Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2 is the second installment in the Silent Hill survival horror series. The game was released in late 2001 on the Sony PlayStation 2 and was ported to the Microsoft Xbox later that year and PC the following year.

While the game is staged in the series' namesake town, it is not a direct sequel to the events and characters of the first Silent Hill game, and is staged at an undetermined date between it and the third game.^[2] This entry takes insight into a new character, James Sunderland, who enters the town after receiving a letter written by his late wife Mary, saying she is waiting for him in their "special place" in Silent Hill.

The game received favorable reviews and was a commercial success. It has been followed by three sequels and one prequel.

Gameplay

The game is shown from a third person perspective, with various camera angles for different areas of the map in contrast to simply always having the player view the game from behind the back of the playable character. The main screen does not feature a heads-up display, so exact information on ammunition and health can only be checked by pausing to view the item menu screen; however, limited information on James' health is conveyed in-game through increasingly frequent controller vibrations as his health becomes lower. There is also no mini-map, and consequently, maps have to be checked through a separate function. Maps must be collected throughout the game like other items, and can only be read if there is sufficient light or when the flashlight James finds is working. James will update relevant maps to reflect locked doors and obstructions, and during the labyrinth will actually draw a new map himself while the level is being navigated if the flashlight is on. James will also write down the content of all documents in a notebook for future reference.

Much of gameplay consists of navigating the town, with less focus on killing enemies and more on finding keys or other items to bypass doors or other obstructions. Occasionally puzzles will be presented, often with riddles left for the player to interpret. The difficulty levels of the enemies and the puzzles are determined independently, giving players the option of having weak enemies while being faced with extremely cryptic riddles or vice-versa.

The atmosphere of the game was presumably designed to be as grim and unsettling as possible; many of the locations that James has to navigate are places that few people would want to go: these include the burned-out shell of a bar, a bloodstained padded cell, a prison morgue full of decayed corpses, a slaughterhouse, a pantry full of spoiled food, and a succession of filthy bathrooms (at one point, he even needs to fish something out of a toilet). The unsettling atmosphere is further enhanced by occasional unidentifiable but vaguely menacing sounds in the background.

Like the original game, James keeps a radio with him which alerts him to the presence of creatures by emitting static, allowing him to detect hostiles even through the thick fog. The sound of the static will change slightly depending on how many creatures are approaching and how far away they are. There are a total of six weapons available, three melee weapons and three firearms, with another two unlocked during replays: a wooden plank obtained from a construction site, a steel pipe embedded in the hood of a car, an oversized knife wielded by Pyramid Head, a small pistol in a shopping cart in the Apartments, a shotgun found in a locker in the hospital, and a hunting rifle found in the prison; the special weapons are a chainsaw and a spray can that deals different damage to different enemies, depending on the rank the player received in the previous playthrough. While combat is not necessarily the focus of the game, there are six boss fights. Nearly all the enemies use short-range attacks save one, who is armed with a gun, and the final boss, which can launch a swarm of black moth-like creatures at James.

Plot

See also: List of Silent Hill monsters and List of Silent Hill characters

The game follows James Sunderland, who arrives in Silent Hill after receiving a mysterious letter from his wife, Mary, who died from an illness three years ago;^[3] the letter beckons him to their "special place", though James has no idea what this means.^[4] As James explores Silent Hill, he encounters others searching the town. Angela, whom he meets at the beginning of the game, has also just arrived to look for her mother,^[5] but on later encounters, seems to be depressed and suicidal; the slow-witted Eddie, meanwhile, seems defensive, and later tends to linger around areas with corpses, though he denies having anything to do with their deaths.^[6] Looking for their "special place", James decides to search Rosewater Park,^[7] where he meets Maria, a woman who strongly resembles Mary, but with a more provocative outfit and personality.^[8] She claims that she has never met or seen Mary and, as she is scared, James allows her to follow him. James also briefly encounters a young girl named Laura, who seems to have no knowledge of the dangers of the town, including the monsters.^[9]

While looking for Laura inside a hospital, James and Maria are ambushed by a fearsome monster called "Pyramid Head", and Maria is killed by the monster just as James slips between the closing doors of an elevator;^[10] James nonetheless resumes his task of finding Mary, and chooses to search the old Lakeview Hotel, where he and Mary spent their vacation.^[11] While en route, James inexplicably finds Maria alive, unharmed and locked in a prison cell.^[12] She greets him with a lascivious pose, claims ignorance to their previous encounter, and discusses elements of James and Mary's past that only Mary would know.^[13] Reaching the prison cell, he finds her once more dead, bleeding on the bed.

Traveling deeper into the underground catacomb, James saves Angela from a monster whom she calls "daddy"; she confesses that her father used to molest her,^[14] whilst a newspaper article that James finds implies that Angela stabbed her father to death. Further on, James confronts a gun-wielding and insane Eddie, who admits to maiming a bully and killing his dog before fleeing to Silent Hill;^[15] James kills him in self-defense when he attacks. Mary's letter reverts to a blank piece of paper, calling into question whether or not James actually received it, or if the letter was all in his mind.

At the Lakeview Hotel, James locates an old home-made videotape, which depicts him smothering and killing his dying wife,^[16] much to the horror of Laura, who was friends with Mary in her time at hospital. In another room, a final meeting with Angela sees her giving up on life, and disappearing into the flames of a burning staircase.^[17] The two Pyramid Heads reappear, along with Maria who has been resurrected once more; as she is killed again by being stabbed with the spear, James finally realizes that the Pyramid Heads were created because he needed someone to punish him. Accepting this, he defeats them, and makes his way to the rooftop, finally reaching what seems to be Mary. Depending on the choice made by the player throughout the game, Maria is either disguised as Mary,^[18] or it is a manifestation of Mary herself.^[19] After the player defeats the final boss, one of several endings play, depending on the player's actions.

Silent Hill 2 does not have a canonized ending, and official statements from Konami have kept the canonicity of the ending ambiguous,^[20][21] although the fourth installment of the series alludes to the idea that James disappeared when he went to Silent Hill. In the Leave, In Water, and Rebirth endings, the woman in the room is Maria once again, dressed as Mary in an attempt to trick James. James rebuffs her, however, and she transforms into a monster. After he defeats it, the Leave ending sees James have one last meeting with Mary, read Mary's full letter, as well as he and Laura leaving the town through the graveyard, while the In Water sees James drive into Toluca Lake, killing himself in despair; Rebirth, available only during a replay game, will also end with James killing Maria, but the final scene shows him in a boat with Mary's body, planning to revive her using special occult objects the player collects during the game.^[22]

In contrast, the Maria ending sees Mary as the woman on the rooftop, who has not forgiven James for killing her. After her transformation into the final boss and her defeat, James dismisses her as being just another hallucination. He then discovers Maria, inexplicably resurrected again, and leaves town with her.^[23] Maria starts noticeably coughing, implying she has the same illness Mary had suffered from, and the events that drove James to murder may repeat themselves.^[24] There are also two "joke" endings available on replay games. The first called Dog ends with James discovering beyond a normally locked door a Shiba Inu which has apparently been controlling all the events of the game from a vision mixer, and the second, UFO, is a continuation of the UFO ending of the first game, in which James is abducted by a group of aliens with the help of the first game's protagonist, Harry Mason, who was abducted on the first game's UFO ending.

Born From a Wish

The Born From a Wish scenario is a brief side-story scenario in the special editions and re-releases of the game. In this gaiden story, the player takes control of Maria shortly before James arrives in town, before they meet at Toluca Lake. After waking up in the Heaven's Night club with a gun, and having contemplated suicide, she resolves to go out and find someone. Her wandering eventually brings her to the seemingly deserted Baldwin mansion, where she hears the voice of seemingly agoraphobic owner, Ernest Baldwin. At first Maria is relieved to have found another living human, but Ernest refuses to let Maria into the room where he is and will only talk to her through the closed door. After completing a few small tasks for him, including passing him a birthday card from his daughter Amy, Ernest warns Maria about James, whom he described as a "bad man"; Maria resolves to open the door to Ernest's room, and finds it empty. Leaving, she again contemplates her gun, as well as suicide. After pointing the gun at her head, she abruptly tosses it over a nearby wall and, after whispering James' name, walks into the fog — presumably to Toluca Lake, to await his arrival.

Development

Influences and design

The atmosphere of the game is for the most part similar to the first game, including the abandoned and/or decomposing look of the town and the persistent fog obscuring the streets, but it has been given a more psychological twist. One example of this is James' letter from Mary progressively disappears during the game, hinting, as Konami later confirmed, that the letter was not real and merely another part of James' hallucinations.^[9] The implication is that, as James slowly began to understand what he did, the illusions of the town begin to disappear. This could also be the explanation for the transformation of the hotel, as when James enters it is mostly intact, but after he sees the videotape he finds it reverts to its true form of a mostly burned-out structure.^[25] Other acknowledged attempts to induce a psychological influence on the game include placing Mary's dress in the room where James discovers the flashlight and modelling at least one dead body in the town after James.^[26]

The monsters in the game, as well as being more humanoid in design than their counterparts in the preceding game, are acknowledged to have been, for the most part, designed as a reflection of James' own subconscious.^[27] At least two creatures, the "Mannequin" and "Bobblehead nurse" are acknowledged to have been created with sexual suggestion in mind, a reflection of James' desires and likely sexual deprivation during Mary's illness.^[27][26] Pyramid Head is acknowledged to have been based on the executioners of the town's fictional history and is intended to be a punisher for James.^[27] Two exceptions to this theme are the "Abstract Daddy", a reflection of the subconscious and memories of Angela, and the "creepers", which are also seen in the first game.^[27]

Silent Hill 2 also incorporates some references to real life events. The creators have said that the name "Mary" came from Mary Ann Nichols and Mary Jane Kelly, Jack the Ripper's first and last victims respectively.^[9] Other observers have claimed that Maria's outfit was copied from Christina Aguilera's appearance at the 1999 Teen Choice Awards.^[28] Eddie Dombrokski's name was taken from actor Eddie Murphy back during the beginning phases of production when Eddie was originally designed with a pleasantly optimistic personality.^[9] The name of Angela Orosco was derived from Angela Bennett, the protagonist of the film The Net, and Laura's from the novel No Language But a Cry by author Richard D'Ambrosio.^[9] There are also indications that the layout of Silent Hill has been based on the town of San Bruno, California to a certain extent.^[29]

Releases

Silent Hill 2 was first released for PlayStation 2 in late 2001. The original European edition also included a second disc: a "Making-of" DVD video featuring trailers, an artwork gallery and a documentary on the title's development.^[30]

The Xbox port was released late in the same year as the PS2 version, on December 20, and the PC version in December of the following year.^[31][32] Each region had a different subtitle; the Xbox port was subtitled Saigo no Uta (最期の詩, Saigo no Uta^? lit. "poem of the last moment") in Japan, Restless Dreams in North America, and Inner Fears in Europe.^[33][34] The ports also contained additional material. James' scenario was given a sixth ending and an additional sub-scenario titled "Born from a Wish" was included. This mini-game is shown from the perspective of Maria, which explains her background before she met James in the main game.

This revised version of the game was ported back to the PS2 and PC and billed as a director's cut under both the "Greatest Hits" and "Platinum" labels depending on location.^[33][35]

The PC version of Silent Hill 2 was released in December 2002, ported by Creature Labs and published by Konami.^[36] The PC edition is equivalent to the Xbox port, including the Maria scenario and the extra ending. The port generally received worse reviews due to its controls, which were keyboard only, mouse support limited to menu and map navigation, although the game had support for a USB controller. Other added features included the ability to save anywhere, quicksave and quickload, and a movie menu to view trailers for Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, as well as any ingame movie once seen by the player.^[37]

Reception

Reaction to the game was generally favorable. Rating aggregation site Game Rankings gives Silent Hill 2 an average rating of 86% for the original PS2 version^[38] while giving the expanded Restless Dreams version 82% on Xbox^[39] and 90% on PS2.^[40] MetaCritic gave the original PS2 version an average rating of 89%,^[41] and an average of 84% for the expanded Xbox version.^[42] GameSpot UK gave the PS2 and Xbox versions ratings of 7.7^[43] and 7.9^[44] out of 10 respectively. A review by IGN for the original PS2 version praised it as "a damn scary game, entirely worth every last cent."^[45] Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation repeatedly ranks the game as one of his personal favorites and holds it up as "the benchmark for video game storytelling and atmosphere." ^[46]

The PC ports typically were given lower ratings than the other consoles. The original PC port holds a rating of 72% on Game Rankings^[47] while the expanded version holds a rating of 6.2^[48] at GameSpot, with the score lowered by the categories of "Gameplay" and "Tilt" (the latter category being an abbreviation of "Reviewer's Tilt" and apparently directed at other criteria including the plot.)^[49] A 2003 review on GameSpy claimed that some of the problems with the PC port came from the difficulty in controlling the character, especially when some of the more unusual camera angles were used.^[50] A similar point was made by another IGN reviewer in December 2002, suggesting that "Keyboard play is possible, but not advised."^[51]

By the end of October 2001, Konami had announced that over a million copies of Silent Hill had been sold.^[52] Since then, Silent Hill 2 has also been re-released as a Greatest Hits game.^[53]

In 2006, G4TV's X-Play declared Silent Hill 2 to be the number 1 of the "Scariest Games of All Time".^[54]

Other media

Music

Silent Hill 2 Original Soundtracks was released in Japan on October 3, 2001 by Konami Music Entertainment, Inc. The album contains musical tracks from the game, composed by Akira Yamaoka.

Games

Silent Hill 3 contains several references to the previous game, unlocked if a memory card with a Silent Hill 2 save is being used. In one of these scenes, Heather (the protagonist) discovers something lodged in a toilet, similar to James' discovery. While James can reach in and fish it out, Heather ultimately refuses, turns to the camera, and wonders what sort of person would actually do that.^[55] The same save data will also create a poster with Maria on it in the Heaven's Night bar that Heather will notice if she enters it. Another reference is when Heather examines the mail box at her apartment building and says there are no letters from a dead wife (similar to James' incident). The last one is on the rooftop of Brookhaven Hospital. Examining the rear fence prompts Heather to say it is secure and won't fall over, whereas in Silent Hill 2, James is flung at the fence by Pyramid Head and it falls over, James falling over the edge with it. The UFO ending for Silent Hill 3 also features James with Harry Mason (the protagonist of Silent Hill) after his abduction following the Silent Hill 2 UFO ending.

Silent Hill 4: The Room makes multiple allusions to Silent Hill 2. Walter Sullivan was originally mentioned in a newspaper clipping James finds in the apartment complex, and one of the rituals the character carries out involves the usage of the items required for the "Rebirth" ending. The character Frank Sunderland is also believed to be James' father. When studying a picture of Toluca Lake that Frank gave him, Henry, the protagonist, mentions that Frank's son and daughter-in-law went to Silent Hill and disappeared. This could allude to James' fate at the end of Silent Hill 2.

Pyramid Head is featured in Silent Hill: The Arcade as well as Konami's New International Track & Field.^[56][57] He also appears in Silent Hill: Homecoming as a non-combative character, renamed Bogeyman.

Films

The film adaptation of the first game features, among the creatures in the town, a modified version of Pyramid Head. In this appearance, his helmet has been redesigned with one less point than the original game version, and he has been manifested from the perspectives of the film's characters rather than that of James, as he does not appear in the film.^[58]

It has been confirmed that a "Silent Hill 2" is being planned but it is unknown if it will be a continuation of the first film, an adaptation of the corresponding game, or a new unrelated story.^[59]

References

External links

• Official Silent Hill 2 website (Konami Japan)
• Official Silent Hill 2 website (Konami Europe)
• Silent Hill 2 at MobyGames
• Silent Hill 2 OST at MusicBrainz
• Letter from Silent Heaven In-depth coverage on Silent Hill 2