#but there is a good chance I’ll at least carry through SH4! I’ll have to look more into the games after that and see how the vibes are

[juniepops]

[vague gestures at spoilers for the other endings if you care about that]

congrats on finishing Silent Hill 2! One of my favorite games!

I'm kind of surprised you got the In Water ending, honestly, though the criteria for which ending you get is still pretty arcane even to this day. Its actually one of my favorite things about the game.

Cuz like its not just one or two plot actions you can do in the game to determine the ending, its tons of little things like how often you take damage and heal, what files you read, how you behave toward Maria, and stuff like that.

The three primary endings of SH2 are all based around James's internal struggle. The events of the game always play out the same, but James's reasons for doing what he does and how he feels about it is entirely up to how you play. I find it absolutely fascinating and one of the best "choice" systems in any game ever. It chaps my ass a bit that basically no other game ive seen, let alone any other SH games, have done anything like it since.

(also you should definitely play SH4 The Room. Its weird and ive never finished it but it does some interesting stuff)

Yes looking into the other ending after the fact really surprised me how complex they are! I’d practically have to replay the whole game to get each new one, unlike SH1 where if I’d kept separate save files I could’ve cut a lot of time out of the replay

I do think that In Water makes sense for a particularly thorough playthrough where I was checking my inventory items for clues and exploring rooms and logs in their entirety. It also doesn’t help that early on I hadn’t figured out the health meter entirely and wanted to save items until I was sure I needed them so I ended up spending a lot of time at low health!

Regardless it’s a very unique interesting system and I’m glad to have taken the chance to play the game. Thank you for following along and sharing your thoughts!