After years of begging, Silent Hill fans are finally getting everything they’ve ever dreamed of … sort of.
Konami hosted a Silent Hill-themed livestream recently, which showed that the company is serious in reviving long-dormant IP. Are you serious? It’s currently Working on a movie, Three new games?, and One huge remake. The most interesting part of the list is actually the last, because Konami is giving away a beloved horror filmSilent Hill 2Bloober Team, a studio behind the project, helped to modernize the website. The Medium.
With fans chomping at the bit for any scrap of news over the years, you’d expect the announcement to be the biggest story of the year. Instead, it’s been met with something of a mixed reaction. The remake in particular has spurred some debate, as some fans just aren’t confident that Bloober Team is the right studio for the job. That’s not by any fault of its own, though. Remaking Silent Hill 2It is a difficult task because it is messy PlayStation 2It is precisely DNA that makes a game memorable.
Otherworldly jank
Silent Hill 2 tells the story of James Sunderland, a man in search of answers after receiving a letter from his wife — which is weird since she died three years earlier. She summons him to the town of Silent Hill in rural Maine, where it’s a little too foggy for comfort. James quickly discovers the town is overrun by monsters, including creepy nurses as well as the famous Pyramid Head.
Although the narrative is frightening enough by itself, thanks to its psychologically disturbing direction in its final moments, much of its terror comes from its atmosphere. To this day, there really isn’t a video game that feels as unsettling asSilent Hill 2 — and much of that can be chalked up to the limitations of the era. For example, the fog that is its trademark. It isn’t a realistic white mist casting a semitransparent veil over the town. That nuance wasn’t entirely possible with the PS2, but it was to the game’s benefit.
Original Silent Hill 2’s fog is dark and thick, almost smoke-like in quality. It blocks out everything visible, and creates a cloud of fog around objects up to two feet away. This allows the game’s creators to create more unexpected scares. For example, creatures that are normally easy to avoid will suddenly appear from nowhere. The fog itself feels like a monster in its own right — it will billow backwards when James approaches it as if it’s on the run. It’s not realistic, but that’s the appeal. The overly thick fog lends the game a claustrophobic aura, as it always feels like it’s about to squeeze in on James and suffocate him.
The game’s fog is so instrumental to its horror that any changes to it have It caused controversy. The fog was lifted when Konami gave the game an HD remake in 2012. Although the changes may seem subtle to casual players, the result was that the entire world became visible and felt more like a fog machine blowing onstage during a performance. It feels silly to say, but fog will be a make or break aspect of the upcoming remake, as a realistic approach could further cut into the town’s mystique.
Fog is an example of how PS2 restrictions can create opportunities. But it’s also possible to see it in technical aspects. The original is the most creepy place to find enemies.Silent Hill 2Because of its limited animation potential, it was not possible to create any. Enemies like Nurses jitter and jerk around unnaturally as they move, their heads swiveling around as if they’re attached by a well oiled ball joint instead of a neck. When James kills one, they plummet to the ground in an instant, like a spirit that’s reanimated them has suddenly flown off and left a dead-weight husk in its place. You feel as if it was once a human being when nothing moves. Whatever you’re up against feels like it was pulled from another dimension, making it hard to ever truly predict movement patterns or behaviors.
Bad acting is not good
Those feelings translate to the game’s acting, which is perhaps its most fascinating aspect. Let’s be clear upfront:Silent Hill 2’s acting is bad. James is especially a cardboard box man. During the game’s most dramatic moment, he emotionlessly mumbles with the energy of a single AAA battery. Other performances are on the other side of the spectrum entirely, with side characters like Eddie entirely overreacting like they’re auditioning for a ’90s educational video about the importance of staying away from drugs.
I don’t mean any of this in a negative way, though. In fact, the stilted performances are a large part of what makes the game so unsettling — even if that wasn’t the creators’ intent at the time. The characters feel just a little alien to the real world, just like enemy movements. (Face animations also help in this regard). You know that scene where James reacts so slowly to the most disturbing news of his life? It’s partially as uncomfortable as it is because you’re expecting him to have a loud, melodramatic breakdown. Instead, he talks like a man in hypnosis, which creates an incredibly haunting disconnect between his horror and his normal reaction.
There are many games to choose from Compare the works of David Lynch for superficial reasons (“It’s so weird!”), but Silent Hill 2It is one the few games that really deserves that comparison. Lynch’s work tends to feel as surreal and otherworldly as it does in part due to his unique directing style, which pulls purposefully off-kilter performances out of very capable actors.Mulholland Drive is as disconcerting as it is because Naomi Watts’ Betty always feels just left of human, but just right of actor. It’s something that plays into some of Lynch’s big-picture idea about identity and the characters that struggle to find their own (see Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks and The Return).
It’s perhaps no surprise that that’s a core theme in Silent Hill 2As well. From James coming to grips with the monster he really is, to the strange doppelganger dynamic between Maria and Mary, we never meet the real version of the game’s characters. Instead, we’re introduced to fragments of their shattered selves stuck in one big supernatural prison disguised as a rural town. The strange performances are a reminder that you shouldn’t take everything in this world as it is.
Is this intentional? Most certainly not. HD remaster features traditional voices rerecorded. Troy Baker voices James, making him more emotive and anguished — a change that turns the game into more of a straight melodrama. The bad acting in the original is more likely a byproduct of video game voice acting at a time when the industry wasn’t really invested in Hollywood-caliber storytelling. But the artists’ intent or the tech that drove decisions is irrelevant; those choices can take on a life of their own and define the work regardless.
That’s the story of Silent Hill 2The brilliant PS2 title “Horror out of Chaos” is a great example of this. Its rough edges aren’t mistakes to be smoothed over by a modern remake; they’re an important part of its shape.
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