Alex Shepherd
From Silent Hill Wiki
| “ | What is this thing? What did you do? Where's Joshua?!
-Alex, as he takes the family ring from his father. | ” |
Alex Shepherd is the player character and protagonist of Silent Hill: Homecoming. Alex is a soldier who comes home from overseas to find his father and later his brother Joshua have disappeared and his mother has gone into a catatonic state. Shepherd begins to search for his brother, leading him through Silent Hill and the new town of Shepherd's Glen.
Contents |
Biography
We are first introduced to Alex in a hospital, where he starts his search for his brother, Josh. Every time he reaches out to his brother and gets closer to him however, Josh runs away. He eventually wakes up in the passenger seat on the truck belonging to Travis Grady, who is driving Alex to Shepherd's Glen, Alex's hometown.
When Alex makes it to Shepherd's Glen, he realizes the town is covered in a foggy atmosphere, and parts of the road are missing and have fallen apart. On the way home, he runs into Judge Holloway, the mother of Elle Holloway. She acts surprised to see Alex, and tells Alex he should go visit his mother. When he makes it home, his mother, Lillian Shepherd, is in a near-catatonic state, and tells him that his father, Adam Shepherd, has gone to look for Josh. Alex then tells his mother he promises to bring Josh back. While doing this, he takes a gun from his mother's lap. He then hears a sound coming from the basement, where he soon discovers that the monsters from his nightmares are, in fact, real. Alex comes to see a currently locked room, in which he remembered once almost entering, and his father stopping him when he opens the door, shouting at him to never enter that room again. Alex then proceeds to leave the house.
Eventually, Alex runs into his old childhood friend, Elle Holloway, outside of the police department. She informs him that many other people in the town have started to go missing, and is seen putting up missing posters. When he told her he was going to go look for his brother, she hands him the radio Deputy Wheeler gave to her, so they could keep in contact.
While searching in a graveyard near Alex's house, Alex goes to a repair/junk shop owned by Curtis Ackers, and asks if he could fix the gun he took from his mother. He eventually trades in his gun for a newer gun, and learns about how the clocks stopped at 2:06 everywhere in the town, and cannot be fixed.
When Alex goes to the Grand Hotel, he runs into Mayor Sam Bartlett, who he saw earlier at the cemetery (but did not know it at the time), partly drunk. Bartlett's son, Joey, used to be friends with Josh. Alex keeps trying to get information from Bartlett, but a monster, Sepulcher, comes out and attacks Bartlett, crushing and killing him. When Alex fights and defeats Sepulcher, a hole appears in the floor, and he swoons into it.
He awakes later in a prison cell and meets Deputy Wheeler. He tells Wheeler that he is looking for Josh, and tells him what happened to Bartlett. He eventually agrees to help Alex escape and find Josh after learning that Alex too has seen the monsters. Wheeler gets separated from Josh when debris falls from the ceiling and blocks Alex from Wheeler as a Siam drops through the ceiling. When Alex escapes the jail, he sees Elle being attacked by yet another Siam. After rescuing her, they realize more creatures are coming, and both decide to go into the sewers. Alex learns that Elle's sister, Nora Holloway, is also missing. Eventually, they both end up separated, and Alex makes it out of the sewers.
Alex gets a radio transmission from Wheeler, telling him to meet up and find Dr. Fitch. Alex ends up running into Dr. Fitch, who is covered in random cuts and blood. Alex follows him into the clinic and enters the room of Scarlet Fitch, Dr. Fitch's daughter. The room is filled with many dolls, and eventually, Nurses come and attack Alex there. When Alex finds the key to a box in Scarlet's room, he picks up a doll and it starts to deteriorate, losing its hair and eye, and then the room turns into the rusted and bloody place - the Otherworld. Here, he sees Josh a few times, and eventually runs into Dr. Fitch again. Dr. Fitch is seen cutting himself to "repent for his sins". A monster created in the likeness of Scarlet, appears and attacks Dr. Fitch, biting his head off. Alex eventually kills it, and reawakens in the normal clinic, and finds that a key was hidden in the doll he found in Scarlet's Room.
Alex then heads to the Town Hall, and unlocks a secret passageway. While going under, and avoiding the Nurses who are guarding the area, Alex finds a ceremonial dagger. The dagger looks like the door handle from the room he was not allowed to enter as told by his father. When he enters the room (which was his father's hunting room), he finds a key to the attic. Alex goes up to the attic, and has a flashback of his father giving Josh the family ring. The ring was passed down generation from generation, and was supposedly very important. Josh was told not to show anyone, not even his brother Alex. After the flashback, Alex finds a note written by his father, saying that he was told he had to choose just one of his sons for something unknown. It also mentions the town of Silent Hill.
Alex intends to confront his mother with this note, and ask her about it and Silent Hill and how they are connected with his father and Josh. Before his mother could really tell him anything, a group of masked people, soldiers of The Order, come and attack Alex and kidnap his mother. As The Order members are in the process of escaping however, the house transforms, the door locks itself, and it transforms into the Otherworld. At this point, Alex comes to, and realizes this. In order to escape, Alex had to complete four different puzzles, all of which involved his family's past and guilt of all his family members.
After the puzzle, the house returns to normal, and Alex escapes only to run into Elle, and eventually Wheeler. They all decided to go to Silent Hill to find everyone. On the way there, via boat on Toluca Lake, Alex mentions how his and Elle's parents told them to never go to Silent Hill. Wheeler tells Alex about a cop, most likely Cybil from Silent Hill 1, who went missing and only her motorcycle was ever found, outside the city limits. Then Elle tells Alex she was wearing a necklace she took from her mother's room since her sister vanished. She hands it to Alex, and the boat gets ambushed by The Order. The Order kidnaps Elle and Wheeler and sends them to the penitentiary, while Alex gets knocked unconscious again, and washes ashore to Silent Hill after he slips into the water. After this, Alex attempts to go and save both of them, running into Wheeler along the way. Still looking for Elle, he ends up entering a room with his mother, Lillian, who is strapped to a stretching rack, and is being tortured. Depending if Alex kills her or not, out of mercy, will effect the ending. If chosen to kill her, Alex will shoot her in the head before the machine rips her in half, if not chosen to kill her, she will be alive while the machine rips her in half.
Alex meets back up with Wheeler and they enter the Otherworld. They eventually find Judge Holloway, strapped to a chair that the two men believe is about to be used to perform a dosage of lethal injection. They try to save her, with Alex unstrapping her as Wheeler goes to try and shut off the gas lines. However, Wheeler gets attacked by a monster from a hole, Asphyxia. While Alex proceeds to help Wheeler, it is shown that Judge Holloway was not really scared, but had a devious intent. After Alex defeats Asphyxia, he sees Josh, who runs outside to the church. While there, Alex enters a confessional booth, and is told a confession from a man, most likely Adam Shepherd, Alex's father. He tells how they feel sorry for always mistreating Alex, and that they really did love him, they just could never show him. Alex tries to tell Adam he is sorry, while Adam attempts to explain to Alex that he was in fact never a military man at all, and the jacket and dog tags were in fact Adam's own from his military service, inciting the fact that Alex has been in a mental institution since an accident. He then sees Pyramid Head, whom he knows as the Bogeyman of Silent Hill, who proceeds to punish Adam, slicing him in half. Perhaps due to anger at the monster's execution of his father, he proceeds to chase after the menacing beast, only to encounter a mine shaft and steam jets. To keep from being burned by the steam and proceed in any shape or form (which he now must do as the Otherworld or whatever is controlling the happenings covered his escape route with barbed wire), he dons an abandoned Order uniform. He soon comes to an elevator, where he is surprised to see Curtis Ackers also there. They take the elevator down as Curtis chats nonchalantly at the person standing beside him, although Alex keeps quiet, presumably to keep from revealing his identity. As the elevator stops, Curtis allows him to go first and clobbers him over the head, knocking him out.
He reawakens in a room, where he is locked to a chair. Judge Holloway appears, and chooses to inform him as to the intent of The Order, and that the true reason the children were missing was because of a ritualistic sacrifice. She then tells Alex that the founding fathers, from the four families: Fitch, Bartlett, Holloway, and Shepherd, were all from the town of Silent Hill. They were allowed to leave the town under one condition - they had to sacrifice one child from each family every fifty years. In doing so, they would protect Shepherd's Glen from the terrors that Silent Hill subdues due to the wrath of their god through an appeasement of blood. Though the other sacrifices were made from three families, one family, Shepherd, did not sacrifice their child. Adam never sacrificed either of his sons, thus throwing off The Order. The only thing left was to go back to their original views and back to Silent Hill. Holloway said they needed to kill the town's people who opposed the change - most specifically Alex, Elle, and Wheeler. She then attempted to kill Alex using a drill, and succeeds in drilling a good chunk out of his left thigh, but Alex soon breaks through his restraints, and forces the drill through her head. With her lying on the floor, Alex admits to being happy she was dead after how she turned out to be.
Alex rescues Elle from the facility, and kills her intended murderer, Curtis. They work their way through the Order's Lair to find Wheeler severely injured, having had several knives stuck into his chest (it is possible that it is Wheeler's screaming you can hear after Elle has been saved). Saving him is another option, requiring to use a medical kit if chosen to save him, but it will affect the ending as well in this game. Alex proceeds on to find Josh, leaving Elle behind, and enters a room with the four family tombs with the list of the children who were to be sacrificed. According to the list of children that were supposed to have been sacrificed for the 150th anniversary of Shepherd's Glen, the children were Scarlet Fitch, Joey Bartlett, and Nora Holloway (Elle's missing sister). Alex then realizes his name is also listed as well, and experiences a flashback about Josh.
Alex was never really a soldier in the Army as believed. For five years, he has been in a mental institution (Alchemilla Hospital), instead of a hospital for war injuries. He then learns what really happened to Josh: the night Josh received the family ring from his father, Alex takes Josh on a boat on Toluca Lake (where technically, Alex was told not to go, since it was part of Silent Hill). He teases Josh, which provokes Josh to show Alex the ring, which causes Josh to try to take it back, only to rock the boat, fall, break his neck on the edge, and drown. When Adam Shepherd retrieved Josh's body from the lake, Alex went into a mental shock, and believed he could fix it, and revive his little brother. Adam then tells Alex there is nothing he can do, and as he was the one who had been chosen for sacrifice, he had ruined everything for everyone. They send him to a mental institution, and lie to everyone telling that he instead joined the Army. Since Josh dies instead of Alex, the ritual took Josh's death, and the pact was thrown off.
After a flashback, Alex realizes why his parents were always cold towards him, and he is thrown again, into the Otherworld. He is confronted by the final boss, Amnion - a cruel representation of his younger sibling. After defeating the monster, Alex cuts Amnion open and finds the corpse of his brother, Josh. Alex finally had the chance to apologize to Josh, and does so, taking the family ring, and leaving his flashlight on Josh's chest, and walks away, leaving Josh's body. What happens to him after this point depends on what ending you receive.
Fate
Smile (Good) ending
Alex is seen exiting a manhole, where he is reunited, once more, with Elle. After a brief conversation, Elle and Alex presumably leave Silent Hill.
In Water (Drowning) ending
Alex, waking in a bathtub filled with water, sees his father walk in. Adam tries to assure his son that he has no reason to be afraid. Joshua will be safe to carry on the Shepherd name, and Alex's sacrifice will keep Shepherd's Glen safe for another 50 years. He is then drowned.
Judgment (Bogeyman) ending
Alex comes to, bound in a chair, with a Bogeyman approaching from both sides of him. Each bears a piece of helmet, identical to theirs. As Alex screams, they attach the pieces to him, transforming him into one of them. As Alex stands, it's revealed that he has taken on the physical characteristics of The Bogeyman. With a final scream, the screen goes black.
Intensive Care (Hospital) ending
Alex is restrained on a medical gurney. Two doctors stand nearby, and Alex begins to panic. Realizing he had been dreaming, or hallucinating, he struggles, asking if he had truly never left. One of the doctors tells him that, no, he had never left and won't be leaving until he learns to accept reality and responsibility for his actions. Electrodes are place against studs located on either side of Alex's head, and the doctors begin administering electroshock therapy.
UFO ending
Alex resurfaces in Silent Hill through a manhole, with Elle waiting for him. They begin to embrace, but are lifted into the air. Overhead, a UFO is seen hovering. The pair has been abducted. Below, Wheeler sees the event, and expresses his feelings on the matter; he was sure this is what had been happening all along.
The ending experienced is dependent on the three key decisions made throughout the course of play; killing Lillian Shepherd or not, forgiving Adam Shepherd or not, and saving Wheeler or not(although saving Wheeler has the least effect for most endings).
| Characters in Silent Hill: Homecoming | |
|---|---|
| Main Characters | |
| Minor Characters | |
