'Silent Hill 2': Remaster, Remake, Revelation?
The real meaning of the photographs...
Of all the horror games to be remade or remastered, Silent Hill 2 by Bloober Team was the most surprising.
The original game, released way back in 2001 for the PlayStation 2, is a classic of the survival horror genre but also one of the most beloved titles ever released. It’s a mix of body horror and psychological horror but is also so much more.
We take the role of James Sunderland, an everyman who has traveled to the small town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife, Mary, except she died three years ago…
While exploring the town, he visits various locations and meets other visitors like Angela, Eddie and, of course, Laura. But it’s only when he comes across Maria, whom he initially mistakes for Mary due to their shared appearance, that things really get weird from the nurses and other twisted monsters to Pyramid Head himself.
James believes that time has passed and yet Mary is alive and waiting for them in their special place, somewhere in Silent Hill. He initially thinks this is Rosewater Park, especially when he finds Maria there, but he gradually realises it’s actually a hotel on the other side of the lake.
The original game was perfection, especially when you remember that this kind of lore, this kind of story had never been done before. Games were meant to be fun and relaxing, not gritting and tragic. Especially when you realise the town is consciously forcing James to deal with his trauma or, at least, seek absolution.
Maria is Mary, but an idealised version of her created because James is lonely and the disease which killed Mary, well it took away her beauty and left her a husk. James killed her not out of compassion or her request, but because he couldn’t deal with what the illness was doing to her. He just wanted it to all be over so he smothered her with a pillow.
As Maria is the fantasy version of Mary, so Pyramid Head is James’ personal torturer. He is James’ anger, his regret, his guilt. A literal demon to chase James, never giving him a moment’s rest. As he is also a part of James, this is why he should never appear in other media… And yet he does, because Pyramid Head is a fan favourite and the thing most fans connect with when discussing the series, not just the one game.
On the face of it, Silent Hill 2 is a straight remake of the original from the ground up with new character models and voice acting and more interactive sections of Silent Hill (you can break glass, for example, and access shops that were otherwise inaccessible).
You visit the same places as in the original: the Blue Creek Apartments, Brookhaven Hospital, Silent Hill itself, Heaven’s Night, the bowling alley,the Historical Society and, of course, Lakeview Hotel. You also dip from the ‘real’ Silent Hill to the Otherworld.
But, as you explore, James discovers something that we’d never found in the original game: a Polaroid, known in-game as a Strange Photo.
These are literal photos. You can see the front and back and they appear to be memories, maybe even James’. They have a notation on the front and an odd numeric code on the back. Taken on their own they appear to simply reference places from the original game or specific moments.
But, of course, that’s not all of it.
It’s a cypher, and there is a message.
“YOU’VE BEEN HERE FOR TWO DECADES.”
Yes, James isn’t just in his own personal Hell, he’s been stuck in a time loop too. For two decades.
Silent Hill, both the town and the game, is all about purgatory, thanks to the fog, the static nature of the town and the slow burn of monsters. We’ve seen that the town calls to those with trauma, from Angela’s abuse to Eddie’s status as a bullied man with a possible side of murder.
So the first time we played the game, back in the PS2 days, was our first time meeting James. The game offered him six endings, depending on how you played the game, which things you did or what items you collected. Some, like the Dog ending, also demanded a replay as it was only accessible on the second go.
The original endings, ‘Leave’, ‘Maria’ and ‘In Water’, each had James do something which showed his character and how the journey through Silent Hill changed him.
‘Leave’ sees him escape the town with Laura (who never sees the monsters and is pretty much as innocent as one can be) after reading the letter that Mary left him.
‘Maria’ sees James escape the town with Maria, after spending the game shifting his affection from Mary to her strange döppelganger, who begins to cough similarly to Mary, suggesting her death will happen and the cycle will repeat.
‘In Water’ is basically the Bad Ending in which James kills himself by driving his car, with Mary’s body in it, into Lake Toluca.
Of the extra endings, ‘Dog’ and ‘UFO’ are joke endings however ‘Rebirth’ sees James gathering items in order to conduct a forbidden ritual which will see Mary reborn anew.
The remake adds several new endings, most notably ‘Stillness’ and ‘Bliss’, both of which require a second playthrough and specific items.
‘Stillness’ is essentially an expansion of the ‘Water’ ending in which James finally gets to reunite with Mary, albeit a Mary played by Mariam and tell her he is moving on. He admits that Mary is dead and that this all needs to end. It’s then implied James drives into the Lake as Mary reaches out for him.
‘Bliss’ is the Happier Ending. Obviously, ‘happy’ still involves a lot of trauma as this is a horror game so…
James essentially steps into the videotape the pair made at the Lakeview Hotel, able to join Mary for the last happy moment before her death. We don’t know if this is just his imagination or if it’s the last firings of a dying brain, after all James has spent the game injecting a lot of suspicious shit.
But this cypher, it suggests things.
It suggests each of these playthroughs, each of these endings, are replays in James’ timeline with the events of the Remake finally confirming James has experienced all of them, only to return to the streets of Silent Hill over and over.
This isn’t hell, it’s purgatory…
Do you feel it yet? That cold in the pit of your stomach… That sense of horrific realisation?
Yes, James can never truly leave; he walks in his own footprints down the years, not remembering previous playthroughs except for fragments which allow him to unlock different, but never better, endings. The Remake is simply his latest visitation to America’s creepiest town with better graphics and more impressive fog.
Hell is not just dying to monsters, it’s being unable to see they are monsters and being unable to escape. Hell is, after all, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So, as we finish the game in search of the ‘Leave’ ending, we can only hope that James finally learns and is allowed out of Silent Hill but, somehow, I doubt it and he is still walking those foggy streets.
See you in another two decades, James…