How come so many Silent Hill 2 fans act like the cult in the rest of the series is goofy and the horror being all in...

How come so many Silent Hill 2 fans act like the cult in the rest of the series is goofy and the horror being all in the protagonists mind somehow is deeper and more mature? Silent Hill 1 is the story of a child being abused by her cult member mom and her beliefs and who suffer from brutal bullying at school which gives her no real place to feel accepted, at it's core it's a story of abuse. It's not like cults don't exist in real life and it's not like they don't regularly get involved in child abuse controversies. Just because the game features supernatural elements doesn't mean that the cult storyline is somehow less """deep""" than James going through supernatural Crime and Punishment.

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I agree with you, but I feel like most simply can't see much mileage out of the cult side of things, while also still keeping the mystique of that cult. If it'd kept going further as a series, using it for every other game as they seemed to be would've been the best approach.

Honestly?
Because the zoom zoom nu-fans only saw some lengthy YT videos about SH2, and never even played the rest. IF they even touched SH2 to begin with.

SH2 is very normie-friendly, because it is not only easy and calm, but also spoonfeeds you everything you need to know about the cast and story during a single playthrough.
SH1 is practically the polar opposite. There's plenty of freedom to explore, tons of missable things, and endings that require going out of your beaten path to be acquired - some of them literally being designed for repeated replays.

That is way too much responsibility pushed on the zoomies, which together with the "lol cult!" memes that spawned some time after the terrible SH Movie, result them just skipping the best game in the franchise and making up their own head-canon narratives for it. Most which seem to just copy shit from Evil Dead or something.
Once this kind of self-conditioning further cemented by external online cultures is completed, it becomes increasingly more difficult to even try to convince them that SH1 pretty much coined all the cool themes and ideas SH2 is usually credited for. Heck, some of them outright refuse to accept that SH1 was indeed called and marketed as a "psychological horror" back in 1999 already, as they seriously believe that the "psychological" part equals SH2's "shrink town" idea (which is practically BS as well, btw).

You're taking your autism to dangerous levels with these reaches m8

I haven't noticed anything like this.

Post body

The definitive best silent hill game of all time takes after sh1 AND has none of that cult zoomie bs

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It shows that you were not browsing and posting on the SH Forums of early 00s, kid.

Still no argument, but whatev.

I saw your prior shitpost thread, mate.
SM is indeed a fine game, best non-TS title even, but it absolutely gets dwarfed by Team-Silent's game design and story.

>It shows that you were not browsing and posting on the SH Forums of early 00s, kid.
don't really give a fuck desu, other peoples' opinions don't really concern me. Regardless it just comes off as autistic, borderline schizo babble to villainize people you disagree with

Respectable then
I actually have no opinion, but your posts teeters on the brink of severe autism so it is important to garner perspective.
Assuming this is actually you you are allowed to hold edgy beliefs.

Most Silent Hill "fans" have just played 2 and the western-made ones.

If anything the cult-focused titles are more "normie" or "zoomie" (drop the lingo, makes you come off as a faggot) friendly due to having a tangible big bad, so to speak.

You can thank Yahtzee for that, he was the first time I ever heard people complaining about goofy cult shit, then suddenly everybody thought SH2 was the only one with a good story.

I've noticed that a lot of people have the misconception that psychological horror means that the horror is all in your head or something stupid like that when psychological horror actually just means horror that tries to scare you by trying to get into your mind rather than going for more obvious shocks or gross out. You can have a psychological horror story with clear, unambiguous supernatural elements.

I like the how SH1and SH4 worlds works as a reflection of a tormented and fractured psyche that starts to invade the normal world and people rather than the protagonist in an amnesia denial like SH2, SH3, SM and the others shitty ones did. Former works better for horror and the later feels ok as a depressing story when they don't add the shyamalan obvious twist.

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>favourite game: Silent Hill 2 (unplayed)

once again Yahtzee proves himself to be a giant faggot

I really like the story of SH4 since the main character is Walter Sullivan and Henry is just some nobody who happened to be the wrong guy at the wrong place. Going through the game and piecing together the story of Walter and realizing that he's actually a pretty tragic character (and again, a victim of abuse at the hands of the cult) is really interesting and it's such a shame that the game was obviously rushed.

>If anything the cult-focused titles
That's just the thing: besides maybe SH4, and with a stretch the SH3 as well (we can skip the western trash), there really isn't SH games that are [about] the cult.

Same goes with this "big bad" idea.
I've seen many people try to turn the "cult" into some SH's Umbrella corp, when the original game makes it very clear that the events are more or less a result of numerous separated factors, with the Dahlia's tiny cult (that is not the same as the entire local faith) being merely a single cog in the overall machine.

Just recently beat SH2 after only playing SH1 like 2 years ago. I've stayed mostly fresh on the entire series and will be ejecting from this thread after this post.

I like both games a great deal but I felt SH2 was just a better story to take in. The town in 2 gives off the feeling that it's not an even evil place, just a super natural one which is a lot more clear without some cult running around.

I still feel like SH1 the town isn't evil by nature but is more a side affect of the cult trying to summon a demon. The story is just a bit more straight forward without a lot to peel away at aside from some different endings.

I don't think this really detracts from the story of the first game or makes it silly in some way. I just think what they did with the story in 2 was written in such a way were you're given just enough insight into the characters that people are able to run wild with speculation and analyzing deeper themes. That said the double edge sword of this would be the head up your ass arms race of people theory crafting every stray polygon and texture having some level of significance

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As someone who has never played a horror game, what are some of the best ones that aren't RE or SH?
I'm looking for something with a good story, not just "oh its spooky"

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Yes, SH4 has the best ideas of the franchise but the execution (gameplay, level design and maybe even the art design) feels like a downgrade from previous games. The ghosts are kino being all the victims of Walter, part of the story and also unrelentless and unkillable.

I agree with you on how Dahlia's cult is handled, suppose I could've phrased that part of my post better. Just easier to refer to them as most do. No idea why a portion of the fanbase has focused so much on the cult, and it doesn't really matter to me. But it's definitely a thing, and I'd say 3 did more to contribute to that than 4 just based on discussion I've seen.

Eternal Darkness, Killer7, Call of Cthulhu (not the recent one, haven't played it)

2 is better because it has an actual story you can follow. 1 is just a cluster fuck unless you have autism, as shown by your post.

Rule of Rose or Siren are more like Silent Hill. Dino Crisis is more Resident Evil

since sh2 is considered far and away the best people just skip 1 and 3 even though they're on par and better then 2 in many ways

Both have actual stories. SH1 has more different storylines and is more ambiguous, partly because the second route (the Cybil one that dealt with White Claudia) was scrapped.

SH2 fags never played 1, so they assume all the goofy shit from 3 is how it always was

>cut Cybil route

Where did you hear that?