I not too long ago bought by means of my first playthrough of the Silent Hill 2 remake and vastly loved it. I used to be involved about Bloober Workforce helming this challenge given their physique of labor in addition to Konami’s patchy publishing historical past. Take into account this me fortunately consuming crow as promised.
This 2024 re-imagining of a survival horror masterpiece is undeniably a subject of debate. With an 86 Metacritic rating and over 1 million copies offered, this remake pulls off an impeccable job retaining the spirit of the unique work and including gildings to its core. In doing so, they’ve helped breathe new life into the enduring haunted city.
Notice: This text will include each gameplay and story spoilers for Silent Hill 2. Learn at your individual discretion.
The Narrative and Character Adjustments within the Silent Hill 2 Remake
After 20 years of distance, the very fact Silent Hill 2 stays one of the crucial haunting and impactful video games ever is a testomony to its high quality. It has been analyzed and dissected fervently since its launch because of its Lynchian tone, surreal dreamlike environment, masterful musical rating, complicated characters, grotesquely symbolic creature designs, and a darkly mature story involving terminal sickness, trauma, and guilt.
James Sunderland’s descent into Silent Hill this time is enhanced by fashionable graphics expertise and better manufacturing values. Whereas it does take away the endearingly stilted awkwardness of the unique, it does permit this remake alternatives to reframe components of the unique.
One character left largely unchanged by these fashionable touches is Angela Orosco. Given the dumb tradition battle nonsense kicked up round her character design and deeply unsettling themes at play relating to home abuse and assault, that is a very good factor.
Eddie Dombrowski is vastly enhanced by the extra refined efficiency seize on show. In each scene he is in, Eddie’s breath is seen, like he’s someplace chilly. However he by no means remarks on or reacts to the chilly. That is illustrated in a scene in an deserted movie show the place Eddie is consuming a bathtub of ice cream barehanded.
It is a contact that confirms a fan idea, that Eddie is experiencing a distinct model of Silent Hill, presumably a frozen industrial panorama just like the meat locker the place his boss struggle takes place. On stability, it is essentially the most mild of narrative modifications.
However Bloober Workforce takes a number of main swings within the Silent Hill 2 remake with Maria. Maria is among the most fascinating characters within the collection. She’s a deceptively complicated mix of damsel and antagonistic power, merciless temptress and obsessive possessive.
Within the Silent Hill 2 remake, Maria is given a bit extra character. That is accomplished by means of smaller components peppered all through the sport, however essentially the most substantive scene occurs within the backyard.
Maria tells James of an area legend: a story of a girl exiled for being a witch who’s visited by a person in secret. The person dies in the future throughout a deliberate rendezvous, however the lady continues to carry a vigil for him.
For first-timers, it may be seen as an on-the-nose parallel to James’ journey by means of Silent Hill, framing it as a story of everlasting love. For these accustomed to James’ story, it is a narrative pink herring, a nice lie meant to cover the messier, extra human finish to that story.
From Maria’s perspective, the story could be seen as a tragic story of somebody holding desperately onto a contented ending that can by no means come. It not solely foreshadows the sport’s closing battle, it frames Maria as a extra tragic determine.
Then there’s James himself. Luke Roberts offers a quiet, deeply damaged efficiency within the lead function, which is put to nice impact within the Silent Hill 2 remake because of superior performance-capture expertise and high-fidelity property becoming a contemporary AAA manufacturing.
It is a efficiency put to nice impact within the remake’s two new endings. The primary one, the Bliss ending, is a mixture of fan service and commentary on nostalgia. Earlier than watching the tape that reveals the reality behind his spouse’s destiny, James drinks a vial of White Claudia, a potion from earlier Silent Hill video games. When the tape activates, James is transported into the world of the tape, trapped eternally in a nostalgic reminiscence of halcyon days.
Given the passionate reverence of the Silent Hill fandom in the direction of its earliest titles, it is an ending with extra chunk on nearer inspection—actually consuming prior to now to the purpose that there isn’t any future.
The second new ending, Stillness, could be essentially the most miserable one. James is actually damaged by his guilt. He would not learn Mary’s closing letter to him and begins to cry in his automobile as rain falls, all whereas Mary seems within the backseat, whispering consolation. It ends ambiguously with the display reducing to black adopted by the sound of the automobile revving, adopted by a crash.
It is an ending that appears to substantiate one other long-held fan idea—that Mary’s physique was in James’ automobile the entire time—in addition to reveals an ending for James that stands alongside the others’ resolutions of emotional catharsis, self-destruction, poisonous codependence, and gonzo absurdity.
Taken as an entire, these narrative modifications and gildings present a refined maturity to Silent Hill’s storytelling, one that does not draw back from the messy humanity of its characters with out falling into melodrama or nihilistic pitch darkness.
The Gameplay Adjustments within the Silent Hill 2 Remake
The core gameplay of the Silent Hill 2 remake is the place Bloober Workforce’s biggest challenges lie. In spite of everything, the narrative of the unique is beloved; the gameplay not a lot.
The remake’s core gameplay follows the AAA status sport pattern. It’s characterised by a third-person digital camera with over-the-shoulder capturing damaged up with mild puzzle-solving and motion set items.
Usually, it is a change that has made the sport extra accessible however could have sanded down a few of the unique’s eccentric edges.
There’s a larger emphasis on fight. James would not simply hearth weapons, he frantically dodges and strikes with melee weapons. These determined struggles are largely intense bouts of flailing and screaming, however sure enemy encounters could be too frequent.
This motion shift can vastly exhaust the participant close to the tip and vastly dilute the monster designs’ meant unsettling visible affect. Getting jumped by one model is horrifying. Getting jumped by 20? Much less so.
As for puzzles, the unique’s notoriously esoteric key-hunting sections are both streamlined or eliminated within the Silent Hill 2 remake. A number of of them are even referenced in easter eggs. That is good for mitigating participant frustration however does make the expertise much less surreal.
Fortunately, the extent design picks up the slack. Profiting from fashionable {hardware}, the Otherworld sections can broaden into unsettling liminal hellscapes in mere seconds, making you query your environment with the logic of a nightmare. Absolutely the standout is the revamped jail part within the sport’s second half.
Lastly, every main boss struggle within the sport is a multi-phase gauntlet, full with escalating risks and evolving fight arenas, making them bombastic in comparison with the unique’s fast and ugly fights.
However regardless of these modifications, the Silent Hill 2 remake nonetheless feels distinctive. There are even some areas the place the spectacle provides to the horror. A private spotlight is the revamped Summary Daddy boss struggle, an enviornment that begins in claustrophobic corridors earlier than exploding right into a twisted labyrinth of business steel and flesh.
The Way forward for Silent Hill
Whereas Konami’s latest makes an attempt to revive the collection have been tepid, Bloober Workforce managed one thing downright unattainable with the Silent Hill 2 remake. There’s a new era of gamers on this collection once more, ones that may have measured and significant conversations with older gamers who have been round for the unique launch.
With that curiosity could come an opportunity for brand new tales on this haunted city with new inventive voices—the form of nightmares that, if dealt with with the identical care as this remake, will probably be ones price revisiting many times.
