The debate regarding Cybil's ultimate fate in Silent Hill is an interesting (if not futile) one in the larger Silent Hill fan community. The Good ending (with Cybil being killed by Harry) seems to be the consensus "canon" ending with most fans. This conclusion is based primarily on the fact that Cybil does not appear nor is mentioned within Silent Hill 3 (which references the events of the first game). Deputy Wheeler, in Silent Hill: Homecoming also states that a female police officer from Brahms went to Silent Hill once and was never heard from again, implying that Cybil never returned from the town.
However, Rosseter, Fungo, DerFuzhwar, and other fans (such as myself) argue that none of those are good reasons to assume that Cybil must have died. Just because she was never referenced in SH3 doesn't mean that she and Harry couldn't have simply parted ways after the first game and never contacted one another again. Harry and his new baby had to go into hiding from the cult, and Cybil had a life in Brahms where she worked as a public servant. It would have been very hard for them to maintain a relationship if Cybil survived and went back to her original life.
Furthermore, from the meta-game standpoint, achieving the Good+ ending (in which Cybil survives) requires the most amount of work by the player and reveals the most information about the game's story. Wouldn't it make sense for this ending to be the true ending to the game? And Homecoming sucks, so we refuse to acknowledge it as canon!
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:
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
And they even posted it on their Facebook page!
Twin Perfect's Facebook update about my comment. Minds blown!
Despite my comment, however, the Cybil argument remains an open point of debate within the Silent Hill fan community, and it likely will for a very long time.
Regardless, I am a huge fan of the work that Rosseter, Fungo, and DerFuzhwar have done with their "The Real Silent Hill Experience" videos, so to be recognized by them for a contribution that I made was a huge honor! Keep up the good work, guys, I hope the people at Konami are listening to you.