I think you mean Henry, right?Opa Opa wrote:No, just no. Harry just doesn't have a personality. His character wasn't really developed within the story. In fact, you could replace Harry with any other person and they would fit in the role. Unless there's something in the story that I entirely overlooked, Harry had to go through those nightmares because he was associated with the same room where so many events had taken place.
I would argue that that wasn't the point of Henry though. The game is never about him. Yes, he's an interchangeable character who could be pulled out and replaced with other faceless background characters, but I felt that was his purpose. Henry is a journalist, a person whose central role is merely to observe and record for mass consumption. In effect, the purpose of his life is to bear witness, not to be the one doing the action per say, but to be the one who sees the action occur.
Consider how this relates back to the voyeuristic aspects of his relationship with his neighbor Eileen. Or how his only means of seeing the outside conversations of other people are through peepholes. Better yet, consider how, when in the safety of his home, his view goes entirely first person to allow the player to watch directly. That is what Henry does: he watches. He does not transpose himself into the action until he is required to do so. He sees the grisly deaths of others and is unable to stop them, but again watches in a near apathy. Henry is the part within us that tells us to do almost nothing despite the horror around us. Henry is our sense of complacence in a world gone mad. It is only when he is directly forced into proceeding that he does so. And truthfully, going back to his voyeuristic tendencies, the rewards he shoots for seem vaguely sexual, such as his relationship with Eileen, whom he sees through the wall and then protects but ultimately has power over once he leads her through the second half of the experience.
Maybe I think too much about the Silent Hill series.
