z's theme song, “Head Cha-La”.
Three more things before we go: First, some have felt confusion about the fetus scene in SH3. They wonder how, if Heather was "pregnant" with the demon, then why didn't she look it by the end of the game? One could Hand Wave it away by saying that her floppy vest covered her up, but the fetus was fairly sizable. Also, when you put Heather in some of the tighter alternate costumes, her character model doesn't change at all, implying that she was never physically pregnant for one second.
I've heard another theory that says that the fetus isn't a fetus in the traditional sense, but instead is a parasite that takes over the host body. But if that's so, then why did Harry's letter to Heather explaining the events of the original game expressly refer to "the fetus nestled in her (Alessa's) womb"? Then again, how would he know exactly what was going on inside her body anyway?
It is very hard to understand. The "pregnancy" explanation is harder to swallow than the parasite theory. But then, why make it a fetus shape at all? SH3 was made to represent the fears of a teenage girl. That justifies and explains a lot of the game's horrors.
Personally, I think it's even more horrifying to think that the fetus actually counts as one. Even if it wasn't her "child", it was still the kind of thing that would deeply affect Heather, and make her reluctant to have any children of her own one day.
I think that the final nail in the fetus theory coffin is how it could have grown to completion outside of Heather's womb.
Secondly, some MK trivia: The characters Sonya and Tanya were named after Ed Boon's sisters.
Finally, I think that the scene featured in this episode from SH3 is the scariest of all time for video games. What's yours?
