But I actually have something worse to confess: I actually finished Silent Hill 2 a while ago. Like a "few months ago" while ago. I'm not really sure why I waited so long to write about it. My guess is that I just didn't know what to say. Silent Hill 2 managed to go against pretty much all of my expectations set up by the first game, and that left me a bit dumbfounded. This is not necessarily a bad thing (unless you run a blog), but it does tend to be a bit disorienting. But maybe that's what the game was supposed to do. After all, if there's one thing this game is good at, its mind games.
Lets go ahead and start with what I imagined this post to be before I even started Silent Hill 2: a comparison.
While Silent Hill managed to create a truly terrifying environment, devoid of most life or help, Silent Hill 2 mostly succeeded in doing the opposite. My kneejerk reaction was how this game was how less scary it was compared to the first game, and I know exactly what contributed to this. The most obvious factor being how you spend barely any time in the "Otherworld." Now, Silent Hill 2 still has the same feel to it, even without being in what is essentially Hell itself, but it still loses the suffocating feeling of isolation and "fish out of water syndrome" that the previous game pulled off so excellently. Relatedly, the monsters lose the personal touch that they once had. While SH1 is full of monsters that make you question exactly what they even are, or if they're even monsters to begin with, SH2 gives you things like animated mannequin parts and grotesque... things that are very clearly demonic in nature. And oddly enough, being able to say "yep, that's definitely evil" seems to make things less scary.
But the big thing here is how many fuckin' people infest this place. It's like goddamn Mardi Gras up in this bitch. You can barely turn a corner without running into someone new, and while this is great for story telling, it severely hinders the development of feelings of isolation, helplessness, and, of course, fear. Hell, you even get a sassy sidekick that follows you around for a while, making off-color remarks and generally being a silly whore who makes you giggle at how over the top she is acting, considering the situation. Really, everyone is over the top, from the bratty little girl to the hungry "comic relief" fat guy.
Now lets talk about the actual game...
Silent Hill 2 isn't about scares and screams. Silent Hill 2 is all about fucking with your mind, and once you complete the game, you will fully understand why everything here is the way it is. For this adventure, you fill the shoes of James Sunderland, a grief-stricken man who has unfortunately lost his wife to the cold hands of "movie-plot generic death reason." However, he has recently received a letter from her, Mary, saying that she is waiting for him in Silent Hill, what was once a romantic getaway location for the two of them. So James rushes to the old town to try to find her.
This should be setting off bells in your head. Even more than you think there should be.
The rest of the game involves James' journey to track down Mary and find out exactly what is going on here. James is well aware that she is dead, but is also compelled to find her anyway. So he explores the town, fighting or running from all sorts of odd creatures, meeting strange people, and being stalked by a terrifying man wearing a large metallic hood. Oh, and he trips and falls into Hell a couple times, which doesn't really seem to phase him much.
James also runs into a few interesting people. First there's Angela, an unstable woman looking for her mother, Eddie, an unstable man hiding from something, Laura, a small girl also looking for Mary, and... Maria, a dead ringer for Mary, but with all the wrong personality. Each of these people has been brought to Silent Hill for their own reasons, and they are each on their own journeys, similar to James. Their presence seems, at first, totally arbitrary, but you eventually learn what their purpose is, and why their presence is significant.
You see, the big thing here is that Silent Hill means something different to everybody. It was a place of nightmares and death to Harry because of Alessa's influence over the town, which in turn was spawned from her awful childhood and memories. Harry was drawn into the "Otherworld" when he approached locations that were of particular interest to Alessa's past. This concept gets built upon here. As you approach the end of the game, you start to realize that the town is manifesting itself differently to everyone. While James sees monsters, Angela sees fire, and Eddie is tormented by... something vague, and these are all relevant to each character's past. The only exception here is Laura. As she is an innocent child, she sees the town for what it really is: an abandoned ghost town, with nothing of interest except a few odd people wandering the streets.
But I suppose I should focus on James. After all, this is his story. (One full of spoilers, I may add.) Try to keep in mind all those bells that have been ringing in your head.
You'll notice that pretty much everyone in this town is nuts, aside from James and Laura. This is because they have all been called to Silent Hill to fulfill some kind of self-satisfying need. A tying up of loose ends, as it were. Angela and Eddie both have some dark pasts that they need to work out, preferably with James' help. He tries to help Angela, but sadly, she ends up being beyond his help. He also tries to help Eddie, but uh-oh, he's gone nuts and tries to kill James, forcing James to kill Eddie himself.
Wow, James sucks at this, doesn't he? Even more than you think. See, Maria gets murdered by Pyramid Head. A couple times, actually. And shortly after James kills Eddie, Maria returns unexplained from death again, and she is promptly killed by TWO Pyramid Heads.
Anyway, James eventually makes it to where Mary is supposed to be; the hotel they stayed at for their honeymoon. And it is here where the true purpose for James' presence becomes known.
He was never the helpful, sane outsider. James is in Silent Hill for exactly the same reasons that Eddie and Angela are. He was drawn to the town so he could rediscover something about himself. Mainly, how he killed his wife. The letter at the beginning was all a lie. Go ahead, check it in your inventory. Just some blank paper. Hell, everything was pretty much a lie. That nice hotel you're in? A burned out, water-damaged husk. Funny how you're just now noticing that, huh?
This is where you start to see the true point of this game. Where SH1 focused on terror, SH2 focused on unsettlingness. (Shut up, its a word now!) The goal isn't to scare you, it is to fuck your mind so thoroughly your mother gets knocked up with blown minds. The goal is to make you sit down and think about what the hell just happened. So what are my actual feelings on the game? While it may not be all that scary, it is still highly interesting, and very open to interpretation. Hell, the game has, what, four or so different endings? And each one is very different and puts a different spin on the game's events. But even with all the variables thrown in, there is still a core set of truths and facts behind what is going on. If you go back and piece together the clues I've talked about here, you'll be able to put together whats going on, but to really piece together all the loose bits, you'll need to play the game for yourself and make your own theories. So get crackin'!
No comments:
Post a Comment