Lakeview Hotel

"Well, I'm alone there now... In our 'special place'... Waiting for you..."

- Mary's letter to James

The Lakeview Hotel was a hotel constructed next to Toluca Lake on West Sandford St. in the Resort Area of Paleville. It was built and run during Silent Hill's tourist boom in order to attract guests to visit the town.

James Sunderland and his wife, Mary Shepherd-Sunderland, stayed here on vacation prior to the events of Silent Hill 2. The Lakeview Hotel, specifically Room 312, is James and Mary's "special place", and serves as the final location.

After James and Mary left Silent Hill, the hotel was completely burned down by a devastating fire, but it appears restored and intact because of the spiritual powers of the town during Silent Hill 2. This hotel is nothing more than a conjured illusion since James expects the hotel to still be there and he likely didn't know about the fire.

The Lakeview Hotel also serves as a setting in The Grinning Man, and seems to make a cameo in Anne's Story.

Design
There are a total of four floors in the hotel, including the basement floor. The hotel map is separated into two parts; one for the hotel guests and one for the hotel staff, where the staff map includes every room. Above ground, the majority of the building consists of guest rooms. The second and third floors are mostly private rooms on both sides, whereas the first floor's rooms are exclusively on the west side. There is a central staircase that extends up to the second floor, however, the third floor can only be accessed by a small stairwell. The hotel also has two elevators, one used by guests and another used mainly by staff.

Notable locations inside the hotel building include Lake Shore Restaurant, Cafe "Toluca", and "Venus Tears Bar". There is also a wacky Observation Room seen in the Dog Ending, only accessible with a Dog Key found in a dog house on a second or more playthrough.

Silent Hill 2


After James doesn't find Mary at Rosewater Park and instead finds Maria, he suspects the hotel is the "special place" she meant in her letter; more specifically Room 312, which was the room they stayed in. However, James and Maria become sidetracked with pursuing Laura into a hospital and Maria is killed. The road to the hotel, Nathan Avenue, also leads to a dead-end.

After exploring the Silent Hill Historical Society, Toluca Prison and Labyrinth, James finally finds a boat he can use to cross Toluca Lake to reach the hotel. When James arrives at the hotel, it appears to him in a normal state as though it had not changed in the past three years. James must collect three music boxes to obtain a key to unlock a gate to to the third floor where Room 312 is. Along the way he also retrieves the videotape that he made with Mary, which they had supposedly forgotten at the hotel before leaving Silent Hill.



James eventually reaches Room 312 to find it in perfect shape. James sits down and plays the videotape. At first the original video plays, with James filming Mary looking out the window and talking about her love for the town. This is then abruptly interrupted by distorted footage of him smothering Mary to death with a pillow. Laura walks in shortly after and asks to leave the hotel with her as she knows Mary isn't here, but James tells her that he killed Mary, causing her to scream at him and run out of the room. He gets up and his radio begins to start working, with Mary's voice, telling James that she is nearby. James then leaves Room 312 and is now back in the Fog World, where he sees the hotel's true form; it is dilapidated, burned and abandoned with water dripping from the ceilings. Hallways in the eastern part of the hotel are covered in soot and the whole basement level is flooded.

James encounters Angela Orosco again on a fiery staircase, but she leaves to kill herself. In the lobby, James sees Maria being killed by a duo of Pyramid Heads. James defeats them and enters a long hallway where he remembers a conversation he had with his wife before she died. Listening to this conversation is one of the determinants towards achieving a particular ending. James makes it to the roof and fights the final boss.

Fire
Lost Memories: Silent Hill Chronicle states, "Before the second game took place, the hotel was completely destroyed by a fire".

A mysterious painting, found in Toluca Prison, depicts the Lakeview Hotel; red paint shows fire consuming the entire building.

Later, when traveling through the Fog World hotel, crime scene lines can be found with "Warning! Fire!" on them. In the room where Angela is found, the staircase is actually on fire, although whether this is related to Lakeview's fire is unknown; the dialogue between James and Angela may imply that she sees fire in the same way that James saw Maria and Pyramid Head.



The source of the hotel's fire may be a heater in the employee lounge which, when examined with the flashlight, has a secret message. When first visiting the employee lounge, James does not have his flashlight with him. After exiting the Venus Tears bar, the player is able to retrieve their items from the shelf on the second floor, including the flashlight. At this point, the player is able to complete the music box puzzle and head to Room 312. However, the player can also head back into Venus Tears and to the employee lounge, now with the flashlight.



When the heater in the corner of the room is examined, James will say "There's a heater here. On the back, in small letters, it says: 'I'm Johnny, one hot guy'". A closer look reveals that the heater is located inches under a curtain. It is possible the heater malfunctioned, causing a spark to ignite the curtain above it, starting the Lakeview Hotel fire. The implication is more obvious in the Italian version of the game; the translation is "Sono Johnny, e faccio scintille", which is "I'm Johnny, and I make sparks" in English.

The Grinning Man
In The Grinning Man, the title character brings a number of people he has abducted to the Lakeview Hotel because, as officer Mayberry explains it, the hotel is temporally and spatially challenged. Anyone who could manipulate those conditions would be able to hide a lot of people in the hotel. The Grinning Man binds his victims inside and brands them with his mark so he can feed off of their vitality to power his magic.

Trivia

 * In 2021, Masahiro Ito revealed that James started off in the hotel's Otherworld upon entering, and the wet version of the hotel is the Fog World version. Because of this, old strategy guides and other media refer to them the other way around because this information was not known at the time.


 * The front of the Lakeview Hotel in the game canon is never actually seen, only its rear side facing the lake. The front of it is seen in The Grinning Man, but it is unknown how canon it is.




 * James may hear a man sobbing when he walks past Room 208 in the Lakeview Hotel. Room 208 is the room in the Wood Side Apartments where he sees the body of a man in front of a TV, which is a modified version of James's model. In Blue Creek Apartments, Room 208's doorknob may rattle if James attempts to enter and walks away from it. Room 208 is also written on the door where James discovers Maria is dead in her prison cell. The crying could be a symbolic manifestation of James's inner sadness and sorrow. It is also possible that it's the ghost of someone who died in the Lakeview Hotel fire.


 * The photos on the hotel bed by the briefcase in room 202 are of the game characters and enemies.


 * Heavy breathing can be heard in the B1F elevator in the Lakeview Hotel where James finds the thinner.


 * On the first try to get up to the third floor of the Lakeview Hotel, it's locked. When James turns around, Mary may be heard calling to him.


 * In the pantry, James can examine the shelves and note that a lot of the food has expired, or smells rotten and moldy. This could be subtle foreshadowing that the hotel has decayed.


 * For some reason, there is quite a bit of fishing tackle in the Venus Tears bar. This is because the developer responsible, having an aversion to alcohol, was unable to collect information on bars.


 * If James has obtained the Dog Key, after watching the video tape, he can enter a room with a dog in it. This triggers the joke Dog Ending, which implies the dog was responsible for James' torment throughout the game.


 * If one tries to view the map in the area with the fiery staircase, a black screen with "I don't have a map of this area" would appear.




 * After defeating the two Pyramid Heads in the Fog World Lakeview Hotel, James uses two eggs, one rust-colored and the other scarlet, to enter another corridor. In this corridor, there is a stain on a door that looks very much like a creepy face imprinted on the wall. Art of Silent Hill even has a picture of it, implying it's deliberate. A photo of the door can also be found in the Baldwin Mansion.


 * While climbing the final staircase to the roof, at a certain point, if James attempts to descend the staircase, it will mysteriously vanish, preventing him from returning. The staircase can be seen dropping down when James moves away.




 * Insert Coin Clothing sold licensed Lakeview Hotel clothing.


 * The hotel's name is somewhat inconsistent in-game. It is "Lake View Hotel" (map in James' car and on the boat launch by the museum), "LakeView Hotel" (official map) and "Lakeview Hotel" (Maria's subtitles).


 * There is an island with a church on it near the hotel.




 * In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the number for the hotel can be found. If the player phones this number, the person on the other end of the phone will talk about the hotel and end the phone call by saying: "Make the Lakeview Hotel your special place". A hotel near the lake with a fountain in front of it can be seen from the car during Dahlia's ride. It is possible this is the Lakeview Hotel in the Shattered Memories universe.




 * Anne's Story implies that Anne Marie Cunningham and Mark Cunningham stayed in Room 312, the Sunderlands' special place.


 * The Lakeview Hotel may be inspired by the Overlook Hotel (The Stanley Hotel) in The Shining, one of the inspirations of the Silent Hill series. A poster for The Shining can be found in-game. The boiler may be a reference to the "Here's Johnny!" scene. The main character Jack Torrance forgets to control the pressure on the old boiler room of the Overlook Hotel, causing it to catch on fire and explode. In the original novel, he purposefully overheats the boiler to destroy the hotel.