Foxing Peculiar

And already, this game is redonkulous. I’m playing on Series X and have already had to swap between three discs during the installation. It’s taking about 3 hours.

I did finish it.

I was exploring the prison when I left off. Making my way around and through the animal doors. I remember the banging in the showers and the woman crying out in a restroom got me, made me jump, freaked me out. I also have a note from this point: “this game is obsessed with scary holes and horrible bathrooms.”

The plague tale at the prison was tough to piece together but interesting in its fragments. Added a lot of spooky atmosphere. As did the creepy art in that one cell in F block. The typewriter puzzle I got in one shot and felt smart, but it’s also fairly obvious, so then I felt dumb for feeling smart.

But eventually I got all the weights and got to the gallows. That shit was elaborate. It took a little while to figure out what to do, what the logic of it was. But the one poem about the thief stealing to survive felt markedly different from the “why NOT kill my mom?” or “fuck you, I’m greedy” tone of the others. And when I put together the numbers corresponded to the nooses, I took a shot and I was right.

James continued descending and I wound up in a place called “The Labyrinth.” Which… I mean, that’s hell, right? It sure seemed like hell. Otherworldly, physically illogical, designed to torment. That’s a version, a depiction of hell, I think. Kind of backroomsy, too.

Angela’s here, and her “daddy” shows up. He wasn’t particularly hard, but it WAS disturbing. Basically confirmed what happened to her. What she endured. Which at this point did have me wondering—I know why James is here, what he did. Eddie is sus as fuck. What is it that she did, exactly?

But after some shotgunning and some skin walls and various other horrible things, it died and she showed back up to beat the shit out of it. Her trauma is feeding her disgust at James (men, everyone), amplified by whatever this place is. But there’s also this weird moment where it’s like it’s talking through her. She says some shit about Mary that she shouldn’t know, but then it’s like she snaps out of it. And then fucks off again.

Then I came to the crossroads. And guess who’s here, past the weird, wiggly flesh portal! I knew we hadn’t seen the last of Maria. At first she gaslights him, like “no, I didn’t die, are you okay?” But then it’s like the pretense drops. She stops the pretense of being a real person, kind of. She wants him to choose her, which made me think I should not, if given that option. She mentions something about a tape, and at first, I genuinely thought she was making an innuendo about a sex tape, but that didn’t feel right. But whatever; I left her alone to go fuck with a weird cube.

This bit was STRESSFUL. Especially the part(s) where Pyramid Head is just suddenly THERE, chasing you around and you have to figure out where to go while avoiding him. Opening the refrigerator in the rotten section was… ugh. Another instance of James having to really get his hand all up in something disgusting.

But I made it through all three sections until I wound up back in Maria’s cell and James kinda broke down over her. It seems like he’s channeling memories of watching Mary die in this moment, but I don’t know. Maybe there’s different ways to interpret it?

Lugging PH’s sword to get through the flesh portal was an interesting touch. It’s like whatever was blocking the way is scared of it, which it clues you into earlier when he chases you through one of them (figured this out by accident just trying to back away from him).

And then you’re in a cemetery. Angela has a grave here. As does the serial killer from the newspaper in the apartments (Walter something). And of course James has to jump into his own grave. Self destruction? Ego death? I don’t know. But just like the initial stairs that led down here, he’s choosing to descend. To embrace what’s coming.

At the end of a long and increasingly bloody hallway, there’s Eddie again. And he’s no longer even pretending. He took his torment out on others, owns up to it now. I find it interesting that he mistakes James for someone, says “how many times do I have to kill you?” Who is he being haunted by? What is he seeing?

He says “this town called you too.” It’s punishing the guilty. But I did enjoy seeing James deck him one. And then the boss fight. Which was, I think, maybe the hardest one? I cottoned on to switching off my light pretty quickly but he’s hard to keep track of and goddamn, getting shot HURT. I had gotten used to having a comfortable level of healing items up to this point, but this fight drained me and I was scraping a little the rest of the game.

After Eddie, James walks through the door and emerges at the docks and the relief of seeing daylight was fucking crazy. I actually let out a long breath and realized how much the game was getting to me. It was unclear to me if this was actually back outside, somehow, or if this is still this weird nether space, or if there’s even a meaningful difference at this point. But whatever it was I was ready to take it.

So I rowed across the lake and ended up at the hotel. Which, despite its increasingly dilapidated condition, was mostly a more chill section than the last couple. Except the employee area. And the boss-ish fight with the hanging monster in the conference room. The hanging monsters in general, really.

Laura’s here and being nicer to James. I still can’t really figure her out. She seems real, not a figment of this place. But she’s also not one of the people being punished. She doesn’t see the monsters. And her timeline doesn’t match James’s. So why and how is she here? Also, this girl is 8. How did she get here? Where are her guardians? Why was she in the hospital? Is she a ghost? What is going on there?

There were some neat puzzles in this bit. The one that stymies me the most in thinking about it is the mirror/apple one. I’m not entirely sure what happened there. And the game gives you two apples, but you only use one. Which means, or at least suggests, that choice matters for something, but what or how is unclear. (I went ripe, cos… why not?)

But EVENTUALLY I got the tape and got to room 312 and watched it. And okay. I knew that reveal was coming. But now he can admit it. Which he does, to Laura. He killed Mary. And repressed it. Guilt, trauma, all that. He’s reached the bottom of the mystery now.

Also, “I heard this whole area used to be a sacred place.” Not the word I’d use, Mary, based on everything I’ve been reading and experiencing so far.

But her voice calls him through the radio. And now the hotel has REALLY gone to shit. Maybe we really did emerge from that abyss and now we’re back in the other world? I don’t know. I don’t know how any of that works, exactly, and by this point I was pretty sure clear answers were not forthcoming.

I could tell I was coming to the end by how empty this part is. There were no enemies for most of it’d and when they did show up, they just kind of… died on their own. Maybe cos James knows the truth now, there’s no point in keeping up the torment? Or his mind is able to resist it more now?

There’s a cassette where a doctor talks about not being able to save “her,” and again seems to address James directly, like he’ll find it. This happened with the abyss key too. Like he’s being guided almost. It made me wonder, but again, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get a straight answer.

At some point, I came upon Angela again. Her comment, “for me, it’s always like this” about the fire kind of answers what it is that she did. Her self loathing here was hard to take and she asked for the knife back, but James said no. I remember wondering about the knife when I got it, and I feel like there’s a different way this interaction could’ve gone, but I don’t know what would’ve triggered that. And then she just leaves, climbing up through the fire. It’s unclear what happens to her, but I feel like that was as positive as it could’ve been?

Then I came upon a concentration of 9 save points in one place. And I did not like that. And I was correct, cos in the next room, not one but TWO Pyramid Heads have Maria all strung up on a… thing. One of them kills her (again), and despite what he’s seen, James kinda flips out. And says he doesn’t need them any more—he can face the truth now, I suppose. And then you have to fight them both at once. Which was chaotic and I was rapidly running out of ammunition, but it still wasn’t as bad as Eddie. A lot of running around, but I took them out.

They synchronized-self-stab and for some unfathomable reason, they each have an egg in their hand. These eggs go into two doors that lead to the same place. But I don’t know. The game keeps giving me choices where I don’t understand what they mean.

Then I’m going up some stairs. A lot of stairs. This feels climactic. But also, not for nothing, James is ascending now for, really, the first significant time in the game, I think.

“Mary” was at the top. And she’s all “yay, now we can be together!” But James has FINALLY come to grips with the fact that 1) this is Maria, and 2) she is a malevolent entity. She, however, is not having his newfound awareness.

This fight wasn’t that hard, but it WAS close, cos I had very few resources left by this point. By the time I got her, I had like 4 rifle bullets, no heals, and my health was loooooow. But she went down.

And then she’s on the floor, calling James’s name. And I thought, no, I don’t trust her. And without even fully processing it, I shot her again. It seemed like maybe there could’ve been more of an interaction there, but that put an end to it.

There is a scene where James confesses to his guilt to Mary, that he killed her out of resentment more than sympathy. But she forgives him—or this projection of her forgives himself. Then she reads her dying letter, which is an extended version of the one that called him here. He finds Laura and they leave. (Which… again, what’s with her?)

I understand there are other ways this could’ve ended, and I assume some of those incomprehensible choices may have played into that. Going to look into what the other endings are. But I think this was the good ending?

But yeah. This was definitely a helluva game. I’m still processing it, and I feel like there’s a lot of little puzzle pieces to put together in the background. And I don’t know how it fits into the rest of the series (I have only played Silent Hill 1, when it came out, and I got freaked out and stopped playing not too deep in).

It’s interesting. I haven’t played that many horror games—my main touchstone for the genre is Resident Evil, so it’s interesting to see a take on it that has a more… a lot of RE is insane and very stupid (in a good way), and this is not that. It feels trite to call it “Lynchian,” but parts of it did remind me of Inland Empire in particular. And I’m fascinated by the way it just kind of pulls you into this dreamscape and leaves you to figure out what’s real and what even happened here.

Alright. James was following Laura, but seems to have gotten distracted. As did I, and forgot to pick up the wrench. But once I figured that out, I got through the door and back into the park.

Which was, again, refreshingly monster-free, but I did run into Angela. She seems to be losing herself, no longer believes her mama’s here. She also has a fragile demeanor, like she’s weirdly eager when James says he’s glad to see her. And then when he mentions a little girl, that triggers something. She seems to see something James doesn’t. It’s strongly implied that she’s being tormented by memories, or at least visions, of childhood abuse.

But she runs off and James is left to find the key that will “open the abyss.” To the historical society, apparently!

But it did occur to me to wonder who’s writing the note James finds with the key. They mention having a patient, so it’s a doctor of some kind. But they also address James directly, they know he’s here, will find this. I’m not sure what that implies. Also, the tone of the letter is… disconcerting. The resignation of it: if James insists on continuing, this person won’t stand in his way.

On the way, I passed a gas station and I’m pretty sure there’s more to find there than I did, but that’s okay. Also passed a bowling alley, which had some leftovers in it that James comments on: “who could sit here eating pizza?” The answer to that seems fairly clear. Who have we seen eating, who’s been associated with food since he first appeared? Eddie is around somewhere.

The paintings in the historical society were neat. Plagues, shipwrecks, shit has not been well in Silent Hill for a long time. I looked at each one and considered it, but I still feel like there’s pieces I’m not putting together. I don’t know, I don’t know how important the history is here, but I learned some stuff. And the Pyramid Head painting. He is an arbiter of judgment. But that form, that incarnation—I first thought that he must exist outside James, cos here he is depicted. But it seems clear James (and thus me also) can’t trust what he sees here. The dream logic of this place could be shaping anything, everything. I don’t know. It’s interesting to question what PH is, but it’s even more unsettling to not be sure you can trust anything.

Then there was the staircase. Which just… kept going. To the point that I was almost sure I was missing something, doing something wrong, that this was some kind of Mario 64-style endlessly looping stairs, by the time I finally got to the bottom. And I mean, the note did say it was an abyss. But that’s what I mean—physical reality seems unreliable here.

And in that moment, this world is testing James. How committed are you to not turning back? He has to jump in yet more scary holes afterwards, and it makes you confirm it more than once. How badly do you want this? As the player, you don’t have much of a choice—this game seems pretty damn linear so far. To the point where I’ve had several moments of confusion and thought “trust the game to guide you.” And it does. Follow the lights on the darkened street. Explore around. You’ll see which way to go. There is a path to follow, but are we following after James, who seems unable to let go of a path that clearly wants to destroy him? Or are we leading him to his doom by continuing to play? I dunno. I had time to think about it going down those stairs though.

And then you run into Eddie again.

And… he’s kinda scary this time. I remember after the first encounter, I was like “he’s having the most normal reaction here.” But in the second encounter, it’s like that was slipping. Whatever darkness was in him was creeping out. And now it’s fucking out. He says he was joking about killing the body you find him with. Which seems unlikely—especially considering there’s a dead guy when you first find him and he said the same thing, and he mentioned to Laura the cops were after him. But either way, that’s a predator now.

But nothing happens. Yet. He just leaves.

And so now I’m in the prison. Which is probably the most stressful part so far? It’s cramped, it’s dark, those fucking wall mannequins are creeping around everywhere and sending my radio/controller into constant conniptions even when I can’t see them. It’s all very tense.

I was in the hospital looking for the third bracelet. But in going back to the X-ray room, I noticed the fourth one was there, under where the memo was and I just didn’t see it earlier. I felt a bit like a dumbass, but it made getting the third bracelet easy.

Eventually I got up to the roof and the Pyramid Head jumpscare got the shit out of me. I appreciate that this game doesn’t do jumpscares much (aside from the fucking leg enemies popping out at you from nowhere all the goddamn time), but when it does do then, it’s very effective.

So James gets yeeted back down to the third floor and talks to Laura. An interesting moment. She claims to know Mary from the hospital, recently. I’m not sure what to make of that. She also says she has a letter from Mary hidden somewhere, which seems important since it’s a letter from Mary that kicked this whole thing off. But James promises he won’t yell and then he absolutely does. He is not a reliable narrator here.

I’m not entirely sure WHAT I was fighting in that second boss fight. It… um… the game is going hard on a visceral, sexual fear that I can’t quite put a finger on. But what I was not expecting was to be snatched through the ceiling after beating it.

I am not entirely clear what happened here. James seemed to be on a gurney, heard his name and that siren again and woke up in… another dimension? Some other, somehow-even-more-fucked-up version of the hospital. I remember saying in a previous entry, when the siren made PH retreat, that it was like calling him back to wherever he came from—this adds to that idea, that the siren has something to do with moving between this world and the other one.

But okay, now it’s time to truck around the hospital AGAIN. The goal this time seemed to be oriented around a very locked box. The metaphor of that seems obvious. The mannequin puzzle was unsettling, and the third lock—with the noisy clock and the pills in the sink and the diary entry—that one took some thinking. And then of course the box was empty (James isn’t ready to face the shadow yet). But there’s a creepy statue door now! Because this is a horror game, so of course there is.

In mucking about further, Maria shows up and puts on some emotion. James doesn’t seem to question how she got to hell-dimension, but he does seem at least a little suspicious of why she’s so intent on finding Laura. I mean, I guess that’s something.

What got me more, was her balking at the statue door once I found the rings. That felt like the first time she genuinely hesitated, and it threw me a little. I still don’t know what she is—what her agenda or role is in… whatever’s happening. It’s an interesting experience not being able to pin that down and that it feels so intentional—that’s a high level of control of the experience. I can see why this game is a classic.

Then Pyramid Head got her after a genuinely stressful chase sequence. I was not expecting that. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s not the last we see of her anyway, but… I dunno. Even knowing what I know, I don’t have my feet on the ground in understanding what’s happening yet.

James seems bummed about it though, and on his way out, he finds what has been the most interesting (and kind of least cryptic) memo in the whole hospital section: the doctor’s note talking about the illness pulling patients into another reality. That seems to be what’s happening again.

I don’t know if Laura’s real in the same way James is and the way I’m pretty sure Maria isn’t. But she doesn’t seem to think there’s anything dangerous about the hospital. Like, the monsters aren’t real to her. If she is “real,” she’s not perceiving the same things James is. Which makes me think Eddie and Angela aren’t either (the latter in particular). They’re in some kind of delusional reality that’s both shared and not, manifested by whatever’s going on in the town. I don’t know, something like that.

Anyway, chasing Laura through the town streets at night was a fun and (relatively) actiony sequence. The street of idling cars and the dark tunnels, it was all a great atmosphere. It’s not clear who left the note on the map that James finds and again, he doesn’t think to question it. He’s on this journey, there’s no going back.