Word: This text incorporates spoilers for the story of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 2 Remake. Learn on at your personal danger.
Silent Hill 2 gamers have been speculating about what’s actually happening within the sport since its launch in 2001. Even on its most floor stage, it is unattainable to say definitively what’s taking place to protagonist James Sunderland. Is he trapped in a hallucinatory nightmare of grief and guilt? Has he wandered into some sort of supernatural area located round a small American city, created by cultists and elder gods? Or is he lifeless and in Hell, paying for his sins?
With Silent Hill 2 Remake, developer Bloober Workforce appears to offer extra particulars and clues associated to these questions. In doing so, the developer has expanded the story of Silent Hill 2. The remake, it appears, is not only a revision of the story–it’s an growth of the unique, current individually from the unique Silent Hill 2. In the identical approach that Closing Fantasy VII Remake revisits the identical story whereas including to it to make one thing new, Silent Hill 2 Remake is a secret sequel of Silent Hill 2.
The unique Silent Hill 2 included a number of hints that what James was experiencing was one thing greater than it gave the impression to be. Wandering by means of the city, gamers would come throughout a number of our bodies of individuals apparently killed by the vicious monsters James repeatedly fights off. What was bizarre about these our bodies, although, was that whereas their faces and heads have been usually coated or obscured, followers observed that they usually gave the impression to be sporting bloodied variations of James’s garments.
Within the 2001 Silent Hill 2, it is a little bit bit powerful to inform what is going on on with this choice–did the builders intend for gamers to see only a bunch of nondescript our bodies, and used the James character mannequin as a cost-saving measure, as a result of the sport simply did not actually embrace many different characters? Or have been these our bodies meant to be a refined trace at one thing deeper taking place in Silent Hill? A principle developed across the latter, culminating with a specific physique within the Wooden Aspect Flats constructing, which seems to have died by suicide, and although their face is roofed, they give the impression of being suspiciously like James Sunderland. It is a principle of the sport that means James is already lifeless.
Silent Hill 2 Remake makes some adjustments to the weather of the Silent Hill 2’s story, puzzles, and fight, but it surely’s nonetheless fairly trustworthy to the broad strokes of the unique story. In reality, as you navigate by means of the city within the remake, you will discover our bodies killed by monsters. And similar to within the authentic sport, these our bodies look quite a bit like James Sunderland.
Scattered all through the city are notes, often discovered close to these our bodies, scrawled in a bloody and manic hand. A number of have the identical messages as have been seen within the authentic sport, however there are extra within the Remake. They counsel these different folks have been additionally trapped in Silent Hill, and for some, apparently for a protracted time period. A couple of go away behind warnings and knowledge, reminiscent of a map of Silent Hill just like the one James carries that is annotated in the identical approach he marks up his personal. Some converse on to the reader, hoping you should use what was discovered earlier than you to maneuver forward.
The extra of them you learn, although, the extra they sound like they have been written with James in thoughts.
Considerably later within the sport, you will discover notes subsequent to a James-looking physique that pertains to one of many sport’s new endings. Although the handwriting is completely different from among the different notes–others appear like they have been written unexpectedly in all-caps printing–this one appears to be like to offer some critical hints in regards to the scenario.
“I can go away by not leaving,” it reads. “I can solely go away by not leaving. The deal is completed. He mentioned he left it for me. The place they as soon as have been.”
This observe places you on the trail to unlocking the brand new “Bliss” ending, added with the remake. When you comply with the clues, you will ultimately discover a hallucinogenic drug referred to as White Claudia. Taking it on the proper time in Lakeview Lodge, earlier than James watches the video tape, triggers the ending. As a substitute of coming to phrases with the truth that he killed Mary, it is virtually as if James hallucinates one other course of occasions, keen himself to stick with Mary earlier than her sickness, completely satisfied in his delusion of denial.
What’s bizarre in regards to the observe is that it suggests the author has been struggling to go away Silent Hill, similar to James is. It additionally makes reference to “the place they as soon as have been.” That location is Pete’s Bowl-o-Rama.
Gamers aware of the unique sport know that James finds Eddie and Laura on the bowling alley, the place he infamously berates the person for consuming pizza whereas the city is overrun by monsters. The bowling alley remains to be there within the remake, but it surely’s empty. You as a substitute encounter Eddie and Laura within the movie show; the gist of the scene is comparable, but it surely performs out barely in another way, with James being much less antagonistic. “The place they as soon as have been,” then, appears to counsel the author of the observe is conscious that James beforehand discovered Eddie and Laura on the bowling alley, however they are not there now.
In different notes, you get the sense that the author is driving James on. A message present in a secure in Brookhaven Hospital, within the workplace of the hospital director, reads as a letter written for James.
“Their pictures turned blurry, melting collectively,” it says. “Unsure if I can do it, however perhaps you may. This may take you the place you’ll want to be, although most likely not the way in which you wish to. And there is certain to be some ache concerned. There at all times is.”
Accompanying the letter is the important thing to the hospital’s roof. A couple of seconds after you rise up there, you encounter Pyramid Head, who throws you by means of the ground of an elevator shaft so that you simply wind up in a beforehand locked-off part of the third ground. It takes you the place you wish to go, although not the way in which you wish to, and there is some ache concerned.
There’s one other notably revealing observe you will discover inside Wooden Aspect Flats.
“You could suppose I am merciless,” it says. “However this can be a jail of your personal making. The selection was yours. I watched you make it. Over and time and again. This time’s not gonna be completely different. And I will be right here. Watching.”
Silent Hill 2 Remake appears to be making it fairly clear. These our bodies are James; lots of the notes within the sport are about him, or presumably even written by these different variations of him. He is trapped in Silent Hill, not simply through the course of 1 playthrough of the sport, however by means of all of them. He is in some type of time-looping hell, enjoying out the course of those occasions time and again. The unique Silent Hill 2 documented one set of James’s experiences. The remake is one other. He is experiencing all of them in some sort of countless torment.
Three completely different instances by means of the course of Silent Hill 2 Remake, you encounter Eddie close to a lifeless physique that he claims he had nothing to do with. These our bodies are harder to establish than the others we have discussed–until, that’s, you attain your ultimate scene with Eddie. On the finish of the labyrinth part, Eddie’s anger lastly reveals that he is been murdering these folks all alongside. Shouting, he fires a revolver into the physique of his newest sufferer, and in the event you look intently, you may see who it’s.
It is James.
Or no less than, it positive does appear like him.
You struggle Eddie in a frigid slaughterhouse warehouse crammed with hanging cuts of meat, the place you ultimately kill him. However as these different James our bodies suggests, typically, he kills you. What’s extra, the 2 of you repeat this course of regularly. Eddie kills James. James kills Eddie. However each characters are trapped in Silent Hill, reliving their sins and their horrors time and again.
In your final encounter with Angela, the third soul seemingly condemned to Silent Hill, she walks up a staircase wreathed in flames. When James feedback on the warmth, Angela asks if he can see it. “For me, it is at all times like this,” she says, seemingly revealing that she experiences Silent Hill in a approach that is markedly completely different from what James does.
Within the remake, in each scene the place you discover Eddie, you may see his breath, as if he is in a chilly room–even although you do not see James’s breath in those self same locations. It is like Eddie is at all times someplace chilly, even when nobody else is. Angela’s Silent Hill is alight with fireplace; James’s Silent Hill is foggy and crammed with monsters seemingly meant to torment him over his lustful, treacherous emotions and actions; and Eddie’s Silent Hill, it might seem, is at all times chilly and crammed with demise. Similar to you briefly see into Angela’s Silent Hill on the finish of her story within the fiery staircase, plainly within the slaughterhouse, you briefly see into Eddie’s Silent Hill.
All these tidbits and items of knowledge counsel that Silent Hill 2 Remake is not a remake per se; it is one other journey by means of the hellish loop for James, and everybody else. And actually, each time you play the sport is one other repetition of that loop. Every conclusion of the story–whether it sees James coming to phrases along with his actions, changing the sick Mary with the idealized, sexier Maria, taking his personal life in Toluca Lake, or selecting a delusion the place he ignores what occurred to Mary–seems to additionally symbolize one other loop. Each time you die within the sport is a visit by means of the loop. Every physique you discover is James, a loop terminating in his demise, just for him to seek out himself once more on the street overlooking the city.
So each ending in Silent Hill 2–except, perhaps, for the jokey Canine and UFO endings, though even that is perhaps sort of debatable–is as respectable as another. They’re all, seemingly, taking place. James reaches all of them, however none of them finish his torment.
With Silent Hill 2 Remake, that fan principle about it being James mendacity lifeless in that chair, seemingly having shot himself, is confirmed, no less than on this sport. And with that, the sport turns into way more horrifying. There is no such thing as a escape from Silent Hill.