The remake of Silent Hill 2 adds an extra layer of interpretation

How do you recreate a story that lives in interpretations?

In “Lost Memories: Silent Hill Chronicle“, a long document published by Konami and Team Silent in 2003, the developers wrote that there is no canonical ending to the original Silent Hill 2which has four main conclusions depending on your actions. Many narrative subtleties regarding the characters, the city outside the cutscenes, and scattered notes throughout the game have taken on different meanings to different people. After more than two decades of existing fan theories and carefully crafted wiki pages, the story of James Sunderland remains a foggy amalgamation of fabrications.

And now here’s the Bloober team Silent Hill 2reimagined according to the standards of the current gaming industry zeitgeist. Even after the Resident Evil remakes paved the way for this possibility, it’s still strange to see. The first trailers showed off a familiar yet modernized presentation, switching to an over-the-shoulder camera and smoother, more modern combat. When the previews came out, Bloober Team developers assured every interviewer that it would stay true to the original down to the last detail – even including some members of the original team involved in the remake. wanted more changes but were overruled.

During my first playthrough, which lasted over 17 hours, I felt the designers’ hesitations about what to change on the walls of each rusty hallway. As you can tell from my playtime, many of the original areas have been expanded, compared to the 2001 game (which lasted about 10 hours). For the most part, the things you love are still there. But there are a series of changes, some subtle, some bold, that challenge that familiarity, resulting in an intriguing new visit.

So early gameplay streams seemed to indicate that some encounters – such as the first sighting of monsters in the tunnel – have been changed. When you interact with certain locations and objects, the game plays a record-scratch animation with a specific music cue. I won’t mention another example, because they are nice pieces of nostalgia that are worth (re)discovering for yourself. The overall implication, however, which is exploited by some new text input and collectibles, is that the game does indeed play with the idea that you are retracing the events of Silent Hill 2 at least once, both from a story and almost meta perspective as a returning player.

I would love to tell you in detail how this all turns out, but I can’t. First, the restrictions of the review embargo prohibit me from describing the new two endings; I can only mention their existence. I couldn’t describe them anyway, since I didn’t get them on my first playthrough either – it was the ending of “Maria” instead. Speaking to colleagues who also had access to the game before release, these additions are still being unraveled and discovered as other people progress in the new Game Plus and try to find a new collectible. Someone out there has probably already seen them, but the details won’t become public until after the game’s release (or shouldn’t be).

The Silent Hill 2 remake doesn’t go to extremes Final Fantasy 7 Remakeboldly reimagining a classic to expand the story into uncharted territory. James still delves through the same main areas as in the original. The ending of “Maria” remains (approximately) identical. The other endings are present as puzzles to solve, adding scattered puzzling pieces for returning players to find, adding story achievements to the existing list. But beyond the quest experience of finding those endings, there are some fundamental changes to the base game that both expand on and, on some occasions, dilute what came before it.

In terms of gameplay, my biggest concerns prior to playing this version were the camera and overall atmosphere, which go hand in hand. The solid corners of the original were an important part for good reason. Walking down a dark hallway toward the camera without knowing what was in front of you until it appeared on screen or the angle changed was always terrifying. The environments themselves, such as the iconic Toluca Prison, thrived in the technically limited grain of the PlayStation 2 era. The change of perspective to a shoulder camera means you’re closer to everything and have free rein to explore areas, but I was concerned that this would fundamentally change the oppressive tone of the original.

Fortunately, that is far from the case. The Silent Hill 2 remake does a great job of suffocating you from its new perspective. While you can now always choose where to look, enemies can still sneak up on you, with Mannequins performing all kinds of peek-a-boo interactions – in a similar way to Stalkers in The Last of Us Part 2hiding behind furniture and sometimes escaping from you after being sighted to find another surprise spot. Changes to movement, such as having interconnecting rooms without doors separated by a loading screen, or spaces you can crawl or squeeze through, can also be used by enemies.

It may sound cliche to talk about darkness in a horror game, but that’s one aspect that the remake of the original captures to a triumph. James’s flashlight can only illuminate a limited portion of the screen, and the flickering of that flashlight, which – like the original – alerts you to moving enemies alongside the static of the radio, is terrifying when you’re briefly in a pitch-black room full of with samples. Their presence can sometimes be a little too abundant, which at best makes you feel uncomfortable, like hearing Spider Mannequins constantly until you’ve taken them all down or moved them somewhere else, and at worst it feels like a annoying reminder that the remake has a modern combat system, and the designers introduced more encounters to justify it.

As for the story, most of the cutscenes show changes. In terms of the new character likenesses and voice acting, your mileage may vary. The campiness of the original game, while charming, has been refined, although there is some stiffness in the way the cast reads lines, which otherwise feels faithful. However, it’s some of the actual story scenes that make a more drastic change.

Silent Hill 2like the franchise as a whole, it included mentions of sexual abuse, suicide, and depression, among other dark topics. In Bloober Team’s version, every time you start the game there’s a disclaimer about this, including a QR code to a Konami site with a list of resources. Still, some of the most disturbing images or direct mentions of said topics during the dialogue (particularly around the videotape of Angela, Pyramid Head, and Mary) are now more subtle. Considering Bloober’s previous track record in games like The remedywhere these topics were poorly handled, these changes sound, to say the least, like a warning not to repeat past mistakes. None of them change the story in and of themselves, but it’s an interesting decision within the context of Silent Hill 2. There’s a reason to properly revisit tropes and images that haven’t aged well, including recent cases like Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. For Silent Hill, however, reducing the impact of certain moments can cause some of the loosest story details to lose weight as the story is pieced together.

But here’s an example of the opposite that ends up being a surprising highlight: James’ interactions with Maria when she tags along. Yes, it falls into the AAA trope of an NPC companion who can’t enjoy any quiet time for more than five minutes. But Maria’s new interactions and dialogues are appropriate. She comments on certain locations and your actions with a fun and flirty flair that enhances the character. Being able to explore the Heaven’s Night strip club in great detail and getting a new movie at the same time are additions that have substance. They’re fleeting, small moments in the grand scheme of beats in the main story that add a steadier presence without being intrusive.

This subtlety is present in the Silent Hill 2 remake as a whole. Some of the scariest elements of the original are the ones you couldn’t see or understand at first glance. The recurring whispers, the footsteps in the prison, the occasional scream from an unknown person. They all added to the tension without the need to be blunt about it. The designers behind the remake have kept these elements, realizing that access to better technology doesn’t have to mean constant spectacle. You can now see the rust and mold of Silent Hill in 4K, but higher fidelity doesn’t make any location more inviting.

It’s an interesting time to look back on it Silent Hill 2as the original has been in an abandoned state for years and the only remastered version available isn’t great. In an official sense, the remake is the current retelling of the story. It’s a faithful interpretation of the events that took place, capturing most of the major and minor story moments while fleshing out some details in between. However, when you look at the legacy of the original game over the past 23 years, it’s hard to imagine Silent Hill 2 remake will be able to replicate that too, allowing fans to spend decades discussing the new endings and narrative additions with contrarian analysis. At the very least, it provides another fiction to theorize about.

Silent Hill 2 will be released on October 8 for PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a pre-release download code from Bloober Team. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. Additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.