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.

A solid experience, all in all. Taken in a vaccuum I think there's quite a lot about Endwalker that can be seen as outright superb and completely unparalleled in its execution, especially considering the state of JRPG storytelling since the mid-2010s or so. Still, there's an elephant in the room that I don't think is addressed often enough: Endwalker is so rife with retcons that it ultimately ends up disassembling more or less everything that made Shadowbringers into the unbelievably and unprecedently amazing narrative that it was, and it makes Final Fantasy XIV into a weaker story for it.

One of these retcons and adjustments stands out above all the rest, however. The fanbase's endearment to a particular faction results in a framing and writing shift that portrays them as less of an unambiguous evil and more of an unambiguously sympathetic, benevolent bunch and results in a rare example of cut-and-dry "good vs. evil" conflict being more interesting and satisfying than something that attempts to be complicated, morally gray and devoid of condonement and condemnation alike (due in large part to the fact that Shadowbringers has some particularly unique, interesting and complex things to say about what it means to be "good" and what it means to be "evil"). This is compounded by the fact that those in opposition to this faction are likewise defanged and portrayed as completely good and kind, creating a frustratingly toothless situation where nobody is wrong and as a result Final Fantasy XIV doesn't really seem to stand against anything (particularly bothersome in a story that prides itself on the strength of its political storytelling).

It still has quite a lot to say when removed from its hesitation to boldly posit that you cannot possibly be a good person in any sense if you're guilty of genocide, no matter how noble your intentions in doing so may be... complete with some particularly poignant and weighty commentary on what it means to live with despair and grapple with the inevitability of pain and sorrow in one's life. Even so, I can't ever really shake the feeling that Shadowbringers was building up to a finale that was simply going to be better than what we eventually would get in the form of Endwalker.

With all of this said, and still holding to it all firmly as can be in my heart - this is still a fairly tight wrap-up to ten years' worth of storytelling, with all the emotional payoff you'd expect from such a long and heartfelt story. It was a particularly bittersweet experience for me in particular, as Endwalker is effectively the conclusion to the character arc of the Warrior of Light - who is for me and countless others a character that has been built up over hundreds if not thousands of hours of story content, gameplay, roleplay and gratuitous self-indulgent interpretation of the game's story. I love Final Fantasy XIV, and even with (if not especially because of its flaws) I can't really think of anything more representative of what this game is fundamentally about than Endwalker and what it so sincerely believes in and wants to convey to the player.

As I trekked alone through the game's final zone, knowing that not only my journey would soon come to an end but that, in many ways, so too would the halcyon days of something I'd found a home of sorts in and bonded with my friends over for far, far too many sleepless nights and spastic Discord calls... I didn't really care about inconsistent storytelling, or frustratingly unaddressed and unresolved character arcs, or the fact that the game engine was clearly starting to fall apart, or that they still hadn't fixed Dark Knight's lack of ability to sustain itself in combat, or that Paladin was a shitty pick for a poster boy job but was perfectly representative of my problems with Endwalker as a whole. There was but a single thought in my head, a thought that still echoes whenever I hear the opening notes of Close in the Distance:

I love Final Fantasy so much.

As a prelude, Chrono Cross is my favorite game of all time and I think that it's functionally a perfectly-realized work of art. You can read an abstraction of my thoughts on the game proper here.

As for the remaster itself, looking at it purely as a repackaged and enhanced version of my favorite game... I've got some mixed feelings about it! As a rule of thumb I think that there's never anything wrong with an underappreciated work of art getting more accessibility and reaching a wider audience, but at the same time I kind of wish that this port was undertaken with more care, love and tact than it actually was. The big elephant in the room is the framerate: as beautiful as Chrono Cross is the game simply does not run well, often bottoming out at around 10 FPS during more cinematic and graphically intensive visuals. I'm used to this and so nominally it doesn't bother me, except that it's much, much worse when playing with the remastered graphics enabled. During summon animations or late-game element animations the game would crawl to less than 5 FPS, and some of the final dungeons were only barely playable because of how clunky and slow the maneuverability of the characters were.

I don't really think I like the new art, either - a lot of the original art has lost some of its trademark ambiguity (for example Serge's somewhat uncertain, hesitant expression and empty eyes are gone in favor of a more all-loving smile, complete with direct eye contact) and there are a few design revisions I'm not fond of like color schemes or detail work... but the one that really bothers me is that there's a criminal case of whitewashing going on for a lot of the characters. Chrono Cross's setting of El Nido is based on a mish-mash of different Central American and Southeast Asian countries (which one might be able to describe as a bit questionable in and of itself, admittedly) and so it makes sense that a large portion of the characters have darker skin tones, including major characters (Serge himself is even a bit on the tanner side, in spite of being a Square Enix protagonist)... and so naturally it makes sense that they're pretty much all made bone-white in the remaster's sprites, often and even at the expense of color schemes or what actually looks good. Furthermore a lot of the new sprites just look bad, and the horror of a certain character's appearance in the original is now just comedic as if they were deliberately trying to sanitize the game's undercurrent of darkness. In general there's something to say about valuing a unique and cohesive visual direction over what just looks "good," with regards to the original pixel-art portraits and low-polygon models...

...whose HD replacements do look quite good, I'll admit. Serge's model having an ever-present scowl is a particularly nice touch that I think befits his character, for example. I also think that the upscale-filtered backgrounds look remarkably good on a Switch's handheld screen, even if they don't look nearly as nice on a TV.

As for the quality-of-life changes, like the superpowers and encounter toggle... I don't know, they all seem a bit unnecessary to me. Chrono Cross isn't a particularly hard game save for the end stretch, and it's even less difficult if you sit down and learn how to use its unique deck-building battle system (and it's a good battle system! This game might have a strong anti-violence message and be unafraid of portraying the horrors that armed conflict brings unto innocent bystanders, but damn, brutality sure is fun when you card-gamify it!), and the game also already has so much quality-of-life features built into it that a lot of JRPGs still haven't caught up with! Being able to run away from any battle at any time to heal and switch up your equipment, enemies mostly being completely avoidable on the map, leveling being handled by leveling up your entire party when you beat a boss as opposed to anything resembling EXP or grinding, the Smith Spirit letting you forge weapons anywhere in the world as opposed to having to go to a store to do it... Chrono Cross really does everything it can to make you have as pleasant of an experience as possible, and adding even more on top of that just feels... unnecessary. (Especially because the power boost option seems to just max out your Elements charge? I don't know, I didn't mess around with it much). I also think the ability to disable encounters in a game about the inevitability of conflict is a bit puzzling, especially since encounters aren't hard to avoid if you want to, and sticking the time shifter in your inventory at the beginning not only feels lazy but de-incentivizes a New Game Plus replay.

Still though, this is Chrono Cross! It's my favorite game and I won't pretend like any of these issues kept me from being drawn into it even more intensely than my first playthrough, with every single allusion to the themes, ideas and messages I’d understood it to be about on my first playthrough further cementing the fact that this is indeed my single favorite game. I didn’t care about the poor FPS or questionable gameplay additions when I was standing up in front of my TV maneuvering my way through the game’s hardest boss, or getting chills when I found something I didn’t notice in a previous playthrough that further proved how tight-knit its storytelling and beliefs are. It certainly didn’t stop me from sniffling and wiping a few teardrops out of my eyes at the ending.

Do I think there are better ways to experience Chrono Cross? Yeah, for sure, absolutely. Preferable method is on a good, overclocked emulator running at native resolution with CRT Royale. But is it ever a bad thing to have my favorite game available to just pick-up-and-play if my endless rambling has gotten a friend into it who doesn’t care about any of that shit and just wants to see what all the fuss is about?

No, I don’t think it is. And even then, it made me so happy to see my favorite game get what felt like the recognition and love it deserved. Call me a sap but I teared up like a little baby booting this up for the first time and seeing the new art of all the party members set against Dreams of the Past, Memories of My Soul (a fantastic piece that perfectly captures the game’s feel and is a welcome late addition to its soundtrack).

It's a bit hard to go wrong with Radical Dreamers (the adventure game that acts as a sort-of-interquel-sort-of-prequel-sort-of-side-story to Chrono Cross), since it's an absolute miracle that it's available in any capacity, much less officially! I think I do prefer the original fan translation a bit more, but it's ultimately just a matter of taste... and how about that new ending, huh!?

must things be "good?" is it not enough to have consumed it during a weirdly vulnerable and foundational time in one's youth and promptly have it set a precedent for what one seeks out in other works of fiction going forward?

i'm not sure if katawa shoujo is entirely worth reading in this day and age; it is in almost every way a product of its time and place. its popularity was most likely spurned by a bunch of young dudes from /v/ expecting a funny little game with crass humor and walking away from it having genuinely felt something from a piece of media from the first time. again, time and place — in today's era of brutal honesty about commitment to fiction and fandoms wearing their investment in their favorite stories proudly on their sleeves, it may seem quaint at best and downright questionable at worst. but back in 2012 when the abstract concept of "feels" was all a lot of people really had to describe what this game and many other period-piece jp media had done to them, it was something truly special.

in many ways, it still is — at least to me. rin was my first favorite-ever character and probably my first hint that i was autistic was how much i related to her route at the tender age of 14. it set a precedent going forward for my investment in character writing above all else in fiction, and i really can't imagine where i would be without it.

There isn't any way I can separate this game from my own extremely personal emotional investment in it and I don't particularly want to air all of that out in public forum for strangers' viewing pleasure, so I'll keep it short:

Lobotomy Corporation's subject matter and primary themes are particularly pertinent to my own life and the kind of person I am, and in that regard it's the story I've been searching for for as long as I've been alive. I've never seen my own point of view on the matter reflected so clearly and wholly before.

It's a laborious experience, but a worthwhile one.

This feels like a story I will grow on to cherish for eons, its sheer earnestness kinda blew me away and I had a tear running down my cheek during the entire last stretch, which is my favourite ever. Absolutely what I needed to hear.

Bazett is truly the Joker for VN readers.


Spoilers //

Special note has to go to its handling of Shirou's legacy and how the entire thing is essentially about a protagonist who was inspired by his deeds, which is incredibly fitting from a meta perspective for an epilogue like this one.