NOTE: This article will generally be spoiler-free, up until the warning sign near the end of the article
Long and winding debates over the scariest games have persisted ever since the sudden rise of gaming in general, dating back to the blocky but colorful era of the 80s with the release of ‘3D Monster Maze.’
In the 90s, after the overwhelming success of Capcom’s ‘Resident Evil,’ the first Silent Hill game stood out as a slow, atmospheric psychological horror game, unlike Capcom’s action-heavy franchise.
But through the general public’s search for the scariest, in 2001, the original iteration of Team Silent’s seminal masterpiece ‘Silent Hill 2,’ evoked a different kind of horror, the one that challenges you to look deeper within yourself.
A quick summary
Silent Hill 2 follows James Sunderland in search of his late wife, Mary, after receiving a letter from her that suggests that she is still alive. Mary claims she is in their “special place,” but James does not know that he must go through literal hell to find his answers.
The town turns itself into James’ personal hell, manifesting monsters born out of his guilt, trauma, and repressed desires during the time when Mary was ill. He meets other individuals drawn to the town, namely Angela and Eddie, who are also searching for answers of their own after the tragic turn in their lives, and Laura, a little girl who was very close to James’ late wife.
James eventually meets Maria, a lookalike of his wife but with a different personality, who constantly provokes him about the things he’s done while trying to unleash his selfish side, as the game emphasizes the genre’s psychological side more.
In my restless dreams…
I finished the original game almost three years ago, during a tumultuous time in my life, and one of the ways that I coped was through video games. My first experience with the franchise was Silent Hill: Origins, but at the time, I was too young to understand its themes and symbolism.
But when I got a bit older, I finally started to understand the point of the games, seeing as how they’re for people, not just looking for a quick scare. The game’s most profound effect on me was that it eventually allowed me to imagine myself in James’s shoes, especially after finishing the remake.
After much thought, I realized I would not see the same things James would. The monsters that the town will be manifested out of my own mind would be very different, and the game revealed parts of me that I haven’t yet confronted at the time.
At the time, I was very angry with myself because things weren’t really swinging in my favor, and without getting into too much detail, it was certainly one of the times in my life when I felt hopeless and drowned in my thoughts almost every day.
What Silent Hill 2 did for me was show me that it is okay to confront your own issues, and what James went through in the game is the same for everyone going through a difficult period in their lives.
The characters in the game, James, Angela, and Eddie, were broken people in search of a way out of their predicaments, but the town offered them the opposite: it forced them to confront their deepest, darkest secrets, with the way out left entirely in their hands.
Beyond horror
Horror, as a genre, is designed to evoke your sense of fear, but it can also explore the human condition through subtle reflections while unleashing our deepest anxieties through imagery and sound.
Horror also taps into our primal fears and the fragility of the human mind, as the game is an allegory for the constant war happening inside your head that is presented in a manner as if you’re going through literal hell.
The Silent Hill games and their narratives were always born of the manifestations of the characters’ deepest, darkest psyches, but the 2nd game was always the one people raved about for its story, and somehow, we can relate to James and his struggles.
With this, it’s not hard to see that Silent Hill 2 is ultimately an allegory for the struggles we go through when we’re mentally struggling, especially when we are in a spot where we feel helpless and like nothing can really get us out of our personal hell.
**VERY MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD**
But in one of the endings for both the original game and the remake, James ultimately accepts his guilt while finding the strength to move on and lead a better life after reading Mary’s last letter to her as he leaves the town with Laura, deciding to live for himself and leave his personal hell behind.
What this ending represents for all of us, not just for James, is that we must find the courage within ourselves and keep hoping we can escape it.
I know what it felt like to be on that end, and my short message to everyone is: don’t doubt yourself. I believe everyone has the ability to make it through the worst of things, even when everything seems hopeless.
