@@tenbones545 harry good to see you! You can find it in the trivia section of the "fandom wiki" about it. You can read a lot of interesting things on the trivia. Probably some other websites too
"The people are acting crazy, the monsters have.. urges other than killing you, and do you want to stick your hand in this hole? Yes or no?" No better way to describe the game than this.
"This is the way I came in. There's no point going back." He's literally saying there's no point in going back to his life, he's given up on everything else and he doesn't plan on going back. He doesn't even bother shutting his car door.
Yeah a lot of people don’t know this but his original intent coming to the town was to kill himself, but on the way his mind repressed it and he created the letter, you see this as towards the end of the game the letter disappears. Then once hes there and open to the mystery the town does its thing
Interesting that he just abandons his car like that since a common theory is that he just killed Mary and her body is still in his car, possibly in the trunk.
@@TheSlammurai It would make sense, as it seemed to have just happened. Also, the "in water" ending implys she's in the car, since that's how they'd be together again after he drives it into the lake. I'm also fairly certain he walks out of Silent Hill with Laura in the "leave" ending. Leaving Mary's body behind in the town he's putting behind him. Makes sense thematically.
“You’d better do something about that cough.” So much anger and immediate regret in that delivery, one of Guy’s best lines in the game and it’s in an ending I bet no one got lol.
I thought the elevator quiz show was a little hokey too until I noticed the elevator never stops while it's happening. The elevator ride being so much longer than it should be since you're only going down 2 floors is creepy. It also fits in with the games reoccurring theme of descent.
one thing i like about silent hill 2 is how it doesn’t glamorise trauma and mental illness. It doesn’t make someone mysterious and sexy because you want to find out what happened to them, it makes them unlikeable and weird but understandably so.
Right. This was an aspect of Tomm Hulett's remaster that irked me quite a bit. Eddie and Angela didn't interest me much in the grand scheme of the overall experience, but all the subtleties of their characters got a thorough bulldozing once they were recast. In particular, Angela went from someone with emotional complexity to someone I could tell was acting like they had a split personality; she was either vulnerable or malevolent, and never awkward in the way someone lacking a normal upbringing typically ends up being.
Bonus Fun Fact: The Giant Knife isn't actually a knife. It's one half of a pair of giant scissors, the other half being in the possession of Pyramid Head himself. James being able to wield the 2nd half of the scissor blade was to show that Pyramid Head is meant to be a twisted reflection of James' dark thoughts.
Maria/Mary Voice Actress is the MVP in SH2 in my opinion, like she's on a whole different level compared to the rest of the cast. There are only 2 scenes whose dialogue had such an impact on me that i still remember all the lines more or less after more than a decade since i first played it and they both involved her: the one where Maria is behind bars and the other where Mary does her monologue at the very end. Just.....perfect acting.
Absolutely agreed, Maria's VA absolutely kills it. That's honestly why I didn't buy Charlie's argument that the voice acting in Silent Hill 2 is bad on purpose, to show how sUpEr cRaZy the characters are. His examples to the contrary are just clips of Maria speaking, and that's because she happens to have the best VA in SH2 by far!
@@QuintessentialWalrus He never once says it's 'bad', he says the characters sound confused/awkward. That isn't bad, that's a very specific performance that the director got out of them (remember, Guy Cihi has stated multiple times that the scenes were performed time and time again until the directors were happy with it). The only performance you could call subpar in this game is the child actor, everyone else is absolutely on point. Silent Hills 2/3 have some of the best voice work in video games, right up there with the Souls series. People seem to look at people like Troy Baker and Yuri Lowenthal as the ideal for voice acting, where for me they're too clean, their performances read very much as performances, and as a result are unrelatable.
Personally I thought the inclusion of the quiz show in the elevator was a good addition to the game. It goes along with the theme that Silent Hill has of taking ordinary, everyday things and warping them into something dark and threatening. I also thought the cheesiness was good too. It feels like the dark power of the town is directly mocking James while he's in this terrifying situation.
Completely agree. I played this game recently with a friend and they were extremely unnerved at the quiz show. It's so far outside what has been established, and how it addresses James directly, has always been one of my favorite parts of the game.
I'll also add that within the quiz is the implication that James is being watched and followed, perhaps judged. I tend to disagree with the comment in the video that it's in contrast to the tone. Its tone is menacing as is the rest of the game.
I think what he's calling "the door things", the monster in the room with Angela, looks more like a bed with covers pulled over someone (possibly 2 people). It looks like a literal interpretation of sexual assault taking place on a bed. That, to me, is why she's so afraid of it. Plus, in the room where we find her, those circular shapes pulsating all around the room seem to parallel this. If the goal was to torture a victim of sexual abuse, i can't imagine a more horrible or effective way to do it than a bunch of things pumping in and out of the wall like that.
@@ExtraordinaryFate just a reminder everyone perceived everything differently in this game. So yeah, some things wouldn't effect certain people because they'd never see it. They'd be presented with something else entirely catered to them.
@@ExtraordinaryFate A minority, sure. But for most the horror occurs on a subconscious level, folks who see it without picking up on the symbolism can and do still find it disturbing. See also, Alien -- as it lines up so well with SH2 in terms of psychosexual horror -- where practically everything is intentionally designed to be subconsciously disturbing, and the handful of jump scares in the movie are just the set dressing. The Shining works too, and is thematically much closer-aligned to SH2.
I'll make this clear, the quiz show in the elevator was added as a way to reward player for paying attention to the main story. The questions are intentionally connected to James' journey, and we can only answer them if we took interest in our quest of finding Mary. 1. "What is the name of this amusement park?" - Our goal at the moment was to get to the Lakeview hotel, which is located next to the Lakeside Amusement Park. If player searched on a map for the hotel, he would definitely spot the park's name. 2. "What was the name of the murderer?" - The name is found in a newspaper under a coin which is needed to progress further. We are forced to read the newspaper, so it's a way to test whether the player is truly interested in the storyline 3. "What is the name of that road?" - It's the only road that leads to the Lakeview hotel, our main destination point, so we should know its name if we truly wanted to get to the hotel. A lazy person would miss all of the obvious answers so they are punished for not concentrating enough on the game.
@@RickySteels I disagree. For all the messed up things that were happening it fit with the strange aspect of everything and at that point it was a nice break from the foreboding atmosphere
The final boss is meant to represent James’ selfish interpretation of his wife while she was dying as a monster that was ruining his life. Confronting this demon with his fantasy of what he wished his wife was contrasting with the monster he perceived her to be was the last step in his journey toward acceptance
ULGROTHA I worded that really badly just ignore my comment I think what I was tryna say is his final step toward acceptance was confronting what he perceived his wife to be while she was dying
@@rickrossstagedive3490 Thays the town messing with him. He feels guilty for euthanized her and thats what it was. Depending on the ending you get the letter will tell you she wanted him to kill her. He did not want it and now the trauma from that event led him to Silent Hill.
Theme of Laura is a legendary track for sure, some of Akira Yamaoka's best work. Akira has said that Theme of Laura is his favorite track he's ever made. I was so happy to be able to meet him and talk to him (and his translator) it was great to get some first hand insight into the process of his music production. (He also said Shadows of the Damned was his favorite Grasshopper era soundtrack he's done)
@@pablomendez9671 yeah I met him at a local convention called Midwest Media Expo, it was a newer convention so not as many people so i was luckily able to pick his brain more. He and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn had a concert as well.
Disagree about the last boss. I mean, if you've ever seen a family member dying in a hospital bed, as I did around the time that SH2 released, then that final boss is one of creepiest designs ever. It's borderline distasteful, and cruel... like the best Horror is! Excellent video though. Thanks!
Right? Her design and the implications still mess me up when I see it. I would agree the actual fight could have been better, other than that it's fine. And I mean...To watch your wife/projected version of her suddenly turn into that and attack you must be horrifying.
I played through the MGS series before experiencing this, but the way she repeats James' name makes me think that's where they got the idea for the way you kill the Boss.
@@GK-hq8mo I think what's currently accepted as the gold standard for review is a holistic view of the game and how it fits in with games as a whole. I. E. Reviews of Ocarina of Time tend to be overly positive because of both nostalgia and the huge impact it left in games that came after it. But both of those points don't actually reflect the content of the game, but rather allows it's own success to influence how others perceive it going forward. The pushback that reviewing things "on their own merit" is it can seem like they're hating on a game because, with any popular media, there is a subsection of people who will reject something popular out of hand to seem like they have a new/better/more interesting perspective. Personally, I see the merits of both methods.
@@GK-hq8mo Formalism has been demonized in some popular contemporary circles for being "a product of 1950s scholarly discourse which purposefully blocks or inhibits historical, cultural, emotional, or intertextual methodologies." The key word is "purposefully," as some critics believe analysis of a work based solely on what's contained in the text itself doesn't allow for reader response, the most accessible form of literary analysis available to people who would rather not analyze form, or lack the ability to do so articulately. If this sounds kinda strange, it is. It's like saying the hammer in the toolbox is keeping the drill from being used, when both are suitable for different reasons for the same purpose.
@@12ealDealOfficial isn't formalism a Russian method of the late XIX century and early XX century that by the 1950s was long forgotten by other academic sensibilities? This history of ideas you are presenting is foreign to me, that's why I'm having a hard time understanding it! E.g., in the 1960 article "the structure and the form" (republished in structural anthropology two), Levi Strauss was commenting on an English translation of a Vladimir Propp book as rescuing to the second half of the century a long forgotten tradition of thought, which he calls formalism.
I think all three 'normal' endings make equal sense: You already covered 'leave' pretty well, so I'm just going to point out that it's pinned on a sympathetic/understanding/forgiving view of James' actions. "Maria" is the "James Bad" ending. It's predicated on a deeply negative view of James: he murdered his wife out of sexual frustration and generic Man Anger, worked himself up into a delusional frenzy to escape his guilt, and deserves no forgiveness. And he gets none; they Pyramid heads die simply because the hell he's about to trap himself in is far worse than any mere stabbing they could inflict on him. I think that most of the ways/reasons "In Water" works are obvious, so I'm just going to address the Pyramid Heads. They die simply because James no longer subconsciously desires for someone else to punish him, because he's planning to punish HIMSELF.
I always felt pyramid heads are just checking on James. The pyramid head in Beginning should be clue to the pyramid heads in the ending. James shows his determination through fighting for survival and answers, and the pyramid head leaves when it is satisfied with the display and lets James continue. In different version, James maybe died there already. It is very clear that fights or other encounters with the pyramid head are always in hands of the Pyramid Thing - It always decides to end the battle, only as reaction to enough of "display" James does by fighting, and always doing action itself not hindered by James.
The reason I found the "Leave" ending the best is James,through the game actually sees what can happen if he gives up like Angela(suicide,"in water"),or succumbs to the temptation the town offers him as happen with Eddie (Eddie can kill whoever npc who wrongs him,James can get the "Maria" ending),and learn from their and his own mistakes,and respects Mary's will by adopting Laura,kinda redeeming himself(dude is still a killer...).
The "it's all a hallucination" theories bother me for the same reason, they undermine the story as told to you, cheapen the narrative. And, often, suggest a *lack* of skill at suspending disbelief in the people who suggest it, that they can't take unrealistic or impossible stories at face value for the time it takes to engage with the story properly. Much more interesting to analyse it from the perspective of "this is how this fiction's world works" like you did.
It's a predatory hallucination; instead of their weaknesses and fears remaining in their head, the demon of Silent Hill pulls them into a tangible form to maximize torment. They are no mere delusions, but they are borne of the same thing as delusions.
@@devildogkogg8353 id also say the journey through the town represents the journey through James psyche. Little bits of James trauma peek out throughout the game, which do grow in number the further in you get. Were slowly fed some of James' issues through the enemies in the environments, always in the dark with james' himself (flashlight) being the only light willing to delve through it. I'd say the nightmare zone you go through in the prison as James keeps diving further and further in represent the darkest of his feelings and thoughts he has to navigate in order to get to the truth, which we find when we clear the prison. This is probably me overthinking it but the way the inside of Lakeview hotel looks in which the darkness of the interior clashes with the light coming in from the windows gives me the impression of balance, in which James has finally waded through the bullshit and the memories and feelings to reach a place of balance in which he's finally able to fully confront his killing of Mary. Thats what makes this game so great though, lots of interpretations that are easy to make and expand on while nothings completely set in stone
Person: it’s just a bunch of hallucinations, the story is over blown Me: okay these are the FICTIONAL rules of this FICTIONAL world, and how it effects these FICTIONAL characters in this FICTIONAL story. (Honestly people just need to learn to enjoy things for how/what it is).
About Maria: If you play Born from a Wish, it's pretty clear that she's a person by herself. She doesn't really understand her purpose, as she basically just popped in the town. She's completely lost. It's pretty tragic if you think about it. She's destined to be just a tool.
I've always thought of Maria as one of James' monsters akin to the Lying Figures or Mannequins conjured up by the town. While she is seemingly more aware of her existence and possesses more of a personality, that only serves the role she plays in James' journey. She is trying to distract him and hinder his path towards the truth at every turn, culminating in the Maria ending if successful. She is only as much a person as is needed to achieve that goal.
MrBowser I often thought she was the symbol of hope that Mary can be alive and that James trying to save her is just him chasing the false promise. I noticed a lot that that when she does it’s because James leaves her behind in the lobby, gets there late behind the bars, and then his memory officially kills off the hope once the pyramid heads “enlighten” James and he finally lets go of the suppressed and accepts the fact that he killed Mary.
@@Raul7x I dunno. I find the fan base assumption that Silent Hill (the town) has will and agency to be a bit of a stretch. It's just a place. A place where natural laws bend and abstract, sure, but just a place. In SH2 the people that are drawn there influence it and shape it. The horrors don't exist there if there's no one affecting it. Silent Hill acts as the vehicle for a person to satiate and confront their subconscious, but it is not a sentient being. Like when we're unconsciously "drawn" to the fridge when we're hungry, Silent Hill (in SH2 at least) functions similarly. In James' case even more so, because Silent Hill was also the place where he and Mary made some of their fondest memories together. For him it was a place of peace *and* penance. In that sense, Maria was always a creation of James' will - not a punishment made by the town to serve the town. His longing for and guilt over Mary created Maria (literally "born from a wish" as her sub scenario is titled), but she is effectively a homunculus, resembling and functioning like a real person but essentially just being a hollow facsimile that exists because of James and serves only his subconscious desire for punishment. James made her, the town was just the incubator.
This is easily one of the best videos I've seen about Silent Hill 2, and believe me, I've seen a lot. What truly makes this one special is how you not only look at the amazing story and sounddesign, but also how the gameplay works together with those and how that is what makes these games truly special. Everyone talks a lot about how Silent Hill 2 is amazing, but I think you're the first I've seen who really explain in detail how the various aspects of the gameplay makes is so amazing, with valid and constructive criticism as well! You really are in a leauge of your own Brit! It's also really refreshing how you look at the "OMG, the monsters are representing the issues of the main character!" in a critical light. As you say, that is cool and gives new understanding when replaying the game, but it's not what makes the game good and scary, and that is what so many fans and the developers of the non-Team Silent-games misunderstood. People have tried to recapture that special twist so many times, but it could never work, because after 2, it wouldn't be a suprise anymore. I also like how you point out the connections to Silent Hill 1. Another thing I take issue with is how often people dismiss the other games and put SH2 on a pedestal because it dosen't connect to the (in their opinion) lame, cult-related story of the rest of the series, and how it, combined with the symbolism of the monsters etc. is about a purgatory-like town where people pay for their sins and are redeemed. But that isn't the point of the game or the series, especially the whole purgatory-angle. I think what you say about the cults God still being an influence is right, especially considering how both Angela and Eddie are tormented, but never get to find redemption the same way James does. Heck, I would say that neither really deserve to be punished the same way James does. Angela killed her father in self-defence, and Eddie only killed a dog and vounded a man, which are bad actions in a way, but the idea of redemption rings hollow when both actions are less bad than James straight up murdering his wife. It seems to me that the only reason James gets out is because he's a harder prey to break down than the clearly way more traumatzed and put-upon Angela and Eddie. The town ends up devouring them, probably strengthening the God, but James (depending on how you play him) manages to break free. It annoyes me how many fans view the town as some psychologist that tries to help people with their mental baggage, when it's clearly a predator attracting and eating easy prey. Sorry for the rant, but I just get so fired up when it comes to these games, especially when there is content this good about them. I suspect that your musings about a Silent Hill-game with less resources and more challenging combat is forshadowing, and that you will take a look at Silent Hill 3 in the near future. Nothing would make me happier, as that is easily my favourite game in the series, and one of my favourite games of all time! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the in-depth comment! I think that take you've expanded upon about James being less easy prey, and the town being a predator is cool; I too think that's what the game's going for.
Man, I love this. For so many years I felt like a black sheep as a SH fan because, while I adored SH 2, I never put it on a pedestal (SH 3 is my favorite) and I never thought SH 2 should be the standard for further SH games. Just let it be its own thing. Further games trying to imitate this probably ruins them, instead of reaching for something more creative in order to set itself apart from other games. Give it its own identity instead of trying to be SH 2 for fuck's sake.
Yep. Silent Hill as a manipulative predator is absolutely the vibe I got too rather than it being an earnest karmic judge. Angela’s fate is still one of the most upsetting things in videogame history.
"I love to reload during a battle! There's nothing like the feeling of slamming a long silver bullet into a well greased chamber."- Eddie Dombrowski reloading his gun during His encounter with James in the slaughterhouse.
Mary/Maria's voice actor is absolutely incredible. Especially considering this came out in the early 2000's, a time when most English video Game voice acting was horrendous (and amusing). Even today, I'd say it's one of the greatest performances in video game history, perhaps even the best.
I remember reloading my game after Maria dies in the hospital basement, and spending 10 to 15 min walking backwards down that long hallway, keeping James between Pyramid Head and Maria, constantly beating on him with the steel pipe, getting her all the way to the doors of the elevator and jumping in, only to see the exact same cut scene play and realizing "Oh Goddamnit, she's supposed to die!"
One interesting thing I found out, when you get on the elevator in the hotel, you can carry Marys photo and letter with you. However if you take another note you have with you, the weight limit goes off. Thus further suggesting that the photo and Marys note are not actually real, thus they dont have weight. Also in Book of Memories it suggests that Mary is in the trunk of your car, taken her with you to Silent Hill. Meaning they are together with the Into Water ending.
You can carry Mary's photo and letter with you on the elevator?? I've played this game countless times and never checked that.. Good find! Yes, Mary's corpse is in the trunk of James' car. Everything points to the probability that he killed her mere hours before the game starts..
@@Stigmatix666 Yeah you can carry the letter and picture on, because they arent real :) They are made up in James head to get him to SIlent hill to find closure. Because they arent real they have no weight :3 So the lift alarm doesnt go off. Give it a try and let me know :D
It would make no sense for James to have brought her, because he is in denial of his actions. The game is him learning to accept his actions and whatever motivation for them. He does have her body in the rebirth ending, but he probably went and got it(I think). I could not find any reference to Mary being in the trunk of Jame's car in that book, and on a coding level, we know she isn't(take of that what you will)
@@dysonwitwer6430 I cant remember where I read it because it was so long ago, but i do remember it being in a cannon source that after he effectivly raped and killed her, he had a mental break down and brought her body to Silent Hill having a mental fugue state or something, he doesnt remember what he did, but he slowly realises and comes to terms with it. Which is why one of the endings he drives into the lake, killing himself and with her in the trunk he says they can be together.
The leave ending has some funny implications for James and Laura’s relationship. Imagine when she gets to her rebellious teenage phase, anytime James tells her to do things she can just be like “Oh so I should just listen to the murderer?”
I don't think Charlie gets enough credit for pivoting so successfully from action to horror as his main focus - same style and depth of analysis but for a completely different genre. This DMC stuff should be a dead meme at this point
@@GMTK jesus seeing your post absolutely scared the crap out of me hello there lmao. Also agreed charlie works really hard and it shows. To the point where I didn't even notice the transition until you mentioned it
1:37:59 "The truth is... I hated you! I wanted you out of the way! I wanted my life back!" "If that were true... Then why do you look so sad?" As someone who resented a family member I had to take care of for almost a decade, as someone who legitimately loathed and resented them in their final moments, but was beside myself with grief when that relief finally came, this part always makes me cry. Might not be the best game, but it's the one I relate to the most.
I completely agree, this game will hit WAY harder for anyone who's had to be a caretaker for an extended period of time, family or not. It's simultaneously a feeling of love and hate, acceptance and denial, all in one mix. It's all the dark thoughts that go through your head as you struggle to accept your predicament, thoughts that you fear and deny to yourself. Truth to be told, Guy Cihi once mentioned on a podcast that a lot of his experience in playing James was drawn from the mixed feelings he had when dealing with his Japanese wife, who treated him very negatively before they parted ways.
James will always resonate with me in a special way. I can't think of many characters in any medium that tackle a subject like this; The idea of personal needs and desires in a situation you're supposed to be altruistic. It's a real risk to make a protagonist that human and complex. How uncomfortable it can make the player feel to imagine themselves in that situation. I know I can relate in a way (not to the level of James and not with a terminal loved one). Bur I've had to struggle with resentment and personal feelings while in a scenario where the other person has it worse and feeling guilty I even have these thoughts. We all want to believe we'd always be unselfish when needed but in reality it's not that simple even if you want it to be. The idea that he did mercy kill Mary but also mixed with unintentional feelings that he felt relieved by it and maybe even wanted it is so complex and powerful that it's almost a miracle that they pulled it off so well that you don't hate James for it. Bc we are complex creatures, and our minds often work in ways we wish they wouldn't. If you get the good ending, which I did my first playthrough unintentionally, it almost feels like Silent Hill in a way was a force for good for him. It helped James come to terms with everything and forgive himself and find redemption in adopting Laura. There are many stories I love with characters and plots that have effected who I am as a person for various reasons, but I have yet to find something else like SH2 that used interactive horror to tell one of the most emotional, bleak, but human stories I ever experienced. I find myself randomly just thinking about James in that quiet foggy town.
29:52 I have to respectfully disagree that this part wasn't scary. As we know, the radio James is equipped with, emits static when he gets closer to an enemy. It becomes a little more loud and clearer the closer he gets to an enemy. I still vividly remember playing this as a kid, in the same way you've described it in this video, walking on eggshells and being careful every step of the way. When I first experienced this scene, it was the scariest scene in the game for me, because I immediately thought "If the radio is THIS clear, what the FUCK kind of monster is near me?" I was shitting my pants scared and I actually turned off my t.v when this happened, and couldn't work up the courage to go back on for 2 weeks. I didn't even pay attention to the announcer or what was going on, just the fact that it was so clear, was my focus in that situation.
Hmm. I always thought the voice was coming from a nonexistent intercom in the elevator, not his radio. They are looking around the elevator, not at his radio.
@@blumiu2426 I too thought it was coming from some sort of intercom, but I do find it interesting that someone thought it could've been coming from the radio, it would make alot of sense in universe
@@ExtraordinaryFate I guess if you're not paying attention to it as a corny quiz show host speaking directly to you/James, but a generic signal the radio picked up, you could interpret it as a more evolved version of the regular monster static, and assume it meant there was something new and incredibly dangerous in vicinity
I think the "In Water" ending is the one the town was urging him towards, and the one he must overcome. Its foreshadowed that James will die by drowning after the first Pyramid Head fight when PH "drowns" himself once he's taken enough damage, and again when the hotel begins to flood after James watches the video and remembers the truth. The three tombstones indicate that James, Angela, and Eddie were all brought to SH to die after facing their punishment, because it seems that the supernatural forces in SH feed off of suffering. Eddie lost his mind to murderous tendencies, and his death was inevitable. Angela was unable to fight off the monster who represented her sexually abusive father, and considered herself broken and unlovable, unable to trust anyone again. Even though James refuses to return her knife, she walks away looking completely defeated. James was supposed be consumed with guilt after the final the confrontation with Maria and take his own life as penance.
I know its late, but the one you keep referring to as "door monster" is most likely a "bed monster". It looks like two figures moving weirdly under a bedsheet, most likely symbolising the sexual abuse Angela went through as a child.
one of the nicknames fans actually give this enemy type is the "Doorman" that's because it's a little weird to keep saying the "Abstract Daddy" and because the subject matter of this creature is pretty dark
The "In Water" ending actually does kind of make sense as long as you look at it as the decision of James and not the player. The low-health aspect might relate less to the player or James being suicidal and have more to do with him having to force himself forward under excruciating pain, suffering with every step and being only a short distance from the end. The actions you take and the things you see may not necessarily imply a deliberately suicidal mentality but, instead chip away at James' already fragile psyche, turning his guilt and shame into an inescapable despair. Even the final battles still make symbolic sense. By confronting the pyramid heads, and therefore the manifestation of his subconscious need for judgement and punishment, shows that he's done accepting his suffering and will take matters into his own hands in the only way he sees left, making them giving up and killing themselves a bit depressing. Then, finally, his rejection of Maria shows that he has given up on any alternative future or happiness for himself and that he will reject any second chance as he doesn't believe he deserves it. This contrasts with the "Maria" ending where he can be seen as latching on to anything that can easily give back the purpose and happiness he's lost. But, that's just my interpretation.
James forces the pain and suffering on himself regardless of player's decision. That's the whole point of the game, and his health does not matter if the punishment still continues. It still does not prove that James is suicidal. The final battle with Piramid Heads symbolises that James accepted his guilt, and it happens regardless of the ending. He doesn't need PH anymore, therefore they kill themselfs. What comes after it is not their problem. Rejection of Maria is a good choice, don't make it a wrong one. Living with delusions would probably make him commit suicide at some point, so it's funny how you believe it would prevent him from doing so. If Silent Hill 2 had Good and Bad endings like Silent Hill 1, the Maria ending would definitely be the Bad one.
@@Luce129 I didn't mean that the ending is 100% pure canon of the events, I'm saying that the same events can have different meanings or outcomes depending on how they're viewed and the context surrounding them. James is obviously in a fragile state of mind throughout the game and the things he experiences in silent hill could easily push his mind to one side of its conflict. Enduring enough pain and trauma can make most people at least consider death as an alternative. James, who was likely already considering the idea, may go fully over the edge if pushed enough. For example, in the "leave" ending James' rejection of Maria means that he doesn't want to accept the happy lie that she offers because he wants to move forward away from the past. The "in water" ending sees him rejecting that happiness because he either doesn't feel he deserves it, or has already made up his mind, seeing Mary as a something he can't replace and doesn't want to live without. With the pyramid heads, accepting guilt is not an easy thing to do, and, depending on his mental state, could either allow him to move on or completely crush him. This is all pretty much my interpretation of it.
1. When you push the suicidal thoughts onto James, the envinment does not change. Everything except for the ending stays the same regardless of our actions, therefore it's unreasonable for James to commit suicide if the "pushes" we make are ineffective for him. Even if he does have these thoughts, we just don't see much of them. 2. James rejects Maria because she's not real and it's impossible for him to be happy with her. I can't argue much about the point you've made here because it's technically correct, as it more or less happens in said ending. 3. Indeed, accepting you guilt may lead to different outcomes, and suicide is one of those. Will James do it? I believe not, as there are more reasons for him to move on with his life rather than commit suicide. I've gotta say, your interpretations are hard to debunk to the point I might consider them valid to some extent. They do have minor flaws, but they can be fixed. I'm slightly impressed.
imo, the dark god(s?) that inhabit silent hill (Samael) feed off of human suffering to sustain itself until it can be reincarnated in Silent Hill 3. the dark god/town can't physically rebirth itself, but it can create manifestations of people's pain and then possess them, which is why maria was so lost and confused until she was used as a pawn to taunt james. as far as the town, i don't think that it sucks in people that have committed evil acts, but just people that are mentally unstable because they have more potential suffering to take advantage of. angela was cool for killing her shitty dad, but james is just kind of a piece of shit. At the end, James is either overwhelmed and gives himself to the town, the town breaks him and uses his inability to cope to siphon pain off of him with Maria, he forgives himself and the town is unable to take any more from him, or uh, there's a cute doggy controlling it all
An hour and 40 minute long video that you somehow manage to make very clear, concise and extremely entertaining. I don't know how you do it, but I'm glad you do.
Honestly I think the In-Water ending could still fit taking place after the two Pyramid Heads dying, though it does give that moment its darkest implication (where in the other endings it is either him facing or completely rejecting his guilt respectively). In that context the two Pyramid Heads dying could be seen as James coming to the weighty realization of everything that he has done and decides that both to reunite with Mary and on some level "atone" for his sins that he will take his life. Because of that the Pyramid Heads have more or less completed their mission- James has been pushed to such an emotional breaking point that they don't need to do anything else. If someone is going to torture themself then what need is there for monsters to do it for him? So they peace out the only way they know how.
In conjunction with the in water ending I think it still makes sense. You're definitely right, he didn't need external forces to make him feel guilty. On top of that I think that James had been pushed to such an extent where it wasn't just guilt driving him but some psychological horrorfest in his head. Even if he wasn't feeling guilt he just couldn't go on, especially without Mary. I like that ending because it shows that even when he went through such an intense and difficult journey he didn't come out stronger, everything was not suddenly just going to get better and happier, James was never truly rid of the pain plaguing him.
For me the "In Water" ending is canon just purely on how it parallels with Angela. Angel commits suicide by walking upwards toward the roaring flames while James is always descending downwards into water. The final hallway before the Mary fight is flooded for this reason and it's also why Pyramid Head goes down into the murky depths in the apartment area. James even states in the beginning how he wants to be nothing like Angela, but after recieving the knife Pyramid Head starts using a sword; conviently called the "Great Knife". James desire to cut himself as atonement and the fact its so heavy and weighing him down mentally is reflected through Pyrmaid Head as well. He also doesn't show up again until the Hospital Roof segment that was fenced off at the top to prevent patients commiting suicide. While the "In Water" ending is canon to me; the beauty of this game and much like actual depression, is that it can be interpreted in many ways. So it's fitting that James can have so many endings, and even a bonus one for fans of the first game who just wanted more of the cool occult stuff.
Speak for yourself about the campy game show announcer. When I first heard him, I wasn't terrified, but definitely weirded out and shocked. When his voice first came on I thought "oh my god the radio works I'm in the real world now!" But when he mentioned James I immediately took that back and realized that the nightmare had to continue. The Campiness of his voice as well as the audience cheering when he mentions the children being murdered, are a great piece of dark humor, that while giving some comic relief, still has a tinge of silent hill weirdness.
I don't like it when folks say they want a Remake of Silent Hill 2 akin to what we got with Resident Evil. Because Silent Hill 2, more than maybe any other game ever made, works BECAUSE of the specific directorial, aesthetic, tonal and gameplay mechanical details it employs. A remake by definition might alter or remove elements that were so crucial to making Silent Hill 2 such a stand out work of art. Furthermore, Silent Hill 2 was developed by a group of literal outsiders who felt they did not fully connect with the corporate environment of Konami. Their energy, and perhaps therir way of translating elements of their inner world into the game was crucial and knowing Konami they way we know them now, would probably just give us a generic third-person shooter...or a pachinko machine.
If it was remade by the original team or lead dev/creator like Resident Evil 1 Remake was, yeah, that could've been great. Resident Evil 1 Remake is definitely still better and more faithful than either of the recent "remakes." Really wish Shinji Mikami and RE1 Remake team could've remade RE2 and RE3 back then after the 2002 one.
@@Gruntvc Personally I absolutely adore the Resident Evil 2 Remake, mostly because it retains all of the elements that worked about the old Resident Evils i.e puzzle-box non-linear levels, limited inventory, delicate health, but gave us controls that were a lot more intuitive and enjoyable. It proved you didn't need tank controls for a Resident Evil game to be scary and thrilling (though some might disagree with me) My take on game remakes is that usually when people clamor for them it means there's something in the original game that needs fixing, holding it back from it's true potential. I feel like Silent Hill 2 hit it's full potential back in 2001 but not so much Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy 7, hence the call for remakes.
Armin Haracic I reckon original FF7 and RE2 were already incredible. The remakes very much aren’t going out of their way to replace the original like REmake 1 did.
I agree with you to a point. I'd be looking for more of a legitimate remaster than the abomination we got for last gen consoles. Perhaps a touch up of the controls, improving the sound (cleaning it up, etc.) and an update on the graphics. The game stands the test of time, but to see it polished and the sound cleaned up with time taken to show love and care for one of their franchises best products would go a long way with fans as opposed to that cash grab that was HD collection
Yeah. We don’t need a a modern graphics revamp, they’d doubtlessly brush over some of the aesthetic in the process. It’s not like shadow of the colossus where the core concept of the game was overshooting the PS2s limitations, SH2 makes perfect use of the PS2 as is. Theres just no need for a less grimy, higher poly count SH2
@FTW Nothing is scary about the Theme of Laura but it's not supposed to be and doesn't need to be scary in order to be an amazing track... To say it's mostly crap (and even saying SH2 sucked overall) is absolutely ridiculous and untrue.
I took psych classes when I was younger, and a recent incident got me to brush up on dissociative fugue. In hindsight, I feel like the stress of James killing Mary lends itself pretty well to him being so confused and not able to see his surroundings realistically, abeit in an unrealistic and exaggerated manner for the sake of video games.
Yes this game is a goldmine of psychological wealth if you pay attention to the details of it. I'm still amazed by it in 2020, just like I was back in 2001 when I first played this game.
Yeah I also thought he had dissociative fugue. I also thought that Wanda Maximoff experienced that as well. It's unclear when she came out of it though, and she clearly chose "to stay in Vegas after waking up in Vegas".
You could arguable say the town of Silent Hill deliberatly latched onto these preexisting feeling and amplified them to an unrealistic degree to draw James to it. Eddie straight up tells him they were both drawn to the town, so clearly there's a little bit of mindfuckery going on.
SH3 did throw a little shade on Harry's otherwise deserved reputation of being a good guy. In it, he admits he contemplated killing infant Cheryl/Heather and even came as close to almost strangling her to death. But then again, you could also see it as adding to his heroism, because despite his love for the child, he knew she was very possibly the future mother of doomsday. It's kind of like The Omen with Damien's adoptive father almost not trying to kill him. And of course, the motivation is completely different from James's.
The whole "It's hot as hell in here." "You see it too? For me, it's always like this." exchange is my favorite in the game. The music playing during it, the camera angle, the delivery, it's the best. It tells you everything you need to about the kind of hell that Angela's been living. A burning hot hell that contrasts with James' wet, drowned out hell. And then she chooses to walk off, into the flames...
A couple of three things you did not mention: 1. About radio call James got after first monster. 2. James appearance was based on Denis Leary. 3. Maria was based on Cameron Diaz, her outfit on Christina Aguilera. Good video overall.
@@kwazhims3lf the dog ending is a masterpiece and I will not accept any other as the true, canonical ending. I can only forgive SH for all of its horrors if a cute doggo was running the show. Seriously though, JS looks nothing like Denis Leary imo. MS has Cameron Diaz vibes but she still looks different (Enough for Diaz to be unable to take legal action against Konami on account of her "stolen likeness"; because everyone remembers Naughty Dog's controversy surrounding Elliot Page's likeness to Ellie from TLOU).
About the power of the town: I remember reading somewhere that residual psychic energy from Alessa had tainted the town permanently, resulting in the town warping in response to people’s psyche’s in later games. I don’t know if that was the official explanation during the Team Silent era, but Origins pretty much confirmed this with Alessa directly manifesting Travis’s personal demons so he can overcome them. The cult chose the town because there was some sort of vague mystical nature to the location, but they and their rituals are what REALLY fucked the place up.
@Queen-Roger It's been confirmed outside the games, if I recall correctly - in one of guidelines created cooperatively with Team Silent. I didn't dig much into Origins, but from what I've heard it's not that far from being a fanfiction, as it makes some valid points about town's history. Either way, everything Jimothaniel said is safe to consider canon.
That’s the kinda dumb nonsense that the non-Team Silent games decided to take from fan fiction and double down on. I wouldn’t take any of that seriously.
ISetYourFaceOnFire it’s not the only one of course but it’s one of, if not the first. Leaving so much to interpretation is something not many developers are willing to do unless they’re indie and usually comes off as pretentious, this game avoids that with self awareness and humor. Many games especially the artistic ones now a days are really ham fisted and forced (Detroit become human and other David cage games being a good example of this) or pretentious and boring. So I’d say it’s worth the eternal amount of discussion and analysis it gets.
I think the reason Angela "knows" about what James did, is because she is reflecting her trauma on to him and she has witnessed a horrible man (maybe her dad) ruin/kill her mother.
"look at all the cute stuff she dose while... possessed" I like to think he wrote that seriously then realized how strange it sounded out loud but kept it in because it sounded funny.
mary's letter to james at the end of silent hill 2 was the first thing in a video game to make me cry. now, after having to help care for my stepfather at home as he died from cancer (and help him die), it hits a lot closer to home. having experienced something like what is shown in the game, the accuracy and care with which it portrays the experience of caring for someone who will die no matter what you do is amazing
This game was special. The first time I played it I started getting real anxiety just from walking the path to the graveyard. Somehow it reached right into my brain and knew how to push the buttons Descending that ridiculous stairwell into the Historical Society was also nerve wracking
The Labyrinth is the most compelling area in SH2 for me, and the Abstract Daddy fight is a great conclusion to the level. The darkest, most twisted parts of James' mind reside here. It twists, turns, and makes absolutely no sense. Pyramid Head's room is here. And then you hear Angela crying out in a terrified whimper, go into this random room, and you're confronted by the most disgusting monster in the game (in my opinion). Just the implication of what that monster is, is just... God, I feel so bad for Angela, man. She didn't deserve to be in that town.
SH2 was my first SH experience .. so after the fuckin nightmare dark halls of the apartment, i get tortured again in the hospital .... if i was a vet, im pretty sure the labyrinth would have appealed more to me but as a first timer, by that point in the labyrinth, i was just gritting my teeth and bearing through it.. unlike the former i just explained, i was a wee bunny, jumping at every shadow and *BUMP* it was terror. dark rooms, dark halls, some kind of normalcy.. time progressing, world starts to change, chain fence, blood smears, world degrades further, twisting into nightmare.... the labryinth didnt fuck me around, it just came out straight "hey, i'm not gonna dick you around, im just all sorts of fucked up"
One bit of storytelling I like in regards to Eddie and Angela is that they sort of represent James' mindset on Mary and what he did. You've got Angela, who's suicidal and thinks it'd be better if she did die after enduring a ton of abuse, similar to how James was mentally beaten down as heard in that final hallway. On the flip side you have Eddie, who seems to represent an almost childish means of absolving of any guilt and rationalising that he didn't do anything wrong because of, again, the abuse suffered. The dog and bully/Mary had it coming, in their eyes. Even his design evokes a childishness to it with the t-shirt, shorts and backwards cap.
Another thing I find interesting is how the In Water and Maria Endings represent the different extremes of James let himself go down the path that Angela and Eddie went down, respectively. In “In Water”, James ultimately succumbs to his guilt and drives himself into the water along with Mary’s corpse. In his eyes, this is his way of finding peace similar to how Angela couldn’t handle the trauma inflicted upon by her father and brother and decided the best way to deal with it all is to ascend into the flames above. In the Maria ending, James keeps Maria around. He has succumbed to his primal instincts. Rather than coming to terms with his grief and accepting what he did, he wants to wallow in the past and keep this “idealized” version of Mary that he conjured up in his head. Similar to how Eddie gets his kicks from killing, this is James’ way of happiness. The game does suggest that this isn’t the way to go. When James and Maria are about to leave the town, Maria lets out a cough to which James says in a very dark tone, “You’d better do something about that cough…” Maria will eventually succumb to her illness and die, repeating the process all over again. I also find that the way James acts in this final sequence isn’t too off from what Angela said about him, that he’s only ever one thing. The way the main trio are compared and contrasted through each other is probably one of my favorite aspects about this game.
I always believed Maria was a real person, but the “real” Maria died in the Elevator basement scene, and all the other Maria’s past that point are illusions/monsters that the town is using to torture James. Like especially since after Maria dies in the elevator, her demeanor changes from then on, and she’s playing a lot more into James fantasy that she looks like Mary.
The nightmares aren't actually overlapping in the staircase scene, it's just Angela's. We get to see what silent hill is like for her but James can't see it, he says it feels hot and he can't move through the flames but he doesn't actually see it as on fire at all
Daddy Denied Angela specifically notes that James sees it as well when she tells him that that was what it always is like for her. James definitely sees the fire. Plus it wouldn’t make sense for the fire to be something we see as the player and not as James because we’re already being shown a false world through James’ eyes. We’re being told that the Silent Hill we’re playing in is only the Silent Hill that exists for James, so suddenly swapping for one scene without any indication or any previous examples of the player being shown something that James can’t see would be incredibly poor writing
@@UniGya agreed everything on fire, stretched human skins on the wall, macabre dmonic shit, angela dissapears up the staircase surrounded by fire, angela remarks "You see it, too? For me... It's always like this" then shes gone.. james cannot cross the flames .... but then the weirdest thing.. he shrugs and comments "its hot as hell in here" ... what a weird thing to say, in a room like that (he's implying the angela ascending the staircase is representative of a person passing away, but in her case its all macabre and on FIRE so she is actually descending to hell because of suicide) i hate the whole scene... i feel like the whole thing would make more sense to me after i huff paint for an hour, then come back to think about it i hate angelas final scene.... for me personally the whole thing would have worked, hinging on one thing, at the last second james calls out to her, "lemme help, i'll fix this, come back, dont go, stay" instead.... "hmm well, cya, btw, who turned up the thermostat?" dont like it hate it... wtf is this scene
James clearly sees Angela's burning staircase. She even comments on it herself. After that scene, he goes back through the door and ends up in his own otherworld..
@@kwazhims3lf he does try that. Angela especially kinda mocks him for it by saying ''will you care for me ? love me ? that's what I thought.'' I dont remember the exact thing but it was something like this. Even though james wants to help angela he is not capable of helping her.
@@kwazhims3lf I feel like you missed the point of Angela’s final scene dramatically. It’s one of the best scenes in the game. It’s beautiful and tragic. James knows he isn’t equipped to help Angela; he knows that Silent Hill has put her through the same kind of torment it put him through. He understands how it works now, just as he understands how broken he is, how broken Angela is, and how incapable he is of doing anything meaningful to help her. Because, in spite of him saying “I’d never kill myself” to her, we know that deep down, he has and still is experiencing those thoughts and feelings himself. There’s nothing he can say to Angela at that moment. She has fully given in. And James himself knows he could potentially follow her down that same path. It’s a brilliantly directed and horribly sad scene. Complete perfection. Absolute kino
I think the developers said that "in water" is the true ending to them. I've never thought the "leave" ending was the true one because in sh4 Jame's dad says he went missing in silent hill. Great video by the way!
Out of the development team, _only_ Masahiro Ito has made comments on the endings and only to say that he designed Pyramid Head with "In Water" in mind. Even then, I tend to take a lot of what Ito says with a grain of salt, as he comes off as though he'd take full credit for everything to do with Silent Hill 2 if he thought he'd get away with it.
You can still consider the Leave ending canon considering that James would probably want to lay low after murdering his wife. At the very least, he might want to avoid his old hometown due to the fact that Mary was hospitalized there and the trauma of everything made him want to live somewhere else.
1:25:25 "The door things" . Actually these are "bed things", because as you guessed, these monsters represent the trauma of Angela, who has been sexually abused by her father. These monster are a grotesque conflation of her father and the bed he abused her in.
"1hr 40 mins of SH2 analysis" "What the hell is this? "- Dante (There, I made a DMC reference by myself before I see any references made by brit himself)
The series of holes were supposed to reflect James' psyche particularly his unconscious (illustrated by the topography of his mind), which he must descend to find the truth. That's why Maria was waiting to confront you behind a cell in the deepest part of his psyche. It was simply contextual/symbolic to continue going down, even for Angela and Eddie.
I, as many others I've seen in the comments, actually liked the "cheesy" quiz show in the elevator. First of all, it was completely unexpected, I already knew I had to deal with monster nurses and mannequins but I could never guess something like this quiz could happen. Also, it just happens, without any kind of explanation, so another mistery added to the huge list of misteries in this town. Second, it rewards you for paying attention to the story and the lore of the town. Third, it scared me in a certain way when it told me that something bad'd happen if my answer is wrong; I knew the answers but I was not sure if I remembered the order correctly, so I was actually scared when I reached the storage room.
I love the Elevator game show part. I think it serves the purpose of showing you “you don’t care.” If it’s James and Mary’s special place, he should know the answers to the questions. But if it’s your first play through and didn’t know anything about SH at all, it would show your clueless, hence, James is clueless too. Like the honey moon video he left at the apartment, He didn’t remember the tape because it didn’t actually matter to him.
Video games really did peak in the PS2 era. PS5 and Xbox Series X are coming out this year, but the variety of experiences we get these days have diminished a lot.
@@NaikoArt I think that this feeling comes from the fact, that today many games are just very alike, some ideas are recycled and gameplay is very similar in most games of the same genre. We just have come to the point, where it's hard to create something innovative or "game-changing" because games are very advanced nowadays. Back in PS2 era, the gaming still had a lot of potentional ahead but due to poorer technology, developers had to do as much as they could to surpass those limitations, thus resulting in very creative stories or gameplay ideas. For example most horror games today look like Outlast or Resident Evil 4 clones. Back then horror games (or any other genre games) were very different from one another.
Did anyone else notice that in Silent Hill 2 while viewing your saves in the menu you can press a button to show additional info like playtime or completed endings? I somehow just found that out recently and I've played through the game several times, I think it's either d-pad or square.
Really enjoyed this analysis. Hope to see an analysis on Silent Hill 3, hopefully including how it relates as the direct sequel to OG Silent Hill. While I’m wishing for things, a Silent Hill 4: The Room analysis would be awesome. Thanks for the content!
@Vandole As a fan of his work I find this very cheap to criticize him on. He tends to be very thorough with his views on games and never comes off as pretentious strictly off game reviews. His vids on horror not working for him was a stretch and definitely not his best work. He is also notoriously inconsistent with his future vids and goals at the end of his latest vids to not line up. That said he does present his points well and I think he makes great cases in them. And he doesn't drag his son into any of his projects intentionally. The dude literally works from home and is a father. He even said he's a father first and content creator second. I can understand people not liking him but the only cheap trick here was your generalizations of his work and personal life my dude.
I'm seeing a resurgence of appreciation for Silent Hill 2 recently, and that's great. I'm so glad I finally tried this series last year, it's really changed me and helped spur my fascination with psychology and symbolism. I hope someday to make a survival horror that's even half as elegant, emotional and terrifying as Silent Hill 2. Any way, good video as always Charlie
The "In Water" ending makes the most sense to me, even though it might just be the most depressing one. It shares a lot in common with "Leave", with the crucial exception that James just cannot accept Mary's forgiveness, and her wish for him to move on. He _does_ accept responsibility for his crime, he still rejects Maria in this one, but he can't get over his loss and his own actions, which is in line with most of what we know of him. I have to agree with the fact it's a bit inconsistent with his newfound determination during the last Pyramid Heads fight, but you could argue he merely accepts the truth that he killed his wife. It doesn't necessarily mean he can live with it, and without her. In "Leave", he recovers too fast and too well from his trauma, which is constantly shown to be about as deep as it gets, and the fact he gets "halway there" in "In Water" seems more in line with his character. And that's not even going into the "logistics" of "Leave", what with him being implied to adopt Laura, a girl that doesn't even like him in the first place and was last seen screaming at him after he confessed to her that _he murdered her best friend,_ all when he's at best the primary suspect in his wife's death, and at worst actively pursued for her murder.
Im not the type of person to always need a “happy” ending to a story but i really just cant accept the “in water” ending as it feels too easy of an ending for him to just give up after having faced so much, but that last point u made about laura is probably the biggest evidence that the “leave” ending just doesnt make sense, its hard to admit but in water has the most evidence supporting it
@@numba9ine288 He faced a lot of things, yeah, but he did so in the mad hope his wife was still alive. I'm assuming he couldn't really imagine life without her, and decided to go on a deluded quest to find her rather than go about it more rationally, because he just couldn't ignore the possibility that maybe, somehow, it really was from her, and he could see her again. He isn't really the most stable guy, he's been on a downward spiral for a few years now, probably, and his murder of Mary traumatized him so badly he completely blocked it out. Presumably, it was the only way for him not to completely break down. Honestly, In Water is the only "main" ending that really makes sense for me, after the double whammy of learning not only that his wife was indeed dead, but also that he killed her himself. It was too much, too quickly, and at the worst time too.
The Prison segment legit... LEGIT gave me this terror, neck hairs raised up frightening feeling that i have never... NEVER felt before in ANY game i ever played.
While the game is infamously poorly ported, the PC release has a mod called "Enhanced Edition" for those who want to play it but don't have the proper hardware. The Enhanced Edition is easily just as good if not better that the original PS2 version of the game which is considerd by most the best official release.
@@fraundakelmbrilpondaprost90 hey friend you can download it for free on my abbadonware. Because game is not sold anywhere you can get it for free there. Just install it download all enhanced edition files and copy... Boom you can get sh3 for free as well. Sh4 is sold on gog so you have to buy that one there 🙂👍
One of the scariest parts to me was in the hotel when you need to open the suitcase. I remember I got the combo to be “kill” and it just freaked me out even though that wasn’t the solution, it kind of reminded me of the “redruM” from The Shining. I love how a completely not scary part of the game actually scared me and it was because of my own fault. That is my most memorable part from playing this game.
I came off feeling the town isn’t good or evil. The town doesn’t even punish people inherently. The feeling I got from analyzing everyone’s story in Silent Hill 2 was that the town gave people what their conscience felt they deserved. This was why Angela would eventually be consumed in fire and Eddie was given wave after wave of victims to use to finally get revenge on the world. This is also why by the end of Silent Hill 2, James is free of the monsters of the town: he believes he’s received his just punishment and come to terms with his guilt.
Genome Soldat it was glorious in its time. Personally I believe Re2 Remake has been the best one, but Re3 was great too. For me nothing from the classic was changed, just the order of events are now lined up to create an actual canon story
I am a grown-ass 32 year old man who has played this game dozens of times. Without fail, when the final read of Mary's letter to James plays and her voice starts to crack when she says "I'm so sorry" I just bawl. Every. Single. Time.
I know this comment is kind of old, but Monica Taylor Horgan is genuinely crying during that scene. If Im correct it was her first time viewing the letter and reading it aloud. What you're hearing isn't acting, it's her raw emotion. That's why it sounds so real, it is real. It breaks my heart every time :(
I love how Silent Hill 2’s Otherworld transitions are more subtle than the other games. The hotel is particularly deceptive because upon entering, you’re already in the Otherworld. It looks like it’s in mint condition. You only see the true state of the hotel in the last few minutes of the game.
Awesome analysis. I think that "Angela's monster" isn't Angela's monster alone. First I think it's a bed monster. That represents what happens to Angela and her father. Second, it's also James monster, who represents the final vision he had about his wife. A monster bound to bed. I also believe that the people James met aren't random people. I think they represent James character: Eddie: stands for the bullied version of James, who got mocked by his sick wife, until he snapped and decided to kill her. All the insecurities of Eddie in the beginning can be seen throughout in James behavior. Angela: stands for the abuse he had to endure by Mary while she was sick. Left him with such a burden. She could also stand for his depressed self, after Mary died and he realised that he is alone. But I think somewhere in the game was mentioned, that Mary abused him in different ways. Not sexual, more psychological. Laura: his self conscious. The part that let him forget what he did. Her appearance as a child, blind to the horrors and totally innocent, as innocent as a child can be, makes it all perfect. "blind to the horrors" stands simply for the fact, that he can't remember what he did, because he kept it locked inside and keep on pretending that he is innocent. He told himself, that the disease killed his wife, which is partly right, as right as a child would tell a story. And in the end he leaves with Laura which actually means, he made peace with his consciousness and leaving the town as sane and understanding he could be. Also I think he said she died 3 years ago on purpose, because that's what the doctor said she had on top. And he told himself that, because maybe he wished for spending the maximum of possible time with her. Which was according to the doctor 3 years. She could have been dead two weeks after he had the conversation with the doctor. Well at least that's my interpretation. Sorry if my English seems off, I'm no native speaker. Thank you.
I always think that there’s a particular tragedy to terminal illness, which is reflected in this game and often just done as “to James’ delusional state, Mary died when she was diagnosed”. And that’s that many ppl make that decision to live as much life as they can before they pass. In the tape, Mary is seen coughing, implying she was already ill when they visited Silent Hill; their vacation was probably part of them living as much life as they could before she passed on. But despite this, it’s effectively the wait for death. Cramming in as many positive experiences as they can is effectively the same as sitting in the shadow of death, knowing that that day is going to come. I think it’s less that Mary was dead to James the minute she was diagnosed, but rather that he’s been living under the spectre of it for so long that it’s effectively bled together as the same thing. I don’t think that sort of thing is truly reflective of James, but rather the concept of living under the Grim Reaper’s scythe, knowing that sooner or later, it’s going to fall.
What an enthralling experience, you really managed to capture the horror and mystique of the game through this video, as someone who's never played the game I was completely suckered in. Amazing job!
As someone who first experienced anything related to this game through watching the Eddie boss fight completely out of context years ago, I can say especially after watching this that by now I see this game as a lot more. Great work, Brit!
Personally I think the fact that examining more items and viewing extra scenes leads you to the In Water ending indicates that it’s the canon ending. Like the game is rewarding you for seeing more of it by showing you what really happens. You’re right about Leave being a more satisfying conclusion to the narrative though.
Chad.
Hey, where have you been
Hey
Chat has left the chad
U Dont No Nothing About Silent Hills Get Lost
I'm so confused
Fun fact:
The VA of Mary while reading her letter to James, legit started to cry. That's why in the ending's her voice sounds very shake-y.
@@tenbones545 harry good to see you! You can find it in the trivia section of the "fandom wiki" about it. You can read a lot of interesting things on the trivia. Probably some other websites too
@wedge i mean you can easily look it up elsewhere
If one didn't cried reading that letter they don't have a heart.
@@ender8759 I know I sure as hell cried
Interesting if true...
"The people are acting crazy, the monsters have.. urges other than killing you, and do you want to stick your hand in this hole? Yes or no?" No better way to describe the game than this.
Sounds like a typical weekend in Silent Hill...
lol just made a comment about stickin limbs into holes
scrolled down
... found this ^_^
Glory hole
I might have a way.
"This is what zero pussy does to a motherfucker."
And let's not forget "Look, a nasty looking toilet, let's stick your hand deep down"
"This is the way I came in. There's no point going back."
He's literally saying there's no point in going back to his life, he's given up on everything else and he doesn't plan on going back. He doesn't even bother shutting his car door.
I never caught that.
Even if unconciously, he probably knows there's something wrong with that "Mary died 3 years ago..." story he tells himself at the start.
Yeah a lot of people don’t know this but his original intent coming to the town was to kill himself, but on the way his mind repressed it and he created the letter, you see this as towards the end of the game the letter disappears. Then once hes there and open to the mystery the town does its thing
Interesting that he just abandons his car like that since a common theory is that he just killed Mary and her body is still in his car, possibly in the trunk.
@@TheSlammurai
It would make sense, as it seemed to have just happened. Also, the "in water" ending implys she's in the car, since that's how they'd be together again after he drives it into the lake.
I'm also fairly certain he walks out of Silent Hill with Laura in the "leave" ending. Leaving Mary's body behind in the town he's putting behind him. Makes sense thematically.
"Eddie, have you gone nuts?"
We need a round of applause for detective James.
The _millisecond_ I heard that for the first time, I groaned with my entire soul. "Oh...James...NO..."
@@christopherb501 That and his very reassuring words..."I'm not crazy! At least, I don't think I am"
Very comforting, James
You just dont say that to a lunatic! Stupidest question ever!!
A fucking genius
James The master diplomat
“You’d better do something about that cough.” So much anger and immediate regret in that delivery, one of Guy’s best lines in the game and it’s in an ending I bet no one got lol.
He doesn’t say “we should?”
"Oh James, you're so funny."
"Seriously, get well soon or I'll kill you...."
i was obsessed, i had to get all the endings
when i got the dog ending, i had the VCR ready, i would go back and watch that tape from time to time
I probably would've gotten that ending if I'd played it. I'm always reading all the things and constantly checking in on NPCs.
No one got intentionally, that is.
"James... you made me happy."
That right there. That's where I break.
Every time
Same
apparently the voice actress cried reading it 😭
bruh the whole letter makes me weep lol, that line completely destroys me
I've played SH2 around 5-6 times in the last 10 years or so and there's not a single time I haven't cried my eyes out at the end with Mary's letter
The music in Silent Hill 2 always struck me as the kind of music you'd play in your car on a long 3AM drive by yourself. Completely alone.
Holy shit that is such a vague yet incredibly accurate description lmao
Hehe that sounds dangerous, ever heard the soundtrack back to back?
And unaware there's a serial killer in the backseat.
It’s so good
Spot on description here!
Only thing I’d add is that it’s hammering it down with rain, and you only pass another car every 20 minutes or so.
I thought the elevator quiz show was a little hokey too until I noticed the elevator never stops while it's happening. The elevator ride being so much longer than it should be since you're only going down 2 floors is creepy. It also fits in with the games reoccurring theme of descent.
I actually like the show it reminded me of Requium for A Dream
If you know the movie then you got juice ;)
HOPELESS Ent. Please no a2a themed monsters.
@@jasongarrett768 ASS TO ASS!!!! >:D
@@hopelessent.1700 JUICE BY TAPPY!
JUICE BY TAPPY!
JUICE BY TAPPY!
WooooOOOOOOOOoooooah!!
Jason Garrett James got Juice!
I’m pretty sure Pyramid heads little mannequins were suppose to fulfill that duty while Doggo barks a2a.
one thing i like about silent hill 2 is how it doesn’t glamorise trauma and mental illness. It doesn’t make someone mysterious and sexy because you want to find out what happened to them, it makes them unlikeable and weird but understandably so.
As it should be
Right. This was an aspect of Tomm Hulett's remaster that irked me quite a bit. Eddie and Angela didn't interest me much in the grand scheme of the overall experience, but all the subtleties of their characters got a thorough bulldozing once they were recast. In particular, Angela went from someone with emotional complexity to someone I could tell was acting like they had a split personality; she was either vulnerable or malevolent, and never awkward in the way someone lacking a normal upbringing typically ends up being.
I understand mysterious but sexy?, Boi did you see Eddie,mf is thiccer than Queen Elizabeth's lifespan
Facts, but okay
Say that to all the 14 year old teenage girls desperately trying to find something different about themselves
fun fact: if you drag the big knife through the long hallway where mary talks to james (or the player) it lasts the exact duration of the talking.
OHHhhHHHH
That's a really cool tidbit
Bonus Fun Fact: The Giant Knife isn't actually a knife. It's one half of a pair of giant scissors, the other half being in the possession of Pyramid Head himself. James being able to wield the 2nd half of the scissor blade was to show that Pyramid Head is meant to be a twisted reflection of James' dark thoughts.
Fun fact: when James is looking in the mirror, he's actually looking to the side as if he's looking at you(the player)
Fun fact: this isn't a fun fact but i wanted to continue the reply chain
Maria/Mary Voice Actress is the MVP in SH2 in my opinion, like she's on a whole different level compared to the rest of the cast. There are only 2 scenes whose dialogue had such an impact on me that i still remember all the lines more or less after more than a decade since i first played it and they both involved her: the one where Maria is behind bars and the other where Mary does her monologue at the very end. Just.....perfect acting.
ANYWAY?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN "ANYWAY"?!
@Virgil Grin I totally agree, she didn't get enough recognition but every person who plays SH2 is always touched by her performance at least.
@L Franco I was a kid and I cried. I'm an adult and still cry 😉
Absolutely agreed, Maria's VA absolutely kills it. That's honestly why I didn't buy Charlie's argument that the voice acting in Silent Hill 2 is bad on purpose, to show how sUpEr cRaZy the characters are. His examples to the contrary are just clips of Maria speaking, and that's because she happens to have the best VA in SH2 by far!
@@QuintessentialWalrus He never once says it's 'bad', he says the characters sound confused/awkward. That isn't bad, that's a very specific performance that the director got out of them (remember, Guy Cihi has stated multiple times that the scenes were performed time and time again until the directors were happy with it). The only performance you could call subpar in this game is the child actor, everyone else is absolutely on point. Silent Hills 2/3 have some of the best voice work in video games, right up there with the Souls series. People seem to look at people like Troy Baker and Yuri Lowenthal as the ideal for voice acting, where for me they're too clean, their performances read very much as performances, and as a result are unrelatable.
Personally I thought the inclusion of the quiz show in the elevator was a good addition to the game. It goes along with the theme that Silent Hill has of taking ordinary, everyday things and warping them into something dark and threatening. I also thought the cheesiness was good too. It feels like the dark power of the town is directly mocking James while he's in this terrifying situation.
Completely agree. I played this game recently with a friend and they were extremely unnerved at the quiz show. It's so far outside what has been established, and how it addresses James directly, has always been one of my favorite parts of the game.
That was one of my fav part
@Svetoslav Nikolov I don't think anyone said the phenomenon is exclusive to James... This is an sh2 video that's why they brought up James.
I'll also add that within the quiz is the implication that James is being watched and followed, perhaps judged. I tend to disagree with the comment in the video that it's in contrast to the tone. Its tone is menacing as is the rest of the game.
I love this part as well for practically the same reason.
I think what he's calling "the door things", the monster in the room with Angela, looks more like a bed with covers pulled over someone (possibly 2 people). It looks like a literal interpretation of sexual assault taking place on a bed. That, to me, is why she's so afraid of it. Plus, in the room where we find her, those circular shapes pulsating all around the room seem to parallel this. If the goal was to torture a victim of sexual abuse, i can't imagine a more horrible or effective way to do it than a bunch of things pumping in and out of the wall like that.
exactly. this game excels in subtle horror in a way that genuinely nothing else has since. it's pure fear, tapping straight into the characters minds
@@jamiedickinson4079 Hot take as it's based solely on psychological fear, some of these themes won't effect some people in the slightest.
Looking at the original designs for the abstract daddy, that is certainly what it is.
@@ExtraordinaryFate just a reminder everyone perceived everything differently in this game. So yeah, some things wouldn't effect certain people because they'd never see it. They'd be presented with something else entirely catered to them.
@@ExtraordinaryFate A minority, sure. But for most the horror occurs on a subconscious level, folks who see it without picking up on the symbolism can and do still find it disturbing. See also, Alien -- as it lines up so well with SH2 in terms of psychosexual horror -- where practically everything is intentionally designed to be subconsciously disturbing, and the handful of jump scares in the movie are just the set dressing.
The Shining works too, and is thematically much closer-aligned to SH2.
I'll make this clear, the quiz show in the elevator was added as a way to reward player for paying attention to the main story. The questions are intentionally connected to James' journey, and we can only answer them if we took interest in our quest of finding Mary.
1. "What is the name of this amusement park?" - Our goal at the moment was to get to the Lakeview hotel, which is located next to the Lakeside Amusement Park. If player searched on a map for the hotel, he would definitely spot the park's name.
2. "What was the name of the murderer?" - The name is found in a newspaper under a coin which is needed to progress further. We are forced to read the newspaper, so it's a way to test whether the player is truly interested in the storyline
3. "What is the name of that road?" - It's the only road that leads to the Lakeview hotel, our main destination point, so we should know its name if we truly wanted to get to the hotel.
A lazy person would miss all of the obvious answers so they are punished for not concentrating enough on the game.
It also punishes you if you get the answers wrong.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that. It is still very out of place and jarring.
Yeah but if we didn’t know this doesn’t mean we were not paying attention but that we can’t remember every trivial thing we’ve come across.
@@RickySteels I disagree. For all the messed up things that were happening it fit with the strange aspect of everything and at that point it was a nice break from the foreboding atmosphere
me finding the answer in google: heh the future is really bright =)
The final boss is meant to represent James’ selfish interpretation of his wife while she was dying as a monster that was ruining his life. Confronting this demon with his fantasy of what he wished his wife was contrasting with the monster he perceived her to be was the last step in his journey toward acceptance
ULGROTHA I worded that really badly just ignore my comment I think what I was tryna say is his final step toward acceptance was confronting what he perceived his wife to be while she was dying
@@rickrossstagedive3490 also how Mary viewed herself by the end of her life, as she says herself she "looks like a monster"
@@rickrossstagedive3490 Thays the town messing with him. He feels guilty for euthanized her and thats what it was. Depending on the ending you get the letter will tell you she wanted him to kill her. He did not want it and now the trauma from that event led him to Silent Hill.
It’s still mid gameplay
@@paulakroy2635no shit. The game is about the story not gameplay lol.
Theme of Laura is a legendary track for sure, some of Akira Yamaoka's best work. Akira has said that Theme of Laura is his favorite track he's ever made. I was so happy to be able to meet him and talk to him (and his translator) it was great to get some first hand insight into the process of his music production. (He also said Shadows of the Damned was his favorite Grasshopper era soundtrack he's done)
you met yamaoka? OMG I'm so jelly!!
@@pablomendez9671 yeah I met him at a local convention called Midwest Media Expo, it was a newer convention so not as many people so i was luckily able to pick his brain more. He and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn had a concert as well.
Shadows of the Damned is still one of my favorite games. It's actually freaky, and disgusting. Playing it now.
@@azforu29 Shadows of the deez nuts
@@Eduardesuper what nice poops
Disagree about the last boss. I mean, if you've ever seen a family member dying in a hospital bed, as I did around the time that SH2 released, then that final boss is one of creepiest designs ever. It's borderline distasteful, and cruel... like the best Horror is!
Excellent video though. Thanks!
Right? Her design and the implications still mess me up when I see it. I would agree the actual fight could have been better, other than that it's fine.
And I mean...To watch your wife/projected version of her suddenly turn into that and attack you must be horrifying.
This game messes me up a lot. The purest horror there is, I would say. That final boss is perfect
I thought it was terrifying and disturbing
I played through the MGS series before experiencing this, but the way she repeats James' name makes me think that's where they got the idea for the way you kill the Boss.
@@bloodykun4443 The way she repeats his name is so eerie.
Although I've never played that game, I've seen that famous scene and they do look similar.
"How the game holds up purely on its contents alone."
Never have I needed something to be a popular concept so much. More of this, please.
It's formalist literary theory. It has its place, though the last 20 years have wrongly attempted to demonize it.
@@12ealDealOfficial can you please elaborate on that? ^^
@@GK-hq8mo I think what's currently accepted as the gold standard for review is a holistic view of the game and how it fits in with games as a whole. I. E. Reviews of Ocarina of Time tend to be overly positive because of both nostalgia and the huge impact it left in games that came after it. But both of those points don't actually reflect the content of the game, but rather allows it's own success to influence how others perceive it going forward.
The pushback that reviewing things "on their own merit" is it can seem like they're hating on a game because, with any popular media, there is a subsection of people who will reject something popular out of hand to seem like they have a new/better/more interesting perspective.
Personally, I see the merits of both methods.
@@GK-hq8mo Formalism has been demonized in some popular contemporary circles for being "a product of 1950s scholarly discourse which purposefully blocks or inhibits historical, cultural, emotional, or intertextual methodologies." The key word is "purposefully," as some critics believe analysis of a work based solely on what's contained in the text itself doesn't allow for reader response, the most accessible form of literary analysis available to people who would rather not analyze form, or lack the ability to do so articulately. If this sounds kinda strange, it is. It's like saying the hammer in the toolbox is keeping the drill from being used, when both are suitable for different reasons for the same purpose.
@@12ealDealOfficial isn't formalism a Russian method of the late XIX century and early XX century that by the 1950s was long forgotten by other academic sensibilities? This history of ideas you are presenting is foreign to me, that's why I'm having a hard time understanding it!
E.g., in the 1960 article "the structure and the form" (republished in structural anthropology two), Levi Strauss was commenting on an English translation of a Vladimir Propp book as rescuing to the second half of the century a long forgotten tradition of thought, which he calls formalism.
I think all three 'normal' endings make equal sense:
You already covered 'leave' pretty well, so I'm just going to point out that it's pinned on a sympathetic/understanding/forgiving view of James' actions.
"Maria" is the "James Bad" ending. It's predicated on a deeply negative view of James: he murdered his wife out of sexual frustration and generic Man Anger, worked himself up into a delusional frenzy to escape his guilt, and deserves no forgiveness. And he gets none; they Pyramid heads die simply because the hell he's about to trap himself in is far worse than any mere stabbing they could inflict on him.
I think that most of the ways/reasons "In Water" works are obvious, so I'm just going to address the Pyramid Heads. They die simply because James no longer subconsciously desires for someone else to punish him, because he's planning to punish HIMSELF.
I always felt pyramid heads are just checking on James.
The pyramid head in Beginning should be clue to the pyramid heads in the ending. James shows his determination through fighting for survival and answers, and the pyramid head leaves when it is satisfied with the display and lets James continue. In different version, James maybe died there already.
It is very clear that fights or other encounters with the pyramid head are always in hands of the Pyramid Thing - It always decides to end the battle, only as reaction to enough of "display" James does by fighting, and always doing action itself not hindered by James.
Guy Cihi, who is James, said the "In Water" ending is his favorite.
the dog ending
James decided his fate.
The reason I found the "Leave" ending the best is James,through the game actually sees what can happen if he gives up like Angela(suicide,"in water"),or succumbs to the temptation the town offers him as happen with Eddie (Eddie can kill whoever npc who wrongs him,James can get the "Maria" ending),and learn from their and his own mistakes,and respects Mary's will by adopting Laura,kinda redeeming himself(dude is still a killer...).
The "it's all a hallucination" theories bother me for the same reason, they undermine the story as told to you, cheapen the narrative. And, often, suggest a *lack* of skill at suspending disbelief in the people who suggest it, that they can't take unrealistic or impossible stories at face value for the time it takes to engage with the story properly. Much more interesting to analyse it from the perspective of "this is how this fiction's world works" like you did.
It's a predatory hallucination; instead of their weaknesses and fears remaining in their head, the demon of Silent Hill pulls them into a tangible form to maximize torment. They are no mere delusions, but they are borne of the same thing as delusions.
@@devildogkogg8353 id also say the journey through the town represents the journey through James psyche. Little bits of James trauma peek out throughout the game, which do grow in number the further in you get. Were slowly fed some of James' issues through the enemies in the environments, always in the dark with james' himself (flashlight) being the only light willing to delve through it. I'd say the nightmare zone you go through in the prison as James keeps diving further and further in represent the darkest of his feelings and thoughts he has to navigate in order to get to the truth, which we find when we clear the prison. This is probably me overthinking it but the way the inside of Lakeview hotel looks in which the darkness of the interior clashes with the light coming in from the windows gives me the impression of balance, in which James has finally waded through the bullshit and the memories and feelings to reach a place of balance in which he's finally able to fully confront his killing of Mary. Thats what makes this game so great though, lots of interpretations that are easy to make and expand on while nothings completely set in stone
Silent Hill is basically a nightmare brought to live by the town supernatural powers
Person: it’s just a bunch of hallucinations, the story is over blown
Me: okay these are the FICTIONAL rules of this FICTIONAL world, and how it effects these FICTIONAL characters in this FICTIONAL story.
(Honestly people just need to learn to enjoy things for how/what it is).
About Maria: If you play Born from a Wish, it's pretty clear that she's a person by herself. She doesn't really understand her purpose, as she basically just popped in the town. She's completely lost. It's pretty tragic if you think about it. She's destined to be just a tool.
I've always thought of Maria as one of James' monsters akin to the Lying Figures or Mannequins conjured up by the town. While she is seemingly more aware of her existence and possesses more of a personality, that only serves the role she plays in James' journey. She is trying to distract him and hinder his path towards the truth at every turn, culminating in the Maria ending if successful. She is only as much a person as is needed to achieve that goal.
@@NowhereBeats of course it is, it's even the most agreed on theory
That dlc ruins what she is supposed to be. She is supposed to be just like the other monsters that are following james not a playable character.
MrBowser I often thought she was the symbol of hope that Mary can be alive and that James trying to save her is just him chasing the false promise. I noticed a lot that that when she does it’s because James leaves her behind in the lobby, gets there late behind the bars, and then his memory officially kills off the hope once the pyramid heads “enlighten” James and he finally lets go of the suppressed and accepts the fact that he killed Mary.
@@Raul7x
I dunno. I find the fan base assumption that Silent Hill (the town) has will and agency to be a bit of a stretch. It's just a place. A place where natural laws bend and abstract, sure, but just a place. In SH2 the people that are drawn there influence it and shape it. The horrors don't exist there if there's no one affecting it. Silent Hill acts as the vehicle for a person to satiate and confront their subconscious, but it is not a sentient being. Like when we're unconsciously "drawn" to the fridge when we're hungry, Silent Hill (in SH2 at least) functions similarly. In James' case even more so, because Silent Hill was also the place where he and Mary made some of their fondest memories together. For him it was a place of peace *and* penance.
In that sense, Maria was always a creation of James' will - not a punishment made by the town to serve the town. His longing for and guilt over Mary created Maria (literally "born from a wish" as her sub scenario is titled), but she is effectively a homunculus, resembling and functioning like a real person but essentially just being a hollow facsimile that exists because of James and serves only his subconscious desire for punishment. James made her, the town was just the incubator.
This is easily one of the best videos I've seen about Silent Hill 2, and believe me, I've seen a lot. What truly makes this one special is how you not only look at the amazing story and sounddesign, but also how the gameplay works together with those and how that is what makes these games truly special. Everyone talks a lot about how Silent Hill 2 is amazing, but I think you're the first I've seen who really explain in detail how the various aspects of the gameplay makes is so amazing, with valid and constructive criticism as well! You really are in a leauge of your own Brit!
It's also really refreshing how you look at the "OMG, the monsters are representing the issues of the main character!" in a critical light. As you say, that is cool and gives new understanding when replaying the game, but it's not what makes the game good and scary, and that is what so many fans and the developers of the non-Team Silent-games misunderstood. People have tried to recapture that special twist so many times, but it could never work, because after 2, it wouldn't be a suprise anymore.
I also like how you point out the connections to Silent Hill 1. Another thing I take issue with is how often people dismiss the other games and put SH2 on a pedestal because it dosen't connect to the (in their opinion) lame, cult-related story of the rest of the series, and how it, combined with the symbolism of the monsters etc. is about a purgatory-like town where people pay for their sins and are redeemed. But that isn't the point of the game or the series, especially the whole purgatory-angle.
I think what you say about the cults God still being an influence is right, especially considering how both Angela and Eddie are tormented, but never get to find redemption the same way James does. Heck, I would say that neither really deserve to be punished the same way James does. Angela killed her father in self-defence, and Eddie only killed a dog and vounded a man, which are bad actions in a way, but the idea of redemption rings hollow when both actions are less bad than James straight up murdering his wife. It seems to me that the only reason James gets out is because he's a harder prey to break down than the clearly way more traumatzed and put-upon Angela and Eddie. The town ends up devouring them, probably strengthening the God, but James (depending on how you play him) manages to break free. It annoyes me how many fans view the town as some psychologist that tries to help people with their mental baggage, when it's clearly a predator attracting and eating easy prey.
Sorry for the rant, but I just get so fired up when it comes to these games, especially when there is content this good about them. I suspect that your musings about a Silent Hill-game with less resources and more challenging combat is forshadowing, and that you will take a look at Silent Hill 3 in the near future. Nothing would make me happier, as that is easily my favourite game in the series, and one of my favourite games of all time! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the in-depth comment! I think that take you've expanded upon about James being less easy prey, and the town being a predator is cool; I too think that's what the game's going for.
You pretty much summed up what I was thinking and probably elaborated on it way better than I would have ever been able. Also yes, pls do SH3 senpai
Man, I love this. For so many years I felt like a black sheep as a SH fan because, while I adored SH 2, I never put it on a pedestal (SH 3 is my favorite) and I never thought SH 2 should be the standard for further SH games. Just let it be its own thing. Further games trying to imitate this probably ruins them, instead of reaching for something more creative in order to set itself apart from other games. Give it its own identity instead of trying to be SH 2 for fuck's sake.
@@maxpaynegk You must've loved Shattered Memories, I'm hoping?
Yep. Silent Hill as a manipulative predator is absolutely the vibe I got too rather than it being an earnest karmic judge.
Angela’s fate is still one of the most upsetting things in videogame history.
"Now I will show you why they call me Revolver...DRAW!" - Eddie Dombrowski
"You're pretty good." - Eddie Dombrowski after being defeated by James
I love the smell of cordite!
"6 bullets...more than enough to kill any dog that moves"
"I love to reload during a battle! There's nothing like the feeling of slamming a long silver bullet into a well greased chamber."- Eddie Dombrowski reloading his gun during His encounter with James in the slaughterhouse.
You made a Metal Gear Solid joke about Silent Hill. I LOVE IT!
Mary/Maria's voice actor is absolutely incredible. Especially considering this came out in the early 2000's, a time when most English video Game voice acting was horrendous (and amusing). Even today, I'd say it's one of the greatest performances in video game history, perhaps even the best.
@ULGROTHA Absolutely. What a waste of talent.
@ULGROTHA Not really, I don't understand how you got that from my comment. The context was clearly about how little work she got in the industry
@Svetoslav Nikolov Ummm, I think you misread my comment
@Svetoslav Nikolov Yes, that's why I mentioned specifically how good the performances are in Silent Hill 2. What point are you trying to make here?
the early to late 90's CRPG's and point and click adventure games had some of the best VA's in gaming
I remember reloading my game after Maria dies in the hospital basement, and spending 10 to 15 min walking backwards down that long hallway, keeping James between Pyramid Head and Maria, constantly beating on him with the steel pipe, getting her all the way to the doors of the elevator and jumping in, only to see the exact same cut scene play and realizing "Oh Goddamnit, she's supposed to die!"
One interesting thing I found out, when you get on the elevator in the hotel, you can carry Marys photo and letter with you. However if you take another note you have with you, the weight limit goes off. Thus further suggesting that the photo and Marys note are not actually real, thus they dont have weight.
Also in Book of Memories it suggests that Mary is in the trunk of your car, taken her with you to Silent Hill. Meaning they are together with the Into Water ending.
You can carry Mary's photo and letter with you on the elevator?? I've played this game countless times and never checked that.. Good find!
Yes, Mary's corpse is in the trunk of James' car. Everything points to the probability that he killed her mere hours before the game starts..
@@Stigmatix666 Yeah you can carry the letter and picture on, because they arent real :) They are made up in James head to get him to SIlent hill to find closure. Because they arent real they have no weight :3 So the lift alarm doesnt go off. Give it a try and let me know :D
@@wolfenwolf Yes, I know they're not real. But for some reason I never tried that..
I'll check that out next time ;)
It would make no sense for James to have brought her, because he is in denial of his actions. The game is him learning to accept his actions and whatever motivation for them. He does have her body in the rebirth ending, but he probably went and got it(I think). I could not find any reference to Mary being in the trunk of Jame's car in that book, and on a coding level, we know she isn't(take of that what you will)
@@dysonwitwer6430 I cant remember where I read it because it was so long ago, but i do remember it being in a cannon source that after he effectivly raped and killed her, he had a mental break down and brought her body to Silent Hill having a mental fugue state or something, he doesnt remember what he did, but he slowly realises and comes to terms with it. Which is why one of the endings he drives into the lake, killing himself and with her in the trunk he says they can be together.
The leave ending has some funny implications for James and Laura’s relationship. Imagine when she gets to her rebellious teenage phase, anytime James tells her to do things she can just be like “Oh so I should just listen to the murderer?”
Well lets see how long it takes for him to mention devil may cry
EDIT: He does not infact mention devil may cry not a single time. He did it bois
The mad lad did it, 1 hour and 40 minutes without making a DMC reference !
I bet he was clenching his asscheeks trying to resist the urge.
I don't think Charlie gets enough credit for pivoting so successfully from action to horror as his main focus - same style and depth of analysis but for a completely different genre. This DMC stuff should be a dead meme at this point
@@GMTK Hello there
@@GMTK jesus seeing your post absolutely scared the crap out of me hello there lmao. Also agreed charlie works really hard and it shows. To the point where I didn't even notice the transition until you mentioned it
@@devilhitman24 *Slow Claps while a single tear rolls down one eye*
1:37:59
"The truth is... I hated you! I wanted you out of the way! I wanted my life back!"
"If that were true... Then why do you look so sad?"
As someone who resented a family member I had to take care of for almost a decade, as someone who legitimately loathed and resented them in their final moments, but was beside myself with grief when that relief finally came, this part always makes me cry. Might not be the best game, but it's the one I relate to the most.
I haven't had that experience, but i still cried. That moment just hits so hard. And so does: "You made me happy" 😢
@@numbdigger9552 I hope you never do. I wish I never did.
I completely agree, this game will hit WAY harder for anyone who's had to be a caretaker for an extended period of time, family or not. It's simultaneously a feeling of love and hate, acceptance and denial, all in one mix. It's all the dark thoughts that go through your head as you struggle to accept your predicament, thoughts that you fear and deny to yourself. Truth to be told, Guy Cihi once mentioned on a podcast that a lot of his experience in playing James was drawn from the mixed feelings he had when dealing with his Japanese wife, who treated him very negatively before they parted ways.
James will always resonate with me in a special way. I can't think of many characters in any medium that tackle a subject like this; The idea of personal needs and desires in a situation you're supposed to be altruistic.
It's a real risk to make a protagonist that human and complex. How uncomfortable it can make the player feel to imagine themselves in that situation. I know I can relate in a way (not to the level of James and not with a terminal loved one).
Bur I've had to struggle with resentment and personal feelings while in a scenario where the other person has it worse and feeling guilty I even have these thoughts. We all want to believe we'd always be unselfish when needed but in reality it's not that simple even if you want it to be.
The idea that he did mercy kill Mary but also mixed with unintentional feelings that he felt relieved by it and maybe even wanted it is so complex and powerful that it's almost a miracle that they pulled it off so well that you don't hate James for it. Bc we are complex creatures, and our minds often work in ways we wish they wouldn't.
If you get the good ending, which I did my first playthrough unintentionally, it almost feels like Silent Hill in a way was a force for good for him. It helped James come to terms with everything and forgive himself and find redemption in adopting Laura.
There are many stories I love with characters and plots that have effected who I am as a person for various reasons, but I have yet to find something else like SH2 that used interactive horror to tell one of the most emotional, bleak, but human stories I ever experienced.
I find myself randomly just thinking about James in that quiet foggy town.
29:52 I have to respectfully disagree that this part wasn't scary. As we know, the radio James is equipped with, emits static when he gets closer to an enemy. It becomes a little more loud and clearer the closer he gets to an enemy. I still vividly remember playing this as a kid, in the same way you've described it in this video, walking on eggshells and being careful every step of the way. When I first experienced this scene, it was the scariest scene in the game for me, because I immediately thought "If the radio is THIS clear, what the FUCK kind of monster is near me?" I was shitting my pants scared and I actually turned off my t.v when this happened, and couldn't work up the courage to go back on for 2 weeks. I didn't even pay attention to the announcer or what was going on, just the fact that it was so clear, was my focus in that situation.
Hmm. I always thought the voice was coming from a nonexistent intercom in the elevator, not his radio. They are looking around the elevator, not at his radio.
@@blumiu2426 I too thought it was coming from some sort of intercom, but I do find it interesting that someone thought it could've been coming from the radio, it would make alot of sense in universe
I'm a bit confused. This part made you not play the game for two weeks? The gameshow?
@@ExtraordinaryFate I guess if you're not paying attention to it as a corny quiz show host speaking directly to you/James, but a generic signal the radio picked up, you could interpret it as a more evolved version of the regular monster static, and assume it meant there was something new and incredibly dangerous in vicinity
I think the "In Water" ending is the one the town was urging him towards, and the one he must overcome. Its foreshadowed that James will die by drowning after the first Pyramid Head fight when PH "drowns" himself once he's taken enough damage, and again when the hotel begins to flood after James watches the video and remembers the truth. The three tombstones indicate that James, Angela, and Eddie were all brought to SH to die after facing their punishment, because it seems that the supernatural forces in SH feed off of suffering.
Eddie lost his mind to murderous tendencies, and his death was inevitable. Angela was unable to fight off the monster who represented her sexually abusive father, and considered herself broken and unlovable, unable to trust anyone again. Even though James refuses to return her knife, she walks away looking completely defeated. James was supposed be consumed with guilt after the final the confrontation with Maria and take his own life as penance.
I know its late, but the one you keep referring to as "door monster" is most likely a "bed monster".
It looks like two figures moving weirdly under a bedsheet, most likely symbolising the sexual abuse Angela went through as a child.
one of the nicknames fans actually give this enemy type is the "Doorman" that's because it's a little weird to keep saying the "Abstract Daddy" and because the subject matter of this creature is pretty dark
Just me that thinks that the quote “there was a hole here, it’s gone now...” is deeply disturbing for some reason I cannot explain
Mary is more than just a hole :(
The "In Water" ending actually does kind of make sense as long as you look at it as the decision of James and not the player.
The low-health aspect might relate less to the player or James being suicidal and have more to do with him having to force himself forward under excruciating pain, suffering with every step and being only a short distance from the end.
The actions you take and the things you see may not necessarily imply a deliberately suicidal mentality but, instead chip away at James' already fragile psyche, turning his guilt and shame into an inescapable despair.
Even the final battles still make symbolic sense. By confronting the pyramid heads, and therefore the manifestation of his subconscious need for judgement and punishment, shows that he's done accepting his suffering and will take matters into his own hands in the only way he sees left, making them giving up and killing themselves a bit depressing.
Then, finally, his rejection of Maria shows that he has given up on any alternative future or happiness for himself and that he will reject any second chance as he doesn't believe he deserves it. This contrasts with the "Maria" ending where he can be seen as latching on to anything that can easily give back the purpose and happiness he's lost.
But, that's just my interpretation.
James forces the pain and suffering on himself regardless of player's decision. That's the whole point of the game, and his health does not matter if the punishment still continues.
It still does not prove that James is suicidal.
The final battle with Piramid Heads symbolises that James accepted his guilt, and it happens regardless of the ending. He doesn't need PH anymore, therefore they kill themselfs. What comes after it is not their problem.
Rejection of Maria is a good choice, don't make it a wrong one. Living with delusions would probably make him commit suicide at some point, so it's funny how you believe it would prevent him from doing so. If Silent Hill 2 had Good and Bad endings like Silent Hill 1, the Maria ending would definitely be the Bad one.
@@Luce129 I didn't mean that the ending is 100% pure canon of the events, I'm saying that the same events can have different meanings or outcomes depending on how they're viewed and the context surrounding them.
James is obviously in a fragile state of mind throughout the game and the things he experiences in silent hill could easily push his mind to one side of its conflict. Enduring enough pain and trauma can make most people at least consider death as an alternative. James, who was likely already considering the idea, may go fully over the edge if pushed enough.
For example, in the "leave" ending James' rejection of Maria means that he doesn't want to accept the happy lie that she offers because he wants to move forward away from the past. The "in water" ending sees him rejecting that happiness because he either doesn't feel he deserves it, or has already made up his mind, seeing Mary as a something he can't replace and doesn't want to live without.
With the pyramid heads, accepting guilt is not an easy thing to do, and, depending on his mental state, could either allow him to move on or completely crush him.
This is all pretty much my interpretation of it.
1. When you push the suicidal thoughts onto James, the envinment does not change. Everything except for the ending stays the same regardless of our actions, therefore it's unreasonable for James to commit suicide if the "pushes" we make are ineffective for him. Even if he does have these thoughts, we just don't see much of them.
2. James rejects Maria because she's not real and it's impossible for him to be happy with her. I can't argue much about the point you've made here because it's technically correct, as it more or less happens in said ending.
3. Indeed, accepting you guilt may lead to different outcomes, and suicide is one of those. Will James do it? I believe not, as there are more reasons for him to move on with his life rather than commit suicide.
I've gotta say, your interpretations are hard to debunk to the point I might consider them valid to some extent. They do have minor flaws, but they can be fixed. I'm slightly impressed.
imo, the dark god(s?) that inhabit silent hill (Samael) feed off of human suffering to sustain itself until it can be reincarnated in Silent Hill 3. the dark god/town can't physically rebirth itself, but it can create manifestations of people's pain and then possess them, which is why maria was so lost and confused until she was used as a pawn to taunt james.
as far as the town, i don't think that it sucks in people that have committed evil acts, but just people that are mentally unstable because they have more potential suffering to take advantage of. angela was cool for killing her shitty dad, but james is just kind of a piece of shit. At the end, James is either overwhelmed and gives himself to the town, the town breaks him and uses his inability to cope to siphon pain off of him with Maria, he forgives himself and the town is unable to take any more from him, or uh, there's a cute doggy controlling it all
What I don't like about In Water is that Laura exists hence she would be alone.
An hour and 40 minute long video that you somehow manage to make very clear, concise and extremely entertaining. I don't know how you do it, but I'm glad you do.
Honestly I think the In-Water ending could still fit taking place after the two Pyramid Heads dying, though it does give that moment its darkest implication (where in the other endings it is either him facing or completely rejecting his guilt respectively). In that context the two Pyramid Heads dying could be seen as James coming to the weighty realization of everything that he has done and decides that both to reunite with Mary and on some level "atone" for his sins that he will take his life. Because of that the Pyramid Heads have more or less completed their mission- James has been pushed to such an emotional breaking point that they don't need to do anything else. If someone is going to torture themself then what need is there for monsters to do it for him? So they peace out the only way they know how.
In conjunction with the in water ending I think it still makes sense. You're definitely right, he didn't need external forces to make him feel guilty. On top of that I think that James had been pushed to such an extent where it wasn't just guilt driving him but some psychological horrorfest in his head. Even if he wasn't feeling guilt he just couldn't go on, especially without Mary. I like that ending because it shows that even when he went through such an intense and difficult journey he didn't come out stronger, everything was not suddenly just going to get better and happier, James was never truly rid of the pain plaguing him.
Actually the James hitting the wall animation happened to me once in Normal, it's so weird.
So I figured this out recently, you have to have been sprinting for 8 or more footsteps to get it to activate!
For me the "In Water" ending is canon just purely on how it parallels with Angela. Angel commits suicide by walking upwards toward the roaring flames while James is always descending downwards into water. The final hallway before the Mary fight is flooded for this reason and it's also why Pyramid Head goes down into the murky depths in the apartment area.
James even states in the beginning how he wants to be nothing like Angela, but after recieving the knife Pyramid Head starts using a sword; conviently called the "Great Knife". James desire to cut himself as atonement and the fact its so heavy and weighing him down mentally is reflected through Pyrmaid Head as well.
He also doesn't show up again until the Hospital Roof segment that was fenced off at the top to prevent patients commiting suicide. While the "In Water" ending is canon to me; the beauty of this game and much like actual depression, is that it can be interpreted in many ways.
So it's fitting that James can have so many endings, and even a bonus one for fans of the first game who just wanted more of the cool occult stuff.
Speak for yourself about the campy game show announcer. When I first heard him, I wasn't terrified, but definitely weirded out and shocked. When his voice first came on I thought "oh my god the radio works I'm in the real world now!" But when he mentioned James I immediately took that back and realized that the nightmare had to continue. The Campiness of his voice as well as the audience cheering when he mentions the children being murdered, are a great piece of dark humor, that while giving some comic relief, still has a tinge of silent hill weirdness.
Definitely. I don't think the creator of this video understands what makes this game so great at all, and this is one of the points he missed hard on.
@@DeadAndAliveCat nah it was lame
@@wickrman1 Okay buddy
I don't like it when folks say they want a Remake of Silent Hill 2 akin to what we got with Resident Evil. Because Silent Hill 2, more than maybe any other game ever made, works BECAUSE of the specific directorial, aesthetic, tonal and gameplay mechanical details it employs. A remake by definition might alter or remove elements that were so crucial to making Silent Hill 2 such a stand out work of art. Furthermore, Silent Hill 2 was developed by a group of literal outsiders who felt they did not fully connect with the corporate environment of Konami. Their energy, and perhaps therir way of translating elements of their inner world into the game was crucial and knowing Konami they way we know them now, would probably just give us a generic third-person shooter...or a pachinko machine.
If it was remade by the original team or lead dev/creator like Resident Evil 1 Remake was, yeah, that could've been great.
Resident Evil 1 Remake is definitely still better and more faithful than either of the recent "remakes."
Really wish Shinji Mikami and RE1 Remake team could've remade RE2 and RE3 back then after the 2002 one.
@@Gruntvc Personally I absolutely adore the Resident Evil 2 Remake, mostly because it retains all of the elements that worked about the old Resident Evils i.e puzzle-box non-linear levels, limited inventory, delicate health, but gave us controls that were a lot more intuitive and enjoyable. It proved you didn't need tank controls for a Resident Evil game to be scary and thrilling (though some might disagree with me) My take on game remakes is that usually when people clamor for them it means there's something in the original game that needs fixing, holding it back from it's true potential. I feel like Silent Hill 2 hit it's full potential back in 2001 but not so much Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy 7, hence the call for remakes.
Armin Haracic I reckon original FF7 and RE2 were already incredible. The remakes very much aren’t going out of their way to replace the original like REmake 1 did.
I agree with you to a point. I'd be looking for more of a legitimate remaster than the abomination we got for last gen consoles. Perhaps a touch up of the controls, improving the sound (cleaning it up, etc.) and an update on the graphics. The game stands the test of time, but to see it polished and the sound cleaned up with time taken to show love and care for one of their franchises best products would go a long way with fans as opposed to that cash grab that was HD collection
Yeah. We don’t need a a modern graphics revamp, they’d doubtlessly brush over some of the aesthetic in the process. It’s not like shadow of the colossus where the core concept of the game was overshooting the PS2s limitations, SH2 makes perfect use of the PS2 as is. Theres just no need for a less grimy, higher poly count SH2
One of the best OST's in gaming
FTW! Yikes.
I concur. I'd probably put SH from 1 to 4 all up in there.
@FTW Lol, what? Just... no...
@FTW You have an opinion, it's cool. The music is still good.
@FTW Nothing is scary about the Theme of Laura but it's not supposed to be and doesn't need to be scary in order to be an amazing track... To say it's mostly crap (and even saying SH2 sucked overall) is absolutely ridiculous and untrue.
I took psych classes when I was younger, and a recent incident got me to brush up on dissociative fugue. In hindsight, I feel like the stress of James killing Mary lends itself pretty well to him being so confused and not able to see his surroundings realistically, abeit in an unrealistic and exaggerated manner for the sake of video games.
Yes this game is a goldmine of psychological wealth if you pay attention to the details of it. I'm still amazed by it in 2020, just like I was back in 2001 when I first played this game.
The 5 stages of grief.
Yeah I also thought he had dissociative fugue. I also thought that Wanda Maximoff experienced that as well.
It's unclear when she came out of it though, and she clearly chose "to stay in Vegas after waking up in Vegas".
You could arguable say the town of Silent Hill deliberatly latched onto these preexisting feeling and amplified them to an unrealistic degree to draw James to it. Eddie straight up tells him they were both drawn to the town, so clearly there's a little bit of mindfuckery going on.
SH3 did throw a little shade on Harry's otherwise deserved reputation of being a good guy. In it, he admits he contemplated killing infant Cheryl/Heather and even came as close to almost strangling her to death. But then again, you could also see it as adding to his heroism, because despite his love for the child, he knew she was very possibly the future mother of doomsday. It's kind of like The Omen with Damien's adoptive father almost not trying to kill him. And of course, the motivation is completely different from James's.
"If that were true... Then why do you look so sad?" This line breaks me
and
After you kill Eddy, the letter from Mary disappears leaving only blank pages
I love what you’ve done here. The video is more than an hour but I didn’t feel bored watching it.
Me: "3 am, time for be--"
*this video appears*
Me: "Here I go destroying my sleep schedule again."
Same shit here XD fuck it quarantinetime
Its only 7pm for me so l plenty of time
4am here, who needs sleep anyway
Is this the youtube equivalent of a a reddit moment?
DAE sleeep?!!?!11!? 🤪
Have good sleep man.
The whole
"It's hot as hell in here."
"You see it too? For me, it's always like this."
exchange is my favorite in the game. The music playing during it, the camera angle, the delivery, it's the best. It tells you everything you need to about the kind of hell that Angela's been living. A burning hot hell that contrasts with James' wet, drowned out hell.
And then she chooses to walk off, into the flames...
A couple of three things you did not mention:
1. About radio call James got after first monster.
2. James appearance was based on Denis Leary.
3. Maria was based on Cameron Diaz, her outfit on Christina Aguilera.
Good video overall.
Huh, no shit? I always thought she looked like Cameron Diaz, but the Denis Leary one...never thought of that before
@@voiceofreason1208 he forgot #4 - dog ending, true intended ending SH canon, according to devs, they told me in private of course, hush hush
@@kwazhims3lf the dog ending is a masterpiece and I will not accept any other as the true, canonical ending.
I can only forgive SH for all of its horrors if a cute doggo was running the show.
Seriously though, JS looks nothing like Denis Leary imo. MS has Cameron Diaz vibes but she still looks different (Enough for Diaz to be unable to take legal action against Konami on account of her "stolen likeness"; because everyone remembers Naughty Dog's controversy surrounding Elliot Page's likeness to Ellie from TLOU).
Lol, the tortured and deeply shame-filled protagonist is based off a ribald comedian who nicked Bill Hicks stuff
James's appearance was based on Guy Cihi's, you know...the one that voiced him and did his motion cap?
Charlie is transitioning from action game ambassador to horror game enthusiast. I'm okay with this
Uneven Steven he can do both. He’s that kind of guy
I don't see why we can't have both.
>action game ambassador
>wants every game to just be DMC
>plays titles on Normal
lolno
Solid Gene hey stfu buddy
Anthony I’m sorry I dare criticize TheCasualBrit. You gonna be ok?
About the power of the town: I remember reading somewhere that residual psychic energy from Alessa had tainted the town permanently, resulting in the town warping in response to people’s psyche’s in later games. I don’t know if that was the official explanation during the Team Silent era, but Origins pretty much confirmed this with Alessa directly manifesting Travis’s personal demons so he can overcome them. The cult chose the town because there was some sort of vague mystical nature to the location, but they and their rituals are what REALLY fucked the place up.
You're correct, it is an official explanation.
I don’t know, I don’t count anything after 4 as canon. If it wasn’t approved by Team Silent, then to me it’s just fanfiction.
@Queen-Roger It's been confirmed outside the games, if I recall correctly - in one of guidelines created cooperatively with Team Silent. I didn't dig much into Origins, but from what I've heard it's not that far from being a fanfiction, as it makes some valid points about town's history. Either way, everything Jimothaniel said is safe to consider canon.
That’s the kinda dumb nonsense that the non-Team Silent games decided to take from fan fiction and double down on. I wouldn’t take any of that seriously.
So Alessa became a vessel?
The day people stop discussing, analyzing and playing Silent Hill 2 is the day video games die as an art form.
What makes you sure about that ?
So silent hill 2 is the only "games can be art" game? " oh please...rediculous statement.
ISetYourFaceOnFire it’s not the only one of course but it’s one of, if not the first. Leaving so much to interpretation is something not many developers are willing to do unless they’re indie and usually comes off as pretentious, this game avoids that with self awareness and humor. Many games especially the artistic ones now a days are really ham fisted and forced (Detroit become human and other David cage games being a good example of this) or pretentious and boring. So I’d say it’s worth the eternal amount of discussion and analysis it gets.
@Virág Zalán You are so unbelievably ignorant that I'm wondering how did you even end up in this comment section.
@Virág Zalán ok boomer
I think the reason Angela "knows" about what James did, is because she is reflecting her trauma on to him and she has witnessed a horrible man (maybe her dad) ruin/kill her mother.
"look at all the cute stuff she dose while... possessed"
I like to think he wrote that seriously then realized how strange it sounded out loud but kept it in because it sounded funny.
mary's letter to james at the end of silent hill 2 was the first thing in a video game to make me cry. now, after having to help care for my stepfather at home as he died from cancer (and help him die), it hits a lot closer to home. having experienced something like what is shown in the game, the accuracy and care with which it portrays the experience of caring for someone who will die no matter what you do is amazing
This game was special. The first time I played it I started getting real anxiety just from walking the path to the graveyard. Somehow it reached right into my brain and knew how to push the buttons
Descending that ridiculous stairwell into the Historical Society was also nerve wracking
The pistons room the Angela boss fight is in...SO disturbing :/
The Labyrinth is the most compelling area in SH2 for me, and the Abstract Daddy fight is a great conclusion to the level. The darkest, most twisted parts of James' mind reside here. It twists, turns, and makes absolutely no sense. Pyramid Head's room is here. And then you hear Angela crying out in a terrified whimper, go into this random room, and you're confronted by the most disgusting monster in the game (in my opinion). Just the implication of what that monster is, is just...
God, I feel so bad for Angela, man. She didn't deserve to be in that town.
@j mula absolutely. That's what made it and the stairwell scene so powerful.
SH2 was my first SH experience
.. so after the fuckin nightmare dark halls of the apartment, i get tortured again in the hospital
.... if i was a vet, im pretty sure the labyrinth would have appealed more to me
but as a first timer, by that point in the labyrinth, i was just gritting my teeth and bearing through it.. unlike the former i just explained, i was a wee bunny, jumping at every shadow and *BUMP*
it was terror. dark rooms, dark halls, some kind of normalcy.. time progressing, world starts to change, chain fence, blood smears, world degrades further, twisting into nightmare.... the labryinth didnt fuck me around, it just came out straight "hey, i'm not gonna dick you around, im just all sorts of fucked up"
Her death was just absolutely perfect
One bit of storytelling I like in regards to Eddie and Angela is that they sort of represent James' mindset on Mary and what he did. You've got Angela, who's suicidal and thinks it'd be better if she did die after enduring a ton of abuse, similar to how James was mentally beaten down as heard in that final hallway. On the flip side you have Eddie, who seems to represent an almost childish means of absolving of any guilt and rationalising that he didn't do anything wrong because of, again, the abuse suffered. The dog and bully/Mary had it coming, in their eyes. Even his design evokes a childishness to it with the t-shirt, shorts and backwards cap.
Another thing I find interesting is how the In Water and Maria Endings represent the different extremes of James let himself go down the path that Angela and Eddie went down, respectively. In “In Water”, James ultimately succumbs to his guilt and drives himself into the water along with Mary’s corpse. In his eyes, this is his way of finding peace similar to how Angela couldn’t handle the trauma inflicted upon by her father and brother and decided the best way to deal with it all is to ascend into the flames above. In the Maria ending, James keeps Maria around. He has succumbed to his primal instincts. Rather than coming to terms with his grief and accepting what he did, he wants to wallow in the past and keep this “idealized” version of Mary that he conjured up in his head. Similar to how Eddie gets his kicks from killing, this is James’ way of happiness. The game does suggest that this isn’t the way to go. When James and Maria are about to leave the town, Maria lets out a cough to which James says in a very dark tone, “You’d better do something about that cough…”
Maria will eventually succumb to her illness and die, repeating the process all over again. I also find that the way James acts in this final sequence isn’t too off from what Angela said about him, that he’s only ever one thing. The way the main trio are compared and contrasted through each other is probably one of my favorite aspects about this game.
19 years later..
SH2 remains a masterpiece 😍❤
Yeah it's my friend favourite game
@@skypemee4040 well, this game is my favorite friend
@@mhmdbilani ok
@@skypemee4040 ok bye
@@mhmdbilani Ok Hello
Angelas story is one of the saddest in gaming history.
I love the holes. I think jumping down and down and down and emerging perfectly fine at ground level even though you should be in hell is super creepy
I always believed Maria was a real person, but the “real” Maria died in the Elevator basement scene, and all the other Maria’s past that point are illusions/monsters that the town is using to torture James. Like especially since after Maria dies in the elevator, her demeanor changes from then on, and she’s playing a lot more into James fantasy that she looks like Mary.
The nightmares aren't actually overlapping in the staircase scene, it's just Angela's. We get to see what silent hill is like for her but James can't see it, he says it feels hot and he can't move through the flames but he doesn't actually see it as on fire at all
Daddy Denied Angela specifically notes that James sees it as well when she tells him that that was what it always is like for her. James definitely sees the fire. Plus it wouldn’t make sense for the fire to be something we see as the player and not as James because we’re already being shown a false world through James’ eyes. We’re being told that the Silent Hill we’re playing in is only the Silent Hill that exists for James, so suddenly swapping for one scene without any indication or any previous examples of the player being shown something that James can’t see would be incredibly poor writing
@@UniGya agreed
everything on fire, stretched human skins on the wall, macabre dmonic shit, angela dissapears up the staircase surrounded by fire, angela remarks "You see it, too? For me... It's always like this" then shes gone.. james cannot cross the flames
.... but then the weirdest thing.. he shrugs and comments "its hot as hell in here" ...
what a weird thing to say, in a room like that (he's implying the angela ascending the staircase is representative of a person passing away, but in her case its all macabre and on FIRE so she is actually descending to hell because of suicide)
i hate the whole scene... i feel like the whole thing would make more sense to me after i huff paint for an hour, then come back to think about it
i hate angelas final scene.... for me personally the whole thing would have worked, hinging on one thing, at the last second james calls out to her, "lemme help, i'll fix this, come back, dont go, stay"
instead.... "hmm well, cya, btw, who turned up the thermostat?"
dont like it hate it... wtf is this scene
James clearly sees Angela's burning staircase. She even comments on it herself. After that scene, he goes back through the door and ends up in his own otherworld..
@@kwazhims3lf he does try that. Angela especially kinda mocks him for it by saying ''will you care for me ? love me ? that's what I thought.'' I dont remember the exact thing but it was something like this. Even though james wants to help angela he is not capable of helping her.
@@kwazhims3lf I feel like you missed the point of Angela’s final scene dramatically. It’s one of the best scenes in the game. It’s beautiful and tragic. James knows he isn’t equipped to help Angela; he knows that Silent Hill has put her through the same kind of torment it put him through. He understands how it works now, just as he understands how broken he is, how broken Angela is, and how incapable he is of doing anything meaningful to help her. Because, in spite of him saying “I’d never kill myself” to her, we know that deep down, he has and still is experiencing those thoughts and feelings himself. There’s nothing he can say to Angela at that moment. She has fully given in. And James himself knows he could potentially follow her down that same path.
It’s a brilliantly directed and horribly sad scene. Complete perfection. Absolute kino
I think the developers said that "in water" is the true ending to them. I've never thought the "leave" ending was the true one because in sh4 Jame's dad says he went missing in silent hill. Great video by the way!
Out of the development team, _only_ Masahiro Ito has made comments on the endings and only to say that he designed Pyramid Head with "In Water" in mind. Even then, I tend to take a lot of what Ito says with a grain of salt, as he comes off as though he'd take full credit for everything to do with Silent Hill 2 if he thought he'd get away with it.
You can still consider the Leave ending canon considering that James would probably want to lay low after murdering his wife. At the very least, he might want to avoid his old hometown due to the fact that Mary was hospitalized there and the trauma of everything made him want to live somewhere else.
1:25:25 "The door things" . Actually these are "bed things", because as you guessed, these monsters represent the trauma of Angela, who has been sexually abused by her father. These monster are a grotesque conflation of her father and the bed he abused her in.
Or table as the implied rape could have been forced on a table.
@Elleborus Yeah, bad mistake on my part was looking up "abstract daddy" in google pictures.
@@mikshinee87 thanks I'm about to do that
@@JairajSinghPatil Oh noes.
@@mikshinee87 rip innocence
I've beaten SH2 probably 10 times, and even though I know exactly where everything is, the ambience still makes me uneasy.
"1hr 40 mins of SH2 analysis"
"What the hell is this? "- Dante
(There, I made a DMC reference by myself before I see any references made by brit himself)
food wich getting better... I would even go as far as to say I underestimated his... ability...
@Jordan Ghill edgy
The series of holes were supposed to reflect James' psyche particularly his unconscious (illustrated by the topography of his mind), which he must descend to find the truth. That's why Maria was waiting to confront you behind a cell in the deepest part of his psyche. It was simply contextual/symbolic to continue going down, even for Angela and Eddie.
Eddie: “If anyone makes fun of me, I’ll KILL THEM! Just like that”
James: “Eddie, have yOu gOnE NuTs?”
Outstanding move!
This should've had a cool subtitle like your Resident Evil "Road to the Rocket Launcher" series.
Silent hill: the road to the mental asylum
Silent Hill: Road to throwing orange juice down a garbage shute
I think the serious title fits the content of the game.
I enjoyed that series, wish he'd continue it, especially with RE3 Remake releasing soon.
Silent Hill: Breaking the Silence
I, as many others I've seen in the comments, actually liked the "cheesy" quiz show in the elevator. First of all, it was completely unexpected, I already knew I had to deal with monster nurses and mannequins but I could never guess something like this quiz could happen. Also, it just happens, without any kind of explanation, so another mistery added to the huge list of misteries in this town. Second, it rewards you for paying attention to the story and the lore of the town. Third, it scared me in a certain way when it told me that something bad'd happen if my answer is wrong; I knew the answers but I was not sure if I remembered the order correctly, so I was actually scared when I reached the storage room.
Me 2001: *It was just a game, snap out of it!*
Me 2020: *It was just a game, snap out of it!*
same here,
once you enter Silent Hill you can never leave.....
@@cyanyde4950 True.
sleeping with the lights on tonight i guess....
*sigh*
Silent Hill 2 is not a mere game, it's a timeless work of art.
I love the Elevator game show part. I think it serves the purpose of showing you “you don’t care.”
If it’s James and Mary’s special place, he should know the answers to the questions.
But if it’s your first play through and didn’t know anything about SH at all, it would show your clueless, hence, James is clueless too. Like the honey moon video he left at the apartment,
He didn’t remember the tape because it didn’t actually matter to him.
Video games really did peak in the PS2 era. PS5 and Xbox Series X are coming out this year, but the variety of experiences we get these days have diminished a lot.
That's because the sweJ took over and it's all about the money.
there's still a lot of great games but we always remember the masterpieces of each era, that's why it always seems like the past was better
Ps2 set the bar high for ps consoles
@@NaikoArt I think that this feeling comes from the fact, that today many games are just very alike, some ideas are recycled and gameplay is very similar in most games of the same genre. We just have come to the point, where it's hard to create something innovative or "game-changing" because games are very advanced nowadays. Back in PS2 era, the gaming still had a lot of potentional ahead but due to poorer technology, developers had to do as much as they could to surpass those limitations, thus resulting in very creative stories or gameplay ideas. For example most horror games today look like Outlast or Resident Evil 4 clones. Back then horror games (or any other genre games) were very different from one another.
Time to watch another 1 hour analysis on Silent Hill 2 for the 10th time by another RUclipsr.
Did anyone else notice that in Silent Hill 2 while viewing your saves in the menu you can press a button to show additional info like playtime or completed endings? I somehow just found that out recently and I've played through the game several times, I think it's either d-pad or square.
Oh so that's what the letter L meant in the save
Really enjoyed this analysis. Hope to see an analysis on Silent Hill 3, hopefully including how it relates as the direct sequel to OG Silent Hill. While I’m wishing for things, a Silent Hill 4: The Room analysis would be awesome. Thanks for the content!
"James,... wait! ... "
When a horror game pulls your heart strings..
😭😭😭
"M-my analysis: the town made him stupid!"
- Joseph Anderson
It's interesting how some of his critiques are really good and others are awfully terrible
Easily one of his worst takes
Isn't that the guy who said "Horror games aren't scary because i'm immortal"?
@@விஷ்ணு_கார்த்திக் that's the guy.
@Vandole As a fan of his work I find this very cheap to criticize him on. He tends to be very thorough with his views on games and never comes off as pretentious strictly off game reviews. His vids on horror not working for him was a stretch and definitely not his best work. He is also notoriously inconsistent with his future vids and goals at the end of his latest vids to not line up. That said he does present his points well and I think he makes great cases in them. And he doesn't drag his son into any of his projects intentionally. The dude literally works from home and is a father. He even said he's a father first and content creator second. I can understand people not liking him but the only cheap trick here was your generalizations of his work and personal life my dude.
I'm seeing a resurgence of appreciation for Silent Hill 2 recently, and that's great. I'm so glad I finally tried this series last year, it's really changed me and helped spur my fascination with psychology and symbolism.
I hope someday to make a survival horror that's even half as elegant, emotional and terrifying as Silent Hill 2.
Any way, good video as always Charlie
It will forever be a mystery how Heaven's Night ended up in Resi Survivor...
The "In Water" ending makes the most sense to me, even though it might just be the most depressing one. It shares a lot in common with "Leave", with the crucial exception that James just cannot accept Mary's forgiveness, and her wish for him to move on. He _does_ accept responsibility for his crime, he still rejects Maria in this one, but he can't get over his loss and his own actions, which is in line with most of what we know of him. I have to agree with the fact it's a bit inconsistent with his newfound determination during the last Pyramid Heads fight, but you could argue he merely accepts the truth that he killed his wife. It doesn't necessarily mean he can live with it, and without her. In "Leave", he recovers too fast and too well from his trauma, which is constantly shown to be about as deep as it gets, and the fact he gets "halway there" in "In Water" seems more in line with his character.
And that's not even going into the "logistics" of "Leave", what with him being implied to adopt Laura, a girl that doesn't even like him in the first place and was last seen screaming at him after he confessed to her that _he murdered her best friend,_ all when he's at best the primary suspect in his wife's death, and at worst actively pursued for her murder.
😂😂😂 Laura was going to snitch him
Im not the type of person to always need a “happy” ending to a story but i really just cant accept the “in water” ending as it feels too easy of an ending for him to just give up after having faced so much, but that last point u made about laura is probably the biggest evidence that the “leave” ending just doesnt make sense, its hard to admit but in water has the most evidence supporting it
@@numba9ine288 He faced a lot of things, yeah, but he did so in the mad hope his wife was still alive. I'm assuming he couldn't really imagine life without her, and decided to go on a deluded quest to find her rather than go about it more rationally, because he just couldn't ignore the possibility that maybe, somehow, it really was from her, and he could see her again. He isn't really the most stable guy, he's been on a downward spiral for a few years now, probably, and his murder of Mary traumatized him so badly he completely blocked it out. Presumably, it was the only way for him not to completely break down. Honestly, In Water is the only "main" ending that really makes sense for me, after the double whammy of learning not only that his wife was indeed dead, but also that he killed her himself. It was too much, too quickly, and at the worst time too.
The Prison segment legit... LEGIT gave me this terror, neck hairs raised up frightening feeling that i have never... NEVER felt before in ANY game i ever played.
tfw the cell locks behind you
"thump" "thump" "thumb"..........rit...u...al....."thump" "thump"
Love your work Charlie! Can't wait for the RE 4 edition of Road to the Rocket Launcher 👌
Me: *Sees my favorite game of all time being done with a nearly 2 hour analysis*
Me: HO BOY
While the game is infamously poorly ported, the PC release has a mod called "Enhanced Edition" for those who want to play it but don't have the proper hardware.
The Enhanced Edition is easily just as good if not better that the original PS2 version of the game which is considerd by most the best official release.
It's excellent. Spread the word!
Having played through, I can vouch for this too!
What's the best way to get a copy of the PC version?
@@fraundakelmbrilpondaprost90 hey friend you can download it for free on my abbadonware. Because game is not sold anywhere you can get it for free there. Just install it download all enhanced edition files and copy... Boom you can get sh3 for free as well. Sh4 is sold on gog so you have to buy that one there 🙂👍
I just played the Enhanced Edition (that's why I'm here watching this video ;-) and it's amazing. First time playing SH2, what a masterpiece!
One of the scariest parts to me was in the hotel when you need to open the suitcase.
I remember I got the combo to be “kill” and it just freaked me out even though that wasn’t the solution, it kind of reminded me of the “redruM” from The Shining. I love how a completely not scary part of the game actually scared me and it was because of my own fault. That is my most memorable part from playing this game.
I came off feeling the town isn’t good or evil. The town doesn’t even punish people inherently. The feeling I got from analyzing everyone’s story in Silent Hill 2 was that the town gave people what their conscience felt they deserved. This was why Angela would eventually be consumed in fire and Eddie was given wave after wave of victims to use to finally get revenge on the world. This is also why by the end of Silent Hill 2, James is free of the monsters of the town: he believes he’s received his just punishment and come to terms with his guilt.
My analysis: One of the best video games made of all time.
I applaud this comment. And the reply to it as well. Hands down, perfect!
Definitely in my top 10, and I'm 36 so I've played a lot of games.
The Madlad did it! One of my favourite games ever
Still waiting for the next Resident Evil video, tho
Yes, next up would likely be the excellent Resident Evil 1 Remake, arguably the best of the classic series and best remakes ever.
Genome Soldat it was glorious in its time. Personally I believe Re2 Remake has been the best one, but Re3 was great too. For me nothing from the classic was changed, just the order of events are now lined up to create an actual canon story
I am a grown-ass 32 year old man who has played this game dozens of times. Without fail, when the final read of Mary's letter to James plays and her voice starts to crack when she says "I'm so sorry" I just bawl. Every. Single. Time.
Same here man. Every time I know it's coming but I always bawl.
It sounds so genuine I got upset just hearing it's again here
Me too bro. I love when a game can have the player have strong emotions like that.
I know this comment is kind of old, but Monica Taylor Horgan is genuinely crying during that scene. If Im correct it was her first time viewing the letter and reading it aloud. What you're hearing isn't acting, it's her raw emotion. That's why it sounds so real, it is real. It breaks my heart every time :(
I love how Silent Hill 2’s Otherworld transitions are more subtle than the other games. The hotel is particularly deceptive because upon entering, you’re already in the Otherworld. It looks like it’s in mint condition. You only see the true state of the hotel in the last few minutes of the game.
Awesome analysis.
I think that "Angela's monster" isn't Angela's monster alone. First I think it's a bed monster. That represents what happens to Angela and her father. Second, it's also James monster, who represents the final vision he had about his wife. A monster bound to bed.
I also believe that the people James met aren't random people. I think they represent James character:
Eddie: stands for the bullied version of James, who got mocked by his sick wife, until he snapped and decided to kill her. All the insecurities of Eddie in the beginning can be seen throughout in James behavior.
Angela: stands for the abuse he had to endure by Mary while she was sick. Left him with such a burden. She could also stand for his depressed self, after Mary died and he realised that he is alone. But I think somewhere in the game was mentioned, that Mary abused him in different ways. Not sexual, more psychological.
Laura: his self conscious. The part that let him forget what he did. Her appearance as a child, blind to the horrors and totally innocent, as innocent as a child can be, makes it all perfect. "blind to the horrors" stands simply for the fact, that he can't remember what he did, because he kept it locked inside and keep on pretending that he is innocent. He told himself, that the disease killed his wife, which is partly right, as right as a child would tell a story. And in the end he leaves with Laura which actually means, he made peace with his consciousness and leaving the town as sane and understanding he could be.
Also I think he said she died 3 years ago on purpose, because that's what the doctor said she had on top. And he told himself that, because maybe he wished for spending the maximum of possible time with her. Which was according to the doctor 3 years. She could have been dead two weeks after he had the conversation with the doctor.
Well at least that's my interpretation.
Sorry if my English seems off, I'm no native speaker.
Thank you.
I always think that there’s a particular tragedy to terminal illness, which is reflected in this game and often just done as “to James’ delusional state, Mary died when she was diagnosed”. And that’s that many ppl make that decision to live as much life as they can before they pass. In the tape, Mary is seen coughing, implying she was already ill when they visited Silent Hill; their vacation was probably part of them living as much life as they could before she passed on. But despite this, it’s effectively the wait for death. Cramming in as many positive experiences as they can is effectively the same as sitting in the shadow of death, knowing that that day is going to come. I think it’s less that Mary was dead to James the minute she was diagnosed, but rather that he’s been living under the spectre of it for so long that it’s effectively bled together as the same thing. I don’t think that sort of thing is truly reflective of James, but rather the concept of living under the Grim Reaper’s scythe, knowing that sooner or later, it’s going to fall.
I like the depth of your theory.
I love that this video is in 4:3 looks great
I hate this video because harry runs better than James it ridiculous James runs better than harry
1st James
2 nd heater
3 rd Henry
4 rt harry
What an enthralling experience, you really managed to capture the horror and mystique of the game through this video, as someone who's never played the game I was completely suckered in.
Amazing job!
Trussa Agreed.
Now go play it. It's an experience
As someone who first experienced anything related to this game through watching the Eddie boss fight completely out of context years ago, I can say especially after watching this that by now I see this game as a lot more.
Great work, Brit!
“The truth is that I hated you. I wanted you out of the way… I wanted my life back.”
“James… if that were true, why do you look so sad?”
Personally I think the fact that examining more items and viewing extra scenes leads you to the In Water ending indicates that it’s the canon ending. Like the game is rewarding you for seeing more of it by showing you what really happens. You’re right about Leave being a more satisfying conclusion to the narrative though.