I have a more sympathetic view of James than I think most people do.

At the very least, I believe that my understanding of the game is less emphatic on his flaws and failings than an awful lot of the interpretations I’ve seen others form in fifteen-plus years of playing, thinking about and growing into Silent Hill 2. I also think a lot of these interpretations scrub out a lot of Mary’s worst traits and have a very one-dimensional view of the two’s marriage and relationship, especially given the all-too-great extent to which I can find myself in James’ shoes and understand just what being in the sorts of situations he’s been thrust into can do to you. This isn’t to say that I think Mary is outright an antagonistic figure, that she was necessarily an abusive partner, or that James’ reaction to that pressure coming to a head was justified, nor do I think James is necessarily an innocent or pure soul. I mean, let’s face it, Silent Hill 2 is a 12-hour manifesto about just how much James Sunderland sucks, but… Mary sucks, too. So does Angela. So does Eddie. So does Maria. So do I, and so do you. Don’t we all?

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In spite of Silent Hill 2’s unapologetic and uncompromising portrayal of the rot within the souls of its cast, we’re never given reason to believe that these people necessarily have to be defined by their pain and the maladaptive manners in which it manifests. Not the banality of Americana left to decay nor a grindhouse of grisly guts-and-gore undercut the beating heart within each one of these individuals’ chests; if anything the desolate atmosphere and steady throughline of sorrow amplify the moments of kindness and connection even more.

James, for all of his single-minded spaciness and passive suicidal ideation, routinely makes an effort to treat the people he encounters with dignity and respect, and that effort is often reciprocated if not paid forward in its entirety — though Angela’s concern for James is largely rooted in bouts of self-depreciation and self-loathing, there is still a consistent pattern of the two wishing one another well as they part ways. Even Eddie, who seems to go out of his way to alienate everybody he meets so that he can be truly alone and therefore exempt from judgment, makes a point of awkwardly telling James to take care of himself after their first meeting. While Laura appears to be little more than a menace for much of the story’s runtime, even she pays James’ concern for her safety forward once it becomes clear that they have a common goal in the Lakeview Hotel.

Each of these people are suffering in their own way, and have convinced themselves for one reason or another that they must carry their burdens alone — even James, for all of his tendencies to try and support others where he can, insists on marching upon his chosen path in solitude where he can help it. But even then they appear to acknowledge that perhaps it’s better to be united through suffering, even temporarily and even through acts as evidently-insignificant as acknowledging one another’s hardship. Misery loves company, and even in the midst of a corporeal Hell each and every one of these people are willing to let their innate tendencies towards decency and understanding shine through even as they teeter upon the precipice of their own individual downward spirals. Their best traits and worst traits exist not as compartmentalized aspects that function in dichotomy to one another, but as two parts of a greater whole. They are human. They are people. Silent Hill 2 concerns itself more than perhaps anything else with this duality that exists in all people, the eternal conflict warring within between our best impulses and our worst impulses.

It’s only fitting, then, that each of these people have already let their worst traits win once, before the story even started. Angela, Eddie and most infamously James have all already taken a life before fleeing to Silent Hill, the darkness within them exacerbated and pushed to an irreconcilable breaking point by circumstances largely outside their control. Angela and Eddie are largely victims who were burdened with their worst traits by a lifetime of abuse at the hands of their family and peers respectively, whereas James’ more general negative personality traits and failings were ingrained by systemic prejudice and toxic ideals of manhood and men’s role in a relationship being strained by a marriage slowly falling apart over the course of three years. It isn’t their fault that they have these negative aspects, nobody is born bad (Laura perhaps represents this more than anybody; as a child she is inherently innocent and sees Silent Hill as a normal town for she has no darkness to exploit), but as unfair as the responsibility of keeping these traits in check might be it is a responsibility nonetheless.

As much as I think Angela’s family and (to a lesser extent) Eddie’s bullies had it coming — I am a full-faced proponent of victims’ right to revenge — I think most people would agree that you aren’t allowed to hurt the innocent people around you just because you have been hurt in turn, and that self-destruction often leaves little but a smoldering crater where a person once stood. Angela’s hostility towards James’ attempts at extending a hand (while understandable and outright justified considering James’ own sins and views of women) does little but dig her further into the hole that she was kicked down into as a little girl, and Eddie’s slow descent into serial murder makes him even more of a sinner than the bullies who pushed him to the brink to begin with. Both of these people are given chances to take steps to right their personal wrongs and make an effort to let their best traits emerge victorious, but eventually choose to spiral out and allow themselves to be consumed by their pain, sorrow and trauma. The story frames them with nothing but a level of empathy and respect still largely unseen in game narratives even to this day, and yet it remains frank and up-front about the simple truth of the matter: you cannot heal if you don’t choose to do so.

Where does that leave James, then? What is his role in Silent Hill 2’s portrayal of the eternal struggle between the good in us and the bad in us? His fate is in your hands. As in, you, the player’s.

You see, James is in a unique position compared to the rest of the cast. While he has a backstory, personality traits, characterization and dialogue that is wholly independent of player input, at the end of the day the choices he makes and the ways in which he carries forward in the face of despair are wholly up to the player. Silent Hill 2 actually isn’t a game about killing monsters and surviving in an environment born and bred for hostility. Konami’s been lying to you this entire time, the guns aren’t actually guns. Silent Hill 2 is a game about a man navigating the tightrope path to recovery and trying to make use of the resources presented to him to accept himself, heal, and let go. Will he make it to the other side, shaken and scarred but still breathing, or will he let himself fall and be sent into the depths below?

It’s all up to you.

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You often see people talk about how Silent Hill 2 is actually a pretty easy game all things considered, more or less nixing the “survival” element of “survival horror” wholesale, and I’ve seen a lot of people make a connection between this and James’ apparent need to be coddled and supported unconditionally. I get where they’re coming from there, but I think that Silent Hill 2’s abundance of resources and player agency as far as minute-to-minute gameplay decisions serves a greater narrative purpose. I don’t mean to sound like an “it was all in his head” ass creepypasta dude here, but work with me: weapons and ammo aren’t actually weapons and ammo, health packs aren’t actually health packs, monsters aren’t actually monsters. These are manifestations of James’ ability to fend off negative impulses and the bad parts of himself rearing their head. These are manifestations of his ability to take care of himself and know how to healthily cope when he eventually falters and stumbles on the road to recovery and normality. These are dark thoughts and self-destructive ideations raising up from our subconscious to haunt us, always lurking in the shadows and ready to strike if we aren’t careful. Even Maria’s role as a literal sexual temptress, while certainly representing James’ idea of an ideal, perfect Mary and his desire for gratification battling with his need for catharsis and honesty with himself, embodies the idea that temptation and indulgence in negative thoughts and habits are a means by which we lose touch with the greater picture as far as our mental health goes.

After a point of stumbling around in the dark and eventually making use of whatever resources you can — medication, therapy, the support of friends and loved ones — you begin to get a feel for your own psyche and learn to know yourself, and you also know how to deal with problems when they come up. This is what Silent Hill 2’s gameplay loop is ultimately about, and why James’ minute-to-minute gameplay decisions influence the way his story ends up rather than compartmentalized routes or story choices like most games that play with the idea of multiple endings. If James fails to take care of himself and makes a point of letting his worst traits get the best of him over and over again, then it’s no surprise that his story ends with him viewing redemption as only coming through his own death. If he gives in to temptation and focuses on the wrong things to try and fill the void left by his trauma, he’ll end up stuck in the same situation and look for the wrong way out, repeating the cycle over and over again until something changes.

But — if James is smart, and careful, and puts in the work and effort to take care of himself and fight all of the rot inside him by using the resources and good habits he’s picked up along the way — he might not be able to really ever get better, but he can live with it. He can start to define himself by his best traits again. He can heal. He can look at all the pain that’s got him to where he is now, turn his back, and leave it all behind.

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The greater Silent Hill fandom has found itself locked in arguments for years over which ending of Silent Hill 2 is canon, the “true” ending, or the one that the developers had in mind when crafting the rest of the story. I understand why — and I understand why people find the framing of Silent Hill 2 as a cautionary tale with the In Water ending compelling — but I think to view it all as a series of compartmentalized possibilities and not as individual parts of the same greater statement is cynical and dehumanizing at absolute best. Silent Hill 2 isn’t about one specific outcome of the duality within us all, but exploring the duality itself and how different people might struggle with it in different ways. At its barest core, it isn’t a game about healing, succumbing, or being trapped in self-perpetuating cycles — it is a game about the very act of struggling and the multitudes that this act encompasses. It understands what it means to grieve, to fear, to hurt, to hate, to decay. It understands what it means to relish, to rejoice, to love, to grow, to live. And it understands more than just about anything else in the world the spaces in the margins where these things meet, intersect, clash and struggle for power.

Myself, though, I have my preferences as far as how I like to view the story ending. I find myself in James’ shoes more and more often these days. It’s been a really rough eighteen months or so, man. It just keeps getting worse. Some of it is through circumstances out of my control, some of it is my own doing, but all of it is mine to deal with and mine to choose what to learn from. I’ve lived the selfish, petulant parts of James who doesn’t want anything more than to be loved unconditionally without concern for the people doing the loving. I’ve lived the same experiences as the James who puts his neck out for the people around him only to get bitten and drained dry in turn. I’ve done much the same as James when he lashes out and hurts people around him to try and make sense of his own pain. I’ve been in the same position of James where I have to let people take advantage of me by letting them hurt me and then acting as their solid rock of support immediately after. More often than not these days I’m the James that we see at the very beginning of his descent into Silent Hill: glass-eyed and empty of the spirit, moving on auto pilot as if not quite sure he’s really here to begin with.

But I don’t want to feel this way forever. I don’t think anybody does. Silent Hill 2 understands that, and it understands that getting better isn’t as easy as it might sound on paper. But I’m trying, man, I really am. I want to let the best parts of me prosper and emerge victorious over all of the worst parts of me. I want to return to the point where better days seem like they’re on the horizon and not twenty miles behind me.

And I want to one day be able to look at all of this that I’m experiencing, turn my back on it, and leave.

it is a really good joke, in retrospect, that james sunderland's silent hill is the easiest to deal with of any of them. even james' psychosexual torture purgatory coddles the crap out of him; at one point point in the midgame i had 11 health drinks, 14 first aid kits, and like 5 ampoules. i almost wanted to beg the game to stop giving me consumables, i felt nauseatingly overstuffed. things like that really sell this sadsack nega-wife guy shit as a grim spiritual joke rather than the heart of the narrative, which is centered in the peripheral cast. i won't say much about it because it's never worth spilling blood and tears on the page for games writing (to me) but angela is such a smartly written and well-understood character by the narrative (probably one of a handful of times mainstream games actually got "trauma" "right") and eddie's inferiority complex turned self loathing turned misanthropy turned paranoid violence hits a perfectttt balance between empathetic and uncomfortable. but enough said, there's nothing new to add here, really just another marker that i finished one of these games

edit: stray thought i wanted to write down so i don't forget it but it's funny that anyone could think downpour was trying anything new by addressing "the prison system" when this game literally has an extended sequence about prison as an occult torture maze built for exculpating authority structured by spatialized m.c. escher contortions of the logic of sin and absolution that runs laps around whatever ill-conceived green mile mike flanagan prestige tv shit was going on in that game

Bloodborne es probablemente el videojuego con el que más he desarrollado una relación conflictiva en toda mi vida. He pasado de amarlo y defenderlo a capa y espada, a que me generen dudas varias de sus decisiones, encontrándome ahora mismo en un punto donde no sé realmente qué pensar del mismo. Quizá escribir esto ayude a dilucidar algunas cosas.

Algo que sí sé es que el juego no es ni la cuarta parte de lo valiente que se ha intentando pretender que es. En muchos sentidos diría que, incluso, es quizá el más cobarde de los Souls junto a Dark Souls III. Nada de lo que hace genial le es particularmente propio, mucho viene heredado de Demon's Souls de cara a sus pretensiones arquitectónicas, que se ha buscado instalar como novedad porque tanto Dark Souls 1 como 2 habían pasado en mayor medida de ello, con muchas de sus decisiones más atrevidas, sobre todo las que buscaban sustraer para generar una impresión más pura, quedándose a medias porque no vaya a ser que se distancie demasiado de los títulos previos.

Yharnam es un lugar fantástico por el que recorrer, pero la obsesión monocromática con una idea muy vencida y gastada del gótico inglés con corte victoriano (estética que a día de hoy no podría ser más impersonal dentro del medio) permea muchísimo la visión de conjunto, volviéndola en un lugar relativamente redundante que apaga su excelsa construcción de ciudad. Inclusive su otra variedad colora, la de los sueños, peca de una uniformidad conceptual que se acurruca demasiado cómodamente en estereotipos del terror cósmico, temiendo salir de solo abrazar las ideas más esenciales del género (temáticamente sabiendo hacer muy poco nuevo más que ser Dark Souls pero relativo a la dicotomía sabiduría/locura) y optando por no mover el terreno en prácticamente ningún frente, ni siquiera proponer algo, solo reverberar más de lo mismo que lleva cien años escribiéndose de Lovecraft y sus sucesores, "pero con estilo Souls."

Inclusive muchas de sus innovaciones, en el terreno de enemigos en forma de bestias mucho más agresivas, terminan quedando a medias porque la saga siempre pecó de apenas contener nula interacción entre tus acciones y las del oponente. Es un ciclo reactivo que orbita demasiado a menudo en hacer sidestep para burlar la gran mayoría de peligros, quitando por el camino la variedad de planteamientos en los enfrentamientos, pues ahora los golpes uno a uno mandan. Mientras juegos previos solventaban esto con un enfoque mucho más marcado por lo RPG, tanto a nivel de estadísticas como en la resolución de situaciones fuera de simplemente ir a los puños, es un juego futuro, Sekiro, quien realmente trajo esta capa de interacción contra los ataques enemigos, como para hacer de estos una experiencia verdaderamente contundente en el plano jugable, que no dependientes de la construcción externa a los mismos.

El factor RPG también disuena mucho más aquí que en los demás. En la ausencia de builds reales, con armas polivalentes dispuestas para prácticamente todos los usos posibles, Bloodborne fue el punto más alto de un Souls que lo tenía todo para convertirse en un juego de acción como tal, pero decidió no hacerlo. Necesitaba cargar con el lastre que le suponen los sistemas de leveleo en un juego donde prácticamente ni se aprovechan, solo quedan reducidos a upgrades binarios que se miden en una escala de cuánto tiempo de combate acortamos.

Creo que, especialmente tras Sekiro, mi imagen de Bloodborne no ha hecho más que venirse abajo. Ni siquiera me interesa discutir cuál es realmente mejor, porque lo que me parece importante es que uno de los dos se compromete realmente con su propuesta, por mucho que siga cargando con el espíritu de su equipo creativo, mientras que el otro está atado de manos al punto en que le es imposible distanciarse lo suficiente. Qué más dará que no tenga Souls en el nombre.

A melting pot of a game that influenced subsequent action games. Unlike those, this one managed to pick the right dose of every of its parts, and scatter them the right way so that none of them exposed their repetitiveness.

Also, the series seemed to forget the subtleties of this game's combat mechanics, specially regarding the QTEs. They were largely seen as the coward option in this game, not only giving you a breather from adjacent attacks but also depriving you from getting extra red orbs in certain cases.
Some quick time events did offer you more orbs than normal, but they were balanced out by either letting enemies hit you while doing them, or through the brutal death bonus, which obblied you to have a combo superior to 10 or 25 hits to have a slight red orb bonus when doing a QTE.

This, joined to the fact that you have to optimize your red orb count a lot in this game (most runs end up without all weapons getting maximized) was a constant tension of using the easy way out of a battle or risking more.

The sequels dumbed this down through the orb multiplier system in each difficulty and basically rewarding you more for only going for QTEs.

I can't help but surrender to its ambitions.

Has less in common with the 80s and 90s films its constantly referencing and more with tv projects like the second season of True Detective or Lynch and Refn's recent ventures in the medium. It's specially interesting how much Dennaton is capable to channel Refn to a point where this and Too Old To Die Young share some of the same thematic elements: from the increasing pressence of nationalist movements in US to the overall depiction of violence as some sort of comfrontation for the viewer's accomodated expectations of it in the medium.

Flawed to the core. Where the barebones of a narrative worked for the first game's own deconstruction and exploration of the vacous nature of its protagonists, here it plants so many threads it feels mostly loss of what it wants to develop, not because is really that difficult to understand, but because of its adherence to explore/connect the audience to these characters that feel less compelling in their archetypical nuisances, and the design of the levels can be really frustrating at times. By making these spaces more open, it also makes one of the first game's way to make the player more adjust to it (being able to create you own path to finish it) less effective. Instead, it seems that it wants you to go more for stealth and mantaining an active approach, to be contantly urgent and knowledgeable of the enemy placement, and i love that this develop into making these space more oppresive for the players to explore and limiting the options to these individual characters as their own form of expression through the violence (specially that one of the characters can't kill if you didn't pressure him to make the game easier), but when it does it wrong, it limits our vision badly, making the option of looking beyond the established field of view an afterthought: where we can kill an enemy in one point of the map, but our behind is constantly exposed or we don't have enough view to avoid getting shot and/or take cover on time when we are in front of them.

For the rest, i love that it's essentially about sequels, more or less about the exploitation of its own metanarrative being constantly appropiated to continue the satisfaction of its audience. Jacket is nothing more than an inspiration for wannabes who do nothing but projecting a way to escape from the roles that the zeitgeist have placing them or abusing the power that they are already given by the narrative itself.
But i think is the end when the game completely adheres to this idea the most. Finds the sense of going back to the past without any sort of futility to explore the present as some kind of meaningless endeavour. It's more thematically exposed than its predecessor and i found this game surprisingly melancholic in its final stages because of it. Jacket and Biker can retroactively change their own path for their own benefit, no matter how dissapointing the end result may be. Here, every effort is pointless in the long run. Almost no one comfronts what they are as individuals, don't go against the narrative at play, but are trustworthy to it until it catches them and devalues them to simple images, npcs and enemies to defeat.
Makes the end of the world a beautiful conclusion in which even the illusion of another title screen give a sense of hope that the own player can make the better call.

i always found the talk around its depiction of violence the most boring aspect of the game. It isn't bad per se, but with games like this or Spec Ops: The Line, i always found the setting (here, the 80s far remove from simple aestheticism, with the underlaying pressence of the Cold War and class dynamics as contrast of both protagonits) and the way in which we become part average videogame vessel and part conspiranoid interpreter of the game itself what attracts me the most.
It's all about how Jacket and Biker engage with their own violent travesy, where one tries to find a way to reconnect with the world only to realize that he's so far remove from the picture that he leaves it away in the air, and the other subdues to tentation of everything having a literal explanation. In that case, Jacket is reborn in Biker and, with that, the conclusion of both killing each other makes both journeys equally valid and meaningless. It recognizes us as active participants and spectators of the fiction at play, but it also understands how, to give meaning, we have to erase the most literalize aspects of it and perceive it as the fully realize metaphor that they are as individuals in the big picture.
Does the abstraction clash with the secret ending literalizing everything? Sure. But i think that the idea that's even optional is a step towards the overall message.
It was a "revenge story" with none of the moralist bullshit, born out of an inherent nationalistic perspective (killing russians, the villians plan being basic world domination stuff) and one in which we are small compared to the big landscape in which it was developed, with no other choice than to accept it and, no matter how many time we either try to complacent to the status quo or trying to change it (as Biker, we can kill all the people in the Phone company as we once seen as Jacket and mantain the "coherence" of the fiction, or leave them alive with zero repercution), it will find a way to keep going forward and accomodate us.

Starting from the oppresive and cold facilities of Mars before everything takes clear form as the body horror-esque nightmares of hell paints the walls and floors that we navigate, it's the ultimate power fantasy.
Not only a great actioner, but also very uncomfortable in its progression and occacionally anxious when it gets closer to the horror of the concept. Looking at the lamented souls and visceras of our fallen allies complemented with the carnage that we produce creates a sort of unpleasantness that (intentional or not) tells us the kind of character we are making in the process. We are as much fighting evil as we are becoming one with it. And wether by lack of vision (the darkness in some sections of "The Shores of Hell" that channel Ridley Scott's Alien) or the direct result of faicing flesh and metal as one manifestation of the militaristic desire of being the savior of the universe, one thing is clear to me: the demented face of Doomguy pleased after finding another powerful weapon is my sleep paralysis demon.

Si un gringo opina que Sunshine es el peor Mario, no estoy de acuerdo
Si un gringo habla de lo mal que la paso con el pachinko, ignoro
Si un gringo pierde todas sus vidas en Corona Mountain, me río
Si Mario Sunshine tiene 100 fanáticos, yo soy uno de ellos
Si Mario Sunshine tiene 1 fan, yo soy ese fan
Si Mario Sunshine no tiene a alguien que lo banque, es porque ya no estoy en este mundo

profoundly disappointing, coming from someone who really liked the first two games in the series. the "clockwork city" conceit, where every single npc is an individual with their own schedule and relationships is, at first blush, remarkable. but very soon you realize how impenetrable it makes things. since you're only able to play as npcs who you recruit to the cause, you never feel like you're really inhabiting the world. the second you interact with them, they cease to be who they are and instead slot into a tiny handful of prescribed recruitment missions. these mission never have any relation to who these ppl are, their jobs or histories or personalities. they're just boxes that need to be checked to make the npc playable. and whoever you play as has been yanked out of their procedurally generated routine and made to go on missions. but you can't do their jobs when you control them. you can't spend time with their loved ones. when you are controlling them, they cease to exist. they made this massive real-life simulation, but not for us to live in.