Memory of a Town: Experiencing Silent Hill 2 Through Its Remake

Before I turned 18 and departed for college, I had played my copy of Silent Hill 2 so much, the CD was utterly scratched. It would always crash at the same spot: right after the intro, running down the path through the misty woods. Amidst the fog, I could hear the ungodly snarls of unseen abominations stalking me through the trees. Then, the soundscape would suddenly glitch. My TV would freeze, its only image a stuck-in-time PlayStation 2 era James Sunderland, mid-step, donning a blank expression.

At that point in my life, I had beaten the game multiple times, even on the hardest difficulties. I knew the nightmarish town of Silent Hill like an old lover. I can still recite entire bits of dialogue by memory. I know a wax doll, a lighter and a horseshoe make for an impromptu handle. I still remember the first time I experienced the famous plot twist – I bawled my eyes out at that pivotal, gut-wrenching moment.

Silent Hill 2 is, and forever will be, an important game for me. It's the first game I ever played (probably at too young an age) with mature themes, handling them with a grounded attitude along with a nightmarish otherwordliness. I hold the first three Silent Hill games in high regard, 2 especially. It taught me, above all, that games are valid art forms worth defending. That a game can respect your intelligence and not spell everything out to you. That a game can be brutal and depressing, but utterly, breathtakingly beautiful in its execution.

Alongside these valuable lessons, it imparted two horrible adages: everything you love can be commodified, everything you love can be ruined.

The late 2000s/early 2010s Silent Hill titles have earned their reputations as disappointing experiences, especially after the series golden age on the PlayStation 1 and 2. After control was wrested from its original creators, the franchise was granted to Western developers that, while devoted fans, failed to capture the essence and subtlety of what made Silent Hill great. Their metaphors and use of overt, lopsided symbols tarnished the nuanced conversations about mental health and abuse the Team Silent titles invited. The subtlety of the monsters sublimated into cash-grab pachinko machines. The narratives devolved into simplistic fables about guilt and punishment.

Bloober Team faced a daunting challenge. Not only did they have to satisfy me by remaking one of my favorite games of all time, they had to impress every other Silent Hill 2 fan out there: fans who have spent decades obsessing over, analyzing, and deconstructing every single detail in the game.

My expectations were rock bottom, given Bloober Team's track record. I found Layers of Fear to be surface-deep and The Medium a middling video game. Then there's Konami, who have been misusing and misunderstanding their intellectual properties for the better part of two decades (see: the disastrous release of the Silent Hill HD Collection, the cancellation of Hideo Kojima's Silent Hills, Metal Gear: Survive...I shudder at that last one). This combination seemed like a recipe for disaster.

The Silent Hill 2 remake managed to pleasantly surprise me. This is Bloober Team's best work. The remake doesn't hold a candle to the original, but it's still the best Silent Hill game to come out since the PS2 era. Even under its own merits, it's a flawed experience, but I'd be lying if I stated I didn't enjoy this fresh take on the familiar streets and dilapidated buildings I grew up with. Playing the remake felt like experiencing this sacred game from my tween years through someone's else's hazy yet passionate memory.

Silent Hill 2 is, and forever will be, an important game for me. It's the first game I ever played (probably at too young an age) with mature themes, handling them with a grounded attitude along with a nightmarish otherwordliness.

"I don't look like a ghost, do I?"

The Silent Hill 2 remake plays with the idea of memory on multiple levels: not only does memory have thematic relevance in the story, but, on a meta level, all remakes invoke the memory of the original game.

On a more superficial and non-narrative layer, there's a series of collectibles scattered throughout the game that serve as references and call backs to the original, called "Glimpses of the Past." The underpass where James originally encountered his first monster, the original Pyramid Head boss room, the blood-covered padded room in the hospital: a button prompt invites you to ponder and reflect on these scenes.

How a remake plays with remembrance defines how well-loved and accepted it is. Change too much: the fans hate it. Change too little: could've been a remaster. There's no mathematical equation or perfect formula for a successful remake. I would argue, however, that the best remakes invoke the authenticity of the original and remain faithful to it while improving on the faults of its predecessor.

Therein lies the issue, and the gargantuan task Bloober Team had to face: what can you meaningfully remix in a game that many consider to be perfect? How do you improve on a game in which even the flaws and limitations add value to the experience? How do you remake an icon like Silent Hill 2?

The best aspects of the Silent Hill 2 remake are the parts left (mostly) untouched: the story, the characters, and the dialogue. The narrative as a whole is excellent, as it was 20 years ago. The themes of guilt, suicidal ideation, sexual frustration and abuse are perfectly executed, with gravitas and psychological complexity. It reminded me why the original is so beloved: because its story is non-plus-ultra. It tugs at your heartstrings forever; it accentuates itself with every single replay. The subtle changes Bloober implemented enhanced the meaning and value of an already impressive plotline.

The moment-to-moment gameplay: the exploration, combat and puzzles, are a mixed bag. The changes to the layout and sequences are superficial at best, leaving me wondering why they were implemented other than to spice things up for long time players or to extend the game's duration.

The worst changes are the ones that oversaturate the game with horror tropes and rely on the overexposure of the scares, losing the subtle, overbearing, ever-present, tense atmosphere of the original.

The themes of guilt, suicidal ideation, sexual frustration and abuse are perfectly executed, with gravitas and psychological complexity.

"In my restless dreams, I see that town..."

You play as James Sunderland, who has received a letter from his wife, Mary, urging him to come to Silent Hill and meet at their "special place." Slight problem: the missus has been dead for 3 years, due to a mysterious and sudden illness. James descends into the abandoned, fog-covered resort town, encountering sickly monstrosities along the way, forcing him to confront his heavily repressed trauma and deep-seated guilt.

I really enjoy the remake version of James more than the original. While the words he utters are (mostly) unchanged, with a couple additions here and there, the higher fidelity of the graphics allow for more subtle characterization. James winces with discomfort when he lodges his arm deep inside a filthy toilet. There's a slight, hesitating hand twitch when he is served a glass of whiskey at the bar. He's more emotive when he speaks and fights, more relatable. But he's still the same awkward James we know and love–the same surly, desperate man haunted by the memory of his dead wife.

I love the original game's voice acting. The campiness adds to the experience and makes the whole world feel rather Lynchian, which accentuates this feeling of de-realization that Silent Hill 2 fomented so well. The new and improved voice acting in the remake retains this ethereal tone. The actors managed to perfectly capture the Twin Peaks style of dialogue of the original while doing away with the corn and the camp, leading to more realistic and relatable character moments. Whoever was in charge of casting and directing the voice actors did a spot-on job.

Then there's the love that was poured into the town. Bloober Team did a great job at conceptualizing the town and injecting it with the necessary character. Silent Hill torments you - cruelly so - all to force you into a head-on confrontation with your darkest nightmares and deepest fears. The fog is as oppressive as ever; it seems to pool around every crevice and corner. The darkness of its interiors is engrossing and impenetrable, as if it threatens to swallow you whole with one misstep. The otherworld is flesh-covered, decayed, rusted over, and as impactful as ever – it is the same affront to your senses I remember, grating metal upon grating bloody metal.

This veneer of graphical improvement doesn't hide the town's personality. It still feels and looks like Silent Hill. This is probably how I visualized the town in the PlayStation 2 days, back when its graphics were considered top-notch and realistic. It proved to me that, at least when it came to the aesthetics and the meaning behind them, Bloober Team understood, better than any other developer that's taken the torch, what makes Silent Hill click.

I am forever grateful the story and the town weren't impacted; it's clear Bloober Team knows that the narrative is timeless and that its themes remain relevant to this day (and probably will for decades to follow). That the town is equally permanent–it has ingrained itself in the brain of its lovers and fanatics. They have preserved its essence for newcomers and fans to experience with fresh eyes. Gold star for Bloober Team.

The fog is as oppressive as ever; it seems to pool around every crevice and corner. The darkness of its interiors is engrossing and impenetrable, as if it threatens to swallow you whole with one misstep.

"Killin' a person ain't no big deal. Just put the gun to their head... pow!"

Combat and puzzles are the real shake-ups to the formula.

The camera has been moved to an over-the-shoulder, 3rd person view. I aim my gun; a small reticule tells me exactly where the bullets will go. I have free range over the camera after years of getting used to that control being wrested from me. A single hit of the right trigger sends my iron pipe swinging. A single press of a button and I'm chugging a health drink. I hold that same button down to inject a rusty syringe straight into my arm. This ease of gameplay immersed me deeper into the game's world. I spent less time fiddling with inventory menus to heal up or change weapons, allowing me to be more present with the horrors that surrounded me. Unfortunately, that's the only valuable addition this switch-up brings.

The game is significantly more combat heavy, which makes sense in the way it emulates third person survival horror games with its perspective and gunplay, but fighting monsters was never the point of Silent Hill.

In the original Silent Hill 2, combat wasn't just clunky and awkward–it was a commitment. In melee combat, you committed to the stance and not being able to dodge or move; you committed to pressing a button to ready your weapon and a whole different one to whack the ghouls; you committed to bashing enemies as their hardy health slowly whittles. It incentivized players to avoid combat, which allowed the monsters have even more of a terrifying presence. When you can weave and bash like the best of them, the brutality of the combat is a punctured wound–it is bloody and punctuated, but the monsters aren't much of a threat. The game started to lose blood with the overabundance of combat scenarios.

In the remake, I almost always chose fighting over running away, because there's a more passive nature to this action. It's no longer the weighted commitment of the original. Why run away from a Lying Figure when I know a couple of thwacks with my melee weapon will fall the enemy? Why run from a Mannequin when three solid bullets to its body will leave it motionless on the floor? The enemies aren't as hardy or potent as the original. This problem is accentuated by the lack of resource scarcity: bullets and health items are abundant and plentiful. I never felt the tension or anxiety that I wouldn't have enough shotgun shells or health drinks for the challenges ahead.

The third person camera also affects the way the game is framed. Call it a flaw, an intentional mechanic, or an antiquated object of a bygone age–the fixed camera angles at least added something to the original. It created an effective emotional distance between the player and James Sunderland–helped the town feel more oppressive and overbearing.

The fixed camera angle allowed for much better framing, not just in obscuring or centralizing the monsters and the scares, but in guiding the player to puzzles, ways forward and important items. Having free control of the camera means the designers have to guide players in a different way. I don't intend to re-hash the "yellow paint" debate, but the white cloth markers that guide you through necessary pathways lead to a more linear and less interconnected experience. The Silent Hill 2 remake felt like a linear series of frights and fights, whereas the original really precipitated this sense of wandering through a hazy, supernatural place. Having to parse out where to go and how to get there, re-treading steps when darkness falls, when the door to nightmares swings open: that's what Silent Hill 2 is all about.

This ease of gameplay immersed me deeper into the game's world. I spent less time fiddling with inventory menus to heal up or change weapons, allowing me to be more present with the horrors that surrounded me.

"What I want from you is an answer!"

It's true the original had some convoluted puzzles. The trapdoor puzzle I hinted at in the introduction contains a fair bit of "moon logic." I tend to excuse them more easily, mostly out of my own familiarity. I know exactly which puzzles I will encounter in which areas. I have an almost eidetic sense for Silent Hill 2's puzzles, and an uncanny ability to solve them by groping inside my mind for a speck of memory.

The puzzles I most enjoyed were the ones that played with my recollections–called back to the original puzzles but improved upon them in unique ways. I loved how they revamped the coin puzzle in Woodbury Apartments and incorporated a final choice that speaks volumes about how you, the player, thinks about and processes guilt. The Lakeview Hotel is a masterclass of level and puzzle design. It truly elevated the original's music box puzzle, evolving it from a simple "collect three keys to open a door" type of chore into an active engagement. The solution informs and assists with other puzzles, turning the Hotel into an interconnected palace where every puzzle bled into the other.

Discussing the puzzles segues smoothly into discussing the ways the various locales have been transformed in the remake. When it comes to the best puzzles and areas in the game, the real standouts are Woodside Apartments and Lakeview Hotel, because out of all of them they felt the most interconnected, reminiscent of the original Silent Hill 2 yet of much improved quality. This is the ultimate tragedy: the beginning and the end of the game are the best parts. So much fluff has been added, the middle of the game borders on tedium.

The best representation of my conniptions over the level and puzzle design is the thrice-locked, chained up box in Brookhaven Hospital. It speaks to some of the biggest issues I have with the game. It's not as if the puzzle has been significantly altered from its original counterpart: the premise is you have to find various codes and keys to unlock a box. The way it differentiates itself in the remake is that the box acts as a sort of central hub, with three chains leading down to separate, delineated paths of the hospital. Down each one, you will either scrounge up either a key or code to unlock one of the chains.

In the original, you have to actively explore the Hospital to find what you need, and even when you do unlock the box, the item you receive is a string that assists in the solution of another puzzle – combined with a bent needle to fish out a key from a shower drain. In the remake, it feels like a slog, because each path is its own journey – it no longer feels like a concise, interconnected space. When you finally unlock the box you get: absolutely nothing. A blanket suddenly drops behind James, clearly demarcating the path forward. It makes the game feel rather linear and bloated. Three paths versus one excellently designed level.

This design philosophy continues through the successive areas. The path to get the key to the Hisorical Society is a linear traversal full of combat encounters and more white-cloth passageways. The original had one labyrinth, the remake has three. Toluca Prison has a puzzle involving weights that unlock different doors that disguises the linearity of your progression.

The game's framing, over-reliance of "game-y" traversal mechanics (such as breaking down walls, crawling through holes clearly marked with white sheets) and the padding that is oh-so-common in the mid-game weren't enough for me to hate the remake. While I am critical of these facets, I still believe they're quite excusable or redeemable by the game's better qualities.

The biggest gripe I have with the game is that it didn't terrify me as much as I wanted it to.

The biggest gripe I have with the game is that it didn't terrify me as much as I wanted it to.

There was a hole here. It's gone now.

What frustrates me about the remake is the inclusion of overt jump scares and artificial horror. I say "artificial" because these elements were broadly injected into a game that didn't need it. The horror of its predecessor felt organic. The town of Silent Hill is horrific in it of itself. The original Silent Hill 2 cultivated an oppressive, terrifying atmosphere and it didn't need jump scares and enemy ambushes in order to do so.

The first time a Mannequin ambushed me, it really got me. By the 50th time, I could easily spot them trying to stand still the darkened rooms, popping some shots at them out of annoyance rather than excitement. We didn't need monsters breaking down walls to represent how vitriolic the town feels toward James. There's no reason why we needed enemies suddenly surprising you when picking up the Woodbury apartment key, nor did we need the aggressive wind howling and hollering.

Fear is too subjective an emotion to judge a game, sure, but the original Silent Hill 2 continues to unnerve me, if not outright terrify me. Bloober Team failed to understand that in order to make the scares and tension work, you need to give the player moments of reprieve and quiet. Whatever we, the players, can formulate inside our own heads will always be scarier than populating the town with monsters. As long as we believe a monstrosity could be hiding in every corner, the anxiety will remain. When there's a Mannequin hiding in every room (an exaggeration on my part, sure, but representative of my frustration), there's not much I can do to freak myself out.

To over-saturate and overexpose a player to your horror elements means they become less effective over time. And when you consider the game is artificially lengthened with its additions, that really salts the wound of this problem.

The horror of its predecessor felt organic. The town of Silent Hill is horrific in it of itself. The original Silent Hill 2 cultivated an oppressive, terrifying atmosphere and it didn't need jump scares and enemy ambushes in order to do so.

"I'm not your Mary"

Memory can be obfuscating. Just as James himself did, I tried to repress my own memory to give the game a fair shot. Nostalgia is an uneasy bedfellow: it kept creeping back into the recesses of my brain and affected my value judgement.

It is impossible to play a remake, especially a remake of a game I love so much, without having memory crawl back like a persistent insect. In general, I saw the changes made to the game as rather superficial. Despite the big alterations and additions, it plays like a remake where nothing meaningful was added or subtracted, yet feels distinctly different from its predecessor.

I went back and played the original Silent Hill 2 after beating the remake. It made me appreciate Bloober's attempt a lot more. Despite what fans might say, the game is starting to show its age. It reinforced what I liked and disliked about the remake, and I stand by my statement that the remake did improve on some facets of the original. The voice acting, the Woodbury Apartments, the Lakeview Hotel – I would much rather play through the remake version of the last level than the original's.

The Silent Hill 2 remake made me cry. Any game that can incite such an emotional reaction from me is a great game. The plot twist was masterfully executed: when James inserts the VHS into a dusty television, he sees his own reflection in the black screen. The tape shows the truth he's been running from all along: his wife hasn't been dead for three years. James Sunderland smothered his sick wife. The inciting cause is ultimately left to player interpretation. I always thought it was because of a combination of factors: his sexual frustration over lack of intimacy, Mary's emotional abuse towards James, maybe even a hint of mercy killing–James didn't want to see Mary suffer, or, perhaps more selfishly, wanted to ease his own suffering caused by Mary's disease. When the tape ends, a clearly exhausted and devastated James stares back, almost as if looking at the player directly, his guilt revealed to an absolute stranger beyond the veil.

A boss fight and an expository hallway later, and you get one of multiple endings. I wasn't attempting to get a particular ending: I was just playing the game normally and not stressing over getting my favorite ending (In Water, in case you're curious). When Mary reads her full letter is when the tears started flowing and they didn't stop until much later. The game ended, and with it all the feelings I've ever felt about the original came crawling back. I have infinite gratitude to Bloober Team for that emotional moment. For allowing me to relive the experience of playing Silent Hill 2 with fresh eyes.

I would be curious to see what a total newcomer to the series thinks of this game. I was unable to separate my love for the original with my critique of the remake. I would argue, however, that the elements a newbie might enjoy most are the elements that are most reminiscent of the original.

I commend Bloober Team for their success. I want to congratulate them for giving it their all in the insurmountable task of remaking Silent Hill 2. I think Silent Hill fans should give this game a fair chance – see how their memory holds up to the remake's reiterations of the places and moments they most loved. But if you're asking me, which version of the game I will go to my grave defending, all I'll say is: bury me with my broken PlayStation 2 and my scratched-up copy of Silent Hill 2.