I noticed that there is not yet a thread attempting to look at the incredible, mind-blowing plot of the newest Silent Hill game. Before we go any further, if you have not yet played the game, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER. This game has a twist ending that puts the Sixth Sense to shame. You will ruin your experience with this game if you read this thread. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
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Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, let's start analyzing this brilliant exercise in psychological mind blowing. As you all know, at the end of the game it turns out the person being analyzed by Dr. Kaufman is not Harry but in fact non other than Cheryl herself, aged 25 and obviously having trouble in her life. While there are numerous hints throughout the game that Cheryl is not the innocent 7-year-old cherub Harry believes her to be, I felt that the truth about her and Harry was very well concealed and even more of a twist than the ending to Silent Hill 2.
Of course, given the fact that Harry is dead when the game takes place, and given the fact that Cheryl is in a state of psychological trauma and denial about what happened, this raises some very interesting questions. What do the events of the game, Harry's search for his daughter and encounters with the various citizens of Silent Hill, mean? What, if any, correlation or relationship do they have to the "real world?" I'm not dumb enough to think there's a concrete answer to these questions. This is a Silent Hill game, after all. But it is definitely worth examining extensively.
At first I thought that maybe the events of the game were simply the construct of Cheryl's troubled mind. There's plenty of evidence to suggest this. Harry probably crashed his car with Cheryl in it, and she survived while he did not. Cheryl, unable to deal with the trauma of her father's death following closely behind the divorce, both of which she probably blamed on herself, refused to accept what happened. She imagined that her dad survived, was lost and continuing to look for her. The Harry in the game was a construct of her head, along with the entire town he goes through, hence why his actions and his encounters in the town reflect the answers on the psych evaluations. The monsters he encounters represent her desire to avoid dealing with the truth, hence why they hold Harry back, while Harry himself represents either her ego, because she so strongly identifies with her dead father, or else her desire to realize the truth. In this way, the monsters play the role of Maria in Silent Hill 2.
The various people he encounters represent various desires and archetypes. Cybil represents the harsh force of truth, almost the role of Pyramid Head, continually forcing Harry to realize the truth of what's going on, preventing the monsters from stopping him by rescuing him. Dahlia represents what she thinks her father would have wanted, what she thinks her mother was like when her father still loved her, or else Cheryl's desire to be desired, in an Electra-complex like way (more on this later). Michelle probably went to school with Cheryl and came to represent the ideal of a happy, well-adjusted individual her father would be proud of, who could help her father and be liked by him in an appropriate way. When her dad went to the nightclub, she succumbed to darker desires and replaced Michelle with a figure that more accurately represented herself and her own desires and confusion, while confusing and disturbing Harry at the same time, putting him in the same state of mind as her. Lisa was probably a nurse that took care of Cheryl after the crash. Lisa's state probably represents the trauma of the event, as well as how Cheryl felt at the time: injured, scared, and groggily messed up due to pain drugs. The way Harry rescues Lisa and the way he ends up killing her both represent two powerful things that emerged in Cheryl as a result of the crash: her desire to be rescued from her situation by her dad, leading to the beginning of her fantasies, and her guilt over her dad's death, as she probably blamed herself, as kids tend to do, because he was probably driving her somewhere, and if she hadn't been there Harry would be alive.
I thought about this analysis, and I realized it fell short of a full explanation. Like all good Silent Hill games, the true nature of what's going on is unclear. You could decide that in Silent Hill 2 James is simply wandering around an empty (or not so empty) town, swinging at phantoms, stumbling through his subconscious issues, or maybe just stays in the car and hallucinates. You could just as easily decide to believe, however, that the town is projecting his subconscious problems, giving them substance and life. Silent Hill has always seemed to be a town where strong emotional force can alter reality. So in Shattered Memories, it could just as easily be true that Harry is a ghost, brought back from the dead by the intense suffering and desires of Cheryl, who longs to be with him again and whose life has now hit rock bottom. I've always felt that Silent Hill is a little like Schrodinger's Cat in that regard: it is both a psychological delusion and a mystical creation caused by emotional force. You can force it into one explanation or the other, but that is just your choice. In the end, it works either way, and both explanations are equally true.
So if Harry is some kind of ghost, are the people he encounters real? Do they actually see him? Or are they, too, apparitions of Cheryl's creation? After all, the previous explanations of the meanings of the characters still holds if they are all ghosts. If, however, these people are real, then an alternate explanation is required. I think young Dahlia is definitely a created spirit, a product of Cheryl's subconscious only as real as Maria in SH2. However, current Dahlia is the way Cheryl's mother actually is, drunk and miserable because of her broken marriage and estranged relationship with her delinquent daughter. Michelle is definitely real, along with the people living in the old Mason home and Cybil. Lisa... is a bit harder to place. She could be the real nurse who cared for Cheryl after the accident, drawn to Harry because of her connection to Cheryl. She could have ended up dying accidentally, taking the wrong pill, or she could have ended up dying because of the force of Cheryl's malice (after all, a sleeping pill wouldn't cause terrible dreams or a bloody death). Or she could be another phantom, based on the real nurse but representative of Cheryl's subconscious issues. Another big argument for the phantom explanation is the various ghosts encountered in the town, which seem to have little connection to Cheryl. Harry, being a spirit, would be able to see the spirits. However, these ghosts could simply be individuals or events Cheryl knew/experienced firsthand or heard about that affected her strongly.
I will now attempt to examine each section of the game, and its possible meaning through each potential interpretation of the game, psychological or mythological.
1. Car crash: Whether Cheryl imagined him or Harry was a ghost that was first conjured into being here, it makes sense that this is where things start. This is where Harry died, this is where Cheryl was separated from him forever. At first Harry has no memory, just a pressing desire to find his daughter. He is what Cheryl clung to, a great hero who didn't die, but instead was out there, single-mindedly searching for her without another thought in his head, including thoughts for his wife. Even if he is a spirit, he is conjured by Cheryl, and therefore his knowledge of his life is at first limited to that which Cheryl wants him to know.
2. Bar/Diner - first ice chase: Harry first encounters a person. Whether it's Cybil or the Barkeep, his search is first given direction here. He first takes out his ID, and first gains memories, giving him life beyond simply looking for his daughter. These memories and desires could have been caused by the spirit contacting people, or the people could be parts of Cheryl's mind that want the truth to come out. However, once he gets to their old home, the illusion of the innocent Cheryl living in their old home will begin to weaken, so Cheryl doesn't want Harry to get home. This is why the ice and creatures first appear, to act as an impediment to Harry. Cheryl contacts Harry in her innocent, 7-year-old voice, helping to prop up the illusion while encouraging Harry to be afraid and not proceed. Ultimately, Cheryl is divided. She wants her dad to look for her but doesn't want him to find the real her, leading to the conflicts that have caused her such psychological trauma.
3. Old House/Cybil's car: If Harry is a spirit that can be seen, heard, and touched by the living, this part is straightforward. He encounters the people living in the home his wife moved out of after he died. His ID lists this address because that's where he still lived when he died. Cybil shows up because the people call the cops and tries to take him to the station to sort this all out. Her car gets stuck in the snow because Cheryl is able to force it to stop there, because of her connections to the lodges in the woods. Harry is now confused and begins to be forced to deal with the truth, as is Cheryl, who has a connection to him psychically or spiritually. If Harry is a spirit, this part is a bit more difficult to interpret. The people in the house represent her sense of dislocation. I imagine she got back from the hospital to find her old home was gone and she had to move in to this new, nasty home over a pawn shop her mom either owns or rents room from. This jarring change probably made her retreat even more into her fantasy. Cybil represents the beginning of her mind's rebellion against her fantasy, forcing her to acknowledge that the home is gone from her and taking her to the lodge to begin the hard path of realizing the truth.
4. Lodge/Woods: Here Harry returns to an old memory and learns a new truth about his daughter, though the true nature of these are unclear at first. Harry encounters signs of a young girl who attempted to call home, nervous about a party in the woods, and signs that that same girl was roofied and raped. I personally think this is Cheryl herself, and the ghost you find crying in a corner near blood that sets off the ice is in fact a phantom of Cheryl. The blood is either Cheryl's or the blood of whoever did this to her, as she may have killed him. This is either where Cheryl is forced to acknowledge that the path her life has taken has diverged sharply from her fantasy, or else the part where Harry the ghost first begins to be exposed to the truth of his daughter's life. In either case, Cheryl doesn't want herself/her dad to know about this, and so when he encounters her shade it brings the ice and the creatures, to hold back the truth. Harry gets through the ice, only to encounter a memory of his divided family. This is where he first sees his wife, and Cheryl first has to deal with her living mother, thought not directly yet. It is also the first time Harry is presented as an imperfect father, neglecting his daughter, further chipping away at the fantasy.
5. School: This is where more of the truth surrounding Cheryl's life starts to appear. There are references to drug use, dangerous forms of escapism (choking game), all of which hint at Cheryl's misery. This is all covered up by talk of prom, school events, and happy, well-adjusted school life. This again is a fantasy Cheryl presents to her dad and herself. Michelle is either the one person allowed to get through the snow by Cheryl or else is imagined by her to complete this picture. Michelle is well adjusted and nice, and makes Cheryl look good through association. Harry the ghost either finds the truth, thought Cheryl tries to stop it by breaking the computer, or else she first acknowledges to herself that she lives elsewhere, though she won't completely admit it. At this point the ice comes back because of the force of her revelation. Harry has to overcome another secret of hers: she has been sleeping with a professor. I think Cheryl seeks out dangerous sexual situations and older men due to a desire to be wanted and protected by males, which ultimately derives from her father's absence in an electra-complex like way. Disturbing, but then again this is Silent Hill.
6. Club/bridge: This is a very interesting part. Michelle become Dahlia, which freaked the hell out of me. If this is all in Cheryl's head then it is her inability to pretend to herself that she is a good girl. She gives in to various fantasies: Dahlia may look the way Cheryl did in high school, or look the way Dahlia, he mom, did in high school, or may just be what Cheryl thinks her dad would like, or all three. In any case, it represents a twisted side of Cheryl, born out of a desire for attention or protection from her father, which caused her to fantasize about him sexually and engage in risky behavior. If Harry is a ghost, Dahlia still represents the same thing, I think, but is another spirit, created out of that part of Cheryl. At this point either Harry sees Michelle as Dahlia, or else simply wanders off, following the phantom. The car ride could be a phantom, or else he could be sitting next to Michelle, either confusing her or saying nothing that she can hear. If a real car reaches the bridge, Harry lowers the bridge only to fall in the water, pulled by Cheryl's desire to stop him. Here Cheryl's desire to avoid the truth is becoming stronger as the fabric of the fantasy falls apart, and the ghost realizes something is up. Cybil comes along and saves him, either because she's a cop or because she is the part of the mind that won't let the truth go untold.
7. Hospital/Lisa: This is the hospital Cheryl stayed at after the crash. The truth becomes closer now. It goes into ice immediately because the entire place forcibly reminds Cheryl of the truth, and exposes it to her father. The role of Lisa was explained above. I think that Lisa died to make Harry feel guilty, to reflect the guilt Cheryl felt over her father's death. Overall, this part is fairly straightforward. The ice develops right as Cybil tell Harry he's not Harry Mason, first indicating that he died. Before she can finish, the ice intervenes, forcing Harry to run into the Mall.
8. Mall: This is one of the last places Cheryl has nice memories of her father with. In the mall he encounters her old cartoon character she loved and a memory of gumballs, all part of the attempt to keep up the facade. Once the ice is melted, another side of the mall is seen, because it is also an area close to Cheryl's new home, and the place where her delinquent lifestyle developed. There are clues that she regularly shoplifted and maybe even stabbed a security guard, which may have been the event that forced her to seek therapy. You aren't force to see these things, and its still not clear who exactly is doing them, but Harry's ghost/Cheryl is increasingly being forced to recognize the truth.
10. Home: Here, Harry first encounters the real Dahlia. Either he really encounters her, which jars his memories and forces him to start remembering what happened, or else Cheryl is first forced to acknowledge her mom, who as part of her electra complex she hates and wants to replace. Her mother represents her life after dad, the part of her life she constantly escapes from into her dad-fantasies, the authority figure she should be following, yet shows no respect. She also reveals the real location of Cheryl. This is too much for her, and she completely breaks down and the ice comes. Falling into her own subconscious or else dragging Harry's ghost down into it. A world that consists of her memories of her old self and which expose the truth of her fantasy, a fantasy centered around the TV, old videos, and a dream logic that is expressed in this place. It is a place thick with escapism, and therefore the monsters, with no obvious way out. In the end Harry dives deeper into his daughter's mind in a manner similar to the "Nowhere" from SH1, or else Cheryl dives into herself similar to the "Holes" area in SH2.
11. Ride with Michelle / Amusement park: Michelle finds Harry, either having been brought to him by Cheryl or else conjured. At this point, it seems even Cheryl wants to know the truth to some extent, and Michelle is reliable, sane, and a good person. Even this, thought, will fall apart. Harry gets a ride, only to witness a relationship fall apart the way his own did. Either this is Cheryl's mind remembering the way that her parent's relationship fell apart, or else Cheryl pulled Michelle to Harry because of this tension in her life, which jived with her own life. Harry then travels through the sewers, representing the dark, disgusting truths which must be faced to find reconciliation. Cheryl calls in the 7-year old voice, representing Harry's memories/Cheryl's desire to escape to fantasy, telling him not to come. He then passes through the amusement park, the final bastion of the fantasy. Here was one of the most powerful and final good memories Cheryl had of her father. Here is the place she came back to in videos so many times. But in the end, Harry leaves this place, seeking the final truth.
12. Boat: This is the last attempt of Cheryl's mind to hold back the truth. Harry encounters Dahlia on the boat, and ends up having sex with her. I'm not sure if grown Dahlia is actually here and has sex with the ghost of her dead husband, or it is the phantom Dahlia. After all, Harry sees the frozen Dahlia when he wakes up. Personally, I don't think she is on board, but it could be possible. Rather, the Dahlia there represents the darkest fantasy of Cheryl finally consummated, either in her own mind or else two phantoms created by her engaging in this fantasy. This is a last-ditch means of escape, to lull Harry's ghost/her own mind into accepting at least this part of the fantasy. But when he wakes up, he see grown Dahlia. His memory makes him realize that she is in fact his wife, and there is no comfort or escape in that path. Alternatively, it's Cheryl's realization that she cannot replace her mom, and that ultimately even indulging in this dark fantasy offers no escape. Harry leaves to seek his daughter/the truth. Several attempts are made to stop him. Dahlia calls him telling him that for their daughter's sake he must turn back. At the same time, a picture of her in police custody is shown to him, perhaps to make him turn back because the little girl he wants is not here. I also heard an explanation saying that Dahlia, who slept with him, wants him held back because she fears that if her daughter sees him, she will never escape her fantasy. The monsters then come out in overwhelming force, the full weight off all denial now sent against him. In the end there is no running from them. Rather, Cheryl's desire to escape is not strong enough, and turns against itself, freezing the monsters. Even so, the final journey is a bitter struggle. In then end, Cybil is there to help Harry, either because she's realized that something is going on, or else to play the role of truth-finder, and help Harry that last step of the way while revealing that he is dead.
13. Ending: Cheryl is finally forced to acknowledge that her father is dead and that she cannot keep focusing on him. Either the ghost comes to her and gives her the comfort and reassurance she needs, or else her own mind does. She reaches a resolution and makes up with her mother. Finally, there is one interesting point to do with the video at the end. How you play affects how Harry was in the past, while he lived. This perplexed me for a bit. Then I realized: how Harry was when he lived would have shaped Cheryl's personality greatly. This would have affected Harry's ghost, or else Cheryl's fantasy of him. So in the end, it all makes sense.
Well, there you have it, my analysis of the game. I know it's pretentious and verbose. Sorry. I'm trapped inside by a huge snowstorm on the East Coast (very much aware of the irony) and have too much time to kill. I just beat the game last night, while playing with the lights out, the thermostat down, as a raging snowstorm, which lasted into today, raged outside. As you can imagine I scared myself witless and got completely wrapped up in the game. On a final note, I would just like to say that I feel Silent Hill: Shattered Memories surpasses the original Silent Hill and even comes close to the quality of Silent Hill 2. Of course, as all true Silent Hill fans know, no game will ever be as good as Silent Hill 2. Anyway, feel free to post your own thoughts, feelings, ideas, or analysis about this game.
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Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, let's start analyzing this brilliant exercise in psychological mind blowing. As you all know, at the end of the game it turns out the person being analyzed by Dr. Kaufman is not Harry but in fact non other than Cheryl herself, aged 25 and obviously having trouble in her life. While there are numerous hints throughout the game that Cheryl is not the innocent 7-year-old cherub Harry believes her to be, I felt that the truth about her and Harry was very well concealed and even more of a twist than the ending to Silent Hill 2.
Of course, given the fact that Harry is dead when the game takes place, and given the fact that Cheryl is in a state of psychological trauma and denial about what happened, this raises some very interesting questions. What do the events of the game, Harry's search for his daughter and encounters with the various citizens of Silent Hill, mean? What, if any, correlation or relationship do they have to the "real world?" I'm not dumb enough to think there's a concrete answer to these questions. This is a Silent Hill game, after all. But it is definitely worth examining extensively.
At first I thought that maybe the events of the game were simply the construct of Cheryl's troubled mind. There's plenty of evidence to suggest this. Harry probably crashed his car with Cheryl in it, and she survived while he did not. Cheryl, unable to deal with the trauma of her father's death following closely behind the divorce, both of which she probably blamed on herself, refused to accept what happened. She imagined that her dad survived, was lost and continuing to look for her. The Harry in the game was a construct of her head, along with the entire town he goes through, hence why his actions and his encounters in the town reflect the answers on the psych evaluations. The monsters he encounters represent her desire to avoid dealing with the truth, hence why they hold Harry back, while Harry himself represents either her ego, because she so strongly identifies with her dead father, or else her desire to realize the truth. In this way, the monsters play the role of Maria in Silent Hill 2.
The various people he encounters represent various desires and archetypes. Cybil represents the harsh force of truth, almost the role of Pyramid Head, continually forcing Harry to realize the truth of what's going on, preventing the monsters from stopping him by rescuing him. Dahlia represents what she thinks her father would have wanted, what she thinks her mother was like when her father still loved her, or else Cheryl's desire to be desired, in an Electra-complex like way (more on this later). Michelle probably went to school with Cheryl and came to represent the ideal of a happy, well-adjusted individual her father would be proud of, who could help her father and be liked by him in an appropriate way. When her dad went to the nightclub, she succumbed to darker desires and replaced Michelle with a figure that more accurately represented herself and her own desires and confusion, while confusing and disturbing Harry at the same time, putting him in the same state of mind as her. Lisa was probably a nurse that took care of Cheryl after the crash. Lisa's state probably represents the trauma of the event, as well as how Cheryl felt at the time: injured, scared, and groggily messed up due to pain drugs. The way Harry rescues Lisa and the way he ends up killing her both represent two powerful things that emerged in Cheryl as a result of the crash: her desire to be rescued from her situation by her dad, leading to the beginning of her fantasies, and her guilt over her dad's death, as she probably blamed herself, as kids tend to do, because he was probably driving her somewhere, and if she hadn't been there Harry would be alive.
I thought about this analysis, and I realized it fell short of a full explanation. Like all good Silent Hill games, the true nature of what's going on is unclear. You could decide that in Silent Hill 2 James is simply wandering around an empty (or not so empty) town, swinging at phantoms, stumbling through his subconscious issues, or maybe just stays in the car and hallucinates. You could just as easily decide to believe, however, that the town is projecting his subconscious problems, giving them substance and life. Silent Hill has always seemed to be a town where strong emotional force can alter reality. So in Shattered Memories, it could just as easily be true that Harry is a ghost, brought back from the dead by the intense suffering and desires of Cheryl, who longs to be with him again and whose life has now hit rock bottom. I've always felt that Silent Hill is a little like Schrodinger's Cat in that regard: it is both a psychological delusion and a mystical creation caused by emotional force. You can force it into one explanation or the other, but that is just your choice. In the end, it works either way, and both explanations are equally true.
So if Harry is some kind of ghost, are the people he encounters real? Do they actually see him? Or are they, too, apparitions of Cheryl's creation? After all, the previous explanations of the meanings of the characters still holds if they are all ghosts. If, however, these people are real, then an alternate explanation is required. I think young Dahlia is definitely a created spirit, a product of Cheryl's subconscious only as real as Maria in SH2. However, current Dahlia is the way Cheryl's mother actually is, drunk and miserable because of her broken marriage and estranged relationship with her delinquent daughter. Michelle is definitely real, along with the people living in the old Mason home and Cybil. Lisa... is a bit harder to place. She could be the real nurse who cared for Cheryl after the accident, drawn to Harry because of her connection to Cheryl. She could have ended up dying accidentally, taking the wrong pill, or she could have ended up dying because of the force of Cheryl's malice (after all, a sleeping pill wouldn't cause terrible dreams or a bloody death). Or she could be another phantom, based on the real nurse but representative of Cheryl's subconscious issues. Another big argument for the phantom explanation is the various ghosts encountered in the town, which seem to have little connection to Cheryl. Harry, being a spirit, would be able to see the spirits. However, these ghosts could simply be individuals or events Cheryl knew/experienced firsthand or heard about that affected her strongly.
I will now attempt to examine each section of the game, and its possible meaning through each potential interpretation of the game, psychological or mythological.
1. Car crash: Whether Cheryl imagined him or Harry was a ghost that was first conjured into being here, it makes sense that this is where things start. This is where Harry died, this is where Cheryl was separated from him forever. At first Harry has no memory, just a pressing desire to find his daughter. He is what Cheryl clung to, a great hero who didn't die, but instead was out there, single-mindedly searching for her without another thought in his head, including thoughts for his wife. Even if he is a spirit, he is conjured by Cheryl, and therefore his knowledge of his life is at first limited to that which Cheryl wants him to know.
2. Bar/Diner - first ice chase: Harry first encounters a person. Whether it's Cybil or the Barkeep, his search is first given direction here. He first takes out his ID, and first gains memories, giving him life beyond simply looking for his daughter. These memories and desires could have been caused by the spirit contacting people, or the people could be parts of Cheryl's mind that want the truth to come out. However, once he gets to their old home, the illusion of the innocent Cheryl living in their old home will begin to weaken, so Cheryl doesn't want Harry to get home. This is why the ice and creatures first appear, to act as an impediment to Harry. Cheryl contacts Harry in her innocent, 7-year-old voice, helping to prop up the illusion while encouraging Harry to be afraid and not proceed. Ultimately, Cheryl is divided. She wants her dad to look for her but doesn't want him to find the real her, leading to the conflicts that have caused her such psychological trauma.
3. Old House/Cybil's car: If Harry is a spirit that can be seen, heard, and touched by the living, this part is straightforward. He encounters the people living in the home his wife moved out of after he died. His ID lists this address because that's where he still lived when he died. Cybil shows up because the people call the cops and tries to take him to the station to sort this all out. Her car gets stuck in the snow because Cheryl is able to force it to stop there, because of her connections to the lodges in the woods. Harry is now confused and begins to be forced to deal with the truth, as is Cheryl, who has a connection to him psychically or spiritually. If Harry is a spirit, this part is a bit more difficult to interpret. The people in the house represent her sense of dislocation. I imagine she got back from the hospital to find her old home was gone and she had to move in to this new, nasty home over a pawn shop her mom either owns or rents room from. This jarring change probably made her retreat even more into her fantasy. Cybil represents the beginning of her mind's rebellion against her fantasy, forcing her to acknowledge that the home is gone from her and taking her to the lodge to begin the hard path of realizing the truth.
4. Lodge/Woods: Here Harry returns to an old memory and learns a new truth about his daughter, though the true nature of these are unclear at first. Harry encounters signs of a young girl who attempted to call home, nervous about a party in the woods, and signs that that same girl was roofied and raped. I personally think this is Cheryl herself, and the ghost you find crying in a corner near blood that sets off the ice is in fact a phantom of Cheryl. The blood is either Cheryl's or the blood of whoever did this to her, as she may have killed him. This is either where Cheryl is forced to acknowledge that the path her life has taken has diverged sharply from her fantasy, or else the part where Harry the ghost first begins to be exposed to the truth of his daughter's life. In either case, Cheryl doesn't want herself/her dad to know about this, and so when he encounters her shade it brings the ice and the creatures, to hold back the truth. Harry gets through the ice, only to encounter a memory of his divided family. This is where he first sees his wife, and Cheryl first has to deal with her living mother, thought not directly yet. It is also the first time Harry is presented as an imperfect father, neglecting his daughter, further chipping away at the fantasy.
5. School: This is where more of the truth surrounding Cheryl's life starts to appear. There are references to drug use, dangerous forms of escapism (choking game), all of which hint at Cheryl's misery. This is all covered up by talk of prom, school events, and happy, well-adjusted school life. This again is a fantasy Cheryl presents to her dad and herself. Michelle is either the one person allowed to get through the snow by Cheryl or else is imagined by her to complete this picture. Michelle is well adjusted and nice, and makes Cheryl look good through association. Harry the ghost either finds the truth, thought Cheryl tries to stop it by breaking the computer, or else she first acknowledges to herself that she lives elsewhere, though she won't completely admit it. At this point the ice comes back because of the force of her revelation. Harry has to overcome another secret of hers: she has been sleeping with a professor. I think Cheryl seeks out dangerous sexual situations and older men due to a desire to be wanted and protected by males, which ultimately derives from her father's absence in an electra-complex like way. Disturbing, but then again this is Silent Hill.
6. Club/bridge: This is a very interesting part. Michelle become Dahlia, which freaked the hell out of me. If this is all in Cheryl's head then it is her inability to pretend to herself that she is a good girl. She gives in to various fantasies: Dahlia may look the way Cheryl did in high school, or look the way Dahlia, he mom, did in high school, or may just be what Cheryl thinks her dad would like, or all three. In any case, it represents a twisted side of Cheryl, born out of a desire for attention or protection from her father, which caused her to fantasize about him sexually and engage in risky behavior. If Harry is a ghost, Dahlia still represents the same thing, I think, but is another spirit, created out of that part of Cheryl. At this point either Harry sees Michelle as Dahlia, or else simply wanders off, following the phantom. The car ride could be a phantom, or else he could be sitting next to Michelle, either confusing her or saying nothing that she can hear. If a real car reaches the bridge, Harry lowers the bridge only to fall in the water, pulled by Cheryl's desire to stop him. Here Cheryl's desire to avoid the truth is becoming stronger as the fabric of the fantasy falls apart, and the ghost realizes something is up. Cybil comes along and saves him, either because she's a cop or because she is the part of the mind that won't let the truth go untold.
7. Hospital/Lisa: This is the hospital Cheryl stayed at after the crash. The truth becomes closer now. It goes into ice immediately because the entire place forcibly reminds Cheryl of the truth, and exposes it to her father. The role of Lisa was explained above. I think that Lisa died to make Harry feel guilty, to reflect the guilt Cheryl felt over her father's death. Overall, this part is fairly straightforward. The ice develops right as Cybil tell Harry he's not Harry Mason, first indicating that he died. Before she can finish, the ice intervenes, forcing Harry to run into the Mall.
8. Mall: This is one of the last places Cheryl has nice memories of her father with. In the mall he encounters her old cartoon character she loved and a memory of gumballs, all part of the attempt to keep up the facade. Once the ice is melted, another side of the mall is seen, because it is also an area close to Cheryl's new home, and the place where her delinquent lifestyle developed. There are clues that she regularly shoplifted and maybe even stabbed a security guard, which may have been the event that forced her to seek therapy. You aren't force to see these things, and its still not clear who exactly is doing them, but Harry's ghost/Cheryl is increasingly being forced to recognize the truth.
10. Home: Here, Harry first encounters the real Dahlia. Either he really encounters her, which jars his memories and forces him to start remembering what happened, or else Cheryl is first forced to acknowledge her mom, who as part of her electra complex she hates and wants to replace. Her mother represents her life after dad, the part of her life she constantly escapes from into her dad-fantasies, the authority figure she should be following, yet shows no respect. She also reveals the real location of Cheryl. This is too much for her, and she completely breaks down and the ice comes. Falling into her own subconscious or else dragging Harry's ghost down into it. A world that consists of her memories of her old self and which expose the truth of her fantasy, a fantasy centered around the TV, old videos, and a dream logic that is expressed in this place. It is a place thick with escapism, and therefore the monsters, with no obvious way out. In the end Harry dives deeper into his daughter's mind in a manner similar to the "Nowhere" from SH1, or else Cheryl dives into herself similar to the "Holes" area in SH2.
11. Ride with Michelle / Amusement park: Michelle finds Harry, either having been brought to him by Cheryl or else conjured. At this point, it seems even Cheryl wants to know the truth to some extent, and Michelle is reliable, sane, and a good person. Even this, thought, will fall apart. Harry gets a ride, only to witness a relationship fall apart the way his own did. Either this is Cheryl's mind remembering the way that her parent's relationship fell apart, or else Cheryl pulled Michelle to Harry because of this tension in her life, which jived with her own life. Harry then travels through the sewers, representing the dark, disgusting truths which must be faced to find reconciliation. Cheryl calls in the 7-year old voice, representing Harry's memories/Cheryl's desire to escape to fantasy, telling him not to come. He then passes through the amusement park, the final bastion of the fantasy. Here was one of the most powerful and final good memories Cheryl had of her father. Here is the place she came back to in videos so many times. But in the end, Harry leaves this place, seeking the final truth.
12. Boat: This is the last attempt of Cheryl's mind to hold back the truth. Harry encounters Dahlia on the boat, and ends up having sex with her. I'm not sure if grown Dahlia is actually here and has sex with the ghost of her dead husband, or it is the phantom Dahlia. After all, Harry sees the frozen Dahlia when he wakes up. Personally, I don't think she is on board, but it could be possible. Rather, the Dahlia there represents the darkest fantasy of Cheryl finally consummated, either in her own mind or else two phantoms created by her engaging in this fantasy. This is a last-ditch means of escape, to lull Harry's ghost/her own mind into accepting at least this part of the fantasy. But when he wakes up, he see grown Dahlia. His memory makes him realize that she is in fact his wife, and there is no comfort or escape in that path. Alternatively, it's Cheryl's realization that she cannot replace her mom, and that ultimately even indulging in this dark fantasy offers no escape. Harry leaves to seek his daughter/the truth. Several attempts are made to stop him. Dahlia calls him telling him that for their daughter's sake he must turn back. At the same time, a picture of her in police custody is shown to him, perhaps to make him turn back because the little girl he wants is not here. I also heard an explanation saying that Dahlia, who slept with him, wants him held back because she fears that if her daughter sees him, she will never escape her fantasy. The monsters then come out in overwhelming force, the full weight off all denial now sent against him. In the end there is no running from them. Rather, Cheryl's desire to escape is not strong enough, and turns against itself, freezing the monsters. Even so, the final journey is a bitter struggle. In then end, Cybil is there to help Harry, either because she's realized that something is going on, or else to play the role of truth-finder, and help Harry that last step of the way while revealing that he is dead.
13. Ending: Cheryl is finally forced to acknowledge that her father is dead and that she cannot keep focusing on him. Either the ghost comes to her and gives her the comfort and reassurance she needs, or else her own mind does. She reaches a resolution and makes up with her mother. Finally, there is one interesting point to do with the video at the end. How you play affects how Harry was in the past, while he lived. This perplexed me for a bit. Then I realized: how Harry was when he lived would have shaped Cheryl's personality greatly. This would have affected Harry's ghost, or else Cheryl's fantasy of him. So in the end, it all makes sense.
Well, there you have it, my analysis of the game. I know it's pretentious and verbose. Sorry. I'm trapped inside by a huge snowstorm on the East Coast (very much aware of the irony) and have too much time to kill. I just beat the game last night, while playing with the lights out, the thermostat down, as a raging snowstorm, which lasted into today, raged outside. As you can imagine I scared myself witless and got completely wrapped up in the game. On a final note, I would just like to say that I feel Silent Hill: Shattered Memories surpasses the original Silent Hill and even comes close to the quality of Silent Hill 2. Of course, as all true Silent Hill fans know, no game will ever be as good as Silent Hill 2. Anyway, feel free to post your own thoughts, feelings, ideas, or analysis about this game.
