I could be wayyyyyyy off on this, but after playing through the game a few hours I have found some hints that suggests that

There are a couple of things that suggest this:

Again, these are just a few clues...I could be wayyyyyyy off, but it's something to spark up discussion nonetheless. Speaking of which, there seems to be very little discussion on Giant Bomb about Downpour, which I find a little odd.

I'm about 30% through the game, and I wouldn't disagree with you. I imagine Vatra wouldn't come out and just tell you something like that, sticking with the old format of having to figure out what really happened to these people in Silent Hill.

*SPOILER* (Sorry don't know how to do the hide content thing first time posting)

Although that sounds interesting, there is a police report that gives info of a man in his forties that kidnapped, sexual assaulted, and murdered a boy under the age of 14. This is presumably Napier, and the boy is Charlie (Murphy's son). The reason for Murphy going to prison was for stealing a police cruiser and he did this so he could have a chance at getting close to Napier even though he is separated from the other prisoners.

I may be wrong, but this is coming from someone that's beaten the game three times and has gotten all the endings (you can reload your last save after beating it to make the other end-game choice and experience a different ending). Good game btw. Flawed, but a whole lot better than any silent hill after the 4th.

@shivermetimbers:

What partypajamas said is correct.

It would also be odd to make a pedophile/child molester the main character of a game. As a player you are supposed to identify with the character you play as, at least to a ceratin degree, and I think it would be hard to feel any kind of sympathy for a pedophile.

I was definitely getting that vibe too. There was so much pointing towards it, with the police reports, Murphy's highly defensive nature when it came to children, the Hansel & Gretel play, and of course those two kids as well who distrust Murphy. I just completed it and got the ''good'' ending. It was... pretty disappointing I think. The story overall wasn't as dark as I was hoping and Murphy's secrets weren't nearly as shocking as, say, James Sunderland or Walter Sullivan or even Alex Shepherd.

I have a feeling that they were going down that route initially, having Murphy as a child molester who may have even attempted to sexually assault his own son, but then went against it because... well, I think it speaks for itself. While it would be kinda repulsive to find you've been playing as a kiddie fiddler the whole time, it would have fit the motif for SH protagonists and it would have certainly left Murphy as a particularly... memorable protagonist all the same. Though again, the controversy that would have spurned from this would have been pretty nasty. It's a shame, and while what really happens does make sense, it also makes for a much more boring and straightforward narrative overall and it doesn't leave the story to be quite as ambiguous as prior entries. Even Homecoming, while as predictable as the twists were, made for a darker tale.

Still, Downpour was a brilliant experience regardless.

EDIT: If anything, this kinda feels like it's more Anne Cunningham's story really. I hope that we'll get some DLC where you get to play as her exploring the town.

EDIT2: Plus the amount of balls you see across the game, randomly rolling out of nowhere, strengthened the idea that Murphy was a child molester because I figured it was doing a homage to The Woodsman or something.

i never got that...

To abyssfull... all the things you mentioned could easily be because he is accused of killing his own kid. Not because he's a pedo.

Is there any good evidence that points in the contrary? I went for the good ending as well which kind of leaves you feeling that Murphy is only in Silent Hill because he killed the man in the prison that he believed killed his son. So, playing a character that killed a man that killed his son is a far cry away from playing a character that is a child killer and pedophile.

@Morrow said:

@shivermetimbers:

What partypajamas said is correct.

It would also be odd to make a pedophile/child molester the main character of a game. As a player you are supposed to identify with the character you play as, at least to a ceratin degree, and I think it would be hard to feel any kind of sympathy for a pedophile.

Out of curiosity, have you played/beaten Silent Hill 2? I don't want to say anything specifically, but James did some pretty heinous things before his stop in Silent Hill. It's not exactly the series' MO to have the player character be an everyman that you can relate with.

@The_Nubster:

I have to admit no, I haven't ^^; But what I was saying was just a general assumption. And even though there are protagonists of SH that did some bad things, you are generally trying to get an understanding of them, but that's just another assumption considering games in general want you to, in a way, relate to the character.

What I'm trying to say is, I think it's pretty impossible to feel anything for a pedophile/child molester for most people. And that's how it should be, imho.

@Morrow said:

@shivermetimbers:

What partypajamas said is correct.

It would also be odd to make a pedophile/child molester the main character of a game. As a player you are supposed to identify with the character you play as, at least to a ceratin degree, and I think it would be hard to feel any kind of sympathy for a pedophile.

Out of curiosity, have you played/beaten Silent Hill 2? I don't want to say anything specifically, but James did some pretty heinous things before his stop in Silent Hill. It's not exactly the series' MO to have the player character be an everyman that you can relate with.

@Brodehouse said:

@The_Nubster said:

@Morrow said:

@shivermetimbers:

What partypajamas said is correct.

It would also be odd to make a pedophile/child molester the main character of a game. As a player you are supposed to identify with the character you play as, at least to a ceratin degree, and I think it would be hard to feel any kind of sympathy for a pedophile.

Out of curiosity, have you played/beaten Silent Hill 2? I don't want to say anything specifically, but James did some pretty heinous things before his stop in Silent Hill. It's not exactly the series' MO to have the player character be an everyman that you can relate with.

Not exactly.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Euthanasia is not a cut-and-dried moral subject by any means. And James is not portrayed as doing it out of malice. Part of the extreme guilt he feels is because he questions himself whether he did it to save her the pain, or to save himself the pain of watching his wife suffer until she dies. The entire arc of the game is him accusing himself of acting selfishly. Even if you completely disagree with his actions, the emotions he felt are understandable to most everyone.

In comparison, fucking and murdering a child for sexual pleasure will only be seen as an understandable action by a very, very small portion of the audience.

Okay, that's true. You're definitely not wrong.

However, I think it's important for games to step out and do bold things. By the sounds of it, Murphy's "thing" is extremely boring and forgettable, even if the game was okay. It would say a lot for the game to draw you in to Murphy, make you like him and make you want to make him survive, and then turning those feelings on their head with the reveal that he's a child molester. You would relate to him and his problems beforehand, but not after. The reveal would change your entire perception of the game, for better or for worse, and it would be an incredibly brave move on the part of the developers.

For example, take American Psycho. The only exposure I had ever had to the name was the scene from the movie with Christian Bale, when he axe-murders a dude while listening to Huey Lewis and the News. However, upon reading the book, I realized that he is an absolutely disgusting and malicious human being with no humanizing characteristics, but I finished the book. It was an interesting read, something that will stick with me for a very long time, and the main character was an absolute piece of shit.

With a series like Silent Hill, the potential for screwing with your emotions is huge, and the game would benefit from having a player character with such a dark past. There would be controversy for sure, but it would get people talking. And it's not like they have to portray his crimes in a sympathetic light or anything, they could treat it how it should be treated. It could have been one of the biggest, most shocking twists of this generation but instead they opted for the whole dilemma of "Is it right to kill a criminal?"

That's kind of a boring narrative and a crappy over-arching question, honestly. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. There are a ton of super-interesting things they could do with a convict player character.

You're not way off, but you've got the wrong character. Murphys son was kidnapped and murdered and possibly molested Murphy didn't have a hand in any of it.

It's Tori Stafford The Game in other words.

Too soon?

@The_Nubster said:

@Brodehouse said:

@The_Nubster said:

@Morrow said:

@shivermetimbers:

What partypajamas said is correct.

It would also be odd to make a pedophile/child molester the main character of a game. As a player you are supposed to identify with the character you play as, at least to a ceratin degree, and I think it would be hard to feel any kind of sympathy for a pedophile.

Out of curiosity, have you played/beaten Silent Hill 2? I don't want to say anything specifically, but James did some pretty heinous things before his stop in Silent Hill. It's not exactly the series' MO to have the player character be an everyman that you can relate with.

Not exactly.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Euthanasia is not a cut-and-dried moral subject by any means. And James is not portrayed as doing it out of malice. Part of the extreme guilt he feels is because he questions himself whether he did it to save her the pain, or to save himself the pain of watching his wife suffer until she dies. The entire arc of the game is him accusing himself of acting selfishly. Even if you completely disagree with his actions, the emotions he felt are understandable to most everyone.

In comparison, fucking and murdering a child for sexual pleasure will only be seen as an understandable action by a very, very small portion of the audience.

Okay, that's true. You're definitely not wrong.

However, I think it's important for games to step out and do bold things. By the sounds of it, Murphy's "thing" is extremely boring and forgettable, even if the game was okay. It would say a lot for the game to draw you in to Murphy, make you like him and make you want to make him survive, and then turning those feelings on their head with the reveal that he's a child molester. You would relate to him and his problems beforehand, but not after. The reveal would change your entire perception of the game, for better or for worse, and it would be an incredibly brave move on the part of the developers.

For example, take American Psycho. The only exposure I had ever had to the name was the scene from the movie with Christian Bale, when he axe-murders a dude while listening to Huey Lewis and the News. However, upon reading the book, I realized that he is an absolutely disgusting and malicious human being with no humanizing characteristics, but I finished the book. It was an interesting read, something that will stick with me for a very long time, and the main character was an absolute piece of shit.

With a series like Silent Hill, the potential for screwing with your emotions is huge, and the game would benefit from having a player character with such a dark past. There would be controversy for sure, but it would get people talking. And it's not like they have to portray his crimes in a sympathetic light or anything, they could treat it how it should be treated. It could have been one of the biggest, most shocking twists of this generation but instead they opted for the whole dilemma of "Is it right to kill a criminal?"

That's kind of a boring narrative and a crappy over-arching question, honestly. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. There are a ton of super-interesting things they could do with a convict player character.

I agree entirely. Pretty much what I was getting at. I mean ignoring the child molester concept, playing as a convict in a Silent Hill game... the amount of possibilities they had at their fingertips were extensive to say the least.

EDIT: Actually, what I would have liked is if they implemented more morality choices, and those choices you make could determine why Murphy was convicted. The differing endings could reveal what type of person Murphy truly was based on your decisions. They started off in that direction, but it died down after like the first 2 hours until cropping up again at the very end. And it's disappointing because after now seeing 3 out of, I think, 5 endings, 2 of them don't even make all that much sense. Now I know, Silent Hill game, but the abstract material always stood for something. In Downpour, a lot of the weirdness appears like it's weird for the sake of weird rather than having much to back it up.

I think it was wasted potential to not have Murphy as the most ambiguous character of the series, but given a lot of the technical issues the game suffers from, they probably didn't have enough of a budget or time so they worked on what they could. And for what they clearly did put a lot of effort towards it shows. Silent Hill has never been more of an engaging town to understand and explore, and the atmosphere is top notch. It's too bad the myriad of underlining psychological themes couldn't match up.

@The_Nubster said:

For example, take American Psycho. The only exposure I had ever had to the name was the scene from the movie with Christian Bale, when he axe-murders a dude while listening to Huey Lewis and the News. However, upon reading the book, I realized that he is an absolutely disgusting and malicious human being with no humanizing characteristics, but I finished the book. It was an interesting read, something that will stick with me for a very long time, and the main character was an absolute piece of shit.

Just my two cents: The Patrick Bateman from the book and Christan Bale's Bateman are two different personalities. While a few scenes in the movie are the same as in the book (like the murder of a homeless man), Bale's performance gave the character of Bateman two things: more intelligence and more class. Of course, leaving out some of the most gruesome scenes from the book is a help to make Bateman look more like a relateable character, but it was Bale's performance who made Bateman look less like a piece of shit and more like a high profile psychopath.

Watching the movie and seeing Bale's version of Patrick Bateman made me very interested in the character, and while American Psycho is one of the most polarizing books, I was extremely disappointed by Bateman. He truly is, like you said, nothing but a piece of shit.