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?
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
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.
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
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.
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?
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
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.
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
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.
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
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.
12 Comments
My relationship with this game has changed a lot over the years, as I've become more cognizant of the Whys around how I feel about it, and as I've come to live very closely a lot of the experiences that James and Mary go through. But I've always connected with James and Angela in particular, and I think what you say here about the game being steadily focused on the totality of personhood, on not just demonstrating everyone's roundness of character but insisting upon it as fundamental to defining them even if they can't always live up to it, on the idea that there's a catharsis at the end of every Silent Hill 2 that everyone goes through but you have to put in the work to Do Silent Hill 2 and that's not nothing itself, really resonates.
You see so often in our era the ways media is boiled down to wiki articles and Solved Plot Explanation Analysis Videos and shit and there's been so much of that for Silent Hill and for this game and it feels like to boil it down to that math misses this stuff. I dunno. I think about Mary all the time. I think about Maria all the time. And Angela. And James.
Really stellar review, I think easily the best writing about this game on the site that I've seen.
also the combat IS good. the gameplay IS good, all the way around. I Do Not Want To Think About Bloober Team.
You see so often in our era the ways media is boiled down to wiki articles and Solved Plot Explanation Analysis Videos and shit and there's been so much of that for Silent Hill and for this game and it feels like to boil it down to that math misses this stuff. I dunno. I think about Mary all the time. I think about Maria all the time. And Angela. And James.
Really stellar review, I think easily the best writing about this game on the site that I've seen.
also the combat IS good. the gameplay IS good, all the way around. I Do Not Want To Think About Bloober Team.
@poyfuh I work with my hands so I listen to a lot of podcasts and YouTube slop while I'm working to keep my mind occupied while muscle memory does its thing otherwise, and today (knowing I'd be beating Silent Hill 2 again this evening) I stuck on the dreaded Silent Hill 2 Two Hour Video Essay and found myself really frustrated by how... clinical the creator's interpretation of and understanding of the game was. For all of the creator's professed love for the game they sure seemed resistant to actually engaging with it on its own terms rather than having to make absolute sense of everything. I saw people arguing that James looking into the camera in the first shot doesn't "make sense" and it's like, dude, it's Silent Hill 2, since when does this game make sense? Piss off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think what you have to say about your relationship with the game changing is a really good thing too because SH3 was my favorite for years, but I really think that since SH2 is a game about empathy and seeing people as people it's the sort of game you grow into with experience and begin to learn more about those exact things through lived experience. I went into this replay fully expecting my freshly-changed feelings on James to be a Hot Take that would make people mad at me but now I'm like, no, this is just the point of the game and also to a large degree the basic ability to see People As People.
Thanks so much for the kind words, also ♥ Your writings on Silent Hill have stuck with me throughout the years so that's high praise coming from you in particular. and yeah dude like fuck I sure am glad that the studio who made a narrative about how mental illness and trauma are inescapable and condemn you to a lonely death are making a game about how mental illness and trauma are just parts of the greater whole that we can live with and accept just like any other part of us
I think what you have to say about your relationship with the game changing is a really good thing too because SH3 was my favorite for years, but I really think that since SH2 is a game about empathy and seeing people as people it's the sort of game you grow into with experience and begin to learn more about those exact things through lived experience. I went into this replay fully expecting my freshly-changed feelings on James to be a Hot Take that would make people mad at me but now I'm like, no, this is just the point of the game and also to a large degree the basic ability to see People As People.
Thanks so much for the kind words, also ♥ Your writings on Silent Hill have stuck with me throughout the years so that's high praise coming from you in particular. and yeah dude like fuck I sure am glad that the studio who made a narrative about how mental illness and trauma are inescapable and condemn you to a lonely death are making a game about how mental illness and trauma are just parts of the greater whole that we can live with and accept just like any other part of us
wow thank YOU for saying nice things about ME lmao. I am very proud of my Silent Hill 4 thing but I think if I could I would go back and like entirely redo the Silent Hill 2 one, keep the autobiography but also actually write more directly about the game. HOWEVER I think you say here pretty much anything I would have wanted to say in that hypothetical scenario so I can only hope this review gets one hillion likes.
It's interesting to think about a changing relationship to Media In General and also to Silent Hill 2 in particular because like on one hand I played Persona 3 for the first time when I was thirteen or fourteen and then a few more times through life and I'm doing that again now (I paused in the middle of the October 4th Confrontation to read this initially lol) and I'm obviously pulling different stuff from it and feeling different ways about a lot of stuff and I think it's normal and good that I'm vibing differently fifteen years later. And I do that with Silent Hill also, absolutely. Silent Hill 2 is so colored by like, this cultural idea of What It's About that is a lot more shallow and kind of mean-spirited than the actual ideas central to the game. The cultural idea of James Sunderland is as incorrect as the cultural idea of Cloud Strife, recognizable but stripped down to its most superficial, parodic elements until the things the game is very loudly saying, often directly through characters' mouths while they look into the camera are lost to the fog, right? Sometimes it's good to revisit a classic just to get that reminder of what it's like to actually experience it with your own senses, I guess, in addition to the fresh eyes of the person you are today. It's something I think about a lot. I'm sure that the remake will be fine about this. I'm sure that blair witch game and layers of fear and layers of fear 2 and layers of fear 2023 and the medium are all flukes. i haven't played observer maybe that one really has the sauce.
It's interesting to think about a changing relationship to Media In General and also to Silent Hill 2 in particular because like on one hand I played Persona 3 for the first time when I was thirteen or fourteen and then a few more times through life and I'm doing that again now (I paused in the middle of the October 4th Confrontation to read this initially lol) and I'm obviously pulling different stuff from it and feeling different ways about a lot of stuff and I think it's normal and good that I'm vibing differently fifteen years later. And I do that with Silent Hill also, absolutely. Silent Hill 2 is so colored by like, this cultural idea of What It's About that is a lot more shallow and kind of mean-spirited than the actual ideas central to the game. The cultural idea of James Sunderland is as incorrect as the cultural idea of Cloud Strife, recognizable but stripped down to its most superficial, parodic elements until the things the game is very loudly saying, often directly through characters' mouths while they look into the camera are lost to the fog, right? Sometimes it's good to revisit a classic just to get that reminder of what it's like to actually experience it with your own senses, I guess, in addition to the fresh eyes of the person you are today. It's something I think about a lot. I'm sure that the remake will be fine about this. I'm sure that blair witch game and layers of fear and layers of fear 2 and layers of fear 2023 and the medium are all flukes. i haven't played observer maybe that one really has the sauce.
This is an absolutely excellent piece! Genuinely nailed the way I have felt about the game and specifically James for years and years.
To see it put into words without devolving into only focusing on the action of what he did itself and letting that paint EVERYTHING within the discussion like it's not as a part of the bigger whole that is the complicated realness of a character that is James Sunderland is genuinely fantastic to see.
Like it's all about people lying to themselves about not only the shit they've done but even like tiny shit they've done! Constant fear and worry about judgements for a multitude of reasons from multiple angles. As I've grown older I too see aspects of myself in James Sunderland and I do not like those aspects, the game itself telling you that you need to want to change, you need to want to take your own life into your own hands and do the work to BE BETTER is so fuckin important.
Great work!
To see it put into words without devolving into only focusing on the action of what he did itself and letting that paint EVERYTHING within the discussion like it's not as a part of the bigger whole that is the complicated realness of a character that is James Sunderland is genuinely fantastic to see.
Like it's all about people lying to themselves about not only the shit they've done but even like tiny shit they've done! Constant fear and worry about judgements for a multitude of reasons from multiple angles. As I've grown older I too see aspects of myself in James Sunderland and I do not like those aspects, the game itself telling you that you need to want to change, you need to want to take your own life into your own hands and do the work to BE BETTER is so fuckin important.
Great work!
@TransWitchSammy Thank you so much! Beyond me just generally Going Through It lately in a specific way that makes me really resonate with James in a way I haven't before I was spurned to revisit Silent Hill 2 because I listened to the Something Rotten podcast episodes about it and found myself really disappointed by Jacob Geller and Blake Hester (who are two guys I otherwise really respect the opinions of as well-read/knowledgable dudes)'s really harsh, unsympathetic reading of James. Like yeah the dude is rotten, you don't have to like him, but I think playing him up as more uniquely rotten than anybody in the Silent Hill 2 cast or even than any given person is disingenuous at best. Again it's a game about people as people and part of people being people is every action they make being a product of context and circumstance, and you don't have to accept those reasons but you have to understand them. Thank you again!
@poyfuh I bought Observer a year or so back tbh it seemed pretty dope. haven't cracked it open yet but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, I just see a cyberpunk game and the madness consumes me
@poyfuh I bought Observer a year or so back tbh it seemed pretty dope. haven't cracked it open yet but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, I just see a cyberpunk game and the madness consumes me
Awesome review. Pretty much described what I thought of the game as well.
Btw, you gonna play and review Persona 3 Reload because you said 3 was your most favorite game ever.
Btw, you gonna play and review Persona 3 Reload because you said 3 was your most favorite game ever.
@SmashBlack Thank you for the kind words! I'm working through P3R at a snail's pace, haha. P3 isn't my favorite game anymore but it still has extremely significant meaning to me and an irreplaceable spot in my heart and life, so I already have a lot of things to say about the remake that I'll probably post here whenever I'm through with it.
Fantastic piece of writing! However my thoughts on James Sunderland are that I simply hate men
@Archagent that's cool. not really at all the point of what I'm saying here but that's cool, I get why you'd have that feeling about him
holy shit dude, what an eloquently written review. blows my mind how many things people can take away from this silly ass game. here's to better days for everyone, and keep writing! :)
@benpai thank you so much! i'm hoping for better days too, and i'm definitely going to keep writing. one of the only things i really still can do, at this point.
straylight
2 months ago