When discussing the games that have had the biggest impact for pushing video game storytelling forward in the past two decades, it’s almost inevitable that Silent Hill 2 will be mentioned. Despite the series’ absence since 2014, the legacy of Silent Hill 2 has endured to the point where it is still considered one of the best horror games of all time.
Coming out in 2001, the first major year for the PlayStation 2 and one of the biggest years in gaming history, Silent Hill 2 had some major competition. That's including Konami’s own Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, which itself was also making huge strides in terms of pushing video games as a storytelling medium forward. For many newer horror franchises, releasing in such a tumultuous year would leave them at a major disadvantage. However even against such tough competition, Silent Hill 2 managed to become one of the year’s best games.
What Inspired Silent Hill 2?
Despite being developed within two years of the first game’s release, Silent Hill 2 is a major step up from the PlayStation 1 original in terms of storytelling and game design. While the original game was definitely ahead of its time with fully voice-acted FMV sequences and early attempts at cinematic storytelling similar to Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill 2 pushed things even further with a heavier emphasis on story, emergent use of symbolism, and visual metaphor.
The initial concepts for Silent Hill 2’s themes of punishment were inspired by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the story of a man who kills and robs an innocent pawnbroker in an attempt to liberate himself from poverty. The novel deals with the man’s struggles with guilt and paranoia as he faces the consequences of his actions. The idea to adapt these themes to a Silent Hill game came after Takayoshi Sato, the CGI director of the first game, read the novel and pitched the game’s rough outline to Team Silent a few months after the release of the first game. Hirayuki Owaku would go on to write the story for the game itself.
It’s important to note that, at this time and for its entire existence as an internal studio at Konami, Team Silent was only a small group of developers. The majority of the team consisting of younger staff members that constantly came and went from the team. At this time, series creator and director of the first game, Keiichiro Toyama, had even left Konami to join Sony’s Japan Studio.
That said, with the team having decided on the core ideas for the game’s story and themes, it was on lead artist Masahiro Ito’s shoulders to design the game’s visual aesthetic, for which Silent Hill 2 was inspired by the works of artists such as Francis Bacon and Andrew Wyeth. Ito has also cited the works of film director’s such as David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock as inspirations, the 1990 psychological horror film Jacob’s Ladder was one of the game’s biggest inspirations, as it was for the original game just two years earlier.
What Made Silent Hill 2 So Special
When Silent Hill 2 launched on September 24, 2001, the game was met with immediate critical acclaim, instantly becoming billed as one of the greatest horror games ever made. This is mainly due to Team Silent's incredible execution of its heavy themes of trauma, guilt, and mental illness through both its characters, and the detail put into the town of Silent Hill.
Unlike the first game, Silent Hill 2's version of the fictional town was represented as a manifestation of protagonist James Sunderland's psyche. Many of the enemies the player faces along their journey representing different elements of James' repressed darker nature. One such example is the now iconic Pyramid Head, who has become something of a mascot for Konami and the Silent Hill franchise, appearing in almost every subsequent game after Silent Hill 4: The Room, and both film adaptations.
Pyramid Head, or "Red Pyramid Thing" as it's referred to as by James, is a physical manifestation of the punishment James seeks as he returns to the town. Hence why it carries around a large knife, an instrument used often to symbolize suicide in the Silent Hill franchise.
This symbolism also finds its place in Angela, the first character James meets as he is about to enter the town. James initially meets Angela at the cemetery, where she reveals that she is looking for her mother. James later finds Angela in the Blue Creeks Apartments building, contemplating suicide, before he quickly tries to connect with her and takes the knife from her possession. The next time James runs into Angela, he finds her cowering in fear while being faced by a grotesque monster resembling her father, where it is revealed that she killed her father with a knife after suffering years of abuse from him.
James encounters Angela again later, at her wit's end in the burning Lakeside Hotel, where she is seen between two dead male bodies, made to represent her father and brother. She thanks James for saving her earlier, however she claims that she does not wish to be saved again, and after James refuses to return her knife she ascends the burning stairs of the hotel claiming "You see it too? For me... It's always like this."
Angela's characterization throughout Silent Hill 2 perfectly encapsulate's Team Silent's desire to convey a realistic depiction of grief and trauma, combined with a surprisingly hard-hitting representation of mental illness. Even moreso than James' story, the narrative surrounding Angela in Silent Hill 2 more harshly depicts the game's cynical, hopeless nature (outside a few of its multiple endings), which is necessary to tell a story with such heavy themes.
The Legacy of Silent Hill 2
While the game recieved major critical acclaim at launch, Silent Hill 2 has only become more renowned with age. Many still look to the game as the magnum opus of the survival horror genre, blending psychological horror gameplay with a truly beautiful narrative. The game is often considered to be one of the best games ever made, and has aged rather well for a very early PS2-era horror game, outside of its admittedly charming voice acting.
The only issue with recommending Silent Hill 2 in 2021 is that there is really no perfect version to recommend to newcomers of the franchise. In 2012, Konami and Hijinx Studios released the Silent Hill HD Collection which included both Silent Hill 2 and 3 with redubbed voice acting, 720p visuals, and trophy/achievement support. While one would think this is the go-to version of the game, it is often regarded as one of the worst remasters of all time as the game was built using an unfinished build for Silent Hill 2. This means the remaster is full of bugs and glitches that constantly disrupt gameplay. Simply put, this version of Silent Hill 2 is not how Silent Hill 2 should be played.
Unfortunately, the only ways to play Silent Hill 2 today are through either an original PlayStation 2 or Xbox copy, or through the PC version, which has been the subject of many restoration mods that have done an excellent job remastering and preserving the game. Regardless, this is one of the most important horror games of all time and should not be skipped, as Silent Hill 2 remains a masterpiece even 20 years later.