Well, they try to but it's not in a very realistic manner. Manifesting your demons as monsters doesn't happen too often in real life, as far as I know. And SH2 in particular deals a lot with the subject but, again, it's set in a literally magical setting - it's like a very dark version of Alice in Wonderland. And speaking of, there is Alice: Madness Returns which does deal with mental trauma but it's literally in Wonderland.Johnny Novgorod said:
It's more than just PTSD, but also an extraordinary case of depressive disorders leading to active hallucination and total dissociation (which can happen with severe depression). To the point you can make the argument that Walker already failed his mission, is actively disassociated from it after failing his commanders, and him 'reliving' the operation through Lugo and Adams. With Lugo representing his higher reasoning and perception of his better nature, and Adams his sense of practiced mental resilience, loyalty and his capacity to survive.Xprimentyl said:
Granted, but there?s to be considered the full impact of the final revelations; they lose some of their gravity if one knows the truth going in.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
No, not really. Mental illness isn't something people interact with, and video games are an interactive media. So...no.HazardousCube said:
Not every fantasy journey is "like Alice in Wonderland".DoPo said:
Yet, the game isn't about mental illness itself, either. You are saying that there would be no SH2 without James but similarly, there would be no external representation of his inner thoughts, fears, guilt and so on without the titular town. You don't get to observe him in a normal setting, you don't see him struggle with this in his own mundane way, you don't see him overcoming or being crushed by all of this in his day to day life.Johnny Novgorod said:
No, but it equally doesn't make the work of fiction a good representation of the subject. The inclusion of the elements from James Sunderland's pshyche does make the story and the themes SH2 explores more nuanced and deep but by no means makes it a better look at mental conditions in general. If that were the case, is Hatred also worth recommending? How about the movie Sucker Punch? They have mental problems in them but regardless of how complex the portrayal is, without that realism they are about equally useful.Johnny Novgorod said:
Again, the town is just an excuse to dramatize what's going on inside the protagonist. Silent Hill is the catalyst but the story is entirely fueled by James and is about him. And it's a story about remedying an illness, not living with it. I'm not saying a slice-of-life about impotence and repression isn't possible, just not in the interest of this game in particular.DoPo said:
At no point did I say it was the perfect or ideal way to handle the themes the story wanted to handle, only that that's what they did and I value the story for doing it.
While most games tend to go way over the top with their portrayal of delusions (Hellblade is a stellar example), psychotic people regularly interact with their hallucinations or delusions. I've met plenty of acutely psychotic people who think they are bleeding and desperately tries to staunch bleeding I can't see, or people who keep brushing imagined bugs of themselves or who gasp for air because they believe someone is poisoning the air. I've seen psychotic people eat imaginary meals or have long conversations with the news reader on TV (or the voices in their head). Someone who interacts with their hallucinations is one of the easiest ways to establish the severity of their psychosis.Silentpony said:
That's narrative convenience, but a lot of depressed people will tell you that the weather seems to be a sort of perpetual overcast with washed out colors. They don't remember or reflect on sunshine or thunderstorms or anything else, because what little they register of the weather is run through a lens of apathy and indifference. As an aside, feeling phantom raindrops would be a sensory hallucination and it is quite common for deeply depressed people to become psychotic. So yes, that happens, though their psychosis tends to be more paranoid in nature.Silentpony said:
Then you haven't heard much. There's a pair of Swedish books written by a man who was treated for schizophrenia for many years and the nurse who treated him. In his book he details how he was Napoleon and was fighting demons in his kingdom to save the souls of all the patients from being dragged to hell. He describes this in very vivid detail, how he fights, hides and runs from these demons and how he involves the other patients to help him fight. The same episode in the Nurse's book recounts how he was either writing frantically on anything he could write on or was sitting rigid but totally silent in the common room.Silentpony said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
