I've already talked about how Murphy Pendleton doesn't fit the story going full-on criminal, so I'm going to avoid that and judge it on the merits of Endings A through C.
The game starts out with Murphy in the prison showers, opening all the showers to steam up the cameras. Sewell leads Napier into a murder. Not ten minutes into the game, we're given a clear-cut scenario of what Pendleton has done, and that Sewell set this all up for him. It's kind of a bait and switch when later, Sewell mentions him going to a maximum security prison...but it's so obvious. A very stern Corrections Officer with a shotgun is giving Murphy a death glare. If you connect the dots early on...a dumpy white guy who's sequestered is obviously someone who other inmates kill on principle (honor among killers, as Max Payne would put it). Later on the bus, Murphy's kid is shown and he clearly is distraught. Those dots obviously mean Napier is a child killer. Nobody really gives a shit about child killers in prison. So why the death glare and maximum security transfer?
Oh. It's you.
In case you weren't sure, meet Anne Cunningham, or the most hard-assed character you'll meet in the game. She's about as subtle as a hyena on laughing gas doing the Can-Can. She obviously knows you, and isolates you at the start of the game for a second before telling you to get on the bus. Not five minutes later, she'll stop you from progressing with a gun. Murphy stops...and instead of telling him to come back over the cliff he just crossed, she decides to both aim a gun at him and cross herself. She reeks of "I have a personal vendetta". It's ironic, considering the positive option here doesn't phase her attitude in the slightest. Murphy has no reason to save her ass, she wants to put him in jail regardless of extreme circumstances.
So Murphy kills a child killer, but two instances indicate that Murphy has killed a CO. This game is so unsubtle it hurts. Once you linked those two together, you can almost see Sewell being the reason for your present company Cunningham hating you. Or, if you can't, she'll make it clear when she's ready to execute you for having a badge on you that you're hiding a cop-killer secret. And if you still can't get it through your skull, Howard the Postman will tell you flat out midway through the game: "Heh, son, in my experience, when someone's THAT angry, it ain't a mistake. It's... personal."
As for me...I got exposition to deliver.
You getting it yet? This game spells a lot of things out for you. When you go to the orphanage, the nun makes it almost damn near criminally obvious that you need to "accept" this Bogeyman to gain your "Freedom" on the key-chain that Bobby Riggs tells you has the word "Freedom" on it. Hey, remember when Silent Hill flat out told you you every single thing about it? No? That's because the last one to be overtly blunt about it was Homecoming. Silent Hill 2 sets it up the best.
"Sure is quite here, huh?" - "I...guess?"
The game clearly establishes the setup, true. But James' inner monologue is necessary to understanding why he's even here in the first place. If you didn't read the game book, even Harry Mason sums it up for Cybil when she's asking why he's here. But after that, the game is free to let the plot run at it's own pace. You meet Angela, and share a little conversation about what she's doing there as well. James' motivations are made very clear: he's looking for his wife, wants to do anything to be with her again, and doesn't mind the danger. Angela's motivations are clear: she's looking for her mother. Her trip in the graveyard appears to be her checking to see if they were even dead. She also brings up her father and brother, and being unable to find them. Nothing is really clear-cut here; is her family dead? Is she checking the graveyard to be certain they are or aren't? It just appears that she hasn't been home in a while and hasn't seen them since.
Eddie's intro is even better, retching into a toilet due to seeing a guy dead and stuffed into a refrigerator. He's frantic and panicked, claiming he didn't do anything while doing this. James begins to understand slowly that "something brought them all there". James is a surprisingly good guy: he acknowledges Angela's concern, asks if Eddie is okay, warns him to get out of town as soon as possible, and reassures Eddie he'll leave as soon as he's done.
Everything is built up subtly. Even Maria, who is pretty overt to start, is slowly played upon. Her oddly sexual and playful manner is subverted by her ability to open the Heaven's Night strip club. Eddie is subverted by Laura; he talks back and forth between being guilty and not being guilty, being scared and being unforgiven, as if he isn't sure. James is completely subverted throughout the first half of the game, expressing concern for everyone and showing extreme concern for Laura's safety. And it even plays when he DOESN'T express concern for Maria to come with him; and more so if you think about Pyramid Head getting the shot on him on the roof of the Hospital, a punishment for leaning whichever direction James is heading in.
The message on the wall in the bar can be seen, but it's up to you to acknowledge it. Checking up on Maria is your job if you want to. Stopping to listen to certain parts, healing yourself immediately...the game doesn't tell you to do anything, but certain things you do affect how the game plays out. That's why I hate Homecoming, because it had the face of Silent Hill
but not the soul. I hate Downpour because it took the face off, and we're left with THIS.
Everything about Silent Hill 2 makes sense after the fact, and is subtly alluded to and played against throughout. Downpour spells everything out for you. I'm not antagonized by a super-pissed cop, I'm not followed by a postman doing a pointless job and telling me the obvious. I'm not told by a DJ that the town has rules you have to follow. I'm figuring it out as I go, realizations dawning on me as time passes. Even if Homecoming did it poorly, it was doing it right. Nothing about Downpour makes me think deeper, since it's already as transparent as the fog itself.
I'm tired of beating on this dead horse. I don't have the patience to go throughout it. Even the ending I gave credit to, Full Circle, makes no sense when I thought about it further. The developers didn't make the poignant scene, the purpose of Murphy Pendleton to even be in Silent Hill open-ended to either a good or bad choice. It's clearly leaning good. It should've shown the scene, but when Coleridge says "Murphy, RUN!", you have Murphy deck him from behind with Sewell watching with approval. There, now you have Murphy locked in a vicious loop of self-denial of what he did to what he HAD to do without losing his own mind. He HAD to kill Napier in his mind, but he DIDN'T have to kill Coleridge.
But even then, this ending is ruined by the aforementioned DJ Bobby Ricks. He is the dumbest character I've ever seen in this series. He wants to escape, keeps playing records and keeps sending out shout-outs to people trying to garner help. The wiki alludes to him being stuck in Silent Hill due to cowardice....but cowardice of what? Wanting to escape but never doing it? Uh...Wiki? Little more info.
"He is never referenced by Murphy again, nor is any clue ever given to
where he ended up, why he was in the town, or what he hoped Murphy could
do. It is also never stated who called Ricks and told him to send out
the messages, whether it was some form of manifestation, the town
itself, etc."
Murphy's comment on Bobby is: "I don't know what his story was, but I am
certain as hell he did not fit this place any more than I do. He knew
things and his plan sounded solid, but in the end that narrow margin
between knowing and doing, that little bit of courage to do things on
your own, he lacked. That was what buried him here forever."
He's stuck in Silent Hill...because he's too scared to get himself unstuck. What the fuck is the point? No, seriously. You make this character, and he dumps plot points, and then he "dies", or is stuck in town until he figures that the best way to escape the town is to escape the town. He's aware of how the town works, but he doesn't figure out how to escape. You literally wrote a plot dump and a plot hole in this character. What.
Making this character...ENTIRELY POINTLESS.
Uggggggggggh. The only positive thing I have to say about this game is the joke ending has the correct Pyramid Head, and is amusing enough to get a smile out of me.
I'm done. I can't talk about Downpour anymore. There's still so much more to talk about, from the design of the city layout, continuing the talk about the characters...but every time I talk about it, my mind just goes back to the first four games. Better characters, proper pacing, subtlety and theming. You could argue my nostalgia refuses to let me accept changes to the formula, but I argue that you could just take this kind of game, and NOT base it in Silent Hill. It could've been an entirely new town; it might as well have been, considering Devil's Pit and the Centennial Building aren't even locations you know of in the series. Drop the Silent Hill name, and build your own franchise if you're going to do it. Because Silent Hill has a standard. It was set with Silent Hill 2, matched by 3, tinkered with by 4. The ball was dropped by Homecoming, and then Downpour decides its fine to kick a Basketball around instead of picking it up and fixing it.
I need to go back to talking about things that don't get me riled up.
See you in hell, "cupcake".
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