Love Letter to Downpour Pt 6: Sidequests
Longest post but pic heavy
The side quests are further glimpses into Murphy’s psyche, his past, and how he can move ahead into the future.
Healing from grief or intense trauma takes extensive psychological and spiritual work; you must be willing to look deep within and dig deep into the psyche to face the demon. There is peace to be had once the mind, body, and spirit are in congruence, and thus the inner demon of trauma and guilt can be exercised.
Within the game files the tokens for Soul-Eye, Four, Healing, Enlightenment, and Harmony are labeled Air, Fire, Earth, Spirit, and Water which lines up with the major areas of the game. Fire (Four) is Devil’s Pit Stop as it is the system shock for the events that are to follow. Soul-Eye (Air) is Devil’s Pit as it is the inward look to “know that you’ve got some changing to do.” Healing (Earth) is the Centennial Building as it attempts to get to the core psychosis that prompted Murphy to negatively change. Enlightenment (Spirit) is St. Maria’s as his soul was damaged when Charlie left his life. Harmony (Water) is Overlook since he is now ready to face his misdeeds and correct his path forward.
Murphy may want to “turn back time,” but the outcome is still the same: that his–and by extension Anne’s–marriage is axed in his pursuit of revenge. [Anne’s Story shows how Anne destroyed her marriage with Mark by engaging in a coerced affair with the warden so that Murphy’s transfer to Wayside could be approved.] He must burn away the mortal sins (as mentioned by Sater) of anger and hatred if he wishes to seek redemption and freedom. Blood still weeps from the portrait of the boy as a child can never be replaced.
Completing this side quest unlocks the Napier art with Murphy’s thoughts on him. Napier may have started the ball rolling on the complete destruction of Murphy’s home life, but Murphy set forth the conflagration that incinerated his life.Penis monster
A highly vulnerable child is missing, so Murphy feels compelled to find the child as it is a reminder of what he felt and experienced with the disappearance of Charlie; the trail leading back to the child’s home reveal that the mother had grown exhausted by the challenges brought by caring for a child with severe autism and murdered her own child. The parents are usually the primary suspects whenever a child goes missing, so Murphy was likely to have undergone hours of grilling and indirect accusations regarding Charlie.
The daughter had put a crimp in the mother’s sexual freedom (all children, neurotypical or divergent crimp freedom), but was she a monster for prioritizing herself and ending the daughter’s miserable existence? Charlie may have been as equally vulnerable as the missing girl, and Murphy may have occasionally felt stifled by Charlie. He feels himself a monster for not loving his boy enough.
Murphy was already demonstrated to have obsessive thoughts regarding Charlie’s death and obsessive actions around toilets (compulsively flushes them without rhyme and reason) which are symptoms of his conduct disorder; throughout the game he receives vision messages from Frank through mirrors.
Sewell is his mirror image and he must do as his mirror image tells him or else he will face the revocation of his future freedom. If Murphy had been left without guidance in his earlier life, he would have become Sewell. (The Reversal ending has Murphy directly mimicking Sewell right down to his smug sardonic smirk.)
The usage of mirrors as a conduit to an alternate world (in the Silent Hill franchise) was first explored in Silent Hill 3 with Heather mentioning in flavor text how she hated looking into mirrors because it felt like a false version of herself was looking back, and then used in the Brookhaven storage room where the Otherworld version of the room leaks out into the room Heather is locked into; Origins further expands on it by using mirrors as a transition from Fog world to Otherworld. Mirrors are the other method of mimicry used by the town to reach deep within the spirit.
Travis Grady’s truck is diagonal from the Mirror house, and if you screw up the mirror puzzle a Screamer will spawn to attack you.
“No priors…clean psych. What leads a guy like you to do something so stupid?”
Murphy alluded to having a checkered past prior to meeting Carol and may have had issues staying out of “trouble” even after changing his ways. Murphy may have committed petty theft to fence as a youth to find subsistence after having aged out of the orphanage, and he may have entertained the idea of robbing a bank. He was able to use his intelligence to fly under the radar of law enforcement. Completing Stolen Goods and All Points Bulletin unlocks the Nun and Anne art.
The call codes are listed on the sides of the police cars.
Grief is one beast holding back Murphy from moving forward with his life–he even dies of grief if a children’s book is examined for too long. The same grief that bore the desire for revenge in both himself and Anne was to fester and metastasize into the gnawing monster that made them violate their own moral compasses. Letting go is not the same as forgetting, but letting go is the hardest part. The Frank portrait is unlocked upon completing the quest.
[There are children’s books on the couch that if you zoom in on for too long it will cause Murphy to automatically die.]
The reels reflect fragments of his memories that were blocked out, so an unbiased observer who delivers the message of Silent Hill refreshes his memory to piece together the fragments of the truth.
Perhaps it is showing the reverse order of traumatic events of his life: House on the Lake was his home where Charlie’s body was found, Silence of the Children was the orphanage in which he grew up with bullying, and Secrets of the Attic is maybe why he became an orphan (played with a golden gun and accidentally shot his mother).
“I keep dreaming about birds.”
Locked away and abandoned with no means of nourishment leads to starvation of the soul. “Someone abandoned their bird. Poor thing will die in there without anyone to feed it, so I set it free. Felt good. I know how he feels…” Murphy knows what it is like to be locked away and abandon hope, so freeing it brings him peace and relief that one day he will rejoin Charlie. But you must be willing to fight for that hope or else you will remain chained by the cowardice to your cage (Ricks).
Birds (specifically ravens) play a role throughout the game as symbols of death and rebirth of the man into a transformed being. Ravens first appear at the bus crash picking at the corpse of another inmate, and then around Devil’s Pit Stop gas station and tram station; in this section they are the carrion of the old Murphy that was heading towards the path of total self destruction and usher him towards his reformation. On the streets are found blue birds that symbolize hope, joy, healing, and innocence (akin to the blue candles that later appear in the game). Ravens next appear in St. Maria’s flying from the roof to circle the chasm behind the institute; here, Murphy is “enlightened” on the true nature of his monster.
Howard is the Raven (Kwekwaxawe) that directs Murphy towards each new chapter of his journey until he reaches “Freedom”: birds are the ultimate creatures of freedom as they are not confined by constraints of land to move as they please, and freedom from everything is what Murphy desires.
Ravens are classified as songbirds that are capable of mimicry. Throughout the game Murphy experiences instances where events of his past are mimicked before him. The town played up its nickname "Kwekwaxawe Kanesda"-"Nest of the Raven."
Dead Man’s Hand (Tell-Tale Heart)
Everyone in the town is a prisoner of some sort that will ultimately see their end. Sater gambled with the lives of those in his care just as Murphy gambled with the devil to seek revenge. Both lost in their hand and haunted by the loudly beating heart of their crimes–Sater locked in a loop of suicides from the guilt of substance abuse and Murphy recurring nightmare of Napier’s screams. Their obsessions and addictions never leaving them a moment of peaceful silence until they fully confront the misdeed.
The corpse is positioned similarly to an inmate who was killed by a guard during the Ryall State riot (seen in the video monitor room of Overlook).
[There is a pile of boxes and books in front of the latter going into the underground that is a bit treacherous and can cause damage to Murphy. I came across this when attempting to see if the TellTale Heart book that is in the game files to be used as a key item was placed anywhere in the side quest. If this is intentional then it adds a hidden element that there are ghosts that can physically harm the character.]
This one is a NG+ quest that has Murphy digging up artifacts from the previous Silent Hill games, and completing it unlocks the Carol art. Placing all the pieces together might lead one to believe that it was Carol who had killed Charlie as part of an occult ritual gone awry, and allowed Murphy to place the blame on Napier. Pairing that with the Otheworld portraits might also lead one to believe that Carol had had an affair with Napier.
Art Collector depicts Murphy’s life from his past and possible future directions he may take after leaving Silent Hill.
Despair (found in the police station) depicts a derelict house that was Murphy’s life before meeting Carol; he was falling apart and heading down a path of total destruction. Hope (hardware store) depicts a church in the distance; he turned back to the church that he had left to seek help. Certainty (storage room in the alley) is a lighthouse beaconing a lost ship; Carol gave him a clear path forward in the treacherous storm that was his life. Freedom (back of van) is a sailboat gently riding the winds; life is easy. Wonder (apartment kitchen) is a figure holding a newborn baby; never had he thought he could love an entity so much as he did with Charlie–a being so pure and innocent. Sunrise (Hillside underground) is a sun shining over a wagon; Murphy never felt more fulfilled in his life than being a father and being with his son.
The final three paintings are unnamed but show how Murphy’s life may go. The first looks like the front of a prison (Execution, Full Circle, Reveral). The second is a flowery meadow that looks similar to the meadow he walks through in Birds and is greeted by Charlie; he can have total freedom to live his life contently (Forgiveness). The third is a clipper ship whose design is meant for speed; he is never declared dead (Truth and Justice) and must “ride like a one-eyed jack of diamonds with the devil close behind” to keep the law off his back.
“I have love in me the like you can scarcely imagine and rage the like of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” This message only appears in the easy riddle mode, but encapsulates Murphy’s mindset with his love and hatred surrounding Charlie.
The symbols harken back to the comic “Past Life” where the story of Jebediah and Ethel Foster journey to Silent Hill to take possession of the Monroe farm once owned by Ethel’s family; Jeb had a troubled past that Ethel attempted to reform, but his past followed him to Silent Hill to seek retribution. The crooked cross and crescent moon are Jeb’s knife and whisky bottle that is returned to him, the feather is Inola the "Squaw" that followed Jeb from the Dakotas, the upside down couple are Jonas and Helena that Jeb killed after a tryst with Helena went awry, and the demon emerging from an opening is the rebirth of Awinita. It is in Monroe cemetery that the Tomahawk is obtained from the central large sarcophagus.
