A man stares longingly into the mirror, shadows cast along his face, hiding his intentions not only from us, but from himself...
"Mary... Could you really be in this town?
A woman's reply, a message delivered from the past beckons the man to a mysterious and desolate ruin.
"In my restless dreams, I see that town."
He slowly walks through a fog laden path, unusual sounds echoing as he gets ever closer to his destination.
"Silent Hill."
He arrives at a graveyard on the edge of the lakeside town, a forgotten hallow ground.
"You promised to take me there again someday. But you never did."
The letter guiding him is past tense, the voice deceased. And yet that voice says,
"Well, I'm alone there now... in our 'special place'... Waiting for you..."
Where the horror for Silent Hill 1 came mostly from the visceral and graphic visuals, an intensely industrial soundtrack, and the occult themes, Silent Hill 2's comes from a much darker, more personal place.
Silent Hill 2 at the start gives you a very familiar setup. You are a lone man, entering the town looking for someone, child and wife respectively.
You are, or at least seem to be, a typical everyman. Both Harry and James are very standard American names, with only five letters. Both have a very similar designs, here's Harry's and James'. In fact James looked even more similar in his original design.
Both men had sickly wives who died before the events of the game, both are very awkward in their mannerisms and how they speak, and both are drawn into circumstances they cannot initially fathom.
This is fully intentional.
James Sunderland is specifically designed to make the player think that they will have a similar experience to Silent Hill 1, making the player feel comfortable and safe.
However, as the game progresses, we begin to see how wrong we are.
When we start, James seems like the voice of reason. When he encounters the other lost souls within Silent Hill, he always tries to rationalize their actions, or explain why their way of thinking is wrong. Like when he tries to convince the traumatized and abused Angela Orosco to not commit suicide, or the eeriely creepy murder denying Eddie Dombrowski that he shouldn't kill people just for saying rude things.
Of course, this façade of rationality immediately breaks the moment these characters insinuate that he is no different from them, causing him to get strangely defensive and angry. His tone of voice becoming way more icy, showing a side of James we didn't know was there.
And it's that side of James that makes us realize... this man is hiding something.
His lack of sanity.
This is something you'll start picking up on when you first go through the Woodside Apartments near the start of the game. As you go through, things begin to appear that... don't make realistic sense. Such as the favorite clothes of Mary appearing in front of a spotlight in an empty room. James himself even comments on this, finding it extremely disconcerting.
However, it's once we enter the Otherworld that the clues become more evident. The locales we enter are covered in a gloomy green and blue cloth, different from the harsh orange and red rusty metals from the first game. The cloth stitches together feeling much like that of a solitary confinement cell or a straightjacket.
Now of course in Silent Hill 1 we would simply attribute this to being a part of the dreams of Alessa and her powers distorting the town... but in Silent Hill 2, there is no Alessa.
These dreams belong to James. From the various monsters encountered, to the rain and water drowning out the world, to even an entire character made from his subconscious to try and please him, all of this springs from James' mind.
The most terrifying of all being, of course, Pyramid Head. This thing is terror incarnate. Regardless of the fact that it is slow, and doesn't follow you that frequently through the game compared to contemporaries like Mr. X or Nemesis, it is both thematically and visually much more horrifying.
Every time it appears, things go wrong. It hunts James down like a dog, carrying its gigantic butcher knife or spear. Killing and what appears to be fornicating with the other monsters seen throughout this horrific mental landscape.
There's a point around just halfway through the game, where you get chased by it through a dark narrow hall, and... man I don't want to spoil it but it just... it just fucks me up so bad.
On that same note, you do get a companion character early on and while I initially thought that this would take away some of the isolation that I felt in the first game... man it paid off heavily in the end.
I don't want to go further into what the plot is like, but to summarize, Silent Hill 2's horror is James Sunderland. The darkness that lies within us all, the scary parts of ourselves we hide not just from the world, but from ourselves
This game makes me wonder what my Silent Hill would be like and... man, I'm so glad this shit is fiction.
"Mary... Could you really be in this town?
A woman's reply, a message delivered from the past beckons the man to a mysterious and desolate ruin.
"In my restless dreams, I see that town."
He slowly walks through a fog laden path, unusual sounds echoing as he gets ever closer to his destination.
"Silent Hill."
He arrives at a graveyard on the edge of the lakeside town, a forgotten hallow ground.
"You promised to take me there again someday. But you never did."
The letter guiding him is past tense, the voice deceased. And yet that voice says,
"Well, I'm alone there now... in our 'special place'... Waiting for you..."
Where the horror for Silent Hill 1 came mostly from the visceral and graphic visuals, an intensely industrial soundtrack, and the occult themes, Silent Hill 2's comes from a much darker, more personal place.
Silent Hill 2 at the start gives you a very familiar setup. You are a lone man, entering the town looking for someone, child and wife respectively.
You are, or at least seem to be, a typical everyman. Both Harry and James are very standard American names, with only five letters. Both have a very similar designs, here's Harry's and James'. In fact James looked even more similar in his original design.
Both men had sickly wives who died before the events of the game, both are very awkward in their mannerisms and how they speak, and both are drawn into circumstances they cannot initially fathom.
This is fully intentional.
James Sunderland is specifically designed to make the player think that they will have a similar experience to Silent Hill 1, making the player feel comfortable and safe.
However, as the game progresses, we begin to see how wrong we are.
When we start, James seems like the voice of reason. When he encounters the other lost souls within Silent Hill, he always tries to rationalize their actions, or explain why their way of thinking is wrong. Like when he tries to convince the traumatized and abused Angela Orosco to not commit suicide, or the eeriely creepy murder denying Eddie Dombrowski that he shouldn't kill people just for saying rude things.
Of course, this façade of rationality immediately breaks the moment these characters insinuate that he is no different from them, causing him to get strangely defensive and angry. His tone of voice becoming way more icy, showing a side of James we didn't know was there.
And it's that side of James that makes us realize... this man is hiding something.
His lack of sanity.
This is something you'll start picking up on when you first go through the Woodside Apartments near the start of the game. As you go through, things begin to appear that... don't make realistic sense. Such as the favorite clothes of Mary appearing in front of a spotlight in an empty room. James himself even comments on this, finding it extremely disconcerting.
However, it's once we enter the Otherworld that the clues become more evident. The locales we enter are covered in a gloomy green and blue cloth, different from the harsh orange and red rusty metals from the first game. The cloth stitches together feeling much like that of a solitary confinement cell or a straightjacket.
Now of course in Silent Hill 1 we would simply attribute this to being a part of the dreams of Alessa and her powers distorting the town... but in Silent Hill 2, there is no Alessa.
These dreams belong to James. From the various monsters encountered, to the rain and water drowning out the world, to even an entire character made from his subconscious to try and please him, all of this springs from James' mind.
The most terrifying of all being, of course, Pyramid Head. This thing is terror incarnate. Regardless of the fact that it is slow, and doesn't follow you that frequently through the game compared to contemporaries like Mr. X or Nemesis, it is both thematically and visually much more horrifying.
Every time it appears, things go wrong. It hunts James down like a dog, carrying its gigantic butcher knife or spear. Killing and what appears to be fornicating with the other monsters seen throughout this horrific mental landscape.
There's a point around just halfway through the game, where you get chased by it through a dark narrow hall, and... man I don't want to spoil it but it just... it just fucks me up so bad.
On that same note, you do get a companion character early on and while I initially thought that this would take away some of the isolation that I felt in the first game... man it paid off heavily in the end.
I don't want to go further into what the plot is like, but to summarize, Silent Hill 2's horror is James Sunderland. The darkness that lies within us all, the scary parts of ourselves we hide not just from the world, but from ourselves
This game makes me wonder what my Silent Hill would be like and... man, I'm so glad this shit is fiction.