The depiction of the town of Silent Hill in its titular game has lead to a lot of confusion and over-analysis from many casual and some hard-core Silent Hill fans. The stories of the first few games are told in very indirect manners, with the player often being shown the story through the acquisition of clues and context, rather than being directly told what is going on by an objective character or outside narration.

One of the most common misconceptions about the games is the idea that the “Otherworld” in Silent Hill is some kind of “parallel dimension” that exists in conjunction with, but separate from, the “real world”. Alternatively, some fans claim that the games utilize some kind of “parallel perception” mechanism, in which everything that happens in the games that is even remotely supernatural is all just happening inside the character’s mind, such that separate characters can be in the same place at the same time, but see things differently. These interpretations have lead to many misunderstandings about other elements of the town and events, such as Alessa having hostile motivations, the residents of Silent Hill being turned into monsters, or that the people who visit the town can never truly leave.

Silent Hill - Harry in Nowhere Silent HIll - Lisa dream sequence

These ideas are all fallacious, and they are derived from fundamental misunderstanding due to how the game presents information, or by a reliance on out-of-game information that presents a false picture of what is happening in the games.

What’s worse, these misguided ideas have found their way into “official” Silent Hill material, including the motion picture and all of the post-Konami-developed games in the series.

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I made quite a splash with the fine folks who made "The Real Silent Hill Experience" videos on Youtube the other day with a comment that I placed in their "part 13b - Questions Unanswered" supplementary video.

About three and a half minutes into the video, Rosseter and DerFuzhwar begin discussing their views on the fate of Cybil Bennett from the first game. They assert that the Good+ ending (in which Cybil survives) is likely to be the canonical ending, even though conventional Silent Hill wisdom suggest that the Good ending (in which Cybil dies) is supposed to be orthadox, and they present the following quote from the first game's event programmer, Hiroyuki Owaku:

The Real Silent Hill experience - Hiroyuki Owaku on Cybil's fate
Hiroyuki Owaku (one of Silent Hill's event programmers) on Cybil Bennett's fate.

After reading this quote, I left a comment on the video saying:

Actually, if "what happens to [Cybil] afterwords is up to the player's imaginations", then that would REQUIRE that the Good+ ending be canon. Because in the Good ending, she dies. There's no ambiguity to be left "up to the player's imaginations".
   - MegaBearsFan

This quote apparently impressed the folks at Twin Perfect so much that they highlighted this post and replied:

HUGE BUMP. EVERYONE PLEASE READ.
   - TwinPerfectChannel
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Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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