How the Silent Hill 2 Remake Revives A Horror Classic

I recently got through my first playthrough of the Silent Hill 2 remake and greatly enjoyed it. I was concerned about Bloober Team helming this project given their body of work as well as Konami's patchy publishing history. Consider this me happily eating crow as promised.

This 2024 re-imagining of a survival horror masterpiece is undeniably a topic of discussion. With an 86 Metacritic score and over 1 million copies sold, this remake pulls off an impeccable job retaining the spirit of the original work and adding embellishments to its core. In doing so, they have helped breathe new life into the iconic haunted town.

Note: This article will contain both gameplay and story spoilers for Silent Hill 2. Read at your own discretion.

The Narrative and Character Changes in the Silent Hill 2 Remake

After two decades of distance, the fact Silent Hill 2 remains one of the most haunting and impactful games ever is a testament to its quality. It has been analyzed and dissected fervently since its release thanks to its Lynchian tone, surreal dreamlike atmosphere, masterful musical score, complex characters, grotesquely symbolic creature designs, and a darkly mature story involving terminal illness, trauma, and guilt.

James Sunderland's descent into Silent Hill this time is enhanced by modern graphics technology and higher production values. While it does remove the endearingly stilted awkwardness of the original, it does allow this remake opportunities to reframe elements of the original.

One character left mostly unchanged by these modern touches is Angela Orosco. Given the dumb culture war nonsense kicked up around her character design and deeply unsettling themes at play regarding domestic abuse and assault, that's a good thing.

Eddie Dombrowski is greatly enhanced by the more sophisticated performance capture on display. In every scene he's in, Eddie's breath is visible, like he is somewhere cold. But he never remarks on or reacts to the cold. This is illustrated in a scene in an abandoned movie theater where Eddie is eating a tub of ice cream barehanded.

It's a touch that confirms a fan theory, that Eddie is experiencing a different version of Silent Hill, possibly a frozen industrial landscape similar to the meat locker where his boss fight takes place. On balance, it's the most light of narrative changes.

But Bloober Team takes several major swings in the Silent Hill 2 remake with Maria. Maria is one of the most fascinating characters in the series. She's a deceptively complex blend of damsel and antagonistic force, cruel temptress and obsessive possessive.

In the Silent Hill 2 remake, Maria is given a bit more character. This is done through smaller elements peppered throughout the game, but the most substantive scene happens in the garden.

Maria tells James of a local legend: a tale of a woman exiled for being a witch who is visited by a man in secret. The man dies one day during a planned rendezvous, but the woman continues to hold a vigil for him.

For first-timers, it can be seen as an on-the-nose parallel to James' journey through Silent Hill, framing it as a tale of eternal love. For those familiar with James' tale, it's a narrative red herring, a pleasant lie meant to hide the messier, more human end to that story.

From Maria's perspective, the story can be seen as a tragic story of someone holding desperately onto a happy ending that will never come. It not only foreshadows the game's final battle, it frames Maria as a more tragic figure.

Then there's James himself. Luke Roberts gives a quiet, deeply broken performance in the lead role, which is put to great effect in the Silent Hill 2 remake thanks to advanced performance-capture technology and high-fidelity assets fitting a modern AAA production.

It's a performance put to great effect in the remake's two new endings. The first one, the Bliss ending, is a mix of fan service and commentary on nostalgia. Before watching the tape that reveals the truth behind his wife's fate, James drinks a vial of White Claudia, a potion from earlier Silent Hill games. When the tape turns on, James is transported into the world of the tape, trapped forever in a nostalgic memory of halcyon days.

Given the passionate reverence of the Silent Hill fandom towards its earliest titles, it's an ending with more bite on closer inspection—literally drinking in the past to the point that there is no future.

The second new ending, Stillness, might be the most depressing one. James is essentially broken by his guilt. He doesn't read Mary's final letter to him and begins to cry in his car as rain falls, all while Mary appears in the backseat, whispering comfort. It ends ambiguously with the screen cutting to black followed by the sound of the car revving, followed by a crash.

It's an ending that seems to confirm another long-held fan theory—that Mary's body was in James' car the whole time—as well as shows an ending for James that stands alongside the others' resolutions of emotional catharsis, self-destruction, toxic codependence, and gonzo absurdity.

Taken as a whole, these narrative changes and embellishments show a refined maturity to Silent Hill's storytelling, one that doesn't shy away from the messy humanity of its characters without falling into melodrama or nihilistic pitch darkness.

The Gameplay Changes in the Silent Hill 2 Remake

The core gameplay of the Silent Hill 2 remake is where Bloober Team's greatest challenges lie. After all, the narrative of the original is beloved; the gameplay not so much.

The remake's core gameplay follows the AAA prestige game trend. It is characterized by a third-person camera with over-the-shoulder shooting broken up with light puzzle-solving and action set pieces.

Generally, it's a change that has made the game more accessible but may have sanded down some of the original's eccentric edges.

There is a greater emphasis on combat. James doesn't just fire guns, he frantically dodges and strikes with melee weapons. These desperate struggles are mostly intense bouts of flailing and screaming, but certain enemy encounters can be too frequent.

This action shift can greatly exhaust the player near the end and greatly dilute the monster designs' intended unsettling visual impact. Getting jumped by one mannequin is scary. Getting jumped by 20? Less so.

As for puzzles, the original's notoriously esoteric key-hunting sections are either streamlined or removed in the Silent Hill 2 remake. A few of them are even referenced in easter eggs. This is good for mitigating player frustration but does make the experience less surreal.

Thankfully, the level design picks up the slack. Taking advantage of modern hardware, the Otherworld sections can expand into unsettling liminal hellscapes in mere seconds, making you question your surroundings with the logic of a nightmare. The absolute standout is the revamped prison section in the game's second half.

Lastly, each major boss fight in the game is a multi-phase gauntlet, complete with escalating dangers and evolving combat arenas, making them bombastic compared to the original's quick and unpleasant fights.

But despite these changes, the Silent Hill 2 remake still feels unique. There are even some areas where the spectacle adds to the horror. A personal highlight is the revamped Abstract Daddy boss fight, an arena that starts in claustrophobic corridors before exploding into a twisted labyrinth of industrial metal and flesh.

The Future of Silent Hill

While Konami's recent attempts to revive the series have been tepid, Bloober Team managed something downright impossible with the Silent Hill 2 remake. There is a new generation of players interested in this series again, ones that can have measured and meaningful conversations with older players who were around for the original release.

With that interest may come a chance for new tales in this haunted town with new creative voices—the kind of nightmares that, if handled with the same care as this remake, will be ones worth revisiting again and again.