Retrospective: Silent Hill 2

So, Silent Hill 2.

I’m just going to say this up front. I strongly believe that this is the best Survival Horror game ever made. I know this is a bold statement, but I believe the game simply is that good. Almost everything about this game contributes to this conclusion, even the flaws in it. While I’m going to obviously be discussing the game’s merits and flaws, this is actually less of a review, and more simply a sort of love letter to the series.

Alright, exposition time. The story, at its most basic, is that our protagonist, James, has received a letter from his wife, Mary, telling her to come meet him at their “special place,” as she’s waiting for him there. Small problem. Mary has been dead for about three years now, dead from an unspecified illness, most likely cancer. So, James decides to go to Silent Hill to see just what is going on. While there, you meet a few other characters, who I’ll explain more about in a bit, as their reasons for being in Silent Hill are much more in depth than you might think.

Yeah this place sure seems like my idea of a “Special Place.”

Now, since the first thing I’ve mentioned about the game is the story, it should be apparent by now that, by and large, the most important aspect of this game is the story, which I consider to be one of the best stories ever written for a video game. As a result, I’m almost certainly going to be going into some details of the story that would be considered “spoilers,” but for those who haven’t played the game, don’t worry, I’ll warn you. (Also, buy it and play it, the hell is wrong with you?)

A large part of the story addresses a question that is very rarely brought up in most video game story lines: just how reliable of a source of information is James? When introducing himself to the side characters, chiefly a slightly off kilter woman named Angela, and a suspicious acting man named Eddie, he mentions that he’s looking for his wife, after mentioning that she’s dead. The characters are very well fleshed out, and react in ways that show that while they are currently stuck in what can only be described as a Hell on Earth, they certainly live in the real world, as they react in manners of very convincing incredulousness, with James often reassuring them in a way that seems almost as directed at himself as it is them, that “I’m not crazy or anything.”

Personally however, if I was seeing some of the things James was seeing during his stay in Silent Hill, I would find the idea of madness to be a little comforting.

Well, hello there!

Ah yes, Pyramid Head. Although in later games, and in the movie (which I will NOT talk about), they sort of turned him into the “mascot” of Silent Hill, and with this, he became a sort of tongue in cheek reference to amusingly immature jokes about how “it’s not rape if they enjoyed it,” this character was part of what made this game so damn scary.

While there’s lots of little subtle elements to the story that are not explicitly stated that have some very nasty ramifications (again, more on that later), each of the first three Silent Hill games have at least one very overt aspect to them, that each time I play through the games, amazes me that there didn’t cause en masse protests of the games by our the likes of our good friend, Jack Thompson, and in this case, it’s Pyramid Head’s introductory scene:

Fun times.

In all seriousness, the integration of this character was a genius move. The scariest thing about him, in game, is that in addition to being completely invincible, he often shows up right out of nowhere, with no cutscene introduction, and each time, it WILL freak you the hell out.

In addition to Mr. Head himself, the other monsters in Silent Hill are delightfully freakish, and most of them are slathered in enough sexual symbolism to make Sigmund Freud blush. And none of it is in the least bit sexy.

Going back to the story, this is where I’m going to be actually discussing it, so if you haven’t played it yet, either go out and do so, or don’t whine at me.

BELOW BE SPOILERS

So, as I mentioned before, not everything James says should be trusted, and the game makes a big point of driving this home. Around a quarter of the way through the game, you meet a character named Maria, who looks nearly identical to Mary, Jame’s wife. This is far from coincidental. Especially when the town and its machinations begin finding ways to kill Maria, and then with no explanation, bring her back from the dead, only to kill her again. If you’re familiar with the Silent Hill modus operandi, almost everything in the games is in some way symbolic or representative of something to do with the main characters. As I mentioned, Pyramid Head is symbolic in a large way, of none other than *drumroll, please* JAMES! Now, why might Pyramid Head, who repeatedly murders Maria, be representative of James, who had a wife named Mary?

Well, I haven’t the foggiest.

At any rate, the eventual revelation that James in fact, smothered Mary with a pillow is presented in a manner, that even despite the nightmarish surroundings, manages to make James seem almost as monstrous as the town itself, and even though, on subsequent playthroughs, this revelation still manages to be just as horrific as it is heartwrenching.

END SPOILERS

James is a very complicated man, and there is, even to this day, a large amount of back and forth amongst the fandom as to how he really should be interpreted, whether as a sympathetic tragic hero, or whether he is even deserving of pity.

In true Silent Hill fashion, I prefer to believe both viewpoints are equally valid.

The side characters are also very well done, especially the character of Angela, whose backstory I won’t reveal here, but trust me when I say that when you find out why she acts as strange around James as she does, she will cease to be “the annoying crazy girl,” and very quickly become, at least to my mind, one of the saddest characters ever written for a video game. As I said, I won’t detail what happened here, you’ll just have to… PLAY THE GAME, MWUA HA HA HA HA HAA!

This game had a major impact on me, and I think on video games as a whole, and it was mainly because of the story was so well done, and trust me when I say it’s what makes the game so amazing. The scares are very effective, and any time you hear someone talk about Silent Hill 2, they will always mention the incredible atmosphere, and the plethora of unsettling imagery and symbolism, and the astounding music, which can range from the hauntingly beautiful to the cerebrally terrifying. But to me, what really makes this game as great as it is is the story, which I believe set a definite benchmark for how well characterization could be done within a video game. Take that, Mr. “Video games can’t be art” Roger Ebert.

Now, I would be remiss to say the game is perfect, as there are three flaws with this game. The first, and to my mind, least problematic, is the graphics. They’re not necessarily bad, as they are convincing enough to still make the apparitions quite scary, but the game was one of the very early PS2 games, and well, it looks like it. As I said though, they don’t really detract from the game’s ability to frighten you, so ultimately, this isn’t too bad, although this aspect will be addressed in next week’s article on Silent Hill 1. The next flaw is the voice acting. While poor voice acting is still an unfortunate blight upon even modern games (although this is finally starting to be averted, see Chris’ upcoming review of Enslaved for more info on this), this game is pretty bad when it comes to the actors. James and Angela’s voice actors kind of get it together towards the end of the game, which is good, because that’s where the real drama starts happening, for the most part, it’s just very cheesy, especially Eddie and Laura’s characters. The last flaw is the controls, which, well, are just not very good. This seems almost kind of a tradition for survival horror games, as developers seem to think it makes you more afraid of the enemies, which I guess it does, but at times, it’s just annoying, especially the camera, which controls as if it were attached to the end of a fishing line being swung around by a drunken epileptic.

The game is rather short, and the combat, while not particularly user friendly, is rather easy, and the emphasis is placed very heavily on the story, and the symbolism of the game, which only adds to the sort of foreboding nature of the town, which, as I mentioned, is an almost literal Hell on Earth. The theme, fittingly for a place that manifests itself as the method of punishment for people’s sins, is that of guilt, and a person’s ability or inability to accept it or escape it. Because no one in this game is innocent. As Eddie says at one point: “You and me, we’re the same! This town called you too!” The town does indeed call for you as well, so heed the call, and play this game as soon as possible if you haven’t.