Spooky Game Season: Silent Hill 2
By Jason Le ʼ23, Staff Writer
For over 19 years, Silent Hill 2 has held critical acclaim and has been dubbed the grandfather of horror games. Unlike most horror games developed for the last few generations of both consoles and PC gaming, what makes Silent Hill 2 critically acclaimed in the horror genre is neither the jumpscares nor the impressive graphics, but rather the plot and ambiguous atmosphere that unfolds from beginning to end.
Before we continue, I must warn you: minor spoilers lie ahead.
Silent Hill 2 introduces a story that is intentionally ambiguous, causing us to fear what is to come but enticing us to explore. The world of Silent Hill 2 differs greatly from its predecessors. Rather than just focusing on a world of fog with monsters to kill, Team Silent (the developing team) adds a dream-like quality to the game so that nothing feels real from the start. The game begins with the protagonist, James Sunderland, an ordinary man who stares at his reflection through a filthy bathroom mirror. The players must look at James, acknowledge his presence and major role in the story, and become him. We are forced into James’ consciousness as we live through the context of his obscured reality.
Silent Hill 2 revolves around James Sunderland and his own nightmare. He is drawn to the town of Silent Hill by a letter he received from his deceased wife. She died three years ago, so how could she be alive, waiting for him? Unlike the characters in the previous Silent Hill game, all of the characters in this story experience the horrors of the town as a rendition of their own nightmares. In the previous game, the players take control of the everyday man, Harry Mason, who encounters monsters and a cult in an attempt to find his daughter, Cheryl. Along the way, he meets Cybil, a police officer, who attempts to help him find his daughter. These characters experience the same world as one another, facing the same monsters and reality together. In Silent Hill 2, the player takes control of James Sunderland; but he encounters Angela, a young woman who experiences her own trauma of suicidality and sexual abuse from the male figures in her life. Her world is hot and engulfed in flames and her trauma eventually consumes her. Eddie, another character, never sees the monsters referenced in James’ version of Silent Hill. Eddie’s hatred of others causes him to go mad. Despite James’ attempts to alter Eddie’s and Angela’s fate, their destinies are set in stone.
James goes through his own odyssey, his own walk through a personal hell. His version of Silent Hill is designed to manipulate the guilt he feels over the death of his wife Mary. The mannequin and nurses are designed to exploit sexual desire, acting as a reminder for his repressed sexual feelings when he visited Mary in the hospital. Maria, a manifestation of James’ wife, forces him to come to terms with these desires as well as his desperation to fill the void left by Mary’s death. She tests James’ perception, culminating all the traits he wished Mary to possess and dying frequently only to come back to life. Ultimately, Maria becomes a demon that forces James into a purgatory of guilt and distress.
What makes Silent Hill 2 so fascinating is its terrifying and ambiguous plot in combination with its cast of characters that paint this dream-like world into an absolute nightmare. There is so much story in the game that cannot be discussed in just one article. Rather, unlocking the full thought-provoking story requires an entire playthrough and time to actually reflect on Team Silent’s overall message. Fear is everywhere, but the tension and overwhelming paranoia can be easily replaced with a wave of sadness as themes become darker and more haunting depending on the way players choose to look at it.
Alongside the story, Silent Hill 2 has an interesting puzzle mechanic. It requires players to solve riddles to unlock new areas of the town and progress further through the story. On one hand, Silent Hill 2 often has cryptic and laughable puzzles but on the flip side, the game balances it out with unclear objectives and mysteries that leave players scratching their heads and end up searching for a decade-old guide on how to beat it. However, if you manage to solve puzzles yourself, the experience can end up being quite fulfilling.
Playing this game now forces players to adapt to an archaic design. The game’s combat is severely clunky, making it better to run than stay and fight the monsters you encounter, especially if you choose a harder difficulty. Silent Hill 2’s control schemes also do not work well with its cinematic camera, and its item prompts are notoriously ambiguous. For players used to working with more advanced game mechanics (i.e. with item prompts appearing as beacons in the sky or a camera that is not stationed in a cinematic manner), this game could be difficult to tackle.
This game is over 19 years old, so of course, the graphics reflect its age. Developed by Team Silent following the release of the original Silent Hill, it was optimized for the PlayStation 2’s new hardware. The fog world illustrated in the first Silent Hill game came from the original PlayStation’s hardware limitations, as Team Silent used fog to cover up its loading assets. In this way, Silent Hill 2’s assets and textures improved upon the original: rather than the ambiguous “fog world,” the game’s enhanced exteriors (still manipulating the degree of fog in a new manner) and complimenting interiors with darker textures create an eerie atmosphere that forces the player into fear by causing safe areas to appear haunting. Most horror games nowadays fail to do that. Rather than relying on jumpscares, Silent Hill 2 embraces its atmosphere and slight paranoia of the player to enhance its horror.
Additionally, Silent Hill 2 introduces the players to a unique set of monsters with various boss battles, each reflective of James’ internal psyche. Nurses are dubbed “sexy” in order to represent James’ repressed sexual desires for his wife when she was ill. There are Mandarins that hang on metal grating for eternity, and should they fall, disappear into an abyss. These represent James’ sanity and will to live should he submit to his own guilt. Pyramid Head serves as the judge, jury, and executioner to James’ sins. It serves as a symbolic physical punishment for James unless he finishes his odyssey in a path of redemption — a fascinating metaphor to a surrealist world.
Like most narrative-heavy games today, Silent Hill 2 has multiple endings, which players can unlock at the end of their playthrough. There are various ‘good’ and ‘bad’ endings, which players can unlock depending on the choices players make throughout the game. These endings provide extra replayability to the game with additional unlocks, such as a new puzzle difficulty or even an extra weapon, if you earn a particular ending.
Finally, my favorite part of Silent Hill 2 is its music. Akira Yamaoka served as the main composer for essentially all of the Silent Hill games. Yamaoka’s unique composition further enhances the atmosphere and intensity. Whether it is the ambient background or the heavy instrumentation during cinematic cutscenes, Yamaoka brings Silent Hill to life. He is well known for his compositions in the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack with tracks from Silent Hill 2 making it into Silent Hill’s live-action remake and various Role Playing horror games.
Silent Hill 2 remains as a modern masterpiece to casual and professional players alike. Crafted as a narrative that forces the player through an odyssey of redemption and fear, I believe it is gaming’s most intelligent storytelling masterpiece. With metaphors riddled throughout the story and the world it inhabits, through the creation of an interesting monster and psychological development of all characters, Silent Hill 2 is the eeriest, intense, but rewarding new horror game to play. This Halloween season, if you’re looking for a story worth exploring or an ambiguously terrifying game to play, Silent Hill 2 is definitely worth a shot.
Recently, an HD collection of the game has been released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. However, if you’re looking for the true experience, Silent Hill 2: Director’s Cut on the PC is a better alternative.
