:.locations.:
Locations
We all know what the universe Walter created looks like. This place-- affectionately dubbed "Walterworld" by your mods-- contains many different locations all smushed together and distorted within the confines of the space. You've seen it: each separate "world" connected by mysterious staircases in illogical ways, and the passage from Walter's dimension and the "real" one connected by holes, if you're Henry.
But there are no holes anymore.
You'd think this severely limits a person's ability to get around in Walterworld, no? If all twenty-one characters were caged into the five tiny spaces we run through in the game with only the stairwells as means of getting around, that'd kinda suck. So luckily for them and us, that's not the case.
How did the ghosts get around so easily? First Andrew's barreling at you in the depths of Silent Hill's Water Prison, and then he's all the way in South Ashfield Heights trying to knock the life out of you. The solution is that the ghosts can go places in Walterworld that people anchored in reality cannot. Well, guess what? If you haven't already guessed, you're all ghosts now! :D Hurrah.
Now that you've shuffled off your mortal coil, the world has opened itself to you completely. Fancy a walk in the streets of South Ashfield? Step right outside! Feel like exploring Silent Hill? Walk there. The doors might not always work, but somehow you always manage to pass through anyway...
The connections between areas are even more illogical now: where originally a great distance lay between Ashfield and Silent Hill, now all a person needs to do is walk down a particular street until the city turns to forest. The following is a list of places a person might go to pass the time in their everlasting afterlife, how to get there, and what one might find there.
Ashfield
"The Lynch and King Street lines were running. They just didn’t go to Lynch or King."
We might consider Ashfield the center of the world, and it is located roughly in the spatial center of all the areas combined. In addition, the subway is up and running again, and can take a person to various locations in any of the other areas. Contained within Ashfield are what we previously considered the Subway, Building, Hospital, and Apartment Worlds, but now they've become little more than places to go. Walking across the street to get to the building complex from South Ashfield Heights sure is more convenient, isn't it?
Characters may also head in a northeasterly direction to visit a place we've never seen in the game: North Ashfield. You could either walk there or take the subway. North Ashfield is more of the same that you'd expect from the city: lots of stores, restaurants, residences. Nothing terribly remarkable, though it seems that a person may actually be able to walk to Silent Hill from there as well...
Subway: As you might expect of a set of subway tunnels, there isn't much to do here. Characters can, however, hop on a train and head to wherever that train happens to go: for example, the Lynch Street line will now take people to Silent Hill instead of Lynch Street, with possible stops along the way in various parts of Ashfield. Near the King Street train there is also a door marked with the Halo of the Sun. This door opens to to a very creepy spiral staircase and ends in the forest graveyard in Silent Hill. Another quick way of getting around, in other words.
Building Complex: This place is huge-- taking up an entire city block-- but at least you don't have to go through the entire series of buildings to get to a certain place anymore: you could just enter the one you want from the street or the alleys running through the block, if you like. Notable locations include Hotel South Ashfield, Bar South Ashfield, where characters are welcome to come and take a load off for a while, and the home of your resident bartender, Eric Walsh. Many of the victims owned or worked in stores here in life.
St. Jerome Hospital: This still isn't a place you want to go if you're not feeling well. Home to the more disturbing manifestations of Walter's psyche, it's still crawling with hideous creatures, possessed wheelchairs, and other oddities. Though the number of Walter's monsters has decreased significantly now that you're essentially counted among them, they are still prone to indiscriminately attack on a regular enough basis that you should beware. However, should you find yourself there for whatever mad reason, you will find a speedy escape into the subway via the door inside the hospital's elevator shaft. Or, you know, you could just leave through the front entrance.
South Ashfield Heights: The holy ground of Walter's world and home of Henry, Joseph, Eileen, and Richard. "Former home" might be more appropriate for Henry and Joseph, because room 302 has been completely sealed from anyone who might enter. Walter spends a great deal of time there, and not a sound can be heard from behind the door. However, strange sounds issuing from the tiny hole in room 303's bedroom wall offer a vague hint as to the horrors found inside. What has become of room 302?
Silent Hill
"...a staircase that should never have been there, rooted into the cold earth, leveling off in the thick of trees and light autumn fog. The highway up above advertised Silent Hill, three miles west."
In my restless dreams, I see that town. Here it is, laid out before you: the place where everything begins. Albeit Walter's version of it. And yet, the town has been rendered in Walter's world with surprising accuracy. Normally a thing or place is only as detailed as how much notice of it Walter originally took, but in parts of Silent Hill, even the most inconsequential of places sometimes manifest-- things that Walter would logically never have seen, much less cared about. How could this be?
Old Silent Hill: A quiet little place, without much worthy of interest. Many shops and empty residences abound, and a sweet little school rests on the western side. Silent Hill is quite a bit more peaceful as a whole than Ashfield on the monster front, though certain places remain rather dangerous to wander through. Old Silent Hill, however, is not one of those places.
Central Silent Hill: Just as dreary as Old Silent Hill, save for a shopping center and a hospital. Alchemilla is nearly empty in terms of its detail, but has a peculiar energy about it nonetheless. While not dangerous in the general sense, a person can't help but feel as though something must be off or wrong about the place.
Resort Area: Home to a motel, a lighthouse, and a very barren amusement park. In truth, the "amusement park" consists of little more than what Walter probably figured belonged in an amusement park: various rides and booths, a ferris wheel-- some a bit deformed or impractically constructed, and none apparently functional. The lighthouse, on the other hand, happens to be one of the more bizarre sites in Walterworld, as a door at the very top seems to serve as a warp point between Silent Hill and a... truly bizarre certain place.
South Vale: The most accurately represented part of Silent Hill, and the part of the town closest to Wish House and its surrounding forest. Many places of interest are here, such as Rosewater Park with its stunning view, the apparently innocuous Brookhaven Hospital, and the Silent Hill Historical Society with its conjoining boat launch. One can go from South Vale to the northern parts of Silent Hill many ways: take the subway, walk along the highway around the lake, or cross the lake on a boat. Be warned, though, that depending on which part of the lake you cross, you may find yourself in another place entirely. The interior of Heaven's Night is surprisingly detailed, indicating that Walter may have gone there at some point in life.
The Forest: Walk West through the forest and you will find South Vale. Walk North and you'll reach the lake. Walk South and you'll enter South Ashfield. Settled somewhere in the middle lies the orphanage Wish House, and near that an eerie and mysterious factory. A door in Wish House's basement will take you down stairs to an elevator. That elevator then descends down, down, from a mysterious place high in the sky to the top of the Water Prison. There are subway entrances scattered around the forest, their stairways just set in the ground.
Water Prison: At the lake's edge on the forest side, a very long, thin wooden boardwalk now takes visitors easily to the tower. At the very top of the prison, an elevator can be taken "up" to the basement of Wish House. It is unknown how exactly this works. And in the prison's basement, another Halo door will bring you to a rooftop in Silent Hill's building complex. Still a dark, lonely, frightening place, it is recommended that most keep to the land and the lake around it. But if you should find yourself unable to stay away, best be ready to protect yourself.
Pleasant River
"The Pleasant River campus was situated oddly in the midst of a field of golden-gray nothing-grass ... the buildings jutted from the earth like monoliths in an otherwise barren landscape. The subway stairs descended awkwardly into the depths of a hillside ..."
It wasn't the town of Pleasant River that Walter attached importance to, but rather the university campus where he learned the skills he needed to carry out the 21 Sacraments. As a result, there is no town: instead,
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