Silent Hill 2 stands out for its mature and intimate treatment of taboo subjects like grief and loss.
“In my wildest dreams, I see that city. Silent Hill. You promised to take me there again one day. But you never did. And now I’m here alone … In our “special place” waiting for you … ”. With this mysterious letter began Silent Hill 2, one of the most impressive survival horror of the genre and that this 2021 will turn 20 years old. The Konami saga stood out in the horror genre for offering a differentiating experience with respect to other references such as Resident Evil. The exploration of psychological fear and intimate and mature themes made their games remembered not only for their memorable scares, but for emotional elements. Silent Hill 2, for its part, put on the table very taboo topics, such as euthanasia and the pain of loss, which we will explore in this report.
James against his repressed memories
Silent Hill 2 opted for a type of terror that went beyond blood and guts to offer us the painful journey of James Sunderland, who travels to Silent Hill after receiving a mysterious letter from his wife. And it is that the intrigue of this message lies in the fact that Mary, the wife of our protagonist, has been dead for three years as a result of a terminal illness.
Dave Cox, Product Manager at Konami, highlighted during an interview for Silent Hill Memories: “Successively, horror games have reached different levels of success. But it is that dark, deep, lurking and insidious terror that has not been covered before in video games. Silent Hill 2 takes the horror genre – and video games themselves – into dark new territory where imagination runs wild. It is a mature game for mature people ”.
James Sunderland before the mirror.
NOTE: Important details of the Silent Hill 2 plot will be reported below, due to the nature of this report.
As in traditional survival horror, our protagonist is not the action hero with a generous arsenal of weapons and superior military training. James Sunderland is a 29-year-old office worker with a low-key physical shape and limited resources on hand. And his story is not that of the gentleman who goes to the rescue of a lady in distress. Rather, it is about a man tortured by his own trauma and struggling to process guilt and loss.
Silent Hill is presented as the manifestation of James Sunderland’s battered psyche. As the game progresses, we discover her fatal secret: Mary did not pass away from her illness, but was drowned with a pillow by her own husband. James’ motivation will be outlined by the player’s decisions throughout the game: Was it an act of mercy to end his wife’s prolonged suffering? Or was it more of a selfish act to free yourself from a painful situation?
James confronts a nurse.
Pyramidal Head, the executioner
GamaSutra analyzes the Freudian concepts that are represented in Silent Hill: “James’s experience in Silent Hill is a waking dream of punishment (Freud, 1952), caused by a psychotic break. James Sunderland is a widower who is mourning the loss of his wife Mary ”. In the same essay, we find how James’ mental disorder has its origin in the repression of his own memories, emotions and desires: “James’s way of curing his own psychosis and the pain over Mary’s death is to shift his ego towards the monsters. In this way he will fight against parts of himself, physically and mentally. These monsters are manifestations of the animus and anima of James (Franz, 1968). Thus, we have the demon patients, who embody James’s suffering and his own insanity; or the nurses representing James’ repressed sexual desire. It is worth mentioning the Pyramid Head, one of the main antagonists and that evoke a grotesque executioner.
Large, imposing stature, and with a gigantic dragging knife, Pyramid Head is the representation of James’ desire to be punished for his own crime. Throughout the game, we faced him on various occasions. In the first encounter, we can choose to fight or flee from their attacks, and on both occasions the town’s siren is the one that ends a fight in which we come out alive, but not victorious. In the rest of the game, we can only run away from him. It is only in the last moments of the game that James, once aware of the purpose of his nemesis, that we have a direct confrontation with Pyramid Head and his two versions. “I was weak,” admits James as he stands up to his executioner. “That’s why I needed you … I needed someone to punish me for my sins … But now it’s all over … I know the whole truth … The time has come to put an end to all this.”
Pyramidal Head
During an interview for Core Gamer, Takayoshi Sato, character designer and CGI director on Silent Hill 2, describes how Pyramid Head is the distorted version of the executioners who inhabited Silent Hill, a purpose-built and execution village, as He himself defines the one that the worst criminals are going to stop to fulfill their sentence: “The executioners needed to wear a mask during the ceremony so as not to see how their spear pierced the flesh directly. Time has passed, but the memory of the executions remained, intensified and formed the illusion that roams Silent Hill. Pyramid Head is the distorted memory of the executioners ”.
Thus, James Sunderland sees himself as a murderer who deserves to be executed, with which his remorse is projected on the figure of Pyramid Head. This monster is also dedicated to torturing the rest of the monsters of Silent Hill, such as James who tortures himself. Takayoshi Sato also expresses that his intention was to make a creature that would not be too alien, so that the player would recognize certain earthly aspects: “I don’t think human beings are afraid to see a monster with fangs, horns and all that visual language. so typical. I think there are two factors that evoke fear: the first, seeing something that is beyond understanding; the second: to see our authentic ‘me’ undercover ”.
Piramidal Head, in a double version, is about to execute Maria.
Mary, born of a wish
Another relevant creature in Silent Hill is Maria, a mysterious woman that James encounters in Silent Hill. Identical to his wife, but at the same time very different. Her face and voice are the same, but her hair, dress, and attitude are much more sensual. In GamaSutra they analyze: “It can be said that [Maria] it is the idealized anima of James, sexual and independent, helpful and, at the same time ‘a mediator between the ego and the Self’ (Franz, 1968, 195). She takes on the role of wife and helps James progress through Silent Hill. ” Sato, for his part, describes in the aforementioned interview how the duality between Mary and Maria follows the model of Eros and Thanatos: “The Mary / Maria paradox was one of my experiments bringing Eros and Thanatos into the main story. I think I have a certain tendency to follow that type of delineation ”.
After James finds Maria, the escort mission mechanic that we already know in different titles begins, but with a very different result. Generally, in this type of section the protagonist must protect an ally from enemies, which is an indispensable condition for victory or for a happy ending. In Maria’s case, however, the payoff for protecting her is very different, as we’ll see later. On the other hand, there is a monster from which we can never save her: Pyramid Head. Throughout the game, James will see his partner being executed by the executioner over and over again: “James has built a world to punish himself while refusing to accept the truth of what he has done. Pyramid Head kills and resurrects Maria, which is a projection of Mary, over and over again until James lets himself remind himself that he was the one who killed Mary. ” It is also worth mentioning the episode “Born from a wish”, a prequel in which Maria seeks her own identity and purpose, which she finally accepts.
The outcome of James’s trauma
During the presentation of Silent Hill 2, Team Silent anticipated how the player’s own behavior shapes their perspective and outcome of the story: “Your actions affect the type of story you see and what certain events mean. In some moments you must make a decision that will take you in different directions than the other option would take you. These actions alter your perception of the story, more than the events themselves. Depending on where you go, your emotions will differ greatly, and your point of view of the story may be different. “
In this way, Silent Hill 2 had different endings depending on the implicit decisions that the player made throughout the game, which we will analyze below, without taking into account the humorous outcomes of the dog and the UFO. In addition, the identity of the final boss varies depending on how we have favored Maria, although in this title the convention that the reward is obtained if we save the girl does not apply.
Mary says goodbye to James in the most optimistic ending.
The ending “Leave” is the most optimistic in the game. If the player tries to keep James in good health and if he maintains a longing attitude towards Mary, we are awarded that outcome. To do this, we must often consult the photo and letter of the woman in the inventory, and ignore Maria, who becomes the final boss. James has forgiven himself for killing Mary and accepts that he wanted to free both of them from pain. Thus, he leaves town with little Laura, Mary’s roommate during her stay in the hospital, and adoption is implicit as a form of redemption.
On the other hand, we have the ending “In the water” (“In the water”), which we get if we maintain a suicidal attitude during the game, that is, we do not worry about James’ health and we look at Angela’s knife several times on the inventory. In this outcome, James has not been able to forgive himself and admits that he has killed his wife out of selfishness. To end his regrets, he ends his own life by diving with the car – which carries the body of his wife – in the lake of Silent Hill.
Mary says goodbye to James in the ending “In the Water”.
Rely on Horror, in an essay that delves into the meaning of each ending, states: “Both endings represent a clear dichotomy: James as a benevolent husband who blames himself too much and learns to forgive himself, and James as a selfish monster. who realizes that he is irredeemable, so he prefers to avoid further hurting others. The first option tries to establish a full stop from the traumatic experience of Silent Hill, although we know that James is unlikely to continue with a normal life. The second option, on the other hand, cuts the story in the bud, with a James who decides that the events of the past are inescapable. In a way, it’s a more realistic ending, because his visions of Silent Hill are so corrupt and disturbing that he will never see life the same way. “
On the other hand, among the most sinister endings we have that of “Rebirth” (“Rebirth”), in which James decides to perform a ritual to resurrect his wife, for which we must gather the necessary objects. But perhaps the most bitter among the outcomes is that of Maria, which we will achieve if we care for our new partner, protect her from monsters and visit her in the hospital. Here, the final boss is Mary. However, when Maria and James leave Silent Hill to start a new life together, the woman begins to cough, hinting that history is going to repeat itself again. Rely on Horror explains that this ending is the one that shows the most fragile James, although the Renaissance one corresponds to the most desperate James: “The ending of Maria is where James has learned nothing from his visit to Silent Hill. It is like a parable of the weakness of man, blinded by beauty and sexual impulse to such an extent that the monsters and the traumatic experience of Silent Hill fade into memory. “
Thus, Silent Hill 2 offers several interesting readings on loss and guilt. Each player will perceive James differently, without ever vision being the correct and authentic one. And it is that mourning and guilt are not ascribed to simple interpretations.
Maria and James
