darkness

walter in silent hill 4

"RED DIARY - APRIL 4

Lately I've been feeling like my life is in serious danger.
I've been through a lot in my life, but I've never felt this kind of pure,
animal fear.
In case something happens to me, I've decided to write down what I've learned
for whoever you are that's living on the apartment now.
I've been investigating the mass murder that took place 7 years ago in which
10 people were killed in 10 days.
They were killed in a variety of ways, but the one thing they had in common
was that each corpse had the following numbers, in order of their deaths,
carved into them:
01121, 02121, 03121,
04121, 05121, 06121,
07121, 08121, 09121,
10121 ... The name of their killer... it was carved in as well...
His name was...Walter Sullivan"

The first moment Walter appears somehow in Silent Hill 4 is right at the beginning of the game - the moment Henry awakes from that weird nightmare and lets us know he's been locked up in the Room 302 for five days now. Completely isolated from the outside world - without TV or phone, all the windows sealed shut and the main door chained up from the inside. The moment Henry says that, some words appear slowly from nowhere in the room's door, painted there with some red substance (blood I guess):

Don't go out!
Walter

I really can't talk from a neutral point of view about this, because unfortunately I got to know that Walter was in the SH4 game (and that he was the man in the coat as well) shortly before playing the game. Internet can be so dangerous sometimes, even when you're doing your best to avoid spoilers *big sigh* But well, I guess I could have remembered anyway about that Walter Sullivan guy that had been mentioned before in Silent Hill 2, and I would have thought if the Walter who had written that message in the door was that same person or not. Because I'm always thinking too much =P Anyway... I didn't doubt it because I already knew it, but still I didn't know what would be Walter's role in the game... and considering the bits I knew from Walter Sullivan thanks to Silent Hill 2 (read below or this page for further details)... would be Walter the bad guy ("don't go out, because otherwise I'll kill you") or he was actually trying to help Henry for any reason ("don't go out, because you'll die for sure if you do")?

Later in game, right after Jasper dies at the end of the Forest world, the "Walter Sullivan case" is first mentioned because of the look-alikes between the marks (the carved numbers) those victims had in their bodies when they were found, and the ones carved into Cynthia and Jasper bodies as well. Slowly, thanks to conversations we listen and specially thanks to the documents we read (most of them, like the one at the top of this page, written by Joseph Schreiber), we get more details on this case and we discover that Walter not only killed two people, like we read in that newspaper at Silent Hill 2 - but ten at least, until he finally got caught by the police and (supposedly) killed himself at his prison cell. After Richard dies at the end of the Building world, we can listen on the radio a conversation between the policemen wondering if whoever is killing those people following more or less the same MO as Sullivan's isn't some crazy copycat, considering Walter is dead for sure, because they even found his body.

At this point, Joseph's investigations on the Walter Sullivan's case are specially useful. Thanks to them, we get to know Walter was actually trying to kill 21 people - the numbers carved into the victims' bodies weren't, as they thought, 01121, 02121 and so on - but 01/21, 02/21 instead. Some time after Walter had killed himself in the prison, something that didn't really make any sense considering he hadn't accomplished his task yet, someone was murdered using a similar method. Police thought it was a copycat case, but Joseph saw something suspicious there and decided to investigate on his own. And that's when he went to the cemetery near Toluca Lake and discovered Walter's grave... to find it empty, and with the numbers 11/21 carved in it. That's not exactly an evidence, but a good proof that Walter could be somehow alive and therefore he could be the person behind that weird, unsolved murder case and the ones that followed (one of which was Joseph himself, as we find out later - 15/21), and very probably the one who's killed Cynthia, Jasper, Andrew and Richard as well.

Young Walter, Adult Walter

Another interesting thing in the game, and actually I'm not sure if I can find a valid explanation to this one, is the fact that there are two Walters coexisting in a same place/dimension and era: the adult Walter, the murderer, and the young Walter - kind of a ghost of Walter as a kid that seems to be more or less the essence of the good, innocent, uncorrupted part of Walter. About where, why and how he was born/generated... scroll down to read my opinion, but anyway Joseph tells us a bit on this matter near the end of the game; like if Walter's incarnation/spirit had splitted in two: the part who simply wanted, more than anything, to retrieve his long lost mother, and the part ho had become a heartless, cold-blooded killing machine, whose only goal was to finish the ritual and kill all the people he had planned.

Is kind of easy for us to know that the kid we first meet in the Forest World is actually Walter Sullivan: in the Prison World, Henry asks Andrew who's that kid and he simply tells us his name, as he knew him from the time he used to work watching the kids at the Wish House. As easy as that. And if we still have any doubt, the last words of Richard while he's strapped to that electric chair, dying electrocuted, is that "that kid is no kid - but the 11121 man", that is, Walter.

Actually, if you pay a bit of attention you can figure out that Walter is not only that kid, but the long-haired man with the coat as well, right after Richard's death. While Richard is dying, he mumbles something about the boy because he has appeared at Richard's room: you can see him for a brief moment next to the window, pointing somewhere outside, before he quickly fades away when Henry enters the room. Once you're back at Room 302 and if you look outside the window, you can see a man in Richard's appartment, next to the window, pointing outside in direction to Eileen's room (actually marking Eileen as the next victim), exactly like the kid was doing when you were there. And you can't see clearly who's that man, but looking closely you can see him well enough to think he could be the long-haired man that appears in the game booklet ;)

The first meeting

After Richard's death, we finally have been able to get out from Room 302 and access the twisted world outside, the Apartment World. Right after leaving out the room, in the corridor, we see that mysterious, long-haired man knocking on Room 303 and then walking away. This is the first time we see the adult Walter (having seen before the young Walter in the Forest world, the Prison world and in the Building world as well)... just that, regardless what I've said above, we can't know for sure that he's Walter yet. Once you leave the corridor and get out to the stairs, you find the guy sitting there and if you approach him he tells Henry he has known Eileen for a long time, and actually he has a doll that she gave him many years ago, when she was younger than him... this can be actually the decisive hint for you to know that this guy could be Walter Sullivan: if Walter is dead and is nothing but a ghost now we could say, he obviously hasn't aged since he died; therefore, he has remained the same age while Eileen has been growing up in a normal way, and that means she's no longer younger than him, but older now. Anyway - after telling you that, Walter gives you the doll (you can take it or not, it's up to you - but actually is better if you leave it there because it will make appear an extra haunting in Room 302 later in game) and if you go anywhere else and then go back to the stairs later, you'll see he's gone and is nowhere to be seen.

Chasing Eileen and Henry

I think that by the next time we see him again, we really shouldn't doubt it anymore: this guy is Walter, and his intentions aren't exactly good. He's the one who has attacked Eileen in her own room at the end of the Apartment World, and now when we find him the moment Henry appears in the Hospital, is doing some kind of weird thing (I don't really need to know what, it is disgusting anyway) with a corpse, and as soon as he sees Henry tries to attack him as well... or that's what it seems at least, luckily Henry goes out of the room fast enough to escape him before he can do anything.

Once you've found Eileen in the Hospital room and you start to go through all the previous worlds again, heading to the end of the game, things get a little more complicated. For first time when you're leaving the Subway world and from now own, Walter will appear in several areas of the forest, the prison, etc. and will try to kill you using different deadly weapons. During this final stage, we get to know (though I guess it was quite obvious at this point) that Walter has chosen Eileen and Henry to be, respectively, the 20th and the 21st victims, the ones remaining to complete the 21 Sacraments ritual... The weird thing is, though I'm not sure if that's the way is supposed to happen but that's what happened to me at least, that Walter will try to kill Henry only - but not Eileen anymore, because she rarely attacks her even when she's an easy target. Maybe because he has tried already and he hasn't suceeded but he plans to kill Eileen in the end anyway, using an easier strategy... Anyway, if you want some advice, you must run away as fast as you can every time you find Walter anywhere, and move to a safer place as soon as possible: he's unvulnerable. You can't kill him, not even trying hard, so don't waste ammo or time because it will be useless, and you'll need it to deal with the other creatures you'll find on your way to the final battle.

The end - some hints for the final battle and a note about the game endings

Obviously Walter is the final boss in Silent Hill 4. Beating him is quite easy - all you have to do is the following:

You may have noticed, however, Eileen is also there in the final battle: she seems to be possessed or something because while you fight all she does is walking towards the gyroscope in the center of the room, no matter what's happening around her. The most wounds she has, the fastest she'll walk - and once she gets the gyroscope she'll die, and it's important you try to save her, so you must kill Walter as fast as you can - because whether you save Eileen or not will affect the game ending.

There are four different endings in this game and which one you'll get depends on two variables: first, if you've managed to eradicate all the spirits and hauntings from room 302; and second, if Eileen survives in the end or not. If you want to save Eileen to obtain certain ending, but she's seriously injured and it's almost impossible to kill Walter before she reaches the gyroscope because she walks too fast, you could use a trick I read in some SH4 guide I found (sorry, I don't remember which one was right now, I'll add the link as soon as I find it again - but please note I did not discover this myself!): if you use holy candles to heal Eileen, she'll be able to enter the final battle in perfect shape, so she'll walk really slowly and you'll sure have enough time to kill Walter before anything happens to her.

Walter's true nature

According to the weird things that usually happen in the Silent Hill games, and specially if you remember the article about Walter's imprisonment from Silent Hill 2 (again, go here if you haven't read it), maybe you're wondering if Walter was really conscious of what he was doing while killing all those people or if he was actually possessed by some kind of devilish entity.

There's a really important bit of information on this matter that we can't find in the game itself - but that was revealed to us through the Silent Hill 4 official website: Walter was indeed posessed by a devil. And not whatever devil, but Valtiel himself - one of the most mysterious characters in the Silent Hill series, that appeared briefly in Silent Hill 3... so briefly that most of people don't notice him the first time they play the game, actually because he's in the background (literally) and Heather doesn't interact with him in any way. He just seems to be there to watch her. We don't know too much about Valtiel - according to the "Lost Memories" book released in Japan (kind of a Silent Hill''s encyclopedia with anything and everything you still needed to know from the first three SH games, containing things like monster files and ending analyisis), he's the attendant to God, so Samael's (Devil's) right-hand man, or demon in this case ;) I also read somewhere that he's actually the one who controls the existence of the Otherworld and why and when it merges with the "normal" world, but I guess it was just a theory At least, I haven't been able to confirm it). Anyway, we can be sure Valtiel isn't a common devil, but a really powerful one - most likely the most powerful one besides Samael himself.

In some moment while Walter was still at the Wish House, he was chosen by the High Priest of Valtiel's cult (Jimmy Stone, the first of the 21 victims) and his right-hand man (George Rosten, also priest of the Valtiel's cult and the #6 victim) to be the person who should carry out the 21 sacraments ritual. And to do so, they had Valtiel's spirit successfully enter Walter's unconsciusness, to give him the needed power and control him (to be exact, Rosten was the one who made this). However, Valtiel's spirit was too powerful, so they couldn't control Walter as they wanted and things came out of hand, being the 21 sacraments performed in a way they didn't expect (that is, with Walter killing them both - first Stone and some time later Rosten, as part of the 21 murders he should commit).

The reason why they did choose Walter and not any other of the children they had "adopted" at the Wish House is quite obvious I think: they just chose the boy who would be easiest to use because of the story behind him. They told Walter the truth: where was he found when he was a newborn child, and that his parents ran away right after his birth, leaving him behind just like that. Then maybe Walter took the idea of Room 302 being his true mother, as he had been found there alone and the room had been taking care of him until he was found by the superintendent (we mustn't forget Walter was a child, and children can have really strange ideas sometimes - so it's kind of logical that he came to this conclusion I guess) After all, his true parents had already shown their true feelings for him: they couldn't care less, so why should he think of them as his parents anymore? Somehow Walter ended believing that, by performing that ritual the people of the cult were talking about, he could purify Room 302 and retrieve his true mother. That's why he maybe even agreed to be possessed by Valtiel, if that meant he could get his mother back.

However, my theory is that Walter's "good side" stayed in him somehow, and manifested when he got caught by the police; that's what he said something that makes us understand he wasn't acting consciously, but that someone (the Red Devil, that means Jimmy Stone, as this was the nickname he was known with due to the triangle-shaped red hood he used to wear) had led him into doing it when he actually didn't want to. About why he killed himself later while being locked up in prison, either could have been because he had regained his counsciusness and it was the only way for him to escape what he had done, or also could have been that he killed himself on purpose knowing he had to be the 11th sacrifice to continue with the ritual. Either way, my theory is that when Walter killed himself, part of his own self didn't want to go on with the ritual, while the other part was still closely tied to Valtiel because was being controlled by him. The result was that the ghost/spirit/incarnation of Walter splitted in two parts: the "good" one would be his inner child, the part of him that all that wanted was to rewrite his own story, to have a family and find the lost love of his mother; and the second one, the part who stayed on the evil side, filled with resentfulness and bitterness towards the world - the one who wanted to keep Valtiel's power. This "evil Walter" would be the adult one, while the other one is obviously Walter in his child form.

It's just a theory after all, but though we have no proofs, don't deny it could have happened this way... it could be a possible explanation to the fact I've mentioned above - the fact that two different Walters from different time periods are coexisting nowadays. It's obvious that both Walters are different since young Walter is the one who saves Eileen's life by protecting her from the man with the coat, according to her own words, when he attacks her in her room at the end of the Apartment's World. Adult Walter obviously doesn't kill young Walter because he's a part of himself, his other half, and I guess it would be like killing himself again. Or something like that (this is a VERY complicated story, don't ask me to make sense in every thing I say! :P) The scene with the bit of conversation between both incarnations of Walter contains really important information on this matter as well: from this scene, is quite obvious that adult Walter already knew of the existence of his "other half", and finds it interesting, even amusing. Actually, he doesn't worry about little Walter and he doesn't try to hurt him when he protects Eileen because he knows the 21 sacraments ritual will be completed anyway, because he's the one who will do it, no matter what. And at the same time, he also knows that his younger self belongs to the era when Walter still didn't know the "absolute truth" behind the Holy Mother, but knows that if that little Walter could ever grow up again, would end doing the same he's gonna do now ("Don't worry. You'll know soon enough"). On the other hand, young Walter doesn't recognize himself in adult Walter, something that more or less makes sense. But also, according to the conversation, we can be sure that, exactly, this young Walter essence is from the time where Walter still didn't know a word about the 21 sacraments. Like if when Walter died, his inner innocence had fought so much to survive on his own that had created an own spiritual form to survive, separated from the murderer possessed by Valtiel...

Wheter it happened exactly this way or not, I'm sure there have been two Walters since Walter put an end to his mortal life, and not before. That would explain too why the first time you find little Walter he's wandering around the graveyard near Toluca lake, in the Forest World, near the place Walter was buried after killing himself in prison.

I hope what I've said makes some sense to you - as I've told you is a kind of complicated story, and my English isn't good enough to express myself clearly most of the times, but anyway... I hope you'll have got the idea :)

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