Silent Hill 2: A Retrospective

*A word of caution, I’m going to spoil the hell out of this game, and pretty quickly, so just be aware as you read through. Enjoy!*

I’m a psychologist, and aside from all of the fortune and fame that came along with that title (and by “fortune and fame,” I mean working at a supermarket while I slaved away for my Master’s degree), I entered into this field because I love trying to understand the inner workings of the mind. Philosophers, biologists, physiologists and psychologists alike have spent thousands of years debating over it and not one of them has ever definitively been able to define what the mind is or where it comes from. And the mind can be a scary place…especially when we lose it.

Enter the Silent Hill franchise. If there’s three things to know about me, it’s that I love horror, psychology (particularly psychopathology), and video games. And what happens when you throw those three things into a blender? You get a magnificent mixture of what both entices and terrifies us to the core simultaneously.

I believe that a profound fear of insanity lies deep within us all. Do we not flock with morbid curiosity to the latest news stories of psychotic killers who commit heinous acts of violence for no apparent reason? Why is it that we scrutinize, with excruciating detail, the actions of those who kill without conscious or any sense of right and wrong? Because we fear becoming them. The armies of journalists that converge upon the scene will always interview a neighbor or a friend, and among all the news footage you’re almost certain to hear, at some point, “I never thought they would do something like this. They were just a seemingly normal person, kept to themselves. I’m shocked, they must have just snapped.” 

And within us all, we fear the point at which we one day, without warning, might just “snap.” What pushes a human being over that proverbial edge nobody really knows, and that is truly scarier than anything any Hollywood screenwriter or novelist could dream up. The fear of crossing into that dark side of the mind lives within us all, and the Silent Hill games exploit that fear relentlessly.

Read part of this short memo that can be found within Silent Hill 2. I think it sums up my point nicely:

“The potential for this illness exists in all people and, under the right circumstances, any man or woman would be driven, like him, to "the other side." The "other side" perhaps may not be the best way to phrase it.  After all, there is no wall between here and there. It lies on the borders where reality and unreality intersect. It is a place both close and distant.”

The “other side.” A place without rhyme or reason, where our darkest fears come alive. There is no distinct boundary between that side and the side where we feel safe, and as such we can cross over into our own personal nightmare at any time and without warning. This sentiment is at the heart of the Silent Hill series and is one of the primary reasons the games achieve the level of horror that they do.

I’ll be focusing on Silent Hill 2 here for two reasons primarily. Firstly, it’s my personal favorite out of the entire series, and secondly it was the first I played out of any of them, and luckily for me it has almost nothing to do with the first game. Actually, the third game is more or less the true sequel to the first, but that’s neither here nor there. I will be referencing Silent Hill 1 and 3 at points, though I won’t be talking much about them or any of the games beyond those two for that matter, mainly because I really haven’t played any of them save for 4 and Origins. So let’s start from the beginning. Or, my beginning, anyway.

The year was 2001, and I was on a full-on Resident Evil kick. I had just gotten a Playstation 2 and was enjoying the hell out of Resident Evil Code: Veronica X. I couldn’t get enough of the survival horror genre. I vividly remember the first time I had ever heard of Silent Hill 2- through this commercial.

Something about those horrific images struck a chord within me, deep down. It looked unspeakably terrifying, but at the same time I was helplessly drawn to it. I liken it to watching a scary movie through your fingers- you want to hide, but at the same time you just can’t look away; you need to see what will happen next. I needed to see, so I mustered all the courage within me and purchased the game. I remember being in the car with my mom as we were driving home from the mall, just sitting there with the game in my hands and staring at the box, wondering what the hell I was getting myself into. I think it was the first time in my life I was actually hesitant to play a new game that I had just gotten. I couldn’t have even imagined the nightmare I was about to be dropped into.

The game tells the story of James Sunderland, an utterly broken man who has been devastated by the death of his wife Mary three years prior. However, his life is disrupted once more when he receives a mysterious letter from someone claiming to be Mary, who in it beckons him to return to their “special place” in the town of Silent Hill. James is shocked and bewildered, but with nothing left to lose in his life he returns to Silent Hill to find the truth. At the end of the game, it is revealed that James killed Mary with his own hands, as a means of ending both her suffering from a terminal illness and his own misery at helplessly watching her endure the agony of a slow death.

In many ways, Silent Hill 2 is much more driven by its story than its gameplay. There are the typical survival horror-esque elements of collecting ammo, fighting monsters and solving puzzles, but the prime narrative of the game is centered around digging deep into the truth of what really happened to Mary, and subsequently, what is left of James’ sanity. That’s not to say that it’s more like an interactive movie than a game; rather it’s a lot less action-oriented than games like Resident Evil are.

I read a great quote in a magazine I forgot the name of a long time ago which I think sums up the relationship between Resident Evil and Silent Hill perfectly. Resident Evil instills a sense of fear in the way that a movie like Alien did. It’s a primal fear of being hunted by voracious creatures that is, in the only way a video game can be, more grounded in reality. If Resident Evil is to Alien, then Silent Hill is more analogous to a movie like The Shining. In Resident Evil, there is a semi-tangible explanation as to why you’re fighting these monsters, whereas in Silent Hill, there is no solid explanation as to how they got there. Once again, it’s the psychological fear that is at the core of Silent Hill, a place where the natural laws of the world no longer apply and our own deep, dark fears come alive.

Silent Hill is a place that presents itself differently to all those who enter its boundaries. For example, note how in the first game, the nightmare world is an expression of the inner pain of a girl who suffered constant physical torment after she was severely burned in a ritualistic fire and kept alive by a cult in order to bring about the birth of a God. This world is a place of blood, rust, sickness, disease and death. Both protagonists of Silent Hill 1 and 3 see the world this way throughout both games. The nightmare world in Silent Hill 2, however, is quite different. It is instead a reflection of James’ depression and inner torment over the loss of his wife. Instead of the predominantly red color scheme of 1 & 3’s “other” world, his personal “other” world is often just dark and gray. Everything is crumbling away, broken, decaying and burnt out.

This too goes for much of what James encounters in the regular world, too. Through an abandoned set of apartments, a broken down prison, and even a closed down bowling alley, each is a decrepit and long-abandoned structure that is neglected and falling apart before you. The other two primary locations, which are a hospital where Mary stayed while she was dying and a hotel where the couple once spent some of their happier times, are intact in the real world but fade into these crumbling structures as James crosses into the other side. The only other location, the labyrinth, is a sort of mixed zone between the real world and the dark world, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

This point is further illustrated in an area where the second and third games intersect, when in 3, you find yourself outside of the park where James goes to search for Mary in 2. In the second game, you simply stroll into the park where you can explore to your own content. However, in the third game, the park is closed down and inaccessible. In the third game, this place serves no meaning to protagonist, so it only makes sense that it would be just another simple background object, as opposed to in the second game, where it serves great purpose to James. The town literally presents itself differently based on who enters its boundaries and what their motivations are (and yes, I'm aware that probably has more to do with the plot and graphical limitations of 2 and 3 than anything, but I like to think it was deliberate).

There are a number of recurrent themes in Silent Hill 2 which are just so well presented as the game progresses. There’s that of the descent into madness, which encompasses a good portion of the latter half of the game. Let’s take a look, for a moment- upon entering the Silent Hill historical society building at about the halfway point of the game, you’ll need to descend a set of stairs that seems to stretch downward into eternity. I’ve actually timed it, and you’ll be running down them for about a full minute. Next, you must jump down into a well where you’ll find yourself seemingly trapped, until you find a weak spot in the bricks to break through. Then, you must descend another hole that literally looks like a hallway flipped on its side, complete with doors on the walls, as if the world as you knew it is being warped into something else around you. You’ll then find yourself in Toluca prison, where you must navigate through more puzzles and monsters until you come across yet another hole through which you must escape. Now, you’re in the prison’s basement, where you’ll find- yes, you guessed it, another hole to jump into. Is this starting to sound ridiculous? Well, it gets better- at the bottom of that hole is once more another hole! And in that one, yet ANOTHER hole! And finally, in that hole, you’ll find something different- a mysterious elevator. But where does it go? Why, downward, of course. The elevator goes down for what seems like miles, but when it stops (seemingly at the Earth’s core, at this point), your descent is complete. 

So let’s review here. That’s one long set of stairs, followed by a series of six holes to jump into, followed by an elevator that descends into an abyss. And if that weren’t enough, when the elevator reaches the bottom, you’ll find yourself in an extremely surreal area simply known as “the labyrinth,” which almost looks like the halls of an ordinary home with several ladders dug into the floors leading into water-filled underground pathways. And as you work your way through the twisting maze of the labyrinth, entering and exiting strange rooms that are so out of place and bizarre (i.e., the “flesh” room where you fight the doorman boss), and finally emerge on the other side, you’ll find yourself…right outside the historical society building, where you first entered.

Another consistent theme is that of James' longing for his wife, present in the character of Maria. James meets Maria early on in the game, in the park where he expected that he might find Mary. Maria is nearly identical to Mary, except much more heavily sexualized and deliberate. The fact that she's running around a town full of monsters wearing fairly skimpy clothes and holding the keys to a strip a club gives us that impression pretty clearly. In the hospital, she starts to get sick just as Mary did, and eventually is stabbed and killed by the Pyramid Headed monster (I'll get to him shortly) there. James is once again cast into misery upon realizing that he failed in protecting her and couldn't save her from the massive dark cloud of impending death. But it doesn't get any better for him there- later on, he finds her alive and well, only this time imprisoned and beyond his reach. He tries once again in vain to save her, only to have the wound painfully torn open again upon finding her dead. Finally, at the very end of the game, she is killed once more before his very eyes by Pyramid Head, again. His own mind forces him to relive the death of Mary over and over again through Maria, though he continually deludes himself into thinking he can change what has already been done and save her.

And finally, there's the theme of James’ own self-persecution due to the guilt he feels over killing Mary himself. Though he consciously blocks out this memory, the town has a number of ways of manifesting that guilt into reality…none better than the most famous of all the Silent Hill enemies, Pyramid Head. Before I discuss Pyramid Head though, I’ll read you a few quick passages from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5^th ed., or DSM-V, on major depressive disorder (MDD) and how it is operationally defined. One of the diagnostic criteria for MDD is as follows: “feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day (not merely self-reproach or guilt about being sick.”  Also, a specifier (a sort of “added feature” that may present itself in tandem with the primary disorder) of MDD is “with mood-congruent psychotic features”, which is defined as follows: “the content of all delusions and hallucinations is consistent with the typical depressive themes of personal inadequacy, guilt, disease, death, nihilism, or deserved punishment.”

Though I’m obviously referring to real-life examples here, these are the sort of themes that manifest themselves in the physical world within the game world of Silent Hill. James’ depression is so great that it not only consumes his life, it manifests as an unconscious desire to punish himself for the crimes he has committed. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our old friend Pyramid Head, who relentlessly stalks James throughout the entire game and forces him to relive the painful moments he has turned a blind eye to again and again. There’s debate among Silent Hill fans as to whether Pyramid Head is exclusive to James’ mind or if he is part of the town itself; personally, I believe that he is part of the town. He takes the form of the classic executioner with the hooded head, as evidenced in both the painting in the historical society and in the image on the gallows in the prison. He follows James right up until the end of the game, and in an utterly shocking moment, another pyramid head appears to fight you! This is once again a manifestation of James' guilt, this time however over being powerless to stop the death(s) of Maria.

And as a side note, yeah, about that the painting in the historical society…oh man, that moment when you walk in and see that painting for the first time…what an absolutely chilling experience. I distinctly remember my blood running cold the first time I saw it. And this game just had so many moments like that. Finding Pyramid Head’s lair in the labyrinth, emerging into the nightmare hospital, hearing the execution in the prison yard…there were so many moments that just radiated within me as pure fear.

Gameplay wise, it’s not a very difficult game, even on the harder difficulties. Some of the puzzles do get extremely cryptic on the harder levels, but in general I never felt as though it was the kind of game that was very challenging to get through. Personally, I think the greater challenge as a player was to get through the game without shutting of your console and burying the disc in your backyard because you feared the evil might somehow escape from the disc and bring the nightmare world into your own reality. Well, at least that’s how it was with me. 

Despite my intense fear, this game is still such a joy to play and it always finds ways to disturb and creep me out even to this day. It always makes me want to dig further into the lore of Silent Hill and the history of the town’s dark past. I think the 1st and 3rd games focused more on that aspect, making it more about cults and demons and Gods from other planes of existence (and to my knowledge, that’s what other games in the series that I haven’t played have done as well). 2, however, takes the concept of “demons” and makes it more figurative and abstract, and that's why it's always been my favorite. Silent Hill is more of a state of mind than an actual place. A state of mind where anything can happen and all of the fear, anxiety, guilt, and shame we feel is free to run loose and torment us. It makes us feel as though we are all in the grips and paranoia and insanity itself, and that is truly the scariest thing of all.