Hello everyone, and welcome to this
very special Silent Hill 2 analysis video. In it, we'll be going through the entire game
and I'll be commentating over it as we go. I've been secretly working on this video ever since I saw
Mathewmatosis' 6-hour long talk show commentary, and like he did in that video, I'll be discussing topics ranging from mechanics, story, visuals,
development dramas, sound design and so on. There's no concrete structure to this discussion, and I'll be jumping between subjects
as they become relevant. It goes without saying that this video
spoils the entirety of Silent Hill 2, so I advise playing before watching if you're able to. I'm AerisAesthetics. Let's get started. After the opening cinematic,
we're thrust into the main menu. Nothing too extraordinary, but I want to note that the background image of the menu
is an image of water. Water comes to play a lot in this game as you'll see. After starting a new game, the player is
introduced to James Sunderland in this cut scene. This cut scene sets the template
which every character introduction will follow. Everyone of them will have the introduced character
in an environment to that reflects their character overall, and where they are in that moment in the story. James's introduction sees him draped in shadows,
observing his own reflection in a dirty bathroom. The scene suggests that
there's more to him than meets the eye. The game's art director, Takayoshi Sato, has explained the importance of
using key shots to present characters. And the two he cited as the most important are the introductory shot - which provides the player
with their first impression of that character, and the second is reaction shot - which
gives the audience the definition of that character based on their behavior to distinct events. This bathroom was the first area modeled for this game
and it sets the visual style for the rest of the game. The game's creators have stated that
all visuals were designed to both attract and repel. The visuals themselves were inspired
by the work of artists like Francis Bacon, Rembrandt, and Andrew Wyeth. Specifically, the monster designs seem
to have come from Bacon, the lighting from Rembrandt,
and the sight of the town from Wyeth. Like the best media, Silent Hill is a work that pilfers ideas and concepts
from a wide range of influences, and then mix them together
to create something wholy unique. After Mary stops talking, James will dawn some exposition on the player
to explain his motivations. And while this is going on, I'd like to talk a bit
more about his overall introduction, and specifically, his introduction as a horror protagonist. The music that surrounded him in the opening
sets a very distinct tone that the player's introductory thought of James
was filtered through. The reading of the letter
and James's subsequent ruminations give the player an insight into his mind. What we immediatly gather from James
is that he's a vulnerable everyman. There are typically three classic horror protagonists, and
they're each one typically attributed to specific cultures because they reflect the values of those cultures. There's the American protagonist, this is the one
who overcomes the horror and lives to tell the tale; there's the Asian protagonist, this is the one
that fails and gets devoured by the horror; and then there's the European protagonist - the one
which cannot be separated from the horror. An example of the American protagonist is
Ash from "Evil Dead"; the Asian protagonist is
Kazuyuki Asakawa from the first Ring book, *spoiler alert* he survives but the horror he faces still devours him
because he can't overcome it by moral means; and the European protagonist is doctor Frankenstein,
which is pretty self-explanatory. James Sunderland is a weird mix
between all three of these depending greatly on how you play through the game. The only constant of these character tropes
evident in him is the European because no matter how his journey ends,
it began with him killing his wife. That reveals in a plot twist later on
and it's a good thing too because it would have made it impossible
to relate to the guy. The first significant action available to the player
is picking up the map I have a feeling that the developers had a clear set
of priorities when deciding the game world and I think what they put on top of that list was
making it feel like a real place. What was brought directly over from Silent Hill 1
is the map being mapped to the ⃤ button. A very important button is solely dedicated to the map because the developers figured
the player would be frequently looking at it. Another thing in the car, maybe,
is Mary's corpse. Her being there is dependent on
James's motivation for coming to Silent Hill and that motivation is determined by
how the player plays the game. If they're self-destructive
then James's burrowed corpse, if they're not, then James probably left her back home. I'll go deeper into this in a few hours so for now, just remember that the car contains
a Schrodinger's Mary's corpse. We've officially begone the long track to Silent Hill. The reason this scene exists is because the developers wanted the player not to turn back
after seeing the monsters. They in a fact wanted the players to have a
*Well, I've already made it this far* attitude. If that was all this scene did I guess
I'd call that a success, but it has more functions which
makes it a good opening section. First of all, it isolates James, which is important to
the development of a relationship with him as a, say, horror protagonist. Second, it's long enough for the player
to become familiar with the tank control, since, all they'll be doing is walking. And third, it functions as a magic circle. A magic circle is a concept in story telling which refers to the place
where the audience leaves their world behind. In theater, this is seen as the pulling of the drapes; in cinema, it's the dimming of the light; and in music, it's the soft and understated
sound of near silence. What all of these do is
force you to block out external stimuli and focus solely on that piece of media
you're consuming. Traveling through this fog is very mechanically
shallow, but it enforces much of the experience because it's here where the player's
first impressions are solidify. Speaking of first impressions, the one we get
of Angela is that to say, physically unimpressive girl, who wears concealing clothing and seems to not
put any effort into making herself look attractive. If you thing that's a job at her expense, rest easy. Angela will later on be revealed to be the victim of
repeated sexual abuse by her father and her brother. A common condition of people
who have suffered crimes of a sexual nature is that collapse of their sex drive, and then abhorrent to the idea of
themselves as object of affection. This is a defense mechanism
that manifested by a guilt complex by which the victim blames themselves for
the wrongdoing committed against their person. None of this is really evident to the player
at this point, however, all they know is that Angela is looking for her mother. If they went to the trouble of reading the game manual, they'll know that Angela has since childhood, convinced herself that she'll never be happy, that she ran away from home shortly
after high school graduation, only to be dragged back home by her father
and that she ran away from home again and this time, she wounded up in Silent Hill. If we compare James and Angela then
an interesting juxtaposition exists since their retrospective and niches. James is brought about by his guilt from killing his wife, Angela is brought about by her guilt
from killing her father and maybe her brother. One of these murders is more
morally justified than the other but the town doesn't distinguish
between the two in any meaningful way. I think the only way to survive the Silent Hill 2 ordeal
is to embrace love, as corny as that sounds. All the survival ending scenarios for James,
excluding that jokes ending, sees him direct his love to someone. Angela is seemingly incapable of external or internal
affection since her story is the Asian horror story, about a character who has succumbed to the horror. She might perceive herself to be the Europian type but,
she really isn't. She's an unfortunate victim and it makes her a very
tragic figure, because she didn't ask for any of this. James's way forward will be to accept his guilt
and focus his love on Laura as per Mary's wish. Angela's way forward is probably to come to grips
with what she did and learn to love herself, but because of her psychological scarring, she's unable to care for herself or to see herself
as a creature worthy of, or desiring affection. What's really admirable about this game in retrospect is the emotional maturity of
its subject matter and their presentations. The core goal of the developers was
to get at the heart of psychological pain and having multiple characters in the town meant that
they could strike that goal from several angles. I think the reason that the developers
opted to include Angela so early on was because they wanted the player to have
a confrontation with another character before seeing any of the monsters because it might have been jarring
if they just suddenly appear an hour or so in. This also helps frame the game as one about people
and problems, and not one about killing monsters, It's in this part of the track where the player
is able to pick up the chainsaw in New Game +. The chainsaw is the reference to
"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" movies. Film was a very important
influence on this series in general and a particular note are David Cronenberg,
David Fincher, and the most important David of all, David Lynch,
we'll get back to him in a second. Two more significant film makers
that influenced this game were Adrian Lyne, his film Jacob's Ladder is the closest
you'll ever get to his satisfying Silent Hill movie; and finally Alfred Hitchcock, his biggest influence was
probably the game's impressionistic presentation of graphic violence. David Lynch is the biggest influence
throughout this entire series and his dream-like ambiance is something
Team Silent capitalizes on to present their stories. In my Silent Hill video I said that "That game was a Lynch-ian horror game
with psychological window dressings." Silent Hill 2 is a different beast. This is a psychological horror game through
and through and it has Lynch-ian atmosphere. The change in priority is largely a resolve of
some restructuring of Team Silent in between games. Takayoshi Sato picked the story which he based on
Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment"', which, by the way, is really long and
takes about a hundred pages to get going. The novel sees an impoverished Russian student
named Raskolnikov convinces himself that exceptional men have the right to commit a crime
if they have something of worth to offer humanity. He points the figures like Napoleon
as prime example of this as: He can kill thousands and
still be remembered as a great man. Raskolnikov considers himself to be an exceptional man and he goes on to kill an unlikable old
pawnbroker under the moral justification that he could use her money to better service society. An immediate link between the two stories
is the theme of just murder but, there's a lot more to it than that. Like Raskolnikov, James was faced a plethora of moral
and philosophical challenges in his rode to redemption. And like "Crime and Punishment",
Silent Hill 2 addresses the themes of criminality, justice, existence, suffering,
violence, sanity, love and redemption. Other writer who has impact to this game includes
Stephen King, Kobo Abe, Dean Koontz and Junji Ito. Funnily enough, the medium which seems to have had
the least impact on the developers was video games. The only ones the developers mentioned are
Alone in the Dark, Silent Hill 1 and Tomb Raider, and that one is only listed because they looked at it
to study how to make three dimensional worlds. When the player reaches town they'll start
their journey much like Harry did in Silent Hill 1. He saw what he thought was his daughter
and chase her through the town but James will see a monster whose
figure he mistakes for that of a human and will then be chasing Laura around later on. There's a big difference between the two games in
the clarity which they use to present the player's goals. As nonsensical and obtuse as it's sometimes seen,
Silent Hill 1 was more straightforward about its plot because it didn't have any
grand reveals to hide from the player. In that game, Harry would get directions
to the school and go to the school. In this game, James sees a picture
of the Lakeview Hotel on fire and then goes to the hotel an hour later,
and it's not on fire. There's another difference here that I already mentioned which is that Silent Hill 1 didn't concern itself
with psychology as the driver of the story. The town was manifesting Alessa's nightmares but the plot was always focused on
Harry's search for his daughter. Here, precisely why the player goes to say the
Wood Side Apartment building isn't dreadly apparent. And the lines between reality and
the manifestations are a lot blurrier in this game because the problem James tackles are more intimately
tied to his core being than Harry's [inaudible] were to him. As a sequel to Silent Hill 1,
this game does a lot of things right. It brings back the core gameplay but uses it to present
the more emotionally mature and engaging narrative. There are a few tweaks like the joystick, playstyle
option, blocking in combat and ammo clip sizes but for the most part, Silent Hill 2
mirrors the core of its predecessor That being said, here's a big difference. This game is taking about 15 minutes
to introduce us to the first monster. The short lead up to the engagement
has the radio emitting static but before I talk about the radio I wanna talk a bit a bout this monster
specifically and symbolism in general. The monster is called the Lying Figure
and it was designed by Masahiro Ito after he saw co-worker arriving to work
wearing a hoodie with his hands in his pocket walking to the beat of the music
he was listening to with his walker. And the popular consensus is that it's either James's
perception of his wife Mary in her last stage of life as a miserable creature
that thing confined within her own body, or, that it represents James's view of himself as
something that can't have sex and wry in agony. Symbolism is a big thing in this game and
it makes any objective analysis on it pretty tricky. There are some things we know to be true because
the developers have gone on records stating them but a sizable chunk of this game has no solid answers. The interpretations we'll be using
are built on this hierarchy. Everything that the developers
have said is taken as truth. Everything subsequent games and media
have said is discarded out of hand. Every interpretation, out of discuss, is framed
in the greater context of the game and I'll make an effort to separate
them from what we know to be true. Additionally, I'll try to present more
than one interpretation when applicable, and I'll be assuming that when the developers have
knocked on on record to explain a phenomenon, that- that phenomenon was
designed to symbolize sex and death, the spine of this game's psychological horror, without being overly designed and with a clear intention that it'd be interpreted by different people
to mean different things. We've passed this moment now but if you rewind you'll see that the engagement began
with the monster hovering over a corpse. I take it to mean that this monster represents Mary
because the corpse is likely that of James's. Many corpses we'll come across are
and this reading suggests that James saw Mary as a hostile but miserable
creature that was sucking the life out of him. That's an interpretation that
supported by James's actor Guy Cihi and I'll elaborate more on the James - Mary
relationship as we progress. Supporting this hypothesis is the fact that
the Lying Figure attacks with a sort of acid spit which might symbolize Mary's verbal abuse. Don't take this interpretation is a concrete but keep
that in mind when I bring up the relationship later on. The radio we just picked up is a mechanic
brought over from the first game and its purpose in amplifying the horror
is not the same as it was back then. When James is close to an enemy
the radio will emit static to warn the player. Alfred Hitchcock explained the building
of suspense in an interesting way and I think he would have been proud of how much
miles this game gets out of the radio alone. Here's Hitchcock's explanation paraphrased: Give an audience a 5-minute scene followed by the
explosion of a bomb that kills the character on screen, and you might startle them and get them
emotionally stimulated for 5 seconds; but give the audience that same 5-minute scene,
after showing them that there's a bomb under the table, and they'll be gripped for
the entirety of the 5-minute scene. The radio tells the player that
there are enemies in a given area which removes their ability to startle the player. This game was designed to get under your skin
and the horror was designed to be lingering. The radio builds anxiety in every area it emits static in and that anxiety directs much of the player's
approach and navigating through the area. They're likely to toggle the weapon they want
to use and make sure it has ammunition. They're then likely to slow down and
take special care around corners. Enemies in this game are generally not much of a thread and I'd guess that the average player can
get through the game with fewer than 5 deaths. But because they're tricked into playing
slower and immersing themselves deeper they'll start to manifest themselves
into the game's space. And it makes everything seem more terrifying which
naturally increases the anxiety levels of the player. The limit visibility has the symbiotic relationship with
the radio and they amplify and vindicate each other. The limited visibility is famously
the resolved technologically limitations. By hiding distant objects behind fog or darkness, Team Silent could increase the quality of the
graphical presentation of what is shown on screen. "Horror is the unknown!" as the popular saying goes. And knowing that there's something out there
which cannot be seen is pretty spooky. The radio removes startles from the game
and replaces them with lingering dread akin to the bomb under the table. It also helps the player
navigates through the environments because it can display
dialogues from different characters. I don't recall that ever happening in the first game but,
since I'm not 100% confident in my recollection, I'm not telling that it's an innovative
addition to the radio as a mechanic. What I will say is that it makes a lot of sense. The monsters in town are manifested from James's
psyche and so are the voices he hears on the radio. Exactly how much control
James has over the manifestations and how much of this experience
has been decided is up for debate. But in the gameplay perspective, James is
running through a pre-designed gauntlet. There are no significant changes in the major beat
of the story so we can assume that what happens was designed by the town to happen the way it does; Or, that the town is reflecting the emotional state
James finds himself in and that it devolves naturally but that the game just wasn't designed to generate content based on choices outside of the endings. I lean on the first interpretation simply
because it's easier to rationalize and to me, it makes James's journey a bit loftier. Changing subject again to the monsters,
there are two Lying Figures coming up which break the rule of the radio warning the player, and present two radically different
approaches to scaring the player. This one is placed under the car to startle them and
this one is dressed in James's clothing to unnerve them. Jumpscares are often referred to as cheap,
but since they're just a tool, criticizing them on their usually
poor execution is a bit unfair. What a jumpscare can accomplish
is that drastically cut the tension and dramatically shifts the state of the story
by changing the tone in an instant. In addition to that, they can be used to
present an error of uncertainty and insecurity. The Lying Figure scouring from
underneath the car looked pretty ridiculous but it's able to get the player moving faster
to the dead end with the corpse and the key I think placing the Lying Figure under the car
has resulted in several people failing to notice that the corpse was not that of a human being
and that it was wearing James's clothes In the great scheme of thing, this isn't
a huge deal but it's a small touch I like because it rewards repeat playthroughs. The fact that the Lying Figure was
wearing James's clothes suggests that either the Lying Figures in general represent James or that, what I said earlier is true and that
these things was designed to be interpreted. Something the Lying Figure jumpscare exemplifies is that the enemies were designed to animate their
bodies in unconventional and painful looking ways. Whenever an enemy attacks James, they seem to be struggling against the natural
joint placement of their bodies to do so. We've made our way to the Wood Side Apartments, and since the first thing we do after picking up the map
is to save, let's talk about manual save points. If you've been following this channel for some time
you know I'm a big fan of these. What's happened since Silent Hill 2 launched is that the industry has whole sales abandoned manual save
points which is a movement I am not on board with. Very few games launched without auto-save and very few games that launched with auto-save make the effort to have the auto-save
inform the player's experience. In the great scheme of thing, every aspect of a game
is a tool to drive player behavior. Creating specific conditions for preserving progress
can make a player more conscious of their progress. It can make them more protective of the progress,
which makes them more actively engaged in the game, because they have to put in
the effort to preserve it. Manual save point can also drive the level design,
the story and the tension cycle. Because of the inventory in the game's
focus on resource management, Silent Hill 2 is pretty much
split into chunks by the save points. Each time the player passes one day, resets the risk-reward cycle of progressing and get to take a breath. Arriving a new save point is usually very relaxing and since the feeling of relieves is tied to them
mechanically, the player is always aiming to progress. This gets them to try a bit harder
when the going gets tough, because letting the controller down and taking a break
really isn't an option until they've secured their progress. The enemy we just killed was a Mannequin. These guys have code in them which tells them
to stay still until the flashlight illuminates them, which can make countering them pretty spooky. In this case however, the Mannequin was actually
spawned in after James picked up the flashlight. This tells us that these developers prioritize
the scene playing out of [inaudible] intended instead of how the player might wanted to. But, this is actually in service to something. The dress we pick the flashlight up from
is identical to the one which Mary wore and putting this Mannequin here,
therefore accomplishes the same goal as the Lying Figure which scoured
from underneath the car earlier. Both distract the player from
what's right in front of them Something I couldn't find any interview or statement
from may developed on was the level design. To pick up a key, James is going to go
quite far away from the save point, but he'll still be relatively save. As each gauntlet progresses there will be more
challenges between the player and their save points and fewer resources in between. The resources are a tricky implementation in and of themselves. From the first three gauntlets in this game, this apartment building, the hospital and the prison, the player will pick up a new gun. Each one has an optimal utility but the ammunition for them was scattered
in a manner that doesn't necessarily reflect that. Often times, the player picks up shotgun shells in areas
where they're likely to want to use the rifle et cetera. After entering that door, the player
is going to try and pick up a key but Laura is going to kick it away from their reach. What I like to pay close attention to
in that engagement is the fake choice. When the player approaches the key
and chooses to engage, they're prompted with a
"Do you want to pick it up?" message. This is a fake choice in that there's no way
to progress any further without saying yes, but it's a good fake choice because it adds
a bit of tension to James's attempt. If pressing to engage has resulted in a cut scene,
we'd be going through the motion that since we "chose" to try. Any ill affect of that attempt
will resonate much stronger Giving this fake choice also makes the player suspicious
and thus, anxious while they watch what happens. We've now officially introduced
to the third character in this game. Fourth if you include Mary. Laura's introduction centers on her being a brat, and as we further progress through the game
we'll find out why that is. Laura is in Silent Hill to look for Mary who she met
when they were together in a hospital. They grew close and Laura started to despise James. It's quite possible that Mary built that hatred
in Laura by badmouthing into her, but it's also possible that Laura knew who he was
by the photographs Mary showed her, and she noticed how sad Mary was
waiting for him to visit her. Laura was designed to be
the player's navigator and to that end, objectives frequently revolve around finding her. This apartment was apparently an odd to
how easy it is to get guns in the United States. That's why the gun was literally in a shopping cart. Pretty funny, but it actually reflects a interesting
culture divine between East and West. If this game was made in the West, the gun might accidentally have been made to empower James. The Western conceptualization of the gun
is that it's a tool to protect one's liberty. But since this game was made in the East,
we see a gun through a filter of -uh- culture, founded not on enlightened philosophy,
but Shinto Buddism. James's empowerment only comes to the end
when he internalizes his guilt, and the gun suits just here to characterize him. There're used to emphasize how vulnerable he is
which makes player empathizes with him. James is not a skilled marksman and does not have an apparent knack for guns besides knowing how to reload them, aim, and press the trigger. Combat is clunky and resources are scarce. Players will likely try to avoid enemy engagement as many as they can. The few times when guns are pulled out are usually after every other alternative is exhausted. The players might be cornered in a hallway or is fighting a boss. There's a certain dread assigned to the gun with aids in our understanding of James as an everyman. Speaking of dread and being cornered in a hallway, Ladies and gentlemen, Pyramid Head. This is a very understated introduction to him considering just how iconic he's become, but it's very keeping in line with the rest of the game. The red aura and the ominous presence makes it very clear that there's something very different about him. We also know from how crazy the radio has gone that he's formidable, and since the next objective is to reach his side of the hallway, The player is aware that they'll be seeing more of him as they proceed. This is another instance of James' model being used as a corpse. The set up here of the television, the single chair and the pose of the sitter is reproduced in the end where James watches the video tape. If there's anything symbolic behind this diorama, I'd say that James' mind is telling us that he's yet not ready to receive the truth that he's killed his wife. What is kind of frustrating about exploring Silent Hill is that the very few concrete answers we do have have all come years after release and usually from the same few individuals. A lot of projects, for example: Metal Gear Solid gets sticky onto specific individuals and while there are certainly cases like Metal Gear Solid where those individuals were indispensable as a creative force of the project, There's also no denying the fact that video games are a huge undertaking and that outside of the indie scene, maybe Metal Gear Solid there's really no such thing as a 'singular vision' And that's certainly the case for the Silent Hill series. Unfortunately, most of the team leaders have disappeared and I mean.. - swallowed by the earth - disappeared. Here in Room 202, we're going to talk a bit about Kinesthetics. When James is low on health, the controller will vibrate in a manner that suggests his heartbeats. This is a non-intrusive method of informing the players of James' health. Another instance of Kinesthetics is the hole in the wall. First, the scene is set: the player approaches the room and there are moths flying about. They approach the wall and there's a green light cast on it. On the bed, there's several dead butterflies. In the background, there's a graving metallic music. Then upon approaching the hole, the player gets another fake choice, which completes the set-up. Upon sticking his hand in, everything gets silent. There's a controller vibration accompanying that reaction. From this hole, James gets the key to the grandfather clock. Silent Hill 1 concerns itself to a great deal about the theme of metamorphosis and parasites, and those are fitting themes for horror stories to explore. The butterflies from that game is reintroduced in this game, but instead of signifying change, they signify death and rebirth. This entire scene of sticking James' hand in the unknown plays with an conceptualization of horror, which this game's translator, Jeremy Blaustien, put quite elegantly. He was brought in during the early conceptualization of this game as a creative consultant. And according to him (clearing throat >.>) "For humans, the concept of personal space is very important. We have our bodies, of course, that's our most personal space." "And within that body, some spaces are more personal than the other." "Beyond our bodies, extending out around us is more personal space: our rooms, our bathrooms where we do our private stuff, our work place, etc." So you can easily see that the concept of privacy is related to the concept of personal space, but there are other psychologically related concepts as well. Mary Douglas in the her world famous book, Purity and Danger, talks about human societies concepts of internal and external: us vs. them, in vs. out. And how it relates to our ideas of purity and impurity, safety and danger. Simply put: we want to feel safe in our personal space and we want our personal space to be clean and pure. In contrast, that which is external to us, removed from us can be easily more considered as impure, dirty, threatening. That is the source of fear. An external source that threatens us whether it be a sharking swimming in the ocean, a terrorist living in a cave, or a killer banging on our door. Then what is horror?
Well, to Jeremy Blaustien, Horror is when it crosses into our personal space When that place which is our personal space, our pure sanctuary is invaded by the impure and the external,
that is when the horror happens. The Boogie Man in the night is fear.
The Boogie Man under our bed or in our closet is horror. Seeing a person with a twisted stomp of a hand pumping blood is fear.
Seeing our own is horror. Seeing a maggot crawling on a lump of meat is fear.
Seeing one crawling out of our infected wound is horror. So many great film makers, writers, and game creators understood this. Stephen King with his shit resolves and dream catcher.
David Cronenberg with his twisted transformed bodies. Silent Hill 4: The room using the concept of invading personal space...
The list is endless. To summarize, a killer with a knife, machete or chainsaw that is about to break down the door is fright. Finding that the killer is already in the house is horror.
Discovering that the killer is actually you - that is psychological horror. And if you noticed, that's actually the arc that Pyramid Head undergoes. First, James saw him as an ominous creature located just out of reach from James: fright. Then, James will come be to stuck in the same room as him as the two duke it out for survival: horror. And later on, James uncovers that
Pyramid Head is a manifestation of his own desire for punishment: psychological horror. This clock is my absolutely least favorite puzzle of the entire game, so if it's all the same to you, we're going to fast forward over it. It's not that it's poorly designed.. It's just that it takes a long time to solve and it's not that really rewarding to do so. We're about to save again, so I'm going to talk about save points again. I touched on it lightly earlier, but there's an inherent risk and reward system integrated into manual save points, which forces players to be more mindful of their resources. Ideally, all mechanics in the game should work together in this .. sorta grand pocket watch complex structure where everything adds to everything else. And there's no system that isn't serving a purpose. I also mentioned that the feeling of relief when finding save points made players treasure progressing, but the equally positive side effect to that is that the further the player moves away from the save points, the more stressed they get because of the risk they're taking. That feeling of anxiety is transported over to long intervals between the save points, and paradoxically, being stressed about continuing makes people that much more invested in continuing. It's sort of a Skinner box move, but because people like Silent Hill, they don't refer to it as such. Final note on save points: because the game doesn't feature any instant satisfaction goals, saving works to drive engagement. The more you have to lose, the more engaged you have become. If this game had auto-saves, the simplistic control scheme and the limited interactivity might have had a harder time keeping the players engaged. There aren't as many adrenaline-fueled quick driven moments per minute as in a more conventional video game, So the few moments of those that they are are contrasted against the many that are not, and that scarcity makes them more resonant. When Silent Hill 2 has you in a clutch, you take it seriously. Since we saved, we've effectively reset the tension cycle, but since Team Silent were good developers, they decided upon a trick to ram it straight up again. And of course, I'm talking about this Pyramid Head encounter. This is one of the few viscerally disturbing moments in the game. Unlike its predecessors, Silent Hill 2 mostly abandons graphically disturbing visuals in favor of suggestive imagery. The corpses the players walks pass usually have their faces covered by the camera angle or some piece of geometry. And even this scene is a dialed-down version of what it could be. You noticed that there was no physical penetration going on. Pyramid Head was dominating over the mannequins, but the focus was on the idea of him as a domineering figure rather than on the visual grotesqueness the animators could have gotten away with. Censorship rules would, of course, have restricted that anyway, but it's nice to see that a strong discipline of the developers on this project was to only go far enough with visuals to firmly present ideas. Stephen King's hierarchy of fear is terror, horror, grossed out. Terror in this sense refers to the suspense before the reveal of the monster. Horror is referring to the shock of seeing the monster. And grossed out is at the bottom, and it simply refers to the grotesqueness of the monster. Ideally, he wants his scenes to be about terror, but if he can't, he'd go for horror. And if he can't, he resolves to grossed out. In that framework, this scene opens on horror since the idea is more disturbing than the actual graphical nature of it. But after the horror has set in, it goes up the King hierarchy to terror. Pyramid Head stalked on his way out of the apartment as seemingly feel for James. James' response was to unload a magazine clip on him which made him leave, but his presence still looms large. And the player's every step from this point on is taking with the knowledge that they might well be facing him soon. Switching from Stephen King to Hitchcock, the bomb under the table we talked about earlier has become the Pyramid Head in the apartment building. Since Pyramid Head is a major character in the game, I'm going to devote the next 7 minutes to discussing him. In the pantheon of over analyzed video game phenomena, Pyramid Head is Zeus. So I wouldn't begrudge you for grumbling at the concept of a 7 minute Pyramid Head discussion. I don't think there's anything truly left to be said about him, but a discussion is still to be expected. If you want to skip it and want to go straight to Eddie, jump to minute 47. I won't hold it against you. Pyramid Head or Pyramid Heads (plural) are manifestation of James' unfulfilled desire for punishment for killing his wife. And according to his creator, Masahiro Ito, he also represents another James. There are numerous ways to interpret that last bit, but the definition I lean towards is that Pyramid Head represents the idea of what James wants to be. He's strong, sexually dominating, and cold as ice. James is characterized by the game play and by the story as weak. He was into forced into celibacy by Mary's disease, and he's a certified mess of emotional conflict. Mary's disease ate her away both physically and spiritually, and it also ate away her relationship with James. The desire to be like Pyramid Head is very understandable in the context of his aforementioned traits. It can easily be seen as a coping mechanism brought about by the emotional trauma James underwent with Mary. Another interesting Masahiro Ito's quote about Pyramid Head is this: "Pyramid Head is the guardian to keep James being only human produced by his guilt." He then elaborated on that quote putting it in the context of why Pyramid Head attacks other creatures which he thought a lot of. Being there to guard James recontextualizes their relationship. The first time James saw him, there was really no beef. He was just standing there. The second time, it was James not Pyramid Head who started the engagement. Additionally, if we also apply the theory that Pyramid Head is a guide. Then we must acknowledge that without Pyramid Head, James might not have picked up the key to the court yard. Their third engagement ends whether the player fights with Pyramid Head or not because it's on a timer. So really, that fight could be read as James needing to accept Pyramid Head's presence as much as James needing to survive. After that encounter, Pyramid Head lowers the water to allow James to progress, which again helps paint him as a guide. The roof encounter on the hospital occurs after James has met Maria and since she represents an illusion to keep James away from facing his guilt, it can be read that Pyramid Head knocked James off the roof in order to separate the two. That's also why he chases them down in the basement and kills her, and why he does it once or twice more. Pyramid Head's relationship with Maria is sort of symbiotic in that they beef up the symbolic significance of each other, So I'll save that discussion until Maria has been properly introduced. Pyramid Head's design was based on Masahiro Ito's fandom of Eastern front war machines. In particular, Ito based Pyramid Head on the German King Tiger Tank and an experimental interceptor named Lippisch P.13a. The design came about because Ito wanted him to visually suggest pain. That's why he has that pyramid case on him. Originally, it was just a guy with what appears to be bubblegum on his face, but Ito nicks that design because it was too human. It didn't disturb because it just looked like a guy in a mask. The design ethos of the Silent Hill monsters is that they should not be indicative of established creatures like demons or dragons, but rather that they should always reflect humanity and they should be made to have human features. It's an approach which the series did not keep as it continued post-Team Silent. And never was it more emphasized than in this game. Pyramid Head like Silent Hill itself would become a misunderstood concept that would be misrepresented in every appearance post-Team Silent. He's very specifically James' monster, but several other creators have gone on to include him in their works. How much of that is monetary pressure from Konami and how much is artistic vision is anyone's guess, but what's very apparent from this is that Pyramid Head is way too over emphasized and way too cool for his own good. This is the way popular media goes, so it was always to be expected and [showed that][?] removing him from the game - unavoidable. He's become sort of a poster boy for the series because he was something people could latch onto. Fans made it really cool, but Silent Hill 2 never did. He's a wiry kind of average height dude with a pyramid on his head, a sluggish walk, and a interest in phallic looking weaponry. I have a feeling many people would be upset by this, but I really think that if Silent Hill 2 ever gets a proper remaster or remake, the team could replace him with a yellow translucent blob. A yellow translucent blob with nails sticking out and on both a thematic and story telling level, nothing of significance would be lost. I'm obviously not advocating this, but rather I'm ham-fistedly trying to make a point. Pyramid Head is too cool for his own good and because he is, artists won't leave him alone. And because they won't, fans won't stop complaining. Usually, the writers of his subsequent appearances acknowledge that he's James' monster, but also attempt to tie appearances to the town's back story. Pyramid Head can be the mascot of a phenomenon I'm dubbing "Franchise Fasting." This is when a franchise is no longer allowed to experiment with new ideas and stories, so instead those creating content for the franchise were forced to dredge up old memories and dress them up in new clothing. And just like when an organism fasts the franchise begins to eat itself. There's no new energy being absorbed to fuel it, so it relies on old energy to keep going. The moments of unique and interesting concepts are replaced with "Remember THIS?" and people go along with it for a while because they already invested themselves in the franchise. But eventually, just like a fasting animal, there comes a time for the franchise to ingest more energy or die. If only there were a visionary video game creator with an interest in bringing Silent Hill back with new ideas. If only such a high concept guy known for great executions and a keen insight into human beings and dramas existed. But alas no, the odds of such a man being with Konami and trying to shock the decaying corpse of this series to life... Huh, would be pretty slim. Hey! Here's Eddie! His introduction is another example of the game resisting grossed out. Originally, the vomiting was a lot more graphic both audibly and visually. Eddie is in Silent Hill and what we can assume to be a run from authorities. He shot a dog and the dog's owner as an overreaction to being bullied his whole life. The dog died, but according to Masahiro Ito, Eddie never killed a human being. That means the corpse we saw in the fridge was likely just a manifestation. Eddie's vomiting seems to be a response to seeing the corpse and it would set up an interesting arc for him because at the end, he's ranting about how those that mocked him deserve to die. However, I interpret the vomiting to be the result of overeating because Eddie likely has some form of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Just like Angela's baggy clothing might seen seen as a defense mechanism, overeating can be seen as Eddie's attempt to defense himself on the count of his fragile sense of self-worth. This is a vicious cycle that afflicts many pople. They feel bad which causes them to go to the short-lived relief of eating, but that eating goes into excess and eventually makes them unhappy with their body. That unhappiness manifests itself in decreased sense of self-worth, which is all too often alleviated again with food. In this sense, Eddie is a victim of his own physiological affliction as much as Angela is, and it makes him fit the Asian horror protagonist which, if you remember, is the one that succumbs to the horrors that afflict them. But bare in mind that this analysis of mine is backlitting[?] We don't have any develop's input on why Eddie is vomiting. Ito has even stated that the cause is a secret. My explanation is not the simplest, but it's the one I lean towards because it's the one that most in keeping with Silent Hill 2 being a game about tragic people With Eddie being introduced, the only major player we hadn't met is Maria, and she's still about 25 minutes away. That being said, we've certainly played for long enough to start talking about Silent Hill 2's pacing. Pacing is generally defined as the speed at which a story moves through each of its scenes. Slower paced scenes are generally used to what's being presented as unimportant[?] to the story. And faster paced scenes are generally used to pay off the audiences' engagement with said story. The base line engagement of any story is determined by its opening moments. That's why all subsequent scenes are contrasted again, and if you recall, Silent HIll 2 starts with a slow and dimly lit cut scene, an opening narration, and a 10 or so minute jog. We can look at the opening as the barrier for entry To enjoy Silent Hill 2, a player must be patient, and that opening effectively filters away many people who aren't. Silent Hill 2 is a slow game by any measure, but what's more important is that it's a cohesively slow game. A mistake that crops off very often in this medium is that gameplay is not indicative of the story. And in terms of pacing, this is seen most evidently when players has to kill 25 enemies in a bombastic action scene only for them then to be presented with a slow cut-scene that wants to delve into the character's psyche. The problem here, aside from using cut scenes in general, is that the pace of the gameplay doesn't mesh with the pace of the cut scenes that connect them. Even games that are lotted to some of the best of recent years fall prey to this . But not Silent Hill 2. The game play is very slow and since the story is as well, it's a winning combination. I'm going to dwell a bit on the next sound we hear. James had just entered the room through a broken window and the first sound we heard as he moved was himself stepping on glass. And this is another example of an unnecessary detail that reflects the design discipline of the developers . The sound designer of this game was Akira Yamaoka, and to put his work on the game in perspective, he made every single sound except for the voice acting. From interviews he's given, he seemed to have made a dedicated decision to distance the sound of Silent Hill from Resident Evil. His explanation was that Resident Evil sounds like a very familiar game. Bullets sound like you'd expect, and so do enemies and footsteps. Additionally, the familiar sound which Resident Evil has gained an extra level of familiarity the more you play because they don't have much in term of variety, which was Yamaoka's key to separating the two franchises. For footsteps alone, he recorded over 100 different sounds. One of those was the sound of cracking glass I pointed out, and when you're aware of this fact, it's almost impossible not notice it in every playthough. To the end of not letting the player become familiar with the sounds, Yamaoka also made it so that each playthough sounds different. Randomly, the player can hear whispers across hallways and the sound of someone breathing or crying or screaming . They can hear pig squeals, distant footsteps, and glass shattering. These sounds help alter the ambiance around the player, and their unpredictability helped put the player out of their element if that make sense. I'm switching between tracks of Silent Hill 2 soundtrack in the background now to illustrate a point. Yamaoka has stated that the music of Silent Hill 2 was supposed to invoke both anger and sadness. You can hear it the mechanical metal scraping sounds that accompany moments of danger and you can hear it in the relaxed piano scores that are used when we're in scenes permeated by a feeling of relative safety. Music is a very powerful tool erect emotions and it's used expertly in this game. You might have seen the videos where the scenes from E.T. or Indiana Jones have had their music removed and have become really stilted and awkward. Silent Hill is very stilted and very awkward all through out, so I don't know if removing the music would add to that effect, but there's still no denying that the music is a big part of this game's identity. A funny parallel between Silent Hill 2 and Ocarina of Time, of all titles, is that neither games featured their retrospective series' main theme. The main theme of the Silent Hill series is very creeping and atmospheric, but since it doesn't reflects this game's sensibility, it was good to drop it. Most tracks in this game is just ambient noises designed to enhance the feeling the game's delivering, but the tracks that are designed to be appreciated in their own right, are all some of the most memorable horror game music out there. Yamaoka's work here makes a strong case for Silent Hill 2 being ahead of any game commercial work[?] in terms of sheer immersion and world building. Like all great works, Silent Hill 2 pushed the envelop in terms of technology and that's true of the audio as well. Yamaoka toyed with the PlayStation 2 S4 sound library to enable Silent Hill 2's sounds to be presentable in seperate channels on the same speakers provided, of course, that the speakers has more than one channel itself. It's quaint in retrospect to read interviews where this is brought up because Yamaoka seems to be very giddy about what is a pretty standard practice today. The game that introduces new innovation is usually more adapt at using a dense[?] subsequent game because it didn't take that innovation as a given Specific meaning is attached to the innovations and it's cognitively used. Silent Hill 2's use of the S4 sound library is there for akin to how games with technologically constrained color palettes tend to look better than games where every color is available. There's always a specification when applying[?] limited resource that helps inform a game developer. Continuing on from there, we can see that the continual increase in console computational power necessitated a creative temporary bankruptcy when it comes to designing play to eliciting an emotional response rather than being intuitive and responsive. The era of set pieces and spectacle necessarily came after the era of [?] innovation. Whilst under Team Silent, Silent Hill continuously tried to express itself more and more with its attractive elements. These attempts were not always successful, but they reflected an interest in advancing the medium that the developer did this. And it's very disheartening that they were disbanded before advent of the 7th generation. Most developers used the new technology to pursue the same base line video experience to the point that most games released in the 7th generation played the same. Very few developers are able to experiment in the way Team Silent could and while it's easy to be upset with Konami for putting an end to this, in full honesty, they did a service to have given it that green light in the beginning. The theme of psychological pain was dropped in subsequent titles in favor of reexploring the occult. Around the release of Silent Hill 3, this change prompted Takayoshi Sato to express disappointment, but I think if he had known what a mess this franchise would become post-Team Silent, I'm sure he'd have reserved his lamentation until a later time. Angela's demeanor in this cutscene suggests that she might have become aware of what's really going on. Whether she knows about the nature of Silent Hill is up for debate, but it definitely seems like she's reclaiming some of her repressed memories. Some but not all. She's not really trusting in James after he reveals that his wife is dead, but she also still seems to think that she can find her mother in this town. Since Angela's guilt is directed at herself and not at her murders, it's quite possible that the monsters manifested for her are not violent. The only one of her monsters which we see, Abstract Daddy, and we never see it engaged any physical interaction with her, so this theory holds up. The reason I'm bringing this up is because she eventually drops her knife. I guess it could be read that she was afraid of James and just drops it, so he'll leave her alone, but since we don't see her wield another weapon in subsequent appearances, it's an okay assumption to make was not a defensive weapon in the first place. At best, she may have been using it while hunting for her mother and at worst, she might have been contemplating suicide with it. The answer might be a mixture of those two. When Or it could be that she's reflecting in this scene. When James entered, Angela was staring into nothingness in front of a mirror holding the knife. If the mirror is there to tell us that reflection is what's going on, then what's reflecting on might be murdering her father with a kitchen knife. I put that theory last because it requires that she knows more than she appears to. We're now making our way to fight Pyramid Head, so it's proper time to discuss the gauntlets. In easily digestible terms, the gauntlets are akin to Zelda's Dungeons. You solves puzzles, find max items, and keys. Fight enemies, gather resources, and steadily increment progress. But to make that comparison and not differentiate the two would be terribly misleading. The big point of separation is, of course, the tone of the retrospective franchises. Zelda is about adventure. Silent Hill is about fear. One celebrates what the other stigmatizes . In terms of mechanics, Silent Hill differentiated itself by prolonging the in between of rooms and by designig the gauntlets as real places first. It all also punishes the players for fighting enermies. There's nothing to loot from their dead bodies. So the players only stand to lose from investing the time to kill them. At best, they come out even but more likely they'll need to heal. Healing objects are limited and like all limited key resources, they get the player to adapt a conservative play style. Other factors which adds to that are re-spawning enemies and the clunky combat system. With the exception the ridiculously hard puzzle difficulties, the puzzles in Silent Hill are never overly complex and their challenge usually comes from the difficulty in executing the solution to them rather than from mentally solving them.
With the approval of the mods, here's a nearly 5 hour long mega analysis I recently made on the game.
Hope you enjoy :)