Somehow I should be able to explain what going on, but I'd have to explain Sea Cucumber's
Lots of endings,
Suicide,
Redemption,
Maria,
Ressurection,
Dog,
UFO,
The final thing to do in the game (when you have seen all the ending) is to look at the words you can't read throughout the game (on the stones some words are scrubbed out, they are readible at the end), some of the history of Silent Hill is explained.
One thing I will say it that both the official guides and gamefaq are slightly wrong with regard what you have to do to get which ending
Also the plot on the net doesn't completely fit what I know about SH2.
AFAIK The PC version is complete. PS2 Special edition, Xbox and PC should have all endings etc. AFAIK PC is the only one with save anywhere and the movie theatre thingy (and the ability to play at 1600x1200
).
With regard the people/story, Silent Hill (the town) attracts disturbed people. The town also has a story (Old gods, Indian burial grounds, human experiments etc)
Eddie has pyschopathic tendencies,
Laura (the child) is disturbed (a surrogate child for Mary),
Mary is dying/dead and wishes she had children (so looks after Laura), Maria wants to be loved, doesn't want to be a stripper and wants what Mary has (when she gets James she finds that his love is corrupted)
Angela was abused by her father (If anybody hadn't noticed Pyramid Head is Angela father).
James killed Mary out of love,
SH1 Harry just does a cameo ,
Inu the real star (Inu = Japanese for Dog) causes it all as a way of getting back of Eddie for shooting him.
The guy in Born from a wish story is pretty obvious.
There is a whole pyschological interplay where the character represent various emotions etc. Laura is a child on one hand but evil on another (she hurts you but does she do it because she is really evil or just doesn't know better). Also the central Mary/Maria story line has a undertone of corrupted love (Is the illness related the James love?)
Its quite possible the most 'adult' game every made, not for the scary bits or the gore (or even the sex, the infamous Pyramid Rape scene) but for the head-on way it tackles child-abuse. The side story of Angela is directly on child-abuse, Angela's personal 'hell' is due to the abuse she suffers at the hands of her father.
Personally I can't stand Laura, but that may be due to the amount of times I saw the piano scene (hardest scene in the game from a engine point of view). A one point Oscar and I knew every word from that scene ("Haha, did I scare you", and thats after 6 months
)
