Alex Shepherd
Before Silent Hill[]
Alex Shepherd was born to Sheriff Adam Shepherd and his wife, Lillian. Throughout his early life, his parents acted cold and distant toward him, sometimes even hostile. All attention seemed to go to his younger brother, Joshua, whom his parents doted upon. Regardless, Alex bore no ill will to his family, simply casting this off as sibling rivalry and family politics. Growing up, Alex had few friends and was always depended upon to be the more responsible of the two Shepherd boys. His only known friend was Elle Holloway, daughter of the town's judge.
Around the age of seventeen, Alex decided to make his own way in the world and left Shepherd's Glen and his family behind, deciding to join the Army. His talent and physical ability were quickly recognized in the military, where he was asked to and succeeded in joining Special Forces.
A year or two into his service, Alex was on a mission in Iraq, when an unspecified incident occurred, sending him to the hospital.
Nightmare[]
His stay in the hospital was brief, but left a lasting impression. After being discharged from the hospital, Alex decided to return to his home town to see how the people he'd known and grown up with had fared. Falling asleep in the cab of a trucker once involved with the events in Silent Hill, Alex experienced a vivid nightmare involving his stay at the hospital. Having visions of his brother running from him through a mockery of a hospital, Alex awakens after being nearly stabbed by the Boogeyman, a creature greatly resembling Pyramid Head. After awakening, he discovers he is nearly home.
After exiting the cab, Alex thanks the man and sees the state of his home. Now more determined than ever to find his brother, Alex heads to his house.
Shepherd's Glen and Silent Hill[]
Alex finds his hometown of Shepherd's Glen in a shambles. The roads haven't been taken care of, accidents riddle the streets, and an all-consuming fog has swept over the area. Heading home, Alex finds his home in the same state of disrepair, his brother and father missing, and his mother an emotional wreck. After taking a gun from his mother, who seems close to suicide, Alex begins to search for his brother.
"You shouldn't have come here, Alex."
--Lillian Shepherd
After leaving his home, Alex encounters the mayor of Shepherd's Glen, Mayor Bartlett, digging up graves in the local Cemetery. The Mayor seems oblivious to Alex, so Alex leaves, continuing through the graveyard, battling monsters along the way. After leaving the graveyard, he encounters Elle Holloway, who doesn't recognize him at first. Elle then proceeds to tell Alex that after he left town, people began to disappear from Shepherd's Glen. At first it was only one or two people, but as time passed, a day didn't seem to go by that somebody went missing. Elle gives Alex a radio, telling him to stay in touch with her as well as the local deputy, Wheeler.
Alex continues on to a junk yard, where he meets the local mechanic, Curtis Ackers. Alex commissions him to fix the gun his mother gave him, and receives a working one in return. Afterward, Alex is told of the other phenomenon happening in Shepherd's Glen: All the clocks in town have stopped working, digital and analog, stuck exactly at 2:06. Alex begins to return through the graveyard when he finds the mausoleum of the Bartletts. After passing out, Alex awakens in the middle of a street next to a hotel. His brother runs into the Hotel. Alex chases him, only to find the hotel boarded up, his brother on the other side. After breaking through, Alex searches for Joshua, only to find Mayor Bartlett, drunk. Bartlett's son, Joey, was once a friend of Joshua, so Alex asks him the whereabouts of the two. the Mayor avoids the question, until, in the hotel's atrium, he is killed by a monster representative of his son. Alex defeats the monster, which opens a chasm in Otherworld. Alex begins to lose his grip on lucidity again, and falls through.
Upon waking up, Alex finds himself in a prison cell, on the wrong end of Deputy Wheeler's shotgun. After explaining what had happened to him and the mayor, Wheeler releases Alex from his cell. As he does so, monster begin invading the police station. Alex and Wheeler receive a distress call from Elle during this, and the two split up in order to break up the monsters. Saving Elle, the two head into the sewers, where Alex loses her, finding only a bloody trail leading out of the sewers. Alex later meets up with Dr. Fitch, the tons physician, covered in blood. Fitch avoids Alex, who follows Fitch into his office, after fighting off a horde of nurses, Alex slips into Otherworld, following his brother's trail to its very pits. In a vault within this real, he finds Dr. Fitch in only his underwear, babbling about his daughter. Giving the doctor a doll Alex found in his daughter Scarlet's room, the doll morphs into a gruesome porcelain creature, calling Fitch "Daddy" before killing him. Alex defeats the monster and passes out once more. Waking up, Alex finds himself unharmed in the doctor's clinic.
"I bleed out the sin but it never goes away."
-- Dr. Fitch
Alex then heads to the Town Hall, and unlocks a secret passageway. While sneaking through the passage 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 can answer his questions, 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, the door locks itself, and it transforms into the Otherworld. At this point, Alex comes to, and realizes this. In order to escape, Alex has to complete four different puzzles, all of which involve his family's past and the personal 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 agree 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 who went missing and only her motorcycle was ever found, outside the city limits. Then Elle tells Alex she was wearing a locket 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 near Silent Hill after he slips into the water. After this, Alex attempts to save both of Elle and Deputy Wheeler, 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 on whether 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 shut off the gas lines. However, Wheeler gets attacked by a monster, 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 (Alex's parents) 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, but Adam explains to Alex that he was never a soldier, and that the dog tags and jacket Alex wears are from Adam's own previous duty. He further adds that Alex's delusion of himself as a soldier began after an accident of some kind. Alex 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 informs 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 suffers from 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 attempts to kill Alex using a powerdrill, and succeeds in causing mild damage to his left thigh, only to die when Alex's restraints fail and he forces the drill through her jaw. Alex later admits to being glad she died after all that she did.
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 the player hears after Elle has been saved). Saving him is another option, requiring the use of 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, 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 him to show Alex the ring. Alex takes the ring from Josh, who lunges at him in an attempt to retrieve it, only to rock the boat, fall, break his neck on the edge, and drown. When Adam Shepherd retrieves Josh's body from the lake, Alex goes into a mental shock, leading him to believe he can fix the problem. 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, leaving the family ring and his flashlight on Josh's chest. He walks away, leaving Josh's body.
After Silent Hill[]
Alex leaves Silent Hill, trying to find a normal life for himself. This seems a futile effort, however, as the darkness of the town seemed to follow him when he left, refusing to let Elle be swept up in his mess, he leaves her in Maryland, heading south, into Virginia. There, he meets several people once involved in the Order, and begins to take their stories in, documenting the history of the Order, as well as what he could about their angels and gods. This time is short, however, as he experiences another Fog Shift. When the events are done, those in the Order shun, him, telling him to take the Darkness with him. Alex spends the next few years on the road, never staying in one place for too long. That is, until he hit New Jersey.
Angels & Asses[]
Alex heads to New Jersey and stops at a local hospital, hoping to take advantage of his father's medical benefits. Speaking briefly with House, Alex finds out the two shared similar experiences about Silent Hill. Deciding to see what the good doc knew, Alex stayed. He experienced one of the town's first fog shifts, but unlike the others, he somehow stayed inside for three months. During this time, he saw the plans of the Order, and talks of the Goddess Reborn. After returning to the real world, old wounds reopened, and House informed Alex of his ability to manipulate fog shifts, also revealing Alex was capable of the same thing.
Some time later, Alex became somewhat involved with an incedent around a group of demons, though it was minor. Afterward, he ran into Kimball Cho, a member of what the citizens of New Jersey called the Fog Patrol.Since then, Alex has been helping the group out with anything they would need.