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cleolinda · 34 minutes ago

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Silent Hill 2 commentary: Honestly just so much Brookhaven Hospital (4)

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PREVIOUSLY ON: I wander around ransacking poor Patient 0130's bedsheet tents; I'm sure climbing down between the walls will turn out fine; the Director is on my shit list; a quick and awkward chat with Maria.

Spoiler policy: Just about anything but That One Big Thing near the end of the game, particularly information about characters, their motives, and their dynamics. The game’s eight endings may also be discussed. Content notes are below the cut.

Content notes: The premise of the game involves subtle mentions of terminal illness, suicidal ideation, and alcohol abuse. This video specifically has a lot of environmental storytelling regarding medical/psychiatric abuse, including historical photographs, in an abandoned mental hospital. There's also very bloody combat with firearms and a steel pipe, and we have some sexualized monsters/enemies (and I discuss the symbolism of that; IMO it serves a purpose). I apologize to the nurses a lot. I also try to warn for specific things, like swarms of insects, as we get to them.

1:55:00: Let's look in on Laura (who is busy drawing on another wall), using some kind of viewing slot in a locked door: "Hey! Are you okay?" "Go away!" shouts Laura, bolting. James calls out, "Don't be afraid! I just want to talk!" after her, because, remember: Laura is his last link to Mary, and he's out of leads. But I also argue at this point that James is actually really good with Laura, in a parental way. Yeah, he freaks out whenever she mentions Mary, and he's going to grab her by the arm later on when she's trying to run away from him, but he's been fighting monsters all day and he sincerely thinks Laura is about to get walloped by demon nurses. My mom has had to jerk my young nephew away from running out into traffic; sometimes you don't have time to be nice about pulling a kid to safety, especially if you've been getting your ass kicked for several hours. In fact, we're stomping on a nearby nurse right as I'm saying this. I'm just saying, especially considering later scenes with the two of them, you can understand why Laura might go off with James in the "Leave" ending.

1:58:00: Another typewriter in Room D2, but it's got a presently relevant document about the "Eddie" patient. I'll let you peruse the full transcript over here if you'd like, but the key points are:

"Malnourished," "refuses solid food," has to be force-fed and "restrained for bathing"

"Agitated in presence of staff," "frantic at the notion of touch," which I think might to relate to Eddie being bullied for much of his life

"Self-injury suspected (could not confirm)"

"Day 4: Something is very wro"

My current theory is that Patient 0090 eventually ended his own life (there's other evidence of this), and the report breaking off may be the moment the employee was summoned for that emergency.

2:02:20: If you break an interior window and get into Exam Room 5, you can get the 1F Inner Ward key, head into the x-ray rooms, pick up a radiograph, and promptly forget that you did. There's already two on the wall, and a fourth one is missing. Out in the hall, Exam Room 4 is locked by a padlock whose code we'll need those x-rays to solve, and I'm whiny about it.

2:06:21: "OH WHO IS THAAAAT?" Quick detour to deal with a nurse gurgling away in Room D3, then collect ammunition and disappointment. "What was even IN here?"

2:08:40: Let's go to the first floor ward, passing Laura's drawing on the way! ("Hey, bunny.") "I know I'm opening the map too much, but I think you'd prefer that to twenty minutes of me w—"

I stop short at a locked stairwell. Hilariously, an ominous background drone kicks in, as if the game fully anticipated my dismay. "IT'S... FINE." We now have to go around ("WHATEVER. WHATEVER. JUST WHATEVER"), have a quick Maria check ("Girl, are you in here?" [Silence.] "You're in here"), and treat ourselves to an elevator ride to the first floor. Thrilling, I know.

2:11:00: Eventually we step over the gory pile of nurses in the lobby and unlock the Inner Ward. We are greeted by a nurse headshaking down the hall to our right. She's right in front of the Doctors' Lounge, but of course I don't notice that. We also tangle with a lying figure, just for variety.

2:13:52: Finally: the lounge. "Ohhhh, this looks like exactly the kind of place somebody is!" I grumble. Surprisingly, no one's there. I am left to examine a clipboard unbothered.

This case bears a disturbing similarity to a situation that took place in the facility a few years back. The patient was admitted on a court order, but with the consent of his remaining family. His condition appeared to be improving for the first few weeks. The administered medications paired with individual sessions with a psychologist and art therapy alleviated his avolition, anhedonia, and social withdrawal. There was no reason for concern. They didnt even know anything was wrong until the night guard reported one of his keys was missing. When they found him, it was already too late.

I walk through this document at length in the Patient 0050 post, but here are my main takeaways:

I had assumed "this case" referred directly to 0050, but now I think it's purposefully ambiguous.

"Remaining family" could suggest that the patient ended up in Brookhaven because they killed someone in their family (could be any/all of the patients; also suggests the Angela we know).

If we read "it was already too late" as referring to suicide inside the hospital, this could describe Patient 0090, "Eddie," and how I think he died (to be discussed in the next video).

It could describe all of the patients' fates on your first run of the game (we find out that something specific happened to 0050 on New Game+).

Alternately, that key may have unlocked the front door; the patient may have escaped the hospital and harmed themselves and/or someone else by the time "it was already too late."

If the patient did escape, this may be the public incident mentioned in the garage article.

Again, we could read "it was already too late" as "killed someone else."

Rhetorical question: why might this document compare Patient 0050, who may have been having "surrogate daughter" therapy, with someone who killed a family member, and may have gone on to kill again?

Again, rhetorically: Why might Patient 0050 also represent James?

I'm just pointing out what's in front of us. "This case" might be so vague as to apply to all the patients, or it might specifically represent 0050.

2:16:00: The clue to the Nurses' Station keypad is a tic-tac-toe type drawing rather than the actual numbers, in fairness to the staff. I vehemently don't trust a back locker room, but there actually aren't any monsters hiding in wait.

2:18:54: Onward! Downstairs! Unlocking that stairwell! Stomping on a shaky nurse (I'm very sorry)! Quick detour to grab some restroom bullets! MAJOR INSECT WARNING, we're about to find a creepy-crawly swarm of them in the hospital kitchen.

2:20:36: Let's admire the dishes first; I'm always impressed by the amount of dish-related clutter throughout the game that really didn't have to be there. I also want to look at some paintings, but I'm not sure what the first one is; again, Google refuses to search for it. I think it's most likely a goose plucked, ready to cook. It's probably a fucking Goya. Meanwhile, a nurse is gurgling out in the dining area ("I'm comin'!").

A second one is already coming to get me in the kitchen ("Oh, you don't usually come out this soon"). If you just really want to see what a headshot to a bubblehead nurse looks like, you can see that here ("Not to be super violent about it"). Not a whole lot, really; nothing explodes or deflates. You just get a splash of that "thinned blood" we were talking about, and it doesn't even take the nurse down.

2:22:00: Here's a spray bottle of mold remover that we need for the x-ray, and a note. ("Don't come get me while I'm reading.")

It’s in the walls. Deep inside. The mold remover gets rid of it for a while, but then the thing reappears in the exact same spots. We need to get in there, break it all down if we have to, and ROOT IT OUT.

This reminds me a lot of the Wood Side Apartments notes that foreshadowed the Otherworld version of the building: "I know there is Something Here, I know I can feel it. It all looks normal, but it’s NOT."

2:22:54: So there's a painting of two dead rabbits (as in, game that would be cooked) that I think represent Mary and Laura, since Laura draws them together as bunnies. This is kind of a delicate thing to point out, but the rabbit on top has a wound where the uterus might be. Mary wanted to have children but couldn't, and Laura is the child she wanted to adopt. It's... very dark that the two rabbits are dead in this picture, but I think that's the symbolism. I also tend to agree with the theory that Laura may already be dead—she may be a ghost who died in palliative care after Mary left, and then "hitchhiked" with Eddie to Silent Hill—and two dead rabbits could support that. I have a lot to say about James functioning as a kind of psychopomp for Laura in the "Leave" ending, but that's for another time.

Late breaking news: It hadn't even occurred to me until I was recording to look up and see if the painting was real. OH GET OUTTA HERE IT'S ANOTHER GOYA. Still Life with Dead Hares. GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE, BLOOBER TEAM (I love you).

UPDATE: The goose was a turkey. And a fucking Goya. Here's why I lose my mind every time I find one.

2:24:00: The argument I make (with a quick break for combat) is that the cafeteria chalkboards imply that outsiders used to be able to visit. One of the boards lists prices that guests can pay for meals—that is to say, these patients were not cut off from their families or friends, from anyone who would have noticed mistreatment. The number of special meals necessary for patients with celiac disease or lactose intolerance also suggests that the staff actually cared about them and wanted to be sure they ate safely... earlier on. Remember that article in the hidden garage that mentioned staffing shortages? I think it suggests that, after a while, there were no longer enough employees to push back against the Director's mistreatment. And Patient 0090 being force-fed (since we're in a food-themed area) is one of the consequences of that.

Did not mention: There's a poster about healthy eating just outside the pantry that I forgot to interact with. I think it's there perhaps to shore up the point that the staff did care, but more likely to connect the stories of Eddie and his corresponding patient—the former, we see eating pizza and ice cream, and the latter, we're told doesn't want to eat at all.

Anyway, there's some combat in the middle here, where I do a fairly good job of fighting off a nurse and a lying figure who can't decide who gets to attack me first. ("Ma'am, I don't appreciate that. You're a very bad medical professional.")

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It's certainly better than the previous time I played this room, when James got hit so hard by a pipe that you could hear the metal ringing off his skull.

2:28:20: Y'all, I'm so tired at this point that I nearly said "head skeleton" instead of "skull."

2:29:50: Okay, we're on to the garden and pool area now, and I really enjoy this part. We take a detour through the sheet-draped dayroom to get through a traversal and fight a nurse and I go on some more about the strategy of getting the FUCK AWAY from them once they start swinging those pipes. "We learn, we learn as we go. We observe."

2:32:10: We've gotten into the locked pharmacy. So we're working on the ID bracelet for the "James" patient now, and I'm telling you up front because it is so, so easy to forget why you're doing any one thing when there is so much game in this game. We're going to need to fish a small metal ear out of a drain: a keychain. And with that key, we're going to open a hatch and drain a swimming pool—the pool Patient 0050 wanted to go back to. Meanwhile, there is a lying figure audibly gurgling out in the garden just beyond the open window ("I'M COMIN'!").

2:32:37: So here's a bloodstained journal; having compared the handwriting, I think the 0130 ("They brought the girl in today") and 0050 (see below) journals are written by two different doctors, and neither of them are the Director. As for the entry itself, I think it's the staff perspective of the "Can we go back to the pool?" incident with Patient 0050. Also, you remember "WHAT DID I MISS?" on the evaluation card? It may refer to this incident as well:

Another incident with 0050 He got out of the pool, and made a break for the garden, cutting himself wide open in the process Thank God I was still here He was completely manic, screaming Had the orderlies hold him down Barely managed to stitch him up He's back in his room for now, sedated

I think "cutting himself wide open" was accidental self-harm, and I open the map to show you where the patient would have been running: through a small greenhouse, probably breaking glass in the process. And "He's back in his room for now, sedated" connects back to the sailboat/eye note. As for the bloodstains on the journal—I'm just spitballing, but what if a previous James was standing here, covered in blood from fighting monsters, paging through it for clues the way we are right now?

2:35:00: Meanwhile, there's a lying figure staggering around in a garden just outside the window (dark and stormy night, etc.), and it reminds me a lot of the lying figures wandering around the swimming pool area in Wood Side Apartments. I forget to specify that I'm talking about that pool, which might have been confusing.

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I have come to really enjoy open areas that you fight your way through, because at least you're not getting lost. Also, I'm better at fighting in general now. "What have they learned to do? Which is fair, because I learned, too."

2:37:10: James sees a lying figure before I do: "What are you looking at? Oh! Good man!" We then promptly get vomited on.

2:38:20: It's worth your while to go around to the back of the gazebo, because there's loot in there regardless, but if you're on New Game+, there's also a bottle of White Claudia that you'll need for the "Bliss" ending. Remember "I can leave by not leaving"? "The deal is done. He said he left it for me"? The note in the Bowl-O-Rama safe that read, "You will find it in a place of care. An island of respite in a sea of suffering"? The "island of respite" is this gazebo, and this bottle is "it." "White Claudia" is the plant that the fictional drug PTV—you know, the reason South Vale is covered in Drug Hotline posters—is derived from, and James will need it to leave this mortal plane and join Mary in a happy videotape world where she never gets sick. That's the "Bliss" ending, if you remember me trying to get around Maria while talking about it. Drink this the moment you get to Room 312 at the Lakeview Hotel, and the game immediately ends.

Usually, you crawl into the gazebo through a traversal, and you immediately get attacked by a mannequin, the way I always talk about having to "pay" for picking up something important. This time, however, I triggered the mannequin somehow while I was still outside—because James' flashlight shined on it through the gazebo wall, maybe? So now we're just sitting there watching the mannequin wandering around and squelching through the lattice, and I am unreasonably delighted by this.

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"That's great! Except it's not great, because now I have to go in," I say, realizing that I'm going to have to crawl and dodge at the same time, somehow, and also I've got an agitated mannequin waiting for me. "I may just have to take the L on this one." And then everybody takes an L, basically: James dodges into the mannequin instead of swinging, the mannequin gets confused and turns its back to us, nobody knows what's happening, the mannequin flumps over dead, and I manage to escape after a poor showing on everybody's part. "That was certainly a unique experience."

On my way out, regarding the vines covering the gazebo: "I'm not gonna say, 'Here's more of that plant,' but here's more of that plant."

2:41:30: So now we're through that greenhouse and into the indoor pool area—a full pool that is just absolutely rancid and green. James has drawn a li'l eye for us on the map,

and we can see another graffiti eye peeking out, if you will, just above the water's surface. So we're going to need a key to open a hatch and turn on a thing and drain the pool. This involves fighting off a mannequin in the nearby locker room ("Blood on the doors, always a good sign") to fetch a coil of medical tube, which is exactly what we need to fish out that ear keychain and then trot back here and drain the pool, not hair???

2:45:15: I am back in full Head Skeleton territory because I cannot figure out how to combine the bent needle and the medical tubing to fish out that ear. And then I had another recording hiatus of several days due to family visiting. But the hot second I shut down the computer after despairing... I realized that all I needed to do was leave investigation mode and go to the inventory. That's it. That's all I had to do! LISTEN I DON'T KNOW THIS GAME IS STRESSFUL AND IT MAKES MY BRAIN TIRED.

2:48:55: So I combine the two items and hoof it back to the pharmacy, and fight off a rogue lying figure...

2:50:00: ...and once we're back at the drain, James fishes out the key, and I talk about two things:

1) The drain is stained with a green goo that we also saw back in Blue Creek apartments—the room behind the moth puzzle room, where James had to stick his entire arm into a hole. Again. You only see the green whatever in these two places, and no one knows what it is; there's sort of a fan legend that it was originally blood, but Konami censored it by making it green instead. That... honestly makes no sense, given how many enemies we beat to a pulp, and Ian thinks it's probably just to guide the player towards what they need to do. Either way, Bloober Team has retained the green ooze to be faithful to the original.

2) The more Ian and I talked about it, the more I think he's right: the ear keychain is an intentional homage to poor Will Graham and the severed ear at the end of Hannibal S1. There's a number of Thomas Harris inspirations in the game—the Harris Street carried over from the original; the moth room itself, which includes the death's head moths from Silence of the Lambs; and potentially a prison interview we'll see much later (I refuse to spoil this). At the same time, we also have that Jacob's Ladder head shake in Hannibal season 2. Heads up: this clip also involves me fighting off a rogue lying figure while trying to expound on the artistic conversation that Silent Hill 2 has apparently been having with the works of Thomas Harris over two decades.

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2:52:50: All of this was to use the key to drain the pool and get James down there to break through the tiled wall. The game is so complex that it's easy to forget how we got from A to B, but the train of thought here was, we found a document referencing the pool behind a drawing of an eye, and now we've gone to the pool, broken through graffiti of the same eye, and pulled out the 0050/"James" bracelet. That's what it was all for. (Note the "weeping" quality of the black fluid pouring from the graffiti eye. I also think it's the same black mess on Pyramid Head's arms: guilt and punishment.)

Since we're near three hours at this point, I decide to call it a day. We have two bracelets and we need one more; then we have three puzzles to solve in the Director's office in order to get a key to get to the rooftop. We'll find Laura again, and then we'll deal with the Flesh Lip, and then I'll cross over into Otherworld Brookhaven Hospital for maybe half an hour and do the first puzzle there.

And I know this because I actually did record all of that shortly before coming down with covid, AGAIN, but there were so many problems with it that it's honestly just faster to record it again. I'll mine the original recording for any outtakes of interest, but I'm really happy that I'll get to redo it with all the patient posts in mind. Also, the first couple minutes of the Flesh Lip fight were... not my best work. Always look on the bright side, I say.

(SH2R commentary master post) - (Patreon) - (Ko-fi) - (YouTube)

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cleolinda · 53 minutes ago

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Silent Hill 2 commentary: Honestly just so much Brookhaven Hospital (3)

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PREVIOUSLY ON: Louise four ever, another hidden Goya, a firearm upgrade, James' masculine ideal, Her Drawings, and Patient 0050 in water behind the Eye; "Ma'am, you're doing this wrong!"

1:26:45: Let's check on Maria and her rancid hospital mattress, in case she feels like talking to us again. (Visiting her gets you points towards the "Maria" ending.) "Hey, sweetie, how're you doin'? You okay in here?" [Silence.] "You're good, okay."

1:27:00: When I first heard the theory that the nurses' "bubble heads" might symbolize condoms, I told Ian that I honestly wasn't sure I wanted to repeat that. Then I found out that it's not a fan interpretation; it's something Masahiro Ito said. Well, before he walked it back:

19 May 2020: Let me set the record straight. I used the word "condom" to describe a face mask. SH2 Bubble Head Nurse is suffocated by a mask covering her whole face, which is like a condom.

In his favor: the nurses' heads have baby faces because James and Mary wanted kids. You don't use condoms if you're trying to conceive. Maybe he did mean it to have a textural similarity but not, like....... symbolism. Anyway, that's the story I'm telling at this point in the video, because I was entertained by everybody on Twitter flipping their shit about it.

1:28:45: After getting James to maneuver a fussy, fiddly cart through an entirely sheet-draped room (White Cloth Indicates Traversals You Can Interact With!) to climb through a hole, we find a doctor's journal.

They brought in the girl today. Poor thing hasn't said a word. She just sits there, head in her hands, sobbing and quivering. I moved her to the corner bed, seems to have calmed her down a bit. She even smiled at me, I think.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time scrutinizing the handwriting of the hospital documents, because initially, I thought this might have been written by the Director and I wanted to kick his ass about it. But no; we eventually find two doctors' journals and a clipboard, and I think all three of these documents are written by different people, none of whom are the Director.

"The girl" is Patient 0130, correlating to Angela. I think the reason she likes the corner bed is because small, enclosed spaces make her feel safer; she also uses sheets to build little tents, and this may parallel a closet in Angela's childhood home that she used to hide in. (We'll see that in the harrowing Abstract Daddy sequence later in the game.)

1:31:10: And here's one of those tents now:

1:32:28: Confusion ensues as I know that we're going to find Patient 0130's ID bracelet in a tent, but I forget that there's a second tent. Let's just smooth past that for the recap, shall we? On to the Bad Idea Wall Hole that takes us to that second tent, which is the stupidest thing James has done yet, especially since he has no way to know that this is the only way to get to Medical Records, or that he even needs to.

1:35:00: If you have claustrophobia, this is not the cinematic for you.

This is yet another point in the game that only makes sense to me metafictionally as, "He does this because I, the player, make him." And this isn't just for moments that seem "stupid"—think of James struggling to explain to Maria why we're going across town in the wrong direction, in direct contravention of his desire to find his wife ASAP, because I care about video game easter eggs and we can't tell her that. Throughout this game, James is doing a whole shit-ton of things that don't make sense to himself. It makes me think a lot about moments in my life where I make bad decisions or, for that matter, trip over my own feet and walk into door frames.

Again, highly recommend you fast-forward to 1:36:15 or so if you're claustrophobic. Looking away won't help, as Ian particularly mentioned James' panicked breathing—Luke Roberts does not cut corners in this performance, I'll put it that way. James finally emerging on the floor below is a beautiful shot, though.

But I really think James needs to learn how to pick locks or kick in doors or something.

1:37:00: Another floor traversal into Medical Records. Here's that second tent; this one has a Marked Bracelet to put on the hand in the Director's office.

I've played this room at least 2-3 other times, and the mannequin that attacks always waited somewhere in the shelves. This time it just busts straight out and comes for us. Festive! There's also a note on the floor, presumably written by Patient 0130:

Front:

why won't they help me why do they keep me in here with him

Back:

Let me out Let me out Let me out Let me out Let me out Let me out Let me out

Again, "him," which makes a certain kind of nightmare sense if you're thinking it's a bogeyman like Pyramid Head, and the patient is asking "why are they keeping me in here with him" of a staff that doesn't know what metaphysical thing she's seeing. But it's heartbreaking if she's speaking of their boss.

Here's what this asshole looks like, by the way. We'll see this portrait a few hours from now in the Historical Society ("Former Director of Brookhaven Hospital"; his name is conveniently missing from the plate). Over on my Director post, you can see what the original game's portrait looked like (a little friendlier, honestly).

1:38:35: Before we leave, here's another typewriter from the Past, and I'm not sure what this one does, either. You can see the original scene here. We also have some posters—Araxium for Anxiety (which could also refer to Patient 0130's severe anxiety) and Alcohol Shattering Your Life, @ you, James—posters on the walls.

1:39:35: On to the Doctors' Lounge! But first, a quick save and a same-day break. On returning, I ventured out first as a software test, "...and something happened... way sooner than it usually happens." I do, in fact, think going to this save point and taking a break put me on a different end of the hospital than usual. The long and short of it is that I end up fighting the two lobby nurses from these practice outtakes. "I guess anything they want to have happen can happen," I admit.

1:43:30: Here's the room I usually leave to go fight the lobby nurses. Instead, we deal with the mannequin hiding here second. There's also another Strange Photo: "At least she was there." I genuinely have no idea what I'm looking at. Where was she? Maybe... kind of... water drops on a dusty surface? Is that a furniture edge, or... I don't want to give away what else I want to check.

1:47:21: We are NOT going to the Doctors' Lounge. We are going to the third floor to get the key to the first floor that gets us to the Doctors' Lounge. This is with me using a walkthrough.

1:49:46: "Let's check on Maria. Girl, how you doin.'" She actually wakes up and talks to us this time! James asks how Maria's "holding up," and she says she wants a bit more nap. She also thanks him for checking in on her: "It's very sweet of you."

And then she reaches out and grabs his hand as he starts walking away. I want you to notice two things in his shot: the extremely visible (on my screen, at least) tan line where his wedding ring used to be, and how his hand just hangs there, unresponsive. "Yeah… uh. Get some rest," he says. It's not so much that James doesn't react as he doesn't reciprocate. What I'm seeing on his face is a lot of hesitation and uncertainty: is he betraying his maybe-not-dead wife by showing Maria kindness? By being emotionally open with her? Is he unsure how he feels at all? (It's wild to me that the face capture in this game is so good that you can sit here and interpret microexpressions.) I think there's a lot going beneath the surface here, rather than James just blanking her. But I want you to remember this moment, because a few hours from now, he will offer her his hand, and—let's say they'll both be punished for that.

While we're here, I also point out Maria's black bracelet. You don't see the crescent moon bead in this shot, but it ties into the song in her first scene, "Beneath the Null Moon." (Which is also why I, being Remake Maria's #1 stan, named the sideblog @beneath-the-null-moon.) And y'all, I only just realized while writing this up that the bead is actually the Black Moon Lilith symbol. More on how that goes all the way back to the opening scene here.

(Right as I'm saying, "It's going to be important that she reached out" on the video, James looks down. "That's right—your hand, James." The timing on this game is incredible.)

1:53:20: "Do I hear somebody?!" This is why I turned off the radio: you really don't need it. "ARE YOU BACK?! Did you CLEAN UP, go BACK TO STORAGE, and COME BACK OUT." Yes, that's what one of the two storage room nurses did.

1:53:40: A new drawing from Laura on a wall: another predator threatening the Mary rabbit, this time a scary bird. (You can hear Laura humming some distance away). This is why I was pointing out the stuffed kingfishers and predator birds on the ammunition boxes back in Blue Creek Apartments—to lead up to this drawing. OKAY OKAY OKAY LET'S GO BACK TO THAT STRANGE PHOTO. THIS IS THE BIRD TAIL THAT YOU CAN SEE IN THE UPPER CORNER. "HER DRAWINGS."

Question: Is James accurately perceiving what Laura drew? He sees monsters and she doesn't; maybe she drew two happy bunnies again, but his guilty conscience is showing him the Mary rabbit threatened by predators. I'm spitballing here, but the "real" characters living in different visual realities raises this possibility.

Let's break for a new post before we go check in on Laura.

Next post: Patients 0050 and 0090 are not having great days; moldy x-rays and MORE GOYAS; I try to compliment the hospital staff while they're whacking me with a pipe; fighting our way through the garden to drain the pool to get to the Eye; my head skeleton is too tired to combine basic items.

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cleolinda · 1 hour ago

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Silent Hill 2 commentary: Honestly just so much Brookhaven Hospital (2)

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PREVIOUSLY ON: Everything you never wanted to know about bubblehead nurses while I get my ass kicked; the three crucial patients, the Director, and the secrets of his office.

39:37: Finally, back out into the hospital. Here's another carefully-staged nurse set piece, as James walking down a hall triggers a light to come on; another nurse staggers out amidst all the scary noises your heart could desire. "Don't fuck this up," I admonish James, like he has control over any of this. It takes me five shots to get her to down to one knee, which is kind of scary with her running at us, but that's the maneuver.

40:30: Here's another room with a Glimpse of the Past from the original game: writing scrawled (in blood?) on the wall that used to read,

Louise I'll take care of you four ever. It's my destiny!

I'm not sure anyone knows who Louise is; the real point is the word four, as in four locks on the chest that used to be here on the bed, tied down by the chain and cords left behind. (You can see it here on the fan wiki.) The remake has moved this box (now with three locks) to the Otherworld version of the hospital:

It's now the centerpiece of that level; each chain leads to an area corresponding to one of the patients with new puzzles/quests. We'll see that in the next commentary video. This is honestly not my favorite area of the game, but I do like how they've redesigned it with three locks for three patients. The remake has also changed what's inside the box: there used to be a strand of hair (???) that you would use to fish a key out from a drain. We'll see that mechanism at the end of this video, this time with medical tubing instead of hair???

(WAIT WHOSE HAIR IS IT? WHAT HAPPENED TO LOUISE?)

42:30: I'm now checking to see which doors open to rooms that "do anything." "Ohhhh, you do something," I whine as M5 stands open. "What do you do?" Serve as an art gallery, apparently. I've identified the artwork here on the second floor here, but there's one I want to point out in particular:

I don't discuss this on the video because I had forgotten to look up the picture—"turn-of-the-century photograph, maybe theater?," as I had it in my notes. It's not: it's an oddly cropped version of Goya's Los Desastres de la Guerra (image from Sotheby's), and more fool me for not checking sooner. This would be the second Goya I've found in the game, and Brookhaven was, in fact, a Civil War hospital in the mid-1800s. Super cheerful for the mental patients, I'm sure.

44:15: More open doors: a restroom does something, allegedly. "And you're going to say, Cleo, how do you not remember this if you've played it so many times? Have you seen how big this game is? There's so much game in this game." It has some ammo. And "so many lovingly rendered toilets and urinals. So many."

46:26: "What are you? Do I want to go in here?" I DO, because this is the Nurses' Locker Room. It contains an iteration of Angela's teddy bear (a sign that one of the patients really is meant to symbolize her) with a Bent Needle stuck in the back for us to use later, and there, in a locker.......

A SHOTGUN. I mean, I'm going to reserve this for emergencies and bosses only, since the game drops shotgun and rifle rounds very sparingly, but it's nice to have. Fun trick: you can switch between firearms using the mouse wheel as well as number keys (1 and 2).

Side note: There's another "The patient's wellbeing is in your hands" poster, which is a very dark/ironic reference to the Big Spoiler, and I'm starting to think that any reference to hands (including hygiene posters featuring hands) might also relate to that. We did, after all, first meet James washing his hands in a restroom.

There's also a couple of things posted on an open locker's door: a copy of the Hippocratic Oath, and art showing two women. It turns out that "First do not harm" is not actually in the Oath, but "either help or do not harm the patient" is found in a book of the Hippocratic School. The real point is, "the Hippocratic Oath" is popular shorthand for that concept, and we are going to discover that the Director did not get the Hippocratic Memo.

I don't actually know what to make of the two women, except that we might have the duality of Mary and Maria—but these two women look exactly alike. They have a late Medieval or Renaissance look to me, but I can't get the image to turn up in a search so far.

Here's what I personally find the most interesting:

We originally saw this muscular pinup poster in the Heaven's Night dressing room, except that I didn't catch on to all the details at a smaller size. Here we see that the name "Jack" (J for James again) is on the poster, and the model's haircut and jacket are pretty similar to James'. I said in a side post about the Director that we see at least three visually dark "shadow" versions of James; the Director's portrait is one, and here's another. (I personally don't buy into "light = good, dark = bad," but that may be what's happening here.) So again, James imagines leggy female pinups everywhere else in town, but once he gets into a women's space, his insecurities seem to come forward and say, "What do women want? Not you." And all of this insecurity makes Maria's overenthusiastic cheerleading, the teasing "big man" nicknames—and the fact that Pyramid Head is hugely muscular—really, really interesting. And that's my theory of James' masculine ideal—that he feels like he doesn't live up to it, and he also wants to be punished by it.

50:40: You can hear a nurse flagrantly squelching all the way from the other end of the hall. I pull off an excellent kneecap maneuver. "You gotta stomp it out sometimes."

51:20: We have circled back around to a sparking, broken elevator and unlocked some doors. "We're still trying to get to the... where are we trying to go? I don't know. I don't know! [tiny voice] I don't know." Why, we're trying to get to the Nurses' Lounge, which turns out to be an important encounter:

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Don't miss my nurse impression in that second video.

"Ma'am, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this very wrong!" I know I keep saying "It's not supposed to happen like this, it didn't happen like this the other times" throughout the hospital; I also know that anything can happen in this game, at any time and in any way the devs programmed it. I think that's the autism talking, on my part—that need to understand the world through pattern recognition. I do understand that things aren't set in stone. But I think it's also really interesting that my single-area practice runs have essentially created a time loop sensation for me, not just for James, and the fact that changes feel intensely disconcerting adds to that meta-experience.

I think that I acquit myself admirably in this encounter, considering that James gets backed in so far that he can't dodge any further. But up to that point, I do a really good job! And then, for all that, the first-aid box has no loot. "...Fuck all y'all, okay. Just fuck everything." At last, we get the L1 room key. But then I have to run for a save point and take "a short break" (I had just gotten a text message about an incoming interruption). On the way back to the Director's office, we hear gurgling in the background ("OH—NO! NO! I'M NOT DEALING WITH YOU RIGHT NOW!"); when I reviewed the video, I saw that the storage room door was open. I told you someone was inside, and now, they're coming out. We'll have that to deal with when I get back...

57:00: ...a week later. It goes like that around here.

To warm up and do some Troublesome Software tests, I fought the nurses coming out of that storage room a few times, plus an encounter afterwards that shows you why I'm wary of traversals. You can see one of those tests below; it's one of my typical "WHY IS THIS A NIGHTMARE" ordeals.

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STRATEGY CHAT, FEEL FREE TO SKIP: I mention some gameplay issues I'm correcting—my chair is so low that my hand is too far back on the mouse, and that's why I keep hitting the desktop button. I forgot and only talked about this later, but something else is swinging too soon, which people have probably noticed—it's because I thought that hitting with the very end of the pipe lands harder, until I realized what I was seeing was sort of a three-swing combo move that I couldn't just trigger with distance. So we'll be getting up closer from now on; I do actually have depth perception.

I also talk about some of the monsters learning (and here, in an earlier post). Which I know is a feature in many games, particularly Alien: Isolation, but I didn't know it would happen in SH2. And it's fun for all of us, because even when I say "I've played this area so many times," we still don't know what's going to show up for the video. This is in addition to enemies getting back up just because they feel like it, such as the second nurse right here. However, James was standing on her at the time, so.

1:04:45: Okay, the reason I hate traversals at the bottom of a wall is that you don't know if something's going to immediately jump you on the other side. They're very convenient other than that. On the warmup above, yeah: I got dogpiled—two lying figures and a mannequin. On other runs, the mannequin actually hid in a different place every time, including an entirely different room. So I end up stalking through the room in paranoia: "Did you learn to hide? I know you're here." This time, it's crouched in a corner. You're enthralled, I know.

1:07:30: There's a crackling radio (a PA system, probably?), and I still don't know what's going on with that, except that we'll also see/hear this in the Otherworld version of the hospital. I can't make out any words, and it doesn't seem to be related to our Monster Detector/Wife Communicator radio.

1:08:12: Here's a couple of historical photos that I image-searched to confirm that they're real. Google flat-out refused to search for this one on the right, due to "content guidelines"; meanwhile, I don't even know what I'm looking at.

Except maybe I do: we see it again, pinned to a board showing pictures of electroshock therapy. As for the nurse portrait beside this picture, I've only found it in discussions of this game. Every time I've searched the personal portraits on the walls—same result, so those are likely created for the game.

But the photo across the room, I was able to identify that one: "Operating Room, Dr. Blake's Hospital. 6, Rue Piccini Paris."

So this is my representative sample of the idea that Bloober Team has used actual historical photos throughout the hospital, in addition to real paintings. I'm not going to try to track down every single thing, because that way lies madness.

1:09:45: Here's one of the Strange Photos I haven't solved: "Her Drawings," showing bullet holes in a wall. I think they're in the shape of an M. M for Mary (or Maria), sure, but—her drawings? "She" was shooting? Could I google this? Yes. Will I google this? NO, I AM GOING TO FIGURE IT OUT FOR MYSELF. That way lies madness, and it said to tell you hello.

ETA: I'm not smart. There's a tiny bit of a Laura drawing in the upper right corner, and I'll point it out when we get there. The bullet hole "M" suggests that Laura intuited correctly that James was a threat to Mary. Read more about it here.

1:12:00: Quick break to not remember where we are. "Why or where we are. Why we are. I don't know." This, too, is the SH2 Experience.

"I have an IGN walkthrough up," and here it is. I did a lot of my first run on my own, and even on the commentary runs, I've often mapped out my own walkthrough in the order I wanted to comment on things. (Commentary 1-2 was a two-parter of thirty pages.) However, I got profoundly lost in the Otherworld basement of this hospital the first time around, and I'm not doing that to me or you or any of us this time. Also, I am GOING to get all the documents for the Archivist achievement.

"Speaking of 'Archivist,' I have started listening to The Magnus Archives." In the time it took me to write all this up, I subsequently finished TMA and cycled back around; I'm somewhere in season 3 (again) as of this writing. I talk about this in the eighth commentary, but Ian pointed out that TMA throws a new meaning onto my habit of announcing "I SEE YOU" whenever I spy a mannequin.

1:15:25: You're thinking, "You don't know how to read a map?" YES I KNOW HOW TO READ A MAP BUT USUALLY I CAN TURN THE MAP ANY WAY I WANT! I LEARNED WITH PAPER MAPS!!! YOU REMEMBER PAPER???????

I'M FINE.

1:16:00: "I know what's in here": A mannequin in a bathroom. This one didn't learn.

1:16:45: "I don't remember who was in here... You! It's you!" I don't know why, but sometimes this man just cannot hit a lying crawler. "COME ON, JAMES!!" But it is completely my fault when we fuck up with another mannequin. I swear this room was not this huge a clusterfuck on the practice run. I swear to you.

"DON'T GET UP. Thank you for staying dead." The duality of gamer: being polite to the monsters while also cursing them the fuck out.

1:19:00: In Room C1, we find a print of a sailboat (James + Boats 4Ever), and underneath that, graffiti of an eye.

Initially, I kept asking Ian if eye imagery related to the Order in some way (he said it doesn't), and finally I just decided that it relates to James not "seeing" himself or what he did. (Again, compare to the It Doesn't S_ee_ poster.)

More importantly, there's a balled-up document in the center of that eye. Bolding mine:

PATIENT INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT Annotation: the following interview was conducted with [redacted] in response to incident #071. I remember lying in water Empty And then I felt him Felt his stare He was close Very close I had to get out Had to get away But he followed He kept staring So I made him stop Now I'm empty again Can we go back to the pool?

To repeat the Patient 0050 post: I think this is the first time I really talk about Ian's theory that "He" is not a Pyramid Head-type bogeyman, but rather the Director of the Hospital, and his three patients were terrified of him. We're going to see the staff perspective of this incident later in the game, although I don't know what "So I made him stop" refers to. We'll see that "I had to get out" refers to the patient making a run from the pool, through a small greenhouse, and towards the hospital garden—and (accidentally?) injuring himself in the process, most likely on broken glass. We're pretty certain that this is Patient 0050, in no small part due to the water connection; "In Water" is actually the name of the ending I'm going for.

As a side note, it finally occurred to me that "Blue Creek Apartments" is another water reference.

Let's wrap up here and save a visit with Maria for the next entry.

Next post: I wander around ransacking poor Patient 0130's bedsheet tents; I'm sure climbing down between the walls will turn out fine; the Director is on my shit list; a quick and awkward chat with Maria.

(SH2R commentary master post) - (Patreon) - (Ko-fi) - (YouTube)

#sh2r playthrough #sh2r commentary #gaming #silent hill 2 remake #long post #video #idoherty451 #horror

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cleolinda · 1 hour ago

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Everyone on tumblr has Conditions. maladies. I log onto tumblr and my mutuals are unwellposting. Conditions I didn't even know existed and sound like dark curses but I will see a post from friend like "died about 60% today, fine now. Made egg on toast #yummytoast". There are so many people in this world with life experiences

#disorders disorder

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cleolinda · 1 hour ago

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Silent Hill 2 commentary: Honestly just so much Brookhaven Hospital (1)

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PREVIOUSLY ON: Nurses, doctors, trees; the Jungian psyche; an enigmatic window; MARIA, GET OUT OF THE WAY

Spoiler policy: Just about anything but That One Big Thing near the end of the game, particularly information about characters, their motives, and their dynamics. The game's eight endings may also be discussed. Content notes are below the cut.

Content notes: The premise of the game involves subtle mentions of terminal illness, suicidal ideation, and alcohol abuse. This video specifically has a lot of environmental storytelling regarding medical/psychiatric abuse, including historical photographs, in an abandoned mental hospital. There's also very bloody combat with firearms and a steel pipe, and we have some sexualized monsters/enemies (and I discuss the symbolism of that; IMO it serves a purpose). I apologize to the nurses a lot. On the video, I also try to warn for specific things, like swarms of insects, as we get to them.

3:10: An update on the Sad Window: I now think that rain specifically symbolizes guilt, not just "any unexpressed emotions, idk," and I'll elaborate on this, God help us all, when we get to some specific rain in the next video.

4:00: While we're here, let's take a trip back to Room C2 and look at the "bloodstain" painting again, because it is a real painting: Jan Mankes' "Woudster road near Oranjewoud." I do think it was chosen because it looks like dried blood splotches (and has a tiny lone figure on the road), but it's real.

Speaking of blood, I still don't know what the desperate scratches on the wall beside the bed are. Again, Ambient Badness. (My brain just spat out "werewolf" for some reason, but that's not a thing in Silent Hill, probably.)

5:45: Regarding Laura's wall drawings: that's a Mary rabbit for sure.

6:05: The church entrance Strange Photo: I'm so proud of figuring this out. I've already done a sideblog post on this, but the point of the photo isn't some kind of riddle that a window isn't an "entrance"; it's that this is the Church of the Rebirth, as seen in the original game's "Rebirth" ending. (Remember the White Chrism at Baldwin Mansion?) In this remake, you never actually see the church in person, because the new "Rebirth" ending fades to black while James is still rowing across the lake. This is the ending I described as feeling a little Pet Sematary to me: we don't see what Mary's like when she comes back. James sounds happy, but sometimes, "dead is better."

I have now realized with sinking heart that every single Strange Photo is going to be this Deep, and I've got to figure out all of them. (I'M NOT GOOGLING! I WANT TO DO IT ALL BY MYSELF!) The ones I've figured out have been extremely cool... and then there's two or three completely inscrutable pictures. "Does anybody tell a local legend about a radiator?"

9:00: But the real reason I pulled up the inventory was so I could turn the Monster Detector radio off; I wish now that I'd had it off the whole time so I could have gotten the achievement for it. Ultimately, it's motion-based and won't tell you anything that the advance gurgling of the monsters themselves doesn't; Mary will pipe up on the radio as necessary, regardless. Indeed, right now, I'm saying, "I hear you!! I heard you squelching!!"

11:25: "Let's check on Maria. Howya doin'. You doin'?" [Silence.] "… You're doin'." I knew at this point that you get a significant cutscene if you check on her after a certain point. I didn't realize that there were two. But we'll get to that in the next video ("I'M REELING! SHE'S GONE!").

11:50: Let's stop by the Palliative Care Center poster again, in case I didn't mention that, yes, it relates to the fact that Mary was in hospice, but also, it shows a young girl, which is the game's way of foreshadowing what Laura will tell us: Mary became friends with her in the hospital.

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(Warning: this is gory.)

12:40: "For y'all's sakes... I'm gonna let this play out." Here's our first (and scripted) encounter with one of the iconic Bubblehead Nurses: she staggers out from a corridor and wanders around a large open area, towards the nurses' station, and will gradually drift towards where you're standing in a connecting hallway. If you leave her alone, that is. The moment you start shooting, it's on.

Normally, I try to kneecap the nurses, but I let this first one wander around so you can get a good look. In fact, I let this one wander so long that she went into the Nurse Head Shake, which was inspired by Jacob's Ladder, and you get a great look at that. I've posted separately about that on the sideblog because the Jacob's Ladder material is pretty disturbing, be advised. On that post, you can see a bit of what the movement looked like in the original game, and I've also included a YouTube compilation of all the SH2 remake nurses' movements, so that you can see the full-speed blur.

STRATEGY CHAT: At that point, I fired one shot to get her to come after us. I was then stuck with the problem of her coming after us, because I was committed to using only the pipe so you could see her moves. Nurses often swing their weapon twice, forward and then back, but sometimes one or three times. If they grab or push you, you need to get BACK. They hit hard as hell and they've got a WINGSPAN with that long steel pipe. They cheat, too, suddenly sliding forward to make up ground ("OH! The GLIDE"). You can see a really egregious example of this from my first run of Toluca Prison several game-hours from now, in which a nurse just whole-ass phases through a wall to come get me. I always get very offended when this happens.

14:00: The subsequent discussion is a bit marred by the dead nurse's micro skirt twitching the whole way through it, and here I am trying to walk around to a more modest angle. I'm also so desensitized to the combat at this point that I basically park us beside a gore-spattered nurse for several minutes to describe all the visual references. This may be something you want to look away from and just listen to. In fact, I have all of this info in a side post so this entry wouldn't be 100,000 words long. Major points (in the order I wrote them up):

Movement: The Glide

The symbolism of the "baby" face

The red square over the nurses' mouths

Stockings and "erotic essence"

The history of nurse uniforms

Yes, this is the kind of person I am

I am straight-up going to hit you with "the history of nurse uniforms"

The Jacob's Ladder head shake

The material of the bubble head: "WHAT THE HELL?"

Combat chat

"Good luck with your skirt, ma'am."

20:20: "There's so many things I don't want to do in here." The nurses' station is locked; a note stuck to the window urges employees to not write down the keypad combination to help passing gamers: "Be responsible, people." There's also a locked storage door that we'll see open on its own a bit later.

Did not mention: I keep forgetting to mention the loud, harsh, ambient breathing noises throughout the hospital, because it goes without saying to me that this relates to Mary's respiratory illness haunting James' subconscious.

21:38: "Oh no." There's a laundry room in the basement where you get pretty thoroughly attacked (in two different versions of the hospital, even), but this smaller one is safe. There's a Glimpse of the Past with a typewriter and carbon paper; you can see it in the original game here.

22:24: Should we fight everything in the surrounding corridors like I did on my recent practice run, or just go straight to the Director's Office? "Do we feel spicy?" I did not feel spicy. I went straight to the office so I wouldn't forget what we're doing.

There's a mannequin hand standing upright on the Director's desk, and it's the organizing principle of the entire Brookhaven Hospital (Fogworld Division) level. We're going to need three patient ID bracelets to get this hand to open its fist and give us a key, so that's three general puzzle areas, and then that key will let us into a locked storage room that will set up two more puzzles, and from there, we'll get another key. This key will take us up to the rooftop to get our ass kicked. That's what this entire level of the game is about. You're welcome.

23:06: Discussion of sundry portraits (probably previous Directors), none of which are allowed to have eyes. I feel like faces in portraits or photos are obscured either because 1) real images were used and they're filing off the serial numbers, if you will; 2) the game doesn't want us distracted by people who aren't significant to James; and/or 3) James can't "see" himself or what he's done (refer back to the It Doesn't S_ee_ movie poster). Secondary to that, the nurse portraits often have blurred faces because of both the head-shake and the bubblehead covering that obscures any features. Whenever I try to image-search any of these portraits, I only get links to discussion of the game; again, they may have been created for it.

24:11: So here we have a cassette tape from the Director of Brookhaven to listen to:

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They are beyond hope... that's what they keep telling me. My three patients. My three "hopeless cases." But I do not believe it to be a matter of hope. It is a matter of diligence, discipline, trial and error, of being as bold as one can be. To go as far as one needs to. I WILL find what it is that truly ails them. And I WILL cure them.

Now, I have a whole side post about this asshole character that I'll add to as we find more documents; it does already have two versions of his portrait in the Historical Society, as well as the second tape we'll hear from him. The main point here (which I always mention with great pride, because I needed a theory win) is that I managed to guess whose deepened, altered voice this is. Because why do you alter someone's voice? To obscure who's speaking from the audience. It's the same actor who plays James, Luke Roberts; apparently, they pitched his voice down. In fact, Ian was able to confirm that Luke Roberts is listed as the Director in the Japanese credits—probably because he needed to be credited separately from Chikahiro Kobayashi, James' voice in that version.

I also do a brief run through the history of Brookhaven Hospital, courtesy of the fan wiki: native peoples considering the land sacred, and I don't know specifically what happened to them once colonists arrived, but it can't have been good; a 17th-century white colony and "little more than a shack" for a hospital abandoned after a plague (a recurring event in Silent Hill history); re-settlement as a penal colony in the early 1800s, a rebuilt Brookhaven, and another plague; use during the Civil War; conversion to a mental hospital at some unspecified point. And the reason I run through this so quickly is that we don't actually know how much of that history is reflected in what James is seeing. Remember, some of this setting may be the real Silent Hill, but some of it is for sure purely from James' own psyche (hold on for a couple of paragraphs). We don't know if the Director on that tape was a real person. And one point in favor of him simply being a manifestation is the fact that he's voiced by the same actor as James, as if he's the same person.

So part of what I'm setting up for you here is that the Director reads as another parallel to or reflection of James, not unlike the janitor near the beginning of the game; the three patients whose documents we're going to read also correlate to James, Eddie, and Angela, and maybe James collectively. These patients may not be the least bit real, and this hospital may be partly or entirely imagined, different from the historical Brookhaven. If Angela were the one wandering through this hospital, the three patients and the posters on the walls and the alarming medical instruments and the Director's tape might be completely different. We genuinely don't know.

To me, the hospital as a setting looks like a mix of early 1900s through 1950s; the photos and portraits show clothing and even an automobile closer to the early 1900s, but some of the medical equipment specifically dates to the '30s-'50s. And then, the wall-mounted TVs in the patient rooms look more '70s or '80s—these might be things that James remembers from Mary's hospital room circa 1983. Because, here's the thing: I didn't figure this out until after I'd recorded the video, but I point out a certificate from the "American Association of Blood [Redacted]" (29:28) in deep confusion.

Why would James be in the office of a blood specialist now? I don't know, but you certainly might be if your terminally ill wife needed one. Like I mentioned before, a Redditor discovered that the drug names on the Green Pharmacy receipt are similar to blood cancer medications. And the word after "Blood" is covered by a blotch shaped like a heart, as if the certificate comes from a time when James was still supporting Mary emotionally—they were still "in love." I think his subconscious has put something he remembers on that wall.

29:07: There's a side room with a safe, and, once again, puzzles love a sheet—a curtain, this time. The buttons involve astrological/alchemical symbols, because life is not hard enough. We'll deal with this in the next video.

30:10: So let's talk about these Three Crucial Patients. If you'd like to read over their full narrative arcs, today sure is your lucky day!

Ian really spearheaded our attempts to identify the three patients (which I'm sure we could have searched for on Reddit, but that's no fun). I also have a master post for all the Brookhaven info, which details how the original game's three (male, named, J-for-James) patients represented the three characters but leaned more closely towards to James as a trio, whereas the remake's patients are nameless, and one is explicitly female. The remake trio seem more clearly mapped to James, Eddie, and Angela, but in a dreamlike fashion—perhaps based only on what James knows or intuits about them. We think we've identified them as:

Patient 0130, symbolizing Angela

Patient 0090, symbolizing Eddie

Patient 0050, symbolizing James

That's the order in which we find their Evaluation Cards. I think the numbers, ordered here from highest to lowest, actually reflect their ages—James as the oldest (canonically 29, but at one point, the remake had wanted to make him older), Eddie in the middle at 23, and Angela as the youngest at 19.

What I've done is gathered the documents and references to these patients (and if I've missed something, I'll add it), and I've done posts collating them for each individual—what Ian and I have been able to figure out about their narrative arcs. These involve a lot of medical abuse, outdated medical procedures, some self-harm possibly resulting in death, and the question of whether an incident involved murder or suicide. You can see full transcripts at the links, but to summarize the initial evaluations here:

Patient 0130, symbolizing Angela

"intense and unrelenting anxiety." I think "full-blown paranoia" could refer to Angela suddenly threatening James with the knife, and "visual hallucinations" could refer to a scene we haven't gotten to yet, where she seems to be talking to someone who isn't James ("You shouldn't be here!").

"Increased medication" is the theme of her puzzle in the Otherworld—I'll show you that whole set up in a bit.

***

Patient 0090, symbolizing Eddie

This patient primarily has "sensory delusions" that leave him unwilling to eat or bathe. I feel like this represents Eddie, who has an overeating disorder, in an ironic way purely because you wouldn't be able to overeat in a locked-down psychiatric hospital. The hygiene parallel is straightforward; Eddie's shirt is deeply stained with food and vomit. But also, I think "delusions" may refer to a later scene where James walks in on Eddie yelling at (imaginary?) corpses: "How many times do I have to kill you?!" (You can see this scene on Ian's stream here.)

I'm not sure how "insomnia" and "sleep medication" track with Eddie as a character, and the Patient 0090 Otherworld puzzle (a mock lobotomy) isn't foreshadowed by the evaluation. However, "constant surveillance" does hint at what I think 0090's death may be: from self-harm.

***

Patient 0050, symbolizing James

There is A Whole Lot going on with the "James" patient. Most simply, I think "sudden outbursts of aggression" refers to The Reveal I Don't Talk About, and "visual and auditory hallucinations" could refer to all kinds of things—Maria not being real, Silent Hill being "FAKE," Mary's letter and her voice on the radio—the reality of this entire game, really. Intriguingly, "current therapy is effective" has been crossed out—was this the aquatherapy 0050 was getting in the hospital pool, or was this the "surrogate daughter" therapy that one Redditor discovered in the game files? And this is before we get into the electroshock therapy (explicitly specified for 0050), the comparison of 0050's case to a patient who may have killed someone, and, uh, a cardiectomy (you heard me). We immediately decided this was James, though, from this evaluation: "Water has a calming effect."

***

35:45: One more thing: I want us to look at this Arnold Böcklin painting, Isle of the Dead, right above the save point in a small back room.

I've done yet another side post for this, but this painting and its back story involves a coffin, a rowboat, and a widow named Marie. I feel like the imagery relates to James rowing across the lake (and very specifically the "Rebirth" ending), but I don't know if we have an intended Mrs. Milley situation in referencing a "grieving widow" or not. Like I say in that side post, if you hear a certain pointedness in my voice when I say, "Mary will never be mourning you," you're not imagining that.

Next post: Onto the rest of the hospital! Louise four ever, another hidden Goya, a firearm upgrade, James' masculine ideal, Her Drawings, and Patient 0050 in water behind the Eye; "Ma'am, you're doing this wrong!"

(SH2R commentary master post) - (Patreon) - (Ko-fi) - (YouTube)

#sh2r playthrough #sh2r commentary #gaming #silent hill 2 remake #silent hill 2 #long post #video #idoherty451 #horror

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