Playing Through the History of Video Games: Flashforward Edition: Silent Hill 2 (2001)

*So, you may remember that I decided that if I ever got around to playing one of the games from the 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die book, the book I’m using for my Playthrough of the History of Video Games that I would go ahead and do a full project write-up of the game and post it as a flashforward edition. 

*So, I was deciding what I wanted to review next when we got a startling announcement about a particularly beloved survival horror game and it seemed that fate had taken hand.  Couple of years ago, I reviewed Silent Hill.  And now . . . now, Konami has taken me right back to where it all began.  Their little announcement has brought me back to that quiet little town . . .

Silent Hill 2 (2001) – Konami

In my restless dreams, I see that town . . . Silent Hill.

*These Flashforward Reviews are always really gargantuan endeavors.  As with the review of Silent Hill, I’ll be going through the story of this game in detail and talking about everything from the mechanics to the plot to the characters and why the game . . . well, no spoilers, but why it holds up as one of the best horror games I’ve ever played. 

*Don’t worry, as if that’s not enough of an epic task I’ve set myself, I will be giving my thoughts on the recent announcement that Konami has outsourced a remake of Silent Hill 2 to Bloober Team, the group behind Layers of Fear, Blair Witch and, you know, more or less Silent Hilly stuff (occasionally blatantly and obnoxiously Silent Hilly stuff, but I’LL TALK ABOUT THAT LATER!).

*Anyway, this review is going to be incredibly long.  People before said they didn’t think I should split things into more than one post, but I think it might be helpful to kind of spoiler tag things in sections, so you can leave this post and come back to it later.  You’ll see what I mean.  It’ll help with all the scrolling and it’ll give you some handy places to stop if you want to leave and come back later. 

*But, for now, let’s flash-back to 1999.  The first Silent Hill game came out in February of 1999 and by June, Team Silent was reunited and working on the sequel.  The decision was made to focus on the PlayStation 2 as the primary platform for the development.  The game would later be ported to the Xbox along with new DLC-type expansion called Born from a Wish.  We’ll be talking about that too. 

*I feel I should make clear that I played the Greatest Hits edition for PS2.  It’s the slightly remastered from the original PS2 release that includes Born from a Wish, which was originally only available on the Xbox edition. 

*There was later a very controversial release called The Silent Hill HD Collection that was released for PS3 and Xbox 360.  This included HDified versions of Silent Hill 2 & 3.  The remasters were considered quite poor and the new voice acting was also very poorly received, so I steered clear of that remaster.

*Why Konami chose to release Silent Hills 2 & 3 together when 3 is actually the direct sequel to the first game is a bit of a puzzle, especially when the original Silent Hill was a PS1 title that STILL, by the way, hasn’t seen any sort of remaster or update or re-release on a newer generation console.

*But as we all know, with Silent Hill, the true soul-shaking horror was the decisions made by Konami along the way. 

*But several really GOOD decisions were made at very early stages in this game’s development that I think really set the table for the game to be as great as it is.  One of the best early decisions was the decision to focus on an entirely different set of characters and to really not connect Silent Hill 2’s story to the story of the first game in any meaningful way. 

*In the larger sense, this just allowed them the freedom to have no real constraints on the story they wanted to tell.  In the more micro sense, it’s also a good thing because the story in the first Silent Hill was absolute garbage. 

*So, let’s just jump into the new story here.  As the game opens, our protagonist, James Sunderland, has arrived on the outskirts of Silent Hill.  James Sunderland is still grieving the loss of his wife, Mary; she died three years ago, after a lengthy struggle with an unspecified terminal illness. 

*But now, three years after her death, James has received a mysterious letter, postmarked Silent Hill.  It purports to be from Mary and appears to be in her handwriting; she reminds James of the happy time they spent in Silent Hill years before and how he had always promised to take her back there before she died, but never did.  But now, she says, she’s waiting for him there, in their “special place.” 

*James has been stopped by a roadblock on the way into town, so he leaves his car by the lake and heads through the woods, into town on foot. 

*It’s kind of a gray day, in case you were wondering.  A little overcast.  A hint of fog perhaps. 

*As James makes his way through the woods, the game uses the sound effects of the dogs from Silent Hill 1 as ambient sound, as if the dogs are sort of in the distance, but approaching.  They never show up.  I don’t think the dogs actually ever appear in this game.  But I like that the game uses the sounds as a way to unsettle the player immediately. 

*Also not in this game at all, skinless pterodactyls and giant moths.  And not a gyromancer to be found. 

* “It was foretold by gyromancy” is genuinely one of my favorite video game quotes ever.  So stupid. 

*Okay, let me just say it right off the top here.  I really enjoyed the first Silent Hill.  I found the exploration and puzzle solving to be quite satisfying and the atmosphere to be really creepy in a fun way.  It was visually striking and had a great score.  It’s let down by terrible voice acting and a story that eventually became idiotic.  But I recommended it.

*Silent Hill 2 is leaps ahead of Silent Hill 1 in every way and it is not just a fun survival horror game; it is a genuinely great game for a lot of reasons, a masterpiece actually.  So, I’m about to spoil the hell out of the game, but it’s a game that really should be experienced by playing it.  It’s a game that really transcends its genre, I think, to become a game any serious gamer should be familiar with; if you’re a gamer into horror, you simply HAVE to play it.  If you’re just a person who is interested in the ways in which storytelling in games has expanded, how games have become more serious over the years and how they have dealt and do deal with serious topics . . . Silent Hill 2 is a must play. 

*Anyway, everything that Silent Hill 1 got right, Silent Hill 2 continues to get right.  The foggy atmosphere of these early stretches of the game and the unsettling score and sound design are all still in effect. 

*In the woods, James comes across a small church with a cemetery and it’s there that he meets Angela Orosco, a young woman who claims to have come to Silent Hill looking for her family as well, specifically her mother.

*Angela’s character is immediately unsettling.  She speaks in an overly childish way.  As the game progressed, I figured out she’s supposed to still be a teenager, but I was taking her for being in her early twenties. 

*I also think James is supposed to be like thirty, but the faces in this game are not great.  Everyone looks like they’re about twenty years older than they’re supposed to be and have been heavy smokers. 

*The voice acting in this game is good.  Like, not great, except for one bit in particular.  It’s still got that kind of stilted quality.  But it’s not terrible like in the first game.  And I think that the somewhat unnatural flatness of delivery kind of works for James in particular.  It’s not natural and it’s not super-emotional, but I think it’s good.  James is kind of lost in a haze emotionally and he sounds, not bored like Harry in the first game, but just kind of in shock.  Guy Cihi is the actor.  Likewise, Donna Burke’s performance as Angela is not what you’d call subtle.  But Angela is an unsettling character, extremely unsettling as we’ll discover; her overly childish voice is part of that. 

*We’ll get into it more.  Angela is an incredibly compelling part of this game for me and she’s interesting to talk about in terms of the remake.  I’ll probably break around halfway through the game’s story to talk about my thoughts on Bloober and the remake since, by then, we’ll have a strong enough handle on the game for me to dig into some stuff. 

*I do find it very interesting that one of the things Konami did when they reissued the game for PS3 was replace the voice acting.  I mean, I guess, that’s not interesting really.  What I find interesting is that the reaction was so negative.  Well into the PS3 generation, people still wanted the original 2001 era voice acting.  I think that goes to my point.  It’s not naturalistic, it is stilted, it isn’t emotionally obvious most of the time, but it feels right.  It’s off, if you get me, in exactly the right way this game needs to be a little off. 

*I didn’t listen to any of the HD Collection voice acting.  I’ve heard it’s bad, that’s all.  Quite often, it seems to me, the voice acting is the place where these early games fall apart, even more so than in the graphics.  I mean, you can view old graphics as being stylized now, you know?  It’s the reason people still make games with “retro” graphics.  But bad acting is often just bad acting.  You can’t take bad acting seriously the way you can old graphics.  At least in my opinion.  So, anyway, yeah, I think the voice acting works here. 

*Angela & James part, wishing each other luck, and James proceeds on into town. 

*The map mechanic here is exactly the same as it was in the first game, which is to say that I like it.  It’s more satisfying once you’re inside a building, but you get a map immediately that lets you navigate through the streets. 

*Anyway, you’ll find your typical items, a radio that emits static when monsters are nearby, a wooden club that you can use to kill monsters, roadblocks and a key or two.  I won’t go into great detail about the moment to moment exploration. 

*The atmosphere on the streets is good, of course.  The first big location you explore is the Woodside Apartments. 

*One of the first things you find in the Apartments is a flashlight which is good because now that we’re inside out of the fog, we’re into the main aesthetic of this game which is essentially pitch darkness.  I’ll talk more about this in a bit. 

*On the third floor, you’ll find a key on the other side of a grate.  You can almost reach it, but just as you have it almost in your hand, a young girl darts out of the shadows, kicks it away from you and dashes into the darkness laughing.  This is Laura.  She is not my favorite person, I’ll tell you that. 

*So, just as a reminder from my Silent Hill 1 review, the basic mode of exploration here is that you go around and try all the rooms.  Some of them have things in them, some don’t.  Some are locked, but you’ll end up finding a key later and you can come back.  There are puzzles involving, you know, just as an example, figuring out what time you need to set a clock to in one of the rooms in order to . . . get the clock to give you a key or something. 

*I find this kind of “box checking” exploration really satisfying.  You know, you have a map of the three floors of this apartment building and every room is on the map and, for whatever reason, it’s just really fun for me to just systematically go through the map until I’ve looked everywhere.  That’s just satisfying on a base level; what this franchise does is add a creepy, tense and unsettling atmosphere to that mechanic and you put those things together and it is, apparently, like catnip to me. 

*One of the monster types in this game is called a Mannequin and it’s essentially a body made up of four legs.  Here’s a picture. 

*I thought these were kind of goofy looking (though, no lie, the first appearance of one, lurching up into the beam of my flashlight, literally the first thing you see when you get the flashlight and turn it around, did give me a real start).  But here’s the thing; one of the major themes of Silent Hill 2 is sexual abuse.  Let’s just get it out there.  It’s one of the major themes.  In terms of James himself, it’s more just sexual desire, not abuse, but regardless, this is a game pervaded by twisted representations of sexuality. 

*And so I realized that the point of the Mannequins is that, yes, they have two pairs of legs.  Female legs.  You know what else that means they have two of?  This is a female figure made monstrous by the stripping of any identity and the mutation of having, not one, but two, you know, private places. 

*Okay, should I have already done a trigger warning?  Probably.  Okay, here you go.  Silent Hill 2 deals explicitly with perverse sexuality and sexual abuse.  Be warned. 

*So, you might be like, “Dude, you sure you’re not reading into the mannequin creatures?  I mean, maybe they’re just creepy looking mannequin based figures.” 

*Well, here’s the thing.  It’s here, in the Woodside Apartments, that we encounter for the first time one of the most iconic characters in the history of horror games, Pyramid Head. 

*Pyramid Head is initially introduced in gameplay.  I feel like I remember one of the designers talking about how bosses were always introduced with cut scenes and he wanted Pyramid Head to occasionally just show up in game-play.  And that is exactly how he is introduced.  You just go around a corner into a dark hall and he’s at the other end of the hall, just standing absolutely still, looking right at you.  You can’t get to him because of a locked gate so you have to just go through another door and leave him standing there.  But it’s definitely a chilling moment, made all the more so by the way it just happens and you don’t know who or what it is, but it’s just standing there with no real introduction. 

*We’ll unpack some of the symbolism of Pyramid Head as we go here.  Anyway, shortly after he is initially introduced in gameplay, we do get a big cut-scene with him.  In this cut scene . . . well, okay, so there is no nudity here, so it’s not graphic in that way.  But the movements are very clear in what they intend to represent.  James comes around a corner and sees, in another room, Pyramid Head “struggling” with two Mannequins and by “struggling,” yes, I mean, he is very obviously having sex with one of them. 

*Again, the moment is brief in terms of what we actually see, but the movements are very clearly sexual and violent and we cut away as James hides in a closet.  When we cut back, Pyramid Head is holding one of the mannequins by one of their legs and starts dragging it away.  Both of the mannequins seem dead; we’ve killed some already at this point in the game.  I mean, it’s a rape. It’s rape and murder.  It’s sexual violence as a way to essentially introduce the main antagonist of this game. 

*Pyramid Head seems about to discover James in the closet, but James opens fire with his pistol and Pyramid Head leaves. 

*This scene really kind of freaked me out.  Looking back at it later, it’s surprising how brief the moment of obviously sexual behavior is.  There’s no blood, there’s no nudity, like I say.  But it genuinely shocked me.  I knew this game had sexual content in it, but I wasn’t ready for a scene quite like this.

*This is the most graphic scene in the game in terms of actually depicting sexual violence.  I think it’s really smart, if I can use that word, to have this scene here, so early in the game.  It clearly just sets a tone and the game doesn’t have to go quite this obviously violent again specifically because you’re just on edge at all times, knowing that it could. 

*After more exploration (and, in a nicely creepy detail, the discovery of an abandoned baby carriage sitting in an empty swimming pool), James encounters the second most repugnant character in the game, Eddie Dombrovski. 

*Eddie is literally introduced by the sound of him vomiting repeatedly. 

*You follow the sounds to find this big husky fratboy with a backwards baseball cap and jean shorts hugging a toilet and throwing up.  Yes, you can see his butt-crack.  That’s not a joke; you can see his butt-crack because of how he’s bent over the toilet. 

*The vomiting sounds here are . . . vile. 

*I’m not a guy who typically freaks out over vomit scenes.  You know, sometimes they’re gross, but they don’t really get to me or make me sick.  But the sounds here are genuinely disgusting.  And they just go on and on. 

*James is a guy who asks the hard questions: “You’re not friends with that red pyramid thing, are you?” 

*There’s a dead body right outside the bathroom, but Eddie claims not to know anything about it.  His story: he’s not even from Silent Hill . . . something just drew him here.  He then saw some weird monsters and he ran in here and has been hiding ever since.  James counsels him to get out of town as soon as he can.  Eddie recommends that James do the same.  James replies, “I’ll leave as soon as I’m done here.”  Wishing Eddie luck, James leaves, the sound of gagging slowly fading into the distance.

*There’s some lore here delivered via newspapers regarding some dude named Walter Sullivan who was apparently a serial killer and he killed himself in prison.  At his trial, he said “He’s trying to punish me.  The monster!  The red devil!  Forgive me . . . I did it, but it wasn’t me.” 

*This doesn’t really come back at any point in this game, but I believe this guy is in Silent Hill 4. 

*Now, I know a big part of the “purist” take on Silent Hill 2 is that Pyramid Head is specific to James’ story, a manifestation of his grief, guilt and shame.  So, you know, the argument is that Pyramid Head shouldn’t be in any of these other games. 

*And I know that Masahiro Ito, the creator of Pyramid Head, has expressed unhappiness with the way the character has been used since Silent Hill 2. 

*And, look, you create a chthonic icon of primordial terror that is the manifestation of guilt, shame and sexual violence, I get that you’re gonna hit the ******* roof when you see the first plushie. 

*Rogue, don’t be ridiculous, yes, the character has been cheapened over the years, but there’s no way anyone would do a PLUSHIE of Pyrami-

*You know, for when you want to introduce your KID to a chthonic icon of primordial terror that is the manifestation of guilt, shame and sexual violence.

*That particular plush, by the way, and, yes, there are numerous different versions of Pyramid Head plushies out there, is my favorite.  Credit where it is due, it was made by a Reddit user named KingBageldish.  I do not believe this version is for sale anywhere.  You can find other versions on sale on Etsy and such.  I think the officially licensed plush is from FanGamer.  Regardless, the one above is my favorite.  A lot of the others have actually metal weapons, but I like that this one has a plush Great Knife. 

*Anyway, where I’m going with this is that I like the “purist” take on Pyramid Head.  I mean, for one thing, he’s such a frightening and unsettling antagonist in this game that I kind of don’t want to see him cheapened by popping up in every Silent Hill game. 

*On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure this “Pyramid Head is purely a manifestation of James’ psyche” is supported by just the text of Silent Hill 2 itself.  I mean, the “red devil” Walter Sullivan is talking about IS supposed to be Pyramid Head, right?  He says the “red devil” is trying to “punish” him and, no spoilers, that really is Pyramid Head’s role in James’ story as well, an avenging punisher, a judge who carries out his own sentence. 

*I haven’t played Silent Hill 4, so maybe I’m wrong about that. 

*However, I would also just point to the fact that Pyramid Head’s design is based on the pointed hoods worn by the executioners of Silent Hill’s past.  So, I guess even just based on that, it seems more than likely that, over the years, some other broken individuals who have found their way to Silent Hill also conjured pyramid headed beings.  I suppose James created this specific Pyramid Head, but if Pyramid Head showed up in someone else’s story, I’d basically just be like, “Oh, I guess they are also aware of the hooded executioners and they created their own Pyramid Head.” 

*I dunno, just a thought.  That’s pretty inside baseball. 

*James is eventually able to get onto the fire escape and from the fire escape, he is able to jump across the alley and into a window of the Blue Creek Apartments. 

*There’s a great cut scene shot here of the camera going up over James’ head as he prepares to jump and then cutting below him as he does jump.  The cut scenes are, by and large, much more cinematic in this game than in the first one. 

*James is not in this building thirty seconds before he is digging through a clogged toilet because he sees a wallet. 

*This allows you to get a combination so you can open a safe and get bullets.  All things considered, I’d have passed on the whole thing. 

*In one of the apartments here, James encounters Angela again, laying on the floor, seeming pretty out of it, playing with a huge knife. 

*James talks her into giving him the knife, but then she kind of reverts into a childlike reaction and runs away from him, screaming that she’s been bad. 

*Pretty quick after this encounter is when we get into our first boss battle and, yeah, it’s with Pyramid Head. 

*This is the scene where I feel like we really get a lot of the things that make Pyramid Head such a striking antagonist.  He’s dragging the big sword (and the sound design on the sword being dragged across the ground is great) and you really do feel the weight of it in the way he moves.  It’s just a very interesting way that he moves and I think it’s memorable and cool. 

*So, you’re in a kind of flooded basement type area here, so there’s a stairwell in this room that just goes down into water and you need to really drain it in order to progress.  But this leads to a great visual where, once you have “defeated” Pyramid Head by shooting him enough times, he just turns and goes down the stairs and walks into the water until he disappears from sight.  So, his big helmet just slowly sinks under the surface.  It’s cool. 

*The sound design in this game is so good.  There’s a little percussion beat under this scene, but it’s mixed really low, so the main sound is that grinding scrape of the Great Knife (that’s its actual name) dragging on the ground and that classic Silent Hill siren sounding in the distance. 

*Once this is over and the water drains, James finds himself back outside and he quickly encounters Laura, the little girl from before, sitting on a wall and humming to herself. 

*”You’re the one who stepped on my hand.”  “I don’t know.  Maybe I did.” 

*James asks her what she’s doing here in such a dangerous place by herself.  Then he notes that she’s got a letter of some sort.  When he asks her what it is, she drops a real bomb: “None of your business.  You didn’t really love Mary anyway.”  She then leaps down behind the wall, which James can’t get around or over and leaves James puzzled and troubled. 

*James finds his way through the streets to Rosewater Park which he thinks is the “special place” Mary mentioned in her letter to him.  It’s there, in the fog, that we encounter our final significant character, a woman named Maria who resembles Mary to a shocking degree.  “You could be her twin.  Your face, your voice . . .” 

*Maria moves pretty fast: “I don’t look like a ghost, do I?  See?  Feel how warm I am.” 

*James decides that if Rosewater Park isn’t the “special place” Mary referred to that she must mean the Lakeview Hotel.  He sets out to go there and Maria tags along, still setting a land speed record: “I look like Mary, don’t I?  You loved her, right?  Or maybe you hated her.”

*Okay, bit of a fumble at the goal line there.  She tags along anyway.

*That’s right, it’s the only non-annoying escort mission in video game history. 

*Soon enough, James and Maria find themselves at the front door of Pete’s Bowl-o-Rama.  But Maria’s fear of the monsters that have been chasing her has a limit: “I’ll wait here.  I hate bowling.” 

*Inside the bowling alley, you will find Eddie and Laura sharing a pizza. 

*Eddie is smacking VERY loudly in this scene.  I kind of love that they just decided to go all in on the “disgusting mouth sounds” element of this character.

*Laura is being her usual charming self: “So, what did you do?  Robbery, murder?”  “Nah, nothing like that.”  “Hah, you’re just a gutless fatso!” 

*As James enters, Laura takes off through another door.  Eddie remarks that Laura is looking for someone . . . a woman named Mary! 

*James tries to get Eddie to come with him to go after Laura.  James is still concerned about her being on her own.  Eddie decides to stay and eat pizza instead: “She said a fatso like me would just slow her down.” 

*I mean, yeah, I’ll bet she did.  James follows Laura out of the bowling alley.  Maria and James chase Laura through an alley, but she slips through a gap between buildings too small for them to get through.  Luckily, Maria knows where they are and, pulling a key out of her bra, she unlocks a door on a nearby building which leads into the back area of Heaven’s Night, a bar/strip club. 

*In a bit of animation that I like, when Maria turns away from James to get the key out of her bra, James leans to try to see.  It’s surprisingly subtle, but it’s definitely there. 

*So, have I talked about how dark it is in some of these buildings?  It’s at this point that I realized taking Maria inside the buildings was going to have a somewhat unnerving effect, by which I mean, she just vanishes into the darkness sometimes when your flashlight isn’t on her and then you’ll turn around and she’ll be in a totally different place. 

*You know how those NPCs that follow you used to do in those games, just kind of suddenly appearing very close to you or being behind you and then you go around a corner and suddenly they’re waiting for you?  Yeah, like that, only in pitch blackness. 

*You cut through the bar and head back outside and then Maria spots Laura going into . . . yes, of course, Brookhaven Hospital. 

*This isn’t the hospital from Silent Hill 1.  That was, um, Alchemilla Hospital, which is a little less statistically probable than Brookhaven, I’d say.  I say “of course” not because it’s the same hospital, but just because, you know, we were always going to end up in a terrifying hospital in this game, weren’t we? 

*And, just as in Silent Hill 1, when the player arrives at the hospital, it’s the best location encountered so far.  I don’t know if I can say Silent Hill 2 kicks up a notch when you get to the hospital because all the Pyramid Head stuff has been so good already and everything, but, yeah, this is definitely one of the scariest locations in the game, by far the scariest of any to this point. 

*Oh, yeah, the office here is a perfect example of what I was talking about above.  You go up to the office door and Maria is behind you and then you go in and you have your little loading screen and then you’re standing right inside the door.  You step forward to go to the desk and Maria is standing in the corner.  Almost **** myself. 

*Here is where another one of Silent Hill’s most iconic monsters is introduced, the Silent Hill Nurse. 

*So, yeah, they’re monsters in nurse outfits and they stick with the themes of the game so far by being very sexualized while also being grotesque.  They have very short skirts and low cut shirts while also having horribly deformed faces and they lurch about in unsettling ways. 

*So, here’s my take on this.  And the game doesn’t actually say this, unless I missed something or am forgetting something.  But I think these nurses are intended to represent something.  We know that James’ wife, Mary, was sick for a long time before she died.  I suspect that, during her long treatment, James was dealing with sexual frustration and attraction to at least one of the nurses that was taking care of Mary.  Possibly it was just a more free-roaming sexual desire where he viewed all the nurses that way; or maybe it was one in particular.  I don’t know. 

*But I think that he would obviously feel a lot of shame and guilt over those feelings, those desires.  And I think these nurses represent those desires, sexual desire married to something perverse and wrong.  Do they represent the nurses, or nurse, themselves?  Maybe.  The situation here allows James to essentially kill these monstrous women, these sexually desirable but also monstrous women, with impunity.  Maybe he’s angry at those women for “making” him feel the way he did.  Or perhaps they represent, not the women, but just James’ desires for those women.  Just some thoughts on this particular enemy design. 

*And, look, with a lot of games, I would be like, “You’re reaching, dude,” if someone started talking about enemy design in the way I’m talking right now.  Like, look, we’re not talking about Dostoevsky, dude.  Of course, the first two Silent Hill games were specifically intended to be more novelistic; Crime & Punishment was an explicit inspiration for this game.  And I do genuinely believe that this game in particular (less so, the first one) really is that layered and thematic.

*So I would call this one of the rare instances of way over the top sexualization of female characters in a video game where it isn’t just exploitative or gratuitous.  I think it’s there for a reason, an artistic reason. 

*And, just to take things back to a more primal level of gameplay, it’s at around this point that you get the SHOTGUN. 

*The hospital is a really big area with lots of backtracking because of locked doors and keys and codes and all that.  It’s great, is what I mean. 

*Maria gets sick at a certain point on the third floor and she ends up laying down in one of the hospital rooms.  You leave her to go look for Laura.

*James still has a lot of exploring to do around the hospital when this happens and, in a detail I really like, though I didn’t know it at the time, how many times you go back to check on Maria impacts the ending you’ll get. 

*This is the kind of thing that I like when it comes to in-game behavior impacting what ending the player gets.  Because it’s thematic.  It’s the game judging how much you care about Maria, how worried you are about her, based on whether you go back to check on her at times.  I’m less enamored of things like, “If you ever examine this particular knife, then you won’t get ending A or B.”  They are sometimes just very random like that.  And this game has a couple of things like that.  But I like this thing with checking on Maria.  It becomes about actual character choice that comes out of the character’s emotional state driving the ending and that makes sense.  Like I said, I didn’t know this at the time, because I do play through these things knowing as little as possible. 

*There’s another very brief encounter with Pyramid Head on the roof of the hospital.  He knocks James off the roof and James falls into an area of the hospital that he had previously not been able to access.  The appearance of Pyramid Head here is one of the few genuine jump scares in this game. 

*The general vibe of Silent Hill is much more focused on creepy atmosphere and a disturbing vibe.  They even give you the radio which warns you when monsters are in the area by emitting static.  Silent Hill 1 had a couple of jump scares and this one has a couple.  But overall, I find it worth remarking on how seldom they happen in these games. 

*In this part of the hospital, you have to open a metal box that is locked up and chained to a bed in one of the rooms.  It requires getting a number code for a combination lock and several keys.  You have to backtrack through a couple of the floors of the building.  They make you really want to see what’s in this box, let me tell you.   

*“You got a piece of hair.” 

*The Silent Hill franchise is not particularly remembered for being funny, but it has its moments. 

*So, how you use it is by tying a fish-hook to it and using the hair-hook combo to reach down into a grate and get a key.  So, it’s not like you even need this particular piece of hair in order to do a magical ritual or anything.  It doesn’t even need to be hair at all.  I mean, I guess this HOSPITAL doesn’t have any thread or string? 

*I mean, look, Silent Hill of all franchises does not need to make logical sense as far as I’m concerned.  I’m not really even making fun of the game for it.  I just did think the “You got a piece of hair” text was funny. 

*James finally catches up with Laura and asks her to please tell him how she knows Mary.  She asks if he’s going to yell at her if she refuses.  He says he won’t.  Laura says that she met Mary “last year” while Mary was in the hospital. 

*James immediately yells “YOU LIAR!!”

*Of course, James tells Laura that Mary was already dead last year; she’s been dead for three years.  Laura says, “Fine, don’t believe me.”  James then tells Laura to come with him, but, using the most ridiculously obvious ruse imaginable, Laura tells James that there’s a letter from Mary in the next room and when he goes into the next room, Laura locks him in and runs away. 

*This is probably the single dumbest thing James does in the entire game.  “Is it in there?”  “Yeah.  In the back.  It’s further in the back.”  You moron. 

*James is then attacked by these weird creatures in cages that are hanging from the ceiling and he has to kill them with his shotgun. 

*So, one of the pieces of received wisdom on the Silent Hill franchise is that the combat is terrible.  I don’t think the combat is terrible.  It’s not inspired in any way.  But there’s nothing wrong with it except how unimaginative and repetitive it is.  Typically. 

*This scene . . . the combat is ******* terrible.  I just found it very hard to shoot at these things while they were hanging from the ceiling.  And there are a lot of them and they’re moving, so it’s hard to keep clear of them.  Anyway, really bad combat. 

*Laura also calls James a “fartface” before running away. 

*Anyway, after James defeats these enemies, we hear the classic Silent Hill siren and, yup, just when you’d kind of forgotten it was a thing, Silent Hill transitions to the Otherworld. 

*The Otherworld is better in this game too.  It’s not exactly the same map as the regular world.  Like when the transition happens, you’re locked in this small room, but then when it’s over, you’re outside in a garden with it raining. 

*Anyway, James ends up in the basement of the Otherworld Brookhaven and discovers a secret room behind a bookshelf.  In that room . . . is Maria!  Last seen, you may recall, sleeping in bed on the third floor. 

*James really knows how to talk to a woman: “Mary!  Oh, Maria, it’s you . . . I thought you were . . . Anyway, I’m glad you’re alive.” 

*The facial animations here are not always that great.  It is PS2.  But they absolutely nail the look Maria gives James when he’s like, “Oh, Maria, it’s you . . .”  Very funny. 

*This kind of feels like a commentary on Silent Hill 1.  I remember making fun of the scene where Harry discovers Lisa is still alive after they’ve been separated and he’s just like, “Oh, good, you’re alive how do I get to the sewers from here?”  Because in this scene, in a departure from that one, Maria actually gets angry and screams at James: “’Anyway?’  What do you mean, ‘Anyway?!’  You don’t sound very happy to see me.  I was almost killed back there.  Why didn’t you try to save me?” 

*It’s like James being as callous as Harry was in that scene, but this time, the woman that our main character is just casually disrespecting actually calls him on his bull****.  I really liked that.  And good voice acting.  Monica Taylor Horgan is the actress who did the voice for both Mary and Maria in this game and she’s absolutely excellent.  She’s occasionally very broad as we talked about before, like when she’s being seductive.  But she’s sometimes very real and emotional.  We’ll talk about her best scene later when she does what I think was probably genuinely the best video game acting ever when this game came out.  But she’s also really good in this moment of anger. 

*So, Maria’s back with James and they set out, once again, to try to find Laura.  James tells Maria that Laura tricked him, but Maria insists they continue looking for her.  She says she didn’t know Laura until she saw her at the bowling alley, but somehow she feels like Laura is her responsibility. 

*So, I haven’t been talking about all of the puzzles, because, you know, this review is going to be long enough as it is.  But I really have to discuss this elevator puzzle that happens now. 

*When you get on the elevator at this point, this cheesy game-show host voice comes over the speaker and goes into this spiel: “Welcome to another exciting edition of ‘Trick or Treat!’  Here you either answer the questions correctly and win a great prize or fail to answer them correctly and receive the punishment!  It all depends on you!  *thunderous applause*  And our lucky, or should I say ‘unlucky,’ challenger today is James!  *thunderous applause*.” 

*You then get three Silent Hill trivia questions, one related to Silent Hill 1 and two related to this game, one related to a document that can easily be missed.  You have to go to a room on the third floor in order to enter your answers.  If you get them correct, you get some sort of bonus; I don’t remember if it was more ammo or health, but it was that kind of thing.  If you don’t get them right, you lose health.  This entire thing is totally optional; if you don’t know the answers, you can just skip it since the prizes you get aren’t required for the game to continue. 

*This was just so utterly unexpected.  I mean, you get used to Silent Hill hitting you with something unexpected, but it’s usually something grotesque or horrifying, not something kind of cheesy and wacky.  As crazy as these games have been, I was still not ready for a gameshow skit. 

*Anyway, once you’ve done that, and solved a couple more item related puzzles, you and Maria head to the basement only to encounter Pyramid Head again.  This is essentially just a chase scene; you have to run through some long hallways in order to get to an elevator.  Maria is lagging a bit behind. 

*Maria gets to the elevator as the doors are closing, so the two of you are wrestling to get the doors open again because she can’t quite squeeze through.  Suddenly, Pyramid Head catches up and plunges his Great Knife into Maria’s back, killing her.  Pyramid Head pulls her back from the doors, the doors close and the elevator travels up.     

*The moment after this death was really a great moment.  James leaves the elevator and stumbles outside back into the streets of Silent Hill.  It’s now pitch black outside as well.  James pauses and we cycle through the following text: “Maria’s dead.  I couldn’t protect her.  Once again, I couldn’t do anything to help.  Laura has run off somewhere.  Mary . . . What . . . What should I do?  Are you really waiting somewhere for me?  Or is this your way of taking . . . ?  I’m going to find Mary . . . It’s the only thing I have left to hope for.” 

*Cheesy as it sounds, I found this scene really emotionally effective.  Losing Maria really is a kind of repeat of losing Mary and James is really at his lowest point so far in this game.  This isn’t even voiced; it’s just text.  But something about it really worked for me. 

*This is a moment I have a lot in horror games, moments where I feel really connected to the character and I kind of give up hope, but only know that I have something left to do.  Here it’s finding Mary; it’s at this point that I gave up on James surviving this journey.  The other similar moment that’s coming to mind is when the mineshaft collapses behind Blake in Outlast 2.  That was a moment of realizing, “Well, we’re not getting out of here.  But I’m going to find Lynn.  I told her I would and I will.  And we’ll be together when it ends.” 

*And so I just ran out into the dark streets.  Nurses and other monsters were roaming around.  I put my gun away and got my club out.  I started purposely seeking out monsters and clubbing them to death.  My version of James has lost it completely at this point. 

*Anyway, you get a map right before you leave the hospital that tells you where to go.  James has quite a bit of running around to do to gather some items before he can head to his next location, which is the Silent Hill Historical Society.  You gotta find a wrench and a key and I’ll skip it. 

*It’s fun though, running through the streets, feeling totally reckless, not afraid anymore, just driven. 

*I project a lot in these games. 

*I did like this note that James find, painted on a wall, “If you want to see Mary, you should just die.  Or you might be heading to a different place than Mary, James.” 

*So, look, I keep talking about how dark this game is.  Allow me to share a brief gif of a playthrough.

*Like, the original has dark sequences as well, but the overwhelming sense memory I have of Silent Hill is of that gray fog with snow drifting down.  Silent Hill felt very cold to me in that game. 

*The overwhelming sense memory of this game is being just totally surrounded by pitch-black darkness with just my tiny flashlight.  It’s a much more claustrophobic game and, even though the day was itself very grey, there’s a sweatiness to Silent Hill 2 that I didn’t feel in the original.  It feels hot; inside the buildings, it feels very close, the air is stale. 

*Yes, the game is that atmospheric and, for all the problems I have with the first game, it also has a palpable atmosphere.  You feel the temperature in these games. 

*Boy, it is a LONG run to the Historical Society from the Park, which is where you find the key. 

*In the Historical Museum, you find a painting of Pyramid Head and his Great Knife, surrounded by hanging cages with those weird creatures in them.  It’s titled, “Misty Day, Remains of Judgment.” 

*James then finds a staircase/tunnel leading down into darkness and, naturally, takes it.  This thing is so long.  I feel it took a couple of minutes just to go through it and I was running.  This is a pretty suspenseful bit actually.

*We find ourselves in some kind of underground facility, all rusted metal doors and hallways and darkness.

*And then we encounter a truly iconic moment in the Silent Hill franchise, a square pit in the middle of a room.  “’The hole’s dark and I can’t see anything.’  Will you jump down? YES NO”

*It was not that long ago that I saw a prompt in some game that asked “Will you jump down?”  I forget what it was.  Anyway, you see references to that little moment in a lot of horror games. 

*I feel like I’d like hang from one of the sides and kind of dangle down against the wall and then drop like that, kind of hugging the wall.  James just ******* jumps feet first right into the middle of the hole. 

*After falling an unspecified distance, James finds himself at the bottom of a brick well.  Breaking through the wall, he finds himself in a small room with a key.  As soon as James picks up the key, his ******* flashlight GOES OUT. 

*That’s right, the flashlight goes out in the darkest game I’ve ever played.  Here’s a gif of the screen in the moment after the light goes out.

*You know what, this game is funny.  That’s hilarious actually.  That is actually still gameplay; it’s not a loading screen or anything.  And it’s just PITCH BLACK. 

*Go turn the brightness up, some people would say.  Let me tell you that I would rather die.

*Heard a guy on a podcast the other day talking about how he always puts horror games on maximum brightness.  I mean, why are you even playing the games at that point?  I tend to hate gatekeepers, but, seriously, Silent Hill 2 on maximum brightness is just the wrong way to play it.  Unless you have some sort of visual problem or something; I’m understanding the accessibility arguments more and more lately and that is legitimate, of course. 

*But just me, playing this game, in order to have a frightening, unsettling and atmospheric experience?  No way am I turning the brightness up. 

*Anyway, back at it, luckily, you picked up a battery back in the hospital, so James just replaces the battery.  This is all in service of nothing but a jump scare because when the lights come back on, the room is covered in roaches. 

*The key is for a locked door that covers ANOTHER dark pit: “’It’s pitch black beyond the door.  I can’t tell how far the blackness stretches.’  Will you go down? YES NO”

*Jump down this hole and James finds himself in the cafeteria of Toluca Prison, a new fantastic location, every bit as good, if not better than, Brookhaven Hospital.  I think it’s better actually, by which I mean it’s worse.  It’s about this point that the darkness just really started wearing on me. 

*Anyway, who should James find in the cafeteria, but that gutless fatso, Eddie Dombrovski. 

*Eddie is not doing well: “Killin’ a person ain’t no big deal.” 

*Eddie has apparently just shot a guy who is laying dead right next to him.  And he finally confesses that, yeah, he killed the guy back in the apartment building as well.  But it was self-defense, Eddie argues.

* “I didn’t do anything!  He just came after me!  Besides he was making fun of me with his eyes!”

*I didn’t say he argued it WELL.

*James offers a little push-back on the whole “murdering people because of the way they look at you” idea and it really looks like Eddie’s about to **** us up, but then he just starts laughing, says he was joking it about it all and leaves. 

*This guy is really on my last nerve. 

*James then moves into the prison proper and this is the scariest and most oppressive environment in the game.  It’s all just these incredibly tight hallways with cells packed into them on either side and, of course, pitch darkness and constant radio static. 

*One of my favorite moments in the game so far: “Books are scattered all over the bed and floor. ‘Black Magic from the Abyss.’ ‘Resurrection of the Dead.’ ‘The Chronicle of Agrippa.’ ‘Manuscript of the Iron Rings.’ I guess I shouldn’t worry about these too much.” 

*So, at first, the prison is kind of an open environment, as a lot of them are, by which I mean, you don’t know yet where you have to go to collect the things needed to progress.  So at one point, there were two different hallways I could go down. 

*So, I went into one of the hallways and there was just this incredibly deep mumbling voice kind of chanting on the soundtrack.  And I was just like, “OK, so I’ll come back to this one” and I just turned around and left. 

*That was a really creepy soundtrack bit.  Really scary. 

*So, the basic items you’re searching for in this area are three metal tablets, “The Glutton,” “The Oppressor,” & “The Seductress.”  This is clearly supposed to be Eddie, James & Angela.  Even though I don’t think they’re entirely accurate.  I certainly don’t think, as we’ll discover, that Angela fits the model of a “seductress.”  Perhaps in some way these tablets represent the worst elements of how these people see themselves.  That’s an interesting take on it. 

*Eventually, you are able to open a hatch in the floor of the prison and are once again faced with a “Will you jump in?” decision.  And so James descends deeper yet again. At the bottom of that trap door?  A hole in the ground.  At the bottom of that hole?

*Another hol-nah, just kidding, it’s actually just a door this time. 

*Go through the door.  There’s a hole in the ground.  I’m not joking. 

*I really liked the way the game just makes James continue to descend, deeper and deeper and deeper.  It really did have a psychological effect on me, this feeling of just getting farther and farther underground. 

*At the bottom of that hole, an elevator.  Guess which direction you go in it. 

*The ride down in the elevator is literally over a minute.  Of just standing there, watching the stone wall scroll past you. 

*James is now in the Labyrinth, a series of halls and doors that are . . . confusing and also sometimes you’re in a sewer. 

*I would say this is a good sewer level.  I mean, I’ve talked before about how much I hate sewer levels and Silent Hill 1 had a really, really awful one.  But this one is okay.  It’s not bad. 

*A really weird puzzle where you rotate a cube with faces on it.  Human faces, I mean; I know every cube has faces.  It seems to turn the room you’re in so that certain doors are lined up with doors that lead into other rooms and other doors just open to blank walls.  It’s cool and hard to explain, but I really liked it.

*One of those rooms is separated by bars that go down the center of the room.  On the other side of those bars, calmly sitting in a chair, looking none the worse for wear . . . Maria, last seen as a shish kabob on Pyramid Head’s Great Knife. 

*Or wait, James suddenly can’t be sure who this is: “James, honey, did something happen to you?  After we got separated in that long hallway?  Are you confusing me with someone else?  *creepy laugh* You always were so forgetful.  Remember that time in the hotel?  You forgot that videotape we made.  I wonder if it’s still there.”  “How do you know about that?  Aren’t you . . . Maria?” “I’m not your Mary.” 

*Very good delivery on that “I’m not your Mary” line. 

*Maria/Mary/Not Your Mary: “It doesn’t matter who I am.  I’m here for you, James.”  She then poses seductively on her chair and tells James to come and get her. 

*There is a door on the other side of the bars, so presumably we have to work our way around to that door somehow. 

*After more exploration, James finds himself in a very industrial room filled with chains and pulleys.  On a blood-stained table . . . is the Great Knife!

*This was an awesome moment of just suddenly realizing where I was.  This is Pyramid Head’s lair! 

*And you can ******* take the Great Knife! 

*Pyramid Head is also roaming this area and I don’t know how genuinely he is randomized, but he seems like he is. 

*This is that thing again about having bosses just show up in gameplay instead of being introduced via cut scene.  And that is exactly what happened to me.  I just went around a corner and then I turned around to go back and he was just right there.  Biggest jump scare of the game for me.  I literally shouted, “OH ****.” 

*Then James finds a newspaper that has a story in it that is very fragmentary, with a lot of missing words and such, but, long story short, it seems that Angela Orosco brutally murdered her father and brother by stabbing them repeatedly. 

*And this is where things get really bad with Angela’s story. 

*James presses on and finds Angela alone in a strange room.  She’s being menaced by an extremely strange character.  Yes, even by the standards of this game, it’s an extremely strange character. 

*I’m just going to put a picture here.  It’s a monster that’s kind of stuck in a doorframe and is kind of part of the door. 

*Oh, God, okay, actually pulling up pictures and looking at them . . . that is . . . um, that is not what this thing is. 

 *Okay, TRIGGER WARNING – Sexual Abuse.

*Okay, that’s not a doorframe, that’s a bed frame.  It’s a figure looming over and trapped in a bedframe.  With what appears to be a really large phallic . . . thing coming out the front. 

*Anyway, we were going to talk about this anyway, but I wasn’t quite prepared to figure out what this bed frame monster actually was.  That is truly awful.  I’ll admit I didn’t quite figure out what it was during gameplay, but . . . that is really bad. 

*Apparently, the name of this character is “Abstract Daddy.” 

*I mean, ****. 

*Anyway, what we were going to have to talk about even before I knew what this guy was is this: Angela was raped by her father and her brother when she was a child.  And not just a one-off thing.  She was . . . abused for a long time until eventually she killed them. 

*Okay, so this is going to lead into a larger discussion of this game, but let’s just finish up this scene because this turns into a small boss battle where James has to fight this creature.  Once you beat it, it falls to the ground and Angela runs over and starts kicking it and eventually, Sidney Prescott style, drops a TV on its head. 

*The scene immediately gets very uncomfortable, unsettling and disturbing as Angela turns on James: “Oh, I see, you’re trying to be nice to me, right?  I know what you’re up to.  It’s always the same.  You’re only after one thing.” “No, that’s not true at all.” “You don’t have to lie.  Go ahead and say it.  You could just force me.  Beat me like he always did.” 

*I’ll say it again.  Voice acting, really good.  Donna Burke does Angela’s voice. 

*Angela eventually becomes physically sick and starts retching.  James makes the mistake of reaching for her shoulder at which she snaps “Don’t touch me.”  Then her whole demeanor changes; she seems suddenly sinister, not the frightened victim she was just a moment before.  “You said your wife Mary was dead, right?  Liar!”  She then leaves, remarking that James probably found someone else because he was tired of Mary. 

*So, let’s talk about it.  At this point, no game had really dared even broach something like child sexual abuse, right?  I mean, I can’t think of what game it would have been.  And it’s a huge risk, just from a creative standpoint.  It would be very easy for it to feel exploitative or cheap or like it’s only there for shock value. 

*But that’s not how it feels.  It’s horrifying, of course, and deeply disturbing as the game gives us the puzzle pieces we need to figure out what has happened with Angela and her father.  But it doesn’t feel out of step with the game; it doesn’t feel exploitative or like it’s not being treated with enough seriousness. 

*I suppose some would say that a game of this period couldn’t treat the subject as it deserved and, look, this is not a super-nuanced exploration of this issue.  But what I am saying is that Angela feels enough like a real character that this story element feels horrifying and disturbing in the, strange as it is to say it, right ways.  In the ways a horror story should make you feel.  It doesn’t feel gross or disturbing in the wrong way, by which I mean disturbing because it’s so poorly done.  I don’t quite know how to say it much better than that.  It . . . well, it works. 

*And that leads us to the realization, I think, that Silent Hill 2 is genuinely a work of art.  Having an element like this in a lot of games would feel tacky and gross.  But Silent Hill 2 is working on emotional levels, story levels and character levels where this element works. Any game that wasn’t functioning on the levels of a work of art would collapse under the weight of this story element. 

*Is it time to detour into talking about the Bloober Team remake?  I think so.  Angela is a good place to pivot to discussing that for reasons I’ll explain in a second. 

*So, I’ve played Layers of Fear, which Bloober Team released in 2016.  They’d been around since 2010 and released quite a few games, none of which gained much traction.  But Layers of Fear was their first foray into the psychological horror genre and it was tailor made for YouTube reactors, so it was a pretty big hit. 

*Bloober Team would follow up with a lot of psychological horror games.  Observer from 2017 was pretty well received and then Blair Witch in 2019 was seen by a lot of people as being a step forward for them and a better game than their others. 

*Then in 2021, they released The Medium, easily their most ambitious game yet, and I heard a lot of people say it was their best so far.  There was also controversy surrounding some elements of the game’s treatment of mental illness; I haven’t done much looking into that because I prefer to approach a game without a lot of criticisms already pre-formed in my head and I have actually been wanting to play The Medium.  Now that Bloober’s gotten the go ahead for the Silent Hill 2 remake, maybe I’ll use that as my excuse to finally get around to it. 

*Regardless, my personal experience with Bloober has been very limited.  I’ve only played Layers of Fear and its DLC, Inheritance.  I’ve reviewed them both before in this very thread.  Layers of Fear review; Layers of Fear: Inheritance review.

*If you’re interested in my in-depth thoughts check those out.  I won’t rehash all of that here, but I will just mention a couple of things that are worth restating in the context of Bloober’s planned remake of Silent Hill 2. 

*I thought Layers of Fear had a fine premise; you play a painter who’s wandering around your mansion, gathering supplies in order to finish your magnum opus.  You’re, of course, also going insane and slowly uncovering the tragic backstory and such. 

*I had two major criticisms of Layers of Fear.  The first was that it wasn’t scary.  And the second was that it had no atmosphere. 

*This really does not sound like the team you want working on a Silent Hill 2 remake. 

*Layers of Fear also had a real problem in terms of the way it seemed so obviously inspired by P.T.  Now, P.T. is a great game, one that I love.  But Layers of Fear is basically a way longer P.T. that isn’t scary or atmospheric. 

*And it really crossed the line for me from “inspired by” to “rip-off of” at some points.  See the below gifs.  The first gif is Lisa’s attack from P.T.  The second gif is the wife’s attack from Layers of Fear. 

*I find that egregiously awful.  It’s just so incredibly similar.

*The game also really ran a “turn-around” mechanic into the ground whereby you would have to turn around and things would change behind your back.  I heard John Wolfe, one of the few YouTuber gamers I actually still enjoy watching, say “Don’t Bloober Team me” while playing a game the other day when that game had a scene with a “turn-around” gimmick.  I got really tired of that mechanic.  Anyway, read my review.  I’m overall negative on Layers of Fear and even more so on the DLC.

*I did also watch someone play through the demo for Observer and, while watching someone play through something is different than playing through it yourself, it looked annoying as hell.  Like, they loved their glitchy visual things in Layers of Fear and in Observer, you play as an android or something, so the glitchy vision actually makes sense, so they just went ******* all in. 

*And some of the effects are pretty cool, but it’s just non-stop glitching effects of various kinds and after watching those ten to fifteen minutes of the demo, I just think it would give anyone a migraine to try to actually play it. 

*It’s possible that, since it’s the demo, they tried to load it down with a lot of different effects and in the game, it isn’t as constant and as extreme as it is in the demo.  I would certainly hope that’s the case.  Because otherwise, it’s awful.

*So, my personal experience with Bloober is essentially one game, one DLC and one demo and I am negative on all of them. 

*That said, I know that Blair Witch and The Medium are generally considered as better games and I can’t speak to those at all.  Hopefully, they have improved. 

*I will point out that there is one major hurdle that I think the Silent Hill 2 remake is going to have to get over, no matter who develops it and that is the character of Angela.  I suspect that if Angela in the remake is anything like Angela in the original, it will cause a tremendous amount of controversy. 

*Thing is that in this version of Silent Hill, it seems like Silent Hill kind of calls people there to be punished.  There’s a purgatorial aspect to Silent Hill in this game.  Maybe hellish, which is different than purgatorial. 

*I mean, we’ve gotten a lot of backstory on Eddie so far and he’s an unrepentant piece of ****.  He will later say to James in an encounter that James needs to stop acting so innocent.  “This town called you too,” he will say.  More on why Silent Hill called James later, but Eddie’s drift is obvious. 

*Angela’s “sin” seems to be that she murdered the man who had been sexually abusing her for years.  Is Silent Hill 2 saying that this is a sin for which she needs to be punished?  Even more troubling is that the “punishment” she seems to be going through is a re-enactment of her abuse.  The Abstract Daddy character is clearly an avatar for her father.  Does Angela “deserve” Hell for killing a man who had sexually abused her for years?  And is that Hell for her to relive that abuse?  That’s obviously really disturbing. 

*So, I have two things to say about this.  One is that, even if the above is the case, well, this is a horror game.  I don’t think that the fact that Angela is faced with the horrible fate I’ve outlined above is to say that she deserves it. 

*But I also think it’s more nuanced than that.  I think there’s a case where you could say that Silent Hill doesn’t call “evil” people, just “damaged” people.  And then once you arrive in Silent Hill, I think we’re supposed to believe that the things a person faces there are manifestations of that person.  A person manifests their own monsters in a way.  That’s certainly the case with James and Pyramid Head and the Nurses, right?  They’re manifestations of James’ broken psyche. 

*So, when these creatures appear and attack Angela, they aren’t “punishing” her, they’re just manifesting out of her brokenness and trauma.  That brokenness and trauma obviously is related to her abuse, so that’s what she manifests.

*There’s also a case to be made that in some way she’s being given the opportunity to carry out more justice.  In this scene, she does ultimately kill the Abstract Daddy.  The treatment of it is not triumphant, but still. 

*Anyway, all of this is basically just to say that I think Angela in this game is one of the best, most thought-provoking, challenging and disturbing video-game characters ever.  I mean, kudos to Team Silent for going there.  They had to know what a huge risk it was. 

*So, given Bloober’s history with “controversial” or “problematic” elements in their games, I’m far from confident that they can get the character of Angela right.  I’m not sure there are very many developers that can. 

*Anyway, that’s my thoughts on the Bloober Team remake.  Should I go ahead and briefly say a word or two about the other games teased in that Silent Hill announcement? 

*I mean, this thing is going to be a million pages long already.  What’s one more? 

*Actually, it is taking me so long to write this epic poem of a review that some of these games will probably already be OUT by the time I get it posted. 

*I don’t actually have much to say because I am trying to not take in a lot of media about them because I want to be surprised by the games when they do come out. 

*But I know there’s the game Silent Hill f.  That is coming from a Taiwanese developer and that it’s set in 1960s Japan.  I’m intrigued.  I mean, that’s an interesting setting all by itself.  As the setting for a Silent Hill game, it’s doubly intriguing; I mean, Silent Hill games have traditionally been set in Silent Hill.  This looks like it’s going to be a game that expands the setting and the lore.  Expanding the lore isn’t always a good thing, but I’m intrigued. 

*And then there’s Silent Hill: Townfall which is being developed by No Code and distributed with Annapurna.  I find this one the most intriguing of them all, I think.  I know nothing about it at this point, but Annapurna has mainly been involved with heavily story-based games.  I really loved Florence and they were also involved with Kentucky Route Zero, one of my top five video games of all time.  I was very mixed on If Found . . . though I think I did give If Found a conditional recommendation. Regardless, the best thing about the Annapurna games I’ve played so far has always been the characters.  

*And then there’s No Code, the actual developers.  I’m familiar with them mainly from their game Stories Untold which came out quite a few years ago now. 

*Now, I am admittedly rather mixed on Stories Untold overall, but I’ll explain why this kind of mixed isn’t the same as the mixed I am on Layers of Fear.  First of all, Stories Untold is an anthology horror game with four stories.  You’re intended to play through each story in one go; there’s no save state anywhere within the stories.  Luckily, they’re mostly pretty short. 

*I won’t go over my whole review on Stories Untold.  If you’re interested in getting more detail, here’s my full review of it.       

*The best section of Stories Untold is the first story, The House Abandon.  It’s set-up in such a way that you’re basically playing an old-school text game within the game. 

*That is your view for the entire first story; some things on and around that desk change, but that desk and that computer is what you’re looking at the entire time you’re playing The House Abandon.  And yet, I found it genuinely really scary and very disturbing.  Here’s a pull quote from my original review:  “This first story really knocked me out.  It’s incredibly creepy and ambiguous and disturbing, hinting at psychological horrors without ever going fully into detail.  I’m comfortable calling The House Abandon a masterpiece, in fact.  It’s essentially a text game, but I found it genuinely scary.” 

*I was less high on the rest of the game, especially the third story, but I think the point stands.  And even in the stories I didn’t love, what the game did have was a ton of atmosphere.  Like the third story, which I didn’t like, had a great setting; it was just kind of a gameplay issue with that one. 

*All in all, I’m way more optimistic about what No Code can do in the Silent Hill setting than I am about what Bloober Team can do there.  I’m more excited about Townfall than I am the Silent Hill 2 remake, for sure. 

*Anyway, my thoughts on some of the new Silent Hill stuff.  Guess we’d better get back to Silent Hill 2 which it seems like I haven’t talked about for a really long time. 

*Back to the Labyrinth after Angela leaves.  James eventually finds his way to the room where Maria is, but he’s too late.  She’s dead (again), laying on the bed.  James has failed a third time to save Mary/Maria. 

*After leaving this location, James stumbles across Eddie again, once again looming over a dead body.  Eddie has a gun and he says that he killed the man because he was always making fun of him. 

*I don’t know, I found some of this dialogue genuinely chilling: “Well, maybe he was right.  Maybe I am nothing but a fat, disgusting piece of ****.  But ya know what?  It doesn’t matter if you’re smart, dumb, ugly, pretty . . . it’s all the same once you’re dead.” 

*I mean, I know this wasn’t the intentions of the game-makers because they didn’t really have this phenomenon in exactly the way then that we do now, but that really sounds a little like incel talk to me. 

*James proves himself once again to be not the smartest guy in the world: “From now on, if anyone makes fun of me, I’ll kill ‘em.”  “Eddie, have you gone nuts?” 

*So, yeah, it’s time for our next boss battle and it’s Eddie.  I don’t know why this was as surprising to me as it was.  I just wasn’t expecting to have to fight one of the other human characters.  I mean, it seems obvious to me now that this was always where this relationship was going since Eddie hates when people challenge him and James has done nothing but argue with him every time they saw each other. 

*This boss battle actually spills into another area, which is kind of cool.  And it’s a big meat locker, you know, with the meat hanging on hooks and everything.  It looks really good actually when Eddie is off screen and you can’t really see past all of the meat slabs.

*During this scene in the meat locker is where Eddie shares that he shot a guy in the knee once because he knew the guy loved playing football and he once . . . my God, he tortured a dog in some unspecified way, but it ended with the dog in so much agony that it “chewed its own guts out.”  “It was fun!” Eddie says. 

*He’s genuinely disturbing.  Like I don’t find him cheesy at all really.  His look is kind of stereotypical and cheesy, but he works in this scene. 

*James tells Eddie that he needs help and this is the thing I talked about a bit before: “Don’t get all holy with me, James.  This town called you too.  You and me are the same.  We’re not like other people.”

*Unfortunately, Eddie follows this thought-provoking meditation on the nature of evil and the metaphysical elements of the town of Silent Hill by popping out and saying, “Let’s party!” 

*So, okay, that was cheesy. 

*So, I went back and watched a video because I wanted to count how many times you have to shoot Eddie just because I thought the beat after he dies is so funny.  With the rifle, which is the most damage dealing gun you have at this point, you have to shoot Eddie eight times and then he dies, collapsing to the ground in a pool of blood.

*James: “Eddie?  Eddie?  I . . . I killed a . . . a human being.”  Yes, James, you just methodically pumped eight high-caliber rounds directly into his chest from about four feet away.  I think he’s dead. 

*I did think that was funny, but then the game did surprise me and kind of made me feel bad for laughing about it.  Because James then just kneels on the ground next to Eddie and just very quietly says, “A human being” again.  And, you know what?  When was the last time a video game just paused and actually took a beat to remind you that a character was a human being?  An antagonist, no less.  And the game holds that shot of James just kneeling there on one knee next to Eddie for SEVERAL seconds. 

*There’s also no music during this cutscene.  So it’s just dead silence and the camera is on James from behind as he kneels and it’s kind of doing this interesting move where it’s drifting into an angle.  It’s a masterful moment.  Genuinely masterful.  Holy ****. 

*That’s not all that’s great about this moment though.  After the long pause, James stands as says, “Mary . . . did you really die three years ago?”  I’m just going to mention this now because I’ll come back to it later.  You may be quicker on the uptake than I am and already know where this is going, but at the time I took it as James starting to figure out that Mary was still alive, right?  Because I’m reading these encounters with Laura as indicating that Mary faked her death three years ago.  Anyway, we’ll come back to this. 

*Anyway, with Eddie’s death behind us, we move out of the Labyrinth and back outside into the fog. 

 *So, while that Labyrinth section was fine by the standards of your typical sewer/maze level, I think it is the weakest section of the game overall in terms of the gameplay just feeling repetitive.  But it also features the scene with Angela where we find out about her story and the whole final confrontation with Eddie, so . . . I suppose it evens out. 

*But just in terms of the environment, I was really glad when I went through the door to leave the meat locker and I was outside.  I found this environment less scary and more just confusing.  And, of course, I didn’t have a map to it!

*We’re on a long dock now and at the end of it there’s a rowboat tethered.  James uses this rowboat to row across Toluca Lake to get to the hotel. 

*Just to refresh since we took a long detour to talk about all the new Silent Hill stuff, you may remember that the last time we saw Maria alive, she kind of prodded James mockingly about a videotape he’d made at the hotel. 

*Since that moment, I was kind of thinking I knew where this game was going.  I’m like, okay, so James seems very motivated by his love for Mary, right?  But there’s all this sexual guilt pervading this game.  And then you throw in Eddie’s line to James about James not being as holy as he’s pretending to be.  It’s at this point in the game where I was just like, “So the videotape is of James cheating on Mary while she’s sick, right?  Like that’s what it is.  And it’s going to be devastating.” 

*So, getting closer and closer to finding this mysterious tape is definitely like starting to just loom over the game for me in a really good, dread-soaked way.  This is going to be bad. 

*Rowing across Toluca Lake, James quickly becomes lost in the fog and I spent a ludicrous amount of time apparently just rowing in circles because it’s actually not very far at all across the lake if you just go straight across. 

*So, once you get into the hotel, you’ll find Laura hiding in the restaurant area.  She seems to have decided that James is being honest with her in that he’s there looking for Mary.  She agrees to show him the letter Mary left for her. 

*She asks James not to tell Rachel that she gave James the letter.  James just kind of sighs and says, “Who’s Rachel?” 

*Laura reveals that Rachel was “our nurse” and that she took the letter out of Rachel’s locker. 

*We finally get to read the letter and it’s from Mary.  She says she’s leaving the letter with Rachel to give to Laura after Mary is gone.  Mary says when she leaves she won’t be able to say goodbye, but that she’ll be in a beautiful and happy place.  She tells Laura that she loves her and that “if things had turned out differently,” she would have liked to adopt Laura.  She also asks Laura to be nice to James; “I know you don’t like him, because you think he isn’t nice to me . . . but he really is sweet underneath.” 

*Mary closes the letter wishing Laura a happy eighth birthday.  As James finishes the letter, he has one question on his mind: “Laura, how old are you?”  “Um, I turned eight last week.” 

*God, this is a good story.  Like maybe other people are smarter than I am or something, but I found the mystery of Mary’s supposed death three years ago and her presence in Silent Hill recently (now we find out as recently as last week) to be genuinely compelling and puzzling. 

*Laura says there’s another letter from Mary, a letter that will explain everything.  But she’s dropped it!  So, she runs off to find it and James finds himself alone again in the hotel. 

*Exploration of the hotel functions the same as everywhere else.  James has a map, there are keys and clues, etc.

*There is a pretty funny bit where the player has to take an elevator, but it says “Weight Allowance: One Person.”  So James has to literally put all of his items on this tiny shelf outside the elevator.  And this includes like five different guns and Pyramid Head’s Great Knife and everything.  It’s kind of funny.  I mean, you don’t see the visual, but just the idea is rather hilarious. 

*So, eventually we find a safe and in that safe . . . we find the videotape. 

*And a can-opener.  For some reason. 

*It should be noted in this section that James had to leave his radio up on that shelf with all of his other items so we don’t get the static warning for monsters, which lead to a couple of nice jump scares.  And they aren’t cheap jump scares with blaring music.  It’s just total silence and then you turn a corner and there’s one of the mannequins there, moving toward you. 

*The game has trained you so well to expect monsters with static that having them just appear in dead silence is disconcerting and startling the first couple of times it happens. 

*There’s a music box puzzle here that is worth mentioning because this might be the only music ever played by a music box in a video game that I’ve ever really liked. 

*But now it’s time to head to room 312 where James and Mary stayed the last time they were in Silent Hill. 

*Yes, there’s a VCR.  It’s time.

*I was so invested in the story at this point that I just put the controller down for a second and just kind of gathered my thoughts and prepared myself emotionally for what was about to come. 

*The tape starts with footage of Mary in this very hotel room, talking to James about how much she loves Silent Hill and hates to leave it.  “Please promise you’ll take me again, James,” she says and then she starts to cough. 

*Then the camera cuts and we get a lot of static and rough cuts and jumpy images.  Among them is a shot of James.  Smothering Mary as she lays on a bed. 

*We then cut back to the hotel room.  James is sitting on a chair in front of the TV, slumped over in despair. 

*And I do not mean to trivialize this moment, but the beat that comes in here is straight fire. 

*It’s an odd choice to bring in any kind of a groove, even a dark one, but it really works. 

*Great piano on it too.  As the camera slowly circles around James in the chair.  The cinematic quality of this game is really great.

*Unfortunately, the soundtrack has track titles like “Angel’s Thanatos,” “Null Moon,” and “Fermata in Mistic Air,” so I have no idea which track this is. 

*Anyway, Laura enters and James confesses to her that Mary is dead and that he killed her.  Laura, of course, runs away horrified. 

*So, here’s where we finally kinda get to the reveal of this whole mystery about Mary dying three years ago, but being in Silent Hill just recently.  Mary didn’t die of her illness three years ago; she was just in Silent Hill recently at the hospital where she met Laura who was also sick.  Then she and James left Silent Hill and James killed her, most likely only days before the game starts and James arrives back in Silent Hill.  Perhaps only hours.  But regardless, after killing her, James had a psychotic break and began to believe that she had died of her illness and that it had been three years since her death. 

*The mysterious letter from Mary, postmarked Silent Hill, that brought him back here, is entirely a fabrication of his mind.  His own subconscious mind has drawn him back to Silent Hill, trying to get him to remember what he has finally now remembered, that he killed Mary.

*I tried to find the quote, but I couldn’t, but I remember one of the creators saying that, in his opinion, Mary’s body is in either the backseat or the trunk of James’ car, which we see at the beginning of the game.  That would seem to indicate that Mary’s death and James’ break with reality occurred as essentially one event and that perhaps immediately after the murder James began his journey back to Silent Hill.  When we first see James in the bathroom in the beginning of this game, it’s kind of chilling to consider that Mary’s body may be only mere feet away, and that her death may have occurred only a couple of hours before.  We’ve spent this entire game searching for Mary; when the game started, she was possibly mere feet away from us, in the trunk of the car parked outside the bathroom.

*As a manifestation of his subconscious, Pyramid Head is a nightmarish mixture of the hooded executioners that were part of Silent Hill’s past and James’ repressed guilt.  Once back in Silent Hill, James’ subconscious needed to create an avenger, a figure to pursue him and punish him for what he’s done, even though James’ conscious mind didn’t even remember.  And so Pyramid Head was born. 

*At least, that’s my read on it.  Konami has tried to maintain some ambiguity about the game, particularly about the endings, and I’m glad for that.  I think there are other interpretations that are probably also valid. 

*We’ll talk about Maria and who/what she might be in a bit. 

*Anyway, the notion is that James sees Silent Hill through the prism of his guilt and self-loathing or that the monsters he sees and the visions he has of the town are projected from him in some way.  Likewise Eddie and Angela had their own experiences of Silent Hill; there is some sort of objective reality at work in Silent Hill, but it’s noteworthy that Laura seems unafraid and says that she doesn’t see the monsters the others see.  Because she’s innocent in some way?  I think that’s probably the intention. 

*Anyway, let’s not make all this too concrete.  I don’t mean to imply that the monsters in Silent Hill aren’t “real” and are only in James’ mind.  I think there’s something about Silent Hill that makes the interior demons of a person real in some way.  What is repressed and kept inside a person’s mind and heart is exposed and expressed in the real world in a twisted and violent way by Silent Hill.  Again, just my take on it. 

*Anyway, after Laura leaves, James stays sitting in front of the television for a while, but then he hears a voice in the static.  It’s Mary, telling him to come find her, so he leaves the room and continues to explore. 

*Eventually, he finds himself in a room that’s engulfed in flames.  Angela is there. 

*Well, hopefully, this scene won’t be as disturbing as some of the previous Angela scenes have be –

*ANGELA: *turns to James* MAMA!

*Well, ****. 

*Sorry, I’m not trying to be flippant or jokey about this particular plot element.  It’s just so oppressive that I am trying to find some kind of humor in the way I talk about it.  I hope that doesn’t feel disrespectful. 

*Angela realizes it’s James, though not as quickly as I would have liked.  “Thank you for saving me.  Though I wish you hadn’t.  Even Mama said it . . . I deserved what happened.” 

*James tells her that’s not true, but she doesn’t seem convinced.  Angela underlines the theme a little, asking James if he’s trying to “save” her, “rescue” her.  She’s disdainful of the idea. 

*See, they did this in Outlast 2 as well and I really like it, this deconstruction of the entire video game mechanic of a main character who’s trying to save someone.  It’s just part of the video game thing, right?  But they turn it into a character trait and not a heroic one either.  I love it. 

*Angela turns and starts going up the stairs and James finally comments on the fact that the room is engulfed in flames: “It’s hot as hell in here.”  Angela pauses: “You see it too?  For me, it’s always like this.” 

*And then she just walks, head bowed, shoulders slumped, into a sheet of flame and disappears. 

*And that’s the last ******* time we see her.  That’s how Angela’s story in Silent Hill 2 ends.

*I mean, holy ****. 

*So, look, if somebody’s in a Silent Hill game, things are real bad for them.  They are not living their best life.  There are no winners in a Silent Hill game. 

*Like, seriously, if you’re a character in a Silent Hill game, you’ve probably been through awful ****, are currently going through awful **** and/or are about to go through more awful ****. 

*But damned if Angela isn’t about the most tragic character with the most horrifying fate in any of these games. 

*I mean, think about it.  Her hell is essentially to relive the trauma of her sexual abuse over and over while also believing that she’s to blame for it.  That is ****** up. 

*And I was about to be like, “And, you know what, most of the time the people in Silent Hill are bad people, but Angela is an innocent” and then I remembered that she did murder and dismember two people with an ax, sooooo

*But, seriously, even if her father and brother weren’t actively trying to assault her at the time she killed them, that’s still self-defense in my opinion.  Because they just could do it at any time they wanted to.  So, she was effectively in danger at all times, under threat at all times.  So, yeah, she killed them when she got the chance and, to my mind, that does not make her a monster or even a bad person. 

*So, no, there’s no way Bloober Team has the guts to do Angela this way.  I mean, mainstream horror has lost its teeth in some way and while I’m not saying that everything needs to be punishingly bleak, it’s going to be real stupid when Angela gets a happy ending in the remake. 

*There’s this real weird philosophy that I hate now where the way a work of fiction treats its characters is seen as somehow, you know, well, like that if a character meets a bad end in a book, that’s because the author thinks they deserve it.  You know what I mean?

*Like I remember back when Jurassic World came out.  And one of the most horrifying deaths was Bryce Dallas Howard’s assistant.  She’s the one who gets picked up by the pterodactyl and then dropped into the water and the Mosiosaurus (sp?) comes up under her and kills her.  I thought that was so scary. 

*And then people online were like, “She didn’t deserve such a horrible death.”  And I was like, “Yes, that’s what happens in horror movies and also in thrillers and also in action movies.  People die who don't deserve it.”  But even the director was like, “Yeah, that was a little harsh and I regret it.”  And somebody with the studio said, “I think in the next one we’ll be sure that the people who die are getting what’s coming to them.”  And I was just like, “For ****’s sake, this IS a horror movie, right?” 

*So, I hear the criticism already if Bloober tries to give Angela a bad ending.  “Oh my God, Bloober Team is saying that people who are molested are bad people and were asking for it and deserve to go to Hell!”  And that is absolutely not what Silent Hill 2 is saying about Angela.  It’s a HORROR game.  Sometimes, and I’m gonna go real crazy here, horrifying things have to happen in a horror story.  And, let’s face it, somebody getting what’s coming to them is not always that horrifying.  Like I wouldn’t call Eddie’s ultimate fate horrifying.  He was himself a horrifying character, but him dying violently?  That wasn’t horrifying. 

*But this with Angela . . . this **** will break you if you think about it too long. 

*And now I want to transition to the funniest joke in the game.   

*No, seriously, the whole Angela thing is one of the big reasons I think the game survives as a horror game that can still be played, despite being like three console generations back.  It’s the story and the characters.  The graphics aren’t great, some of the gameplay is a little clumsy, some of the puzzles are overly gamey.  But the story and the characters.  They still work, they still hit hard and the game remains disturbing and unsettling and so the game endures while the cheesy jump-scare machines and edge-lord gorefests come and go.

*But, yeah, there is a great joke in the next bit.  You save in this game only at certain save-points represented in the game by red squares, usually on a wall, but sometimes on a desk or table or something. 

*So, after Angela leaves, James proceeds down a maze of corridors and then enters a room that has NINE red squares on the wall.  I thought this was both a really funny joke and a clever bit of game design.  It’s telling you, somewhat jokingly, “look, you’d better save here.”  And that’s funny.  But it’s also an actual warning, in case players are trying to get through the game without saving or with only minimal saving.  To that player, the game is saying, “look, if you save only once in this game, it needs to be here.”  And it’s also just effective in making sure that the save point isn’t missed.  Because even though they are red and this game is super-dark, sometimes, these save points do disappear into the shadows.  There was on in the first Silent Hill that was on the trunk of a car and I thought I was never going to find it. 

*Anyway, kudos.  Good joke and great game design. 

*James enters the next room, hopefully after making numerous save files, and finds Maria there, somehow alive again, but suspended upside down via some contraption that she seems to be kind of impaled on.  I wasn’t super clear on how this worked.  And standing impassively nearby . . . who else?  Pyramid Head. 

*But, wait, there are actually TWO Pyramid Heads, flanking her.  I found this to be a genuinely surprising and chilling moment, the sudden reveal of a second Pyramid Head. 

*Anyway, yeah, yeah, they ******* stab her to death. 

*James has to watch Maria die again.  He’s failed . . . again. 

*But James finally has his epiphany.  “That’s why I needed you . . . needed someone to punish me for my sins.  But that’s all over now.  I know the truth.  Now it’s time to end this.” 

*So, Pyramid Head(s) have been conjured to punish James for killing Mary and forcing James to watch as Maria is brutally murdered again and again has been their way of trying to force him to remember what he did, I think.  James has tricked himself into forgetting what happened to Mary.  The letter and Pyramid Head are manifestations of . . . his subconscious . . . mingled with the strange occult power of Silent Hill itself?  With the goal of making him remember. 

*But now, these entities have taken on a life of their own; James remembers, but they’re still here, still killing Maria over and over.  I think this is why we’re introduced to the second Pyramid Head here; Pyramid Head isn’t just still here after James has remembered – he’s growing stronger, expanding, duplicating himself.  Pyramid Head has served his purpose, but in Silent Hill, nothing ever quite dies the way it should. 

*My interpretation. 

*So, here’s the boss battle, the final battle with Pyramid Head and, of course, it is with two of them at once.  They’re faster than any of the Pyramid Heads you’ve fought before and they’re armed with spears, not swords. 

*Once you do enough damage (or, reportedly, just dodge them for ten minutes), they will retreat to the middle of the room and impale themselves on their own spears.  At the end of the day, they kill themselves. 

*As James leaves this area and makes his way to the final boss battle (yes, there’s still one left), we hear a flashback to a conversation between James & Mary when Mary’s in the late stages of her illness.  She says that the drugs and the disease have turned her into a monster and that she’s tired of suffering.  She says it would be easier if “they would just kill me.” 

*I think we’re initially supposed to kind of go “Hmmm” meaningfully and think, “Ah, so James actually did it [i]for[/i] Mary,” but then the game immediately reverses on us as Mary breaks down crying, begs James to stay with her, says she’s scared and that she doesn’t want to die. 

*More really good voice acting in this scene. 

*So, outside it’s raining and James goes up a long flight of stairs to arrive at a high scaffolding platform.  A woman is standing at the window, looking out.  It’s Mary, wearing the dress we’ve always seen her in.  “Mary?” James says.  The woman turns . . .

*And it’s at this point that the game changes depending on which ending you’re going to get.  There are six endings and I’m going to go through all of them.  On my first playthrough, I got “Leave,” which is the ending you’re most likely to get on your first playthrough. 

*One thing I really do like about the way these endings work is that they are predicated on, not just random things throughout the game or on different items you found, but on your actual behavior.  Here’s an example of what I mean.  In order to get the Leave ending, you need to have demonstrated with your behavior that James’ main ultimate goal is to escape Silent Hill.  You want to live and escape. 

*This is demonstrated by, for instance, always healing yourself very quickly when you get hurt.  If, on the other hand, you don’t heal yourself very often and stay in the red zone with your health, then that means that James doesn’t really care if he survives or not; in that case, you’re more likely to get the ending “In Water,” which, okay, spoiler, in that one, James kills himself at the end. 

*Basically, the three main endings are “Leave,” “Maria,” and “In Water.”  To get “Leave,” you need to demonstrate that you want to survive and you need to not form especially strong attachments to either Maria or Mary.  This is judged by the game based, again, on how you behave.  If, while exploring the hospital level, you go back to check on Maria in the room where she’s sleeping, that builds your bond with Maria.  On the other hand, if you look at Mary’s letter in your inventory, that builds your bond with Mary and your bond with Mary grows every time you look at it. 

*In essence, those first three endings are dependent on 1. How safely vs. how recklessly you play and 2. Is your bond stronger with Mary or Maria or is it pretty low with both of them? 

*Then, once you get into the other three endings, that’s when you it starts depending on whether you’ve found certain hidden items and if you’ve gotten the other endings and so on. 

*So, back to the Leave ending.  The woman at the window turns and . . . it’s Maria.  Dressed like Mary, her hair like Mary’s, but clearly Maria. 

*I feel like the technology at the time actually shouldn’t have been good enough for them to do body language this nuanced, but you just know as soon as she turns around that it’s Maria, not Mary.  It’s just so obvious.  And then more great voice acting: “When will you stop making that mistake?” 

*That is a chilling moment.  Genuinely scary. 

*So, Maria says she’ll always be there for James and everything and he’s like, “No, it’s time to end this whole nightmare” and he’s going to leave Silent Hill for good.  Maria isn’t a fan of that so she then turns into a demon and it’s the last boss fight. 

*This demon is actually substantially less scary than Maria, dressed like Mary, snarling, “When will you stop making that mistake?” 

*Immediately after James defeats the Maria-demon, we get a scene of James and Mary talking.  Mary’s in the bed as if she’s sick, but this is clearly some kind of vision or something because they’re talking about the fact that James killed her. 

*James tells Mary that he did it because he couldn’t stand to see her suffer, that he wanted to end her pain.  But he immediately recants: “No.  That’s not true . . . the truth is I hated you.  I wanted you out of the way.  I wanted my life back.” 

*Genuinely good acting from the James voice actor in this scene.  His name is Guy Cihi and I have often found that his readings work because James is supposed to be emotionally disconnected and so the odd flatness of Cihi’s line readings work in a weird, kind of unsettling way.  But I wouldn’t say that, overall, he’s given a “good” performance.  But he’s good in this scene. 

*Kind of a mike drop moment in this scene from Mary.  “James . . . if that were true, then why do you look so sad?” 

*Oh my God, that line just about ******* killed me. Tears just sprang to my eyes when she said that. 

*Mary then tells James that she wants him to do only one thing: “Go on with your life.” 

*And then there’s just a still shot of the cemetery as the text of Mary’s final letter to James scrolls upwards and we hear Monica Horgan perform the absolute **** out of it. 

*This letter . . . well, let me just talk about the presentation first.  This thing is five minutes long.  FIVE minutes.  With no music even.  And that’s after the conversation between James & Mary. 

*I mean, let’s just pull it back for a second.  This horror game ends with a final boss fight . . . you know pulse pounding, battling a demon, etc.  And then the game is just like, “Okay, now just chill for five minutes of the saddest **** you’ve ever heard.” 

*The only other game that’s really coming to mind right now in terms of doing something similar to this is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice which also ends with a huge action scene and then you just put the controller down and watch the story play out and cry like a child. 

*I mean, the crying was my experience with Hellblade anyway. 

*I guess my point is that it feels so incredibly bold and shocking for the game to conclude in this way.  I know that a lot of games have ending cinematics and stuff, but I think this one is remarkable just because of how emotionally devastating it is.  It’s Silent Hill 2 reaching for more transcendent emotions than I think most game designers at the time were even thinking about.

*And even as they’re going for a really big emotional payoff, they don’t fall back on music as a crutch.  It would be so easy to really lay the music on really thick under this narration and try to make the player sad with that.  But they don’t do it; they have faith in the experience they’ve crafted with the game as a whole preparing the player for this moment, they have faith in the writing, they have faith in the performance. 

*And this is a series that always has amazing music and the music is always really important to building the atmosphere.  So it’s even more remarkable that they went this way with it.    

*The text of the letter is overall sad, just talking about Mary’s illness and the strain it’s put on her relationship with James.  And then it ends with her saying that James is a good man and that she wouldn’t trade their time together and that she loves him. 

*And it’s Horgan’s performance that just really brings this thing home.  Like I’m going to say that when this game came out this was the best voice acting ever done in a video game.  And I can’t right now come up with what might be the next really excellent voice acting performance after Silent Hill 2, so I’m thinking that Horgan held the position for a really long time.  It’s just acting that is still, all these years later, after we’ve heard so many amazing VA performances, just shockingly good. 

*Here’s another crazy thing about this letter.  I suspected we might get different letters from Mary based on which ending we got.  Nope.  Same letter.  Same performance from Horgan.  They had to write a letter that would feel like a satisfying conclusion no matter which of the different endings the player got.  And they nailed it.  I’ll talk about this more in a minute, but it works. 

*Okay, so not with the dog ending, but that’s just its own thing. 

*As the letter ends, the music returns and we see James & Laura walk through the cemetery.  They’re leaving Silent Hill together.  We watch them until they disappear into the fog.  Roll credits. 

*ROOOOOOLLLLLLL **************** CREEEEEDDIIIIIIITTTTSSSSS WE DID IT GUYS

*Assuming even one single person is still reading this.   

*I just checked.  We are at 31 pages in Microsoft Word. 

*You’d think I was getting paid for this. 

*By the word. 

*Well, anyway, we’re done . . . except for the remaining five endings and, have I even mentioned it yet, the “DLC” extra scenario Born from a Wish that was released on the Greatest Hits edition of Silent Hill 2.  In which you get to play as MARIA!  That’s right, we’ll get to that. 

*First though, the next ending.  Let’s do “In Water” because it’s pretty simple and, I think, the weakest of the three main endings. 

*In Water is basically the same as the ending I just described, except at the end of the discussion with Mary, James stands up, picks Mary’s body up and leaves the room with it.  Then we get black screen as we hear James say that he finally understands what he has to do.  We then hear the sound of squealing tires and a car crashing into water.  Then we get the letter, over a very rudimentary “underwater” screensaver. 

*So, presumably, at the end of this one, James puts Mary’s body in the car and then kills himself by driving into the water.  This is the one I guess you get by being reckless, not saving a lot and not healing yourself very often, all of which indicates that you don’t care about saving your life.  This one feels kind of silly, partially because there’s no visual of the car going into the water.  Something about just hearing the sound effects over a black screen kind of robs the moment of its power. 

*Final ending of the main three is “Maria,” the ending you get if you’ve bonded more with Maria instead of Mary over the game.  So, for instance, if you don’t read Mary’s letter or look at her picture, but you do go back and check on Maria when you have to leave her behind in the hospital, that’s a scenario where you would likely get this ending. 

*This time, when James arrives at the scaffolding platform, it’s actually Mary waiting for him, not Maria dressed as Mary.  She’s in bed and she’s hurt by the fact that James tried to “replace” her with Maria.  So, she then turns into the demon and you fight her for the final boss fight. 

*After you kill Mary (again), James meets up with Maria outside and James tells Maria that she’s the one he really wants now.  They leave Silent Hill together and we get the letter again, over a visual of the rest stop where the game began. 

*I think this one is thematically interesting.  This makes James’ journey through Silent Hill about him finally overcoming his grief and moving on.  The “Leave” ending is also about this, but it has James leaving with Laura and Mary has forgiven him and given her permission for him to have a new life.  In this one, it’s a more antagonistic thing where Mary is something that James has to kill in order to kill . . . his grief and guilt, I think.  I’m not super-crazy about the way that has him re-enacting his trauma (and, of course, putting Mary through that violence again as well) in order to overcome the trauma.

*But then we still end with that same letter and so, even though James had to face Mary in a very antagonistic way and defeat her in order to move on, we still get the feeling that, in a larger sense, Mary has given him what he needs to move on in a more healthy way, a way that’s more about reconciliation than about more anger. 

*But then things take a turn.  As the letter ends, we get a long shot of James and Maria approaching James’ car at the rest stop.  Then, Maria stops and we hear her cough.  Then we hear James say in a flat tone, “You’d better do something about that cough.” 

*I think my interpretation of this ending is that Silent Hill really is kind of James’ hell.  He’s stuck in an endless loop.  Soon, I think, he’ll be returning to Silent Hill, looking this time for Maria who he has killed while she was sick with an illness.  While here, looking for Maria, he’ll meet another woman, a woman who looks strangely like Maria.  And it’ll all happen again.

*I had this amazing thought while I was thinking about this as the credits were going.  How many times has James already been to Silent Hill?  Is the story we play through in this game his first time coming to Silent Hill searching for a woman he’s killed?  Or is it his tenth?  Or one-hundredth?  Or one-thousandth? 

*This actually gives your ability as a player to replay this game as many times as you want a kind of existential meta-horror element. 

*I feel like these are genuinely very layered endings.  These aren’t “good” or “bad” endings necessarily;  I think “In Water” is “bad” in a kind of technical way.  Just the execution of it.  But I think these all stand up to actual analysis on a character and thematic basis.  Just like the game as a whole.  The endings don’t fail to live up to the game. 

*Let’s go through the bonus endings real quick.  These are less effective overall in terms of being serious story endings, but . . . they’re worth talking about.  For reasons.    

*First, there’s the U.F.O. ending.  You may recall that the first game had a joke U.F.O. ending and this ending is essentially a follow-up to that.  Harry Masen, the protagonist from the first game, arrives in a UFO and asks James if he’s seen his daughter; James asks if Harry has seen his wife.  The aliens then zap James and take him away on the spaceship.  Whatever. 

*Then there’s the dog ending which is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.  There’s a point at which, on a second playthrough, you can find a key in a doghouse, I think, and then late in the game, right before you go up to the top of the building to meet Mary/Maria for the final boss fight, there’s a door that you can unlock with that key. 

*Inside that door, you find a large control room being manned by a Shiba Inu who has a display of a map of Silent Hill where he has been tracking James.  James realizes that this dog is the one that’s been pulling the strings all along and falls to his knees in despair.  The dog licks him. 

*That’s not even the weird part.  The craziest thing is that they did a whole credits sequence based on this ending.  It’s inspired by the regular credits which include a close-up of James’ face on one side of the screen and images from the game on the other with moody music playing.  So, if you get the dog ending, you instead get this:

*Please watch all of that.  I can’t describe it and you definitely have to see the very ending.  That’s just . . . coming at the end of one of the most serious and thought-provoking video games ever.  I kind of love it, just because it is so insane. 

*It literally feels like I’m dreaming when I watch that.

*Like I said, you can only get this ending on a repeat playthrough.  The key you need to unlock the door isn’t there on your first playthrough.

*But can you imagine if it was?  Can you even imagine if it was possible to stumble into that ending on your initial playthrough?  You would think you were genuinely having a psychotic break, I think.  I mean, I almost did anyway just watching it and I knew that the premise was that a Shiba Inu was the puppet master.  I knew that and it still almost broke me. 

*And it is worth noting.  Silent Hill 2: ahead of the doge curve by like a full decade. 

*Okay, final ending.  Rebirth.  This one is just weird.  After you defeat the Maria monster, James just gets in the boat and paddles off into the fog and then you just hear him very weirdly say, “Ah, Mary.” 

*Anyway, that’s it for Silent Hill 2 proper.  I think Leave & Maria are the two best endings.  One of them is dark, but holds hope for the possibility of redemption.  The other is dark and traps James in an eternity of murder, grief and loss.  They’re both satisfying in their own ways and, of course, those are only my interpretations of them. 

*Okay, so let’s briefly talk about Born from a Wish.  Silent Hill 2 was released for PS2 in North America in September of 2001.  It wasn’t released for Xbox until December 2001 and when that release came out, it included Born from a Wish, a side story that you could access after you beat the base game.  Later, when the Greatest Hits edition of the PS2 release came out, Born from a Wish was also included with it at that time. 

*It’s a short scenario, 30 to 45 minutes, unless you’re me, in which case it’s an hour-and-a-half. 

*So, the scenario begins with an overhead shot of Maria; she’s sitting in a chair, holding a revolver.  “When I woke up, I was alone,” is the first line of the game.  She contemplates committing suicide.  She’s afraid of the monsters that are outside.  She wishes she could go find someone to be with because she doesn’t like to be alone, but she suspects no one else is alive.  That’s the opening cut scene. 

*So, you control her to leave the apartment, go through the bar that she’ll bring James back to later and out into the foggy streets. 

*Man, this music is really good too.  I feel like this is not reused music from the main game.  It could be.  I haven’t just sat down and listened through the soundtrack and there is a lot of music in the main game.  But either way, it’s good.  This has the same vibe as the main game. 

*While running from the creatures, Maria finds herself trapped in kind of walled garden and she escapes by going through the double doors into a large mansion. 

*As most home-owners do, the owners of the “Baldwin House” keep an incredibly detailed map of both floors of their house right inside the door of their living room. 

*On the second floor landing, Maria tries to go through a door only to have someone on the inside pull it shut and lock it.  She knocks on the door for a ridiculously long time, until someone on the other side says, “Stop it, you’re disturbing me.”

*Okay, so the voice acting is quite a bit worse than the main game.  And you may recall I’m a defender of even James’ voice acting in the main game. 

*Stahp it.

*Maria’s ability to read social cues is not the best: “Whew, thank God I finally found somebody.  Can you open the door?” 

*You could cut the sexual tension with a knife: “Can you open the door?” “No.” “But why?” “Is it really necessary for me to answer all your tedious questions?”  “Yes.”  “Oh, I didn’t know that.” 

*At least this partially explains why Maria likes James so much.  She had just finished dealing with this charmer.

*This conversation is just a real winner.  Guy behind the door keeps saying he just wants to be left alone, so Maria asks him “You want to be alone in this insane asylum?”  You know, referring to the monsters, which they have discussed.  His response: “But how can you say it is this town that is insane?  Perhaps it is we that are insane.  Both of us . . . hopelessly insane.”    

*Deep, bro, real deep.

*“Are you satisfied? Would you leave me alone?”  “My name is Maria.  What’s your name?”

*I promise you that is a real exchange.  I literally laughed out loud.

*There’s then just a very long silence and then Maria knocks on the door again and the guy behind the door just says in the flattest voice you’ve ever heard, “Ernest.” 

*This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. 

*Maria tells Ernest she’ll be back.  He contains his excitement. 

*We will never actually see this guy, by the way.  I’m guessing they just didn’t have time to do any new character models and hit on this “conversations entirely through doors” style of cutscenes and it isn’t great, but whatever. 

*This is an entirely new environment though and it’s pretty big. 

*Anyway, Maria leaves Ernest behind his door and goes and climbs up a ladder she finds in a fireplace.  As one does. 

*This is a surprisingly cool environment; it’s really small, just one room, but it’s a hidden garden inside this house, so it’s a square room but it’s filled with plants and grass and a gravestone.  I found this room to be really cool.  Like I would love to be in a secret garden room like this. 

*Minus the grave, of course. Maybe a bench instead. 

*I feel it is not super realistic that this room is directly off the chimney.  That’s some interesting architecture. 

*The architecture is definitely the least realistic thing about the Silent Hill franchise.

*I actually got stuck on this for a bit because I had essentially gone everywhere I could go, but I couldn’t find anything in this room, so I kept trying to find where else I could go.  Here’s the deal, there’s a red board in this garden room that you have to find. 

*Do you see it?

*No, not the thing up there on the stone.  That’s the black board.  That one I found and then I thought I’d found everything in the room because the red board is so hard to see. 

*She’s facing it.  Does that help?

*Yeah, that’s it.  The blackest red I’ve ever seen in my life. 

*I know I’ve been praising this game for being as dark as it is, but, man, that is a tough one to spot. 

*So, anyway, you have to put the boards into a depression on the gravestone and then the gravestone releases a key that you need to progress. 

*Of course, there’s a puzzle element because you have to block the hole completely and all of the boards have different holes in them, so you have to rotate them until all of the holes are blocked.  It was surprisingly easy. 

*Okay, so there’s a weird audio-only thing that happens at one point where you essentially hear a flashback where it is revealed that a young child died by falling out a window. Presumably that’s the grave in the chimney. 

*The audio flashback came after a long period of the game being totally silent except for Maria’s footsteps and the sound of doors opening and it genuinely made me jump. 

*In the attic, Maria finds a birthday card from “Amy Baldwin” to her “Daddy.”  As you leave, you hear a child’s voice say. “Give it . . . to my daddy.”

*Yeah, I know how quests work.  Chill out. 

*Lengthy interlude where Maria finds a book about the Acacia Tree and how it’s a sacred symbol to various religions. 

*God, every ******* time they bring the music back after we’ve gone for a few minutes with score, it’s just nerve shredding.  Like genuinely unpleasant, like, “Get me out of this hallway so this music will stop.” 

*Anyway, gonna go buy the soundtrack so I can listen to it on my headphones while doing the dishes, back later. 

*Maria takes the letter to Ernest and after another conversation through the locked door, she slides it under the door to him.  Amy is, of course, Ernest’s daughter who died 10 years ago by falling from the attic window. 

*Ernest gets pretty cryptic.  “Maria . . .?  So you must be . . . That’s why.  That’s why you could see me.”  “Huh?”  “So perhaps that means I can hope for a miracle as well.”

*I’m wondering if this game is kind of positing that Maria’s a kind of angelic being who is there to kind of help people process their trauma or something.  It’s just interesting that, on the way to meet James, she essentially does a mini-quest where she helps someone else process their grief. 

*But enough philosophy!  Ernest gets less cryptic.  “In the apartment next door, there’s a bottle containing a white liquid.” 

*And Maria shoots down my “angel” theory: “You want me to get it?  Why don’t you get it yourself?” 

*So, Maria does leave the mansion in order to go into the apartment building next door.  We see the mansion she was just in has “Keep Out of Haunted Mansion” spray painted on it. 

*I was always more a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride guy anyway.

*Really creepy bit when she gets into the apartment hallway in the other building where she goes through a door and in the hallway she comes out in, there’s a monster, but he’s walking away and just disappears into the darkness.  It doesn’t attack you or anything, but it’s super-creepy anyway. 

*So, Ernest says that he can’t leave the house and the white liquid is the only thing he needs to complete his work.  Which is bringing his daughter back to life?  Or is he himself a ghost?  I’m not sure. 

*I do really like some parts of this conversation. 

*Great moment here: Ernest asks Maria, “Do you believe in Fate?”  “Not really,” Maria answers.  “That’s fine then,” Ernest says and then, “That James . . . he’s a bad man.”  Great moment.

*Maria looks puzzled and says, “James . . .?”  Then after a long pause, she says, “Y – Yes.  I know.”  Good facial animation and good voice acting on this line.  There are a bunch of different ways you could play this, but she doesn’t sound sad.  More . . . I don’t know, kind of, well, I don’t know, it’s hard to say.  Not accepting, but almost, well, very thoughtful and like she’s really thinking about it.  Considering it. 

*And then she says, “But he’s kind.”  Ernest starts to say something, “Maria, you’re . . .”  But she interrupts him, telling him that it doesn’t matter what he thinks about her; he really doesn’t know anything about her. 

*Really long shot that just travels through the mansion.  Over a minute long. 

*Then we cut to Maria outside on the street, walking slowly through the fog. 

*She stops and puts her gun to her own head, apparently contemplating suicide.  Then she shakes her head and flings it over a nearby garden wall. 

*Then this beat drops.  The beats in this soundtrack are genuinely dope. 

*She whispers “James,” and walks off into the fog and we get a slow fade to black. 

*Then, over the black screen we hear the exchange from the main game when James and Maria first meet.  Man, I wish they hadn’t done that.  It just doesn’t feel right.  Like we’ve just been through too much with Maria at this point.  We know both her and James too well; when she’s just like, “Do I look like your girlfriend?” I kind of cringed. 

*Well, hell, that’s it. 

*Thirty-four pages in Microsoft Word.  Wow.  I suspect no one’s gonna get all this through this one.  If you did, say something, just so I’ll know. 

*Anyway, I think it’s safe to just call it a day here.  I don’t have a whole lot to say in terms of wrapping everything up.  I talked about why this is one of the greatest horror games ever made, maybe THE greatest horror game ever made, all the way through the review. 

*It’s just a masterpiece and that’s all there is to it.  I highly recommend playing this game before Bloober Team ***** out their sure to be horribly inferior version. 

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