#finn plays sh2r

[eldritch-elrics]

one of the most interesting things about the silent hill 2 remake to me is the sort of... cascading effect that its particular brand of realism has on the entire experience, especially when it comes to james's characterization.

i'll try to explain concisely what i mean.

both 2001's SH2 and 2024's SH2 have what you could call a realistic artstyle. between the two games, this is achieved in very different ways. the original game uses realistic textures, proportions, animations, and especially lighting. this is what gives the fmv cutscenes their uncanny feel - the low resolution means that we focus not on the details, but whether the overall shape and lighting of the scenes feels consistent with reality.

the 2024 remake, meanwhile, follows in the tradition of recent AAA releases by upping the detail. silent hill, as a location, feels more real than ever. now, you can debate about what this does or doesn't add to the game - is an important part of the character of silent hill the eerie, empty, and unreal atmosphere it gains from the limitations of the ps2? that's a valid question. but being a 2024 AAA release, and one that clearly has a lot of effort put into it, the remake goes for realism by adding a whole lot of stuff.

now you have a game that is full of stuff. objects. clutter. this creates a problem. in the original silent hill games, important objects are not indicated with any kind of ui. instead, they're highlighted with particular colors, textures, lighting, etc. the remake does this too - but it also adds a little nondiegetic indicator when you're standing next to something you can interact with:

for a game with this artstyle, this is 100% a necessity. sure, some objects (especially stuff with uniform designs, like ammo or health items) stand out regardless. but for other things... it just isn't always clear!

imagine the game without these indicators. you would probably be able to find most of the important objects. but you'd need to spend way, way more time searching through rooms full of clutter in order to pick out the stuff that's necessary to progress. this is how the original game works! and it works in that game because the levels are smaller, and there is less random crap. but it would just be so tedious to do in the remake.

adding an interaction indicator doesn't so much create a clear boundary between "important" and "not important" - plenty of the stuff you can interact with in the remake is random stuff like posters that add nothing but worldbuilding detail, or drawers that don't actually contain anything - but it does create a clear boundary between "things the developers meant for you to focus on" and "things the developers meant as background details." this cannot help but change the entire experience of the game. in the original game, anything has the potential to be interacted with - you don't know whether you can or not until you've walked up to it (and made sure you've walked up to it at the right angle...) and pressed the button. this makes you consider your surroundings in a different way! it makes you search differently! it makes you more aware! it also adds more mystery - it makes the world feel that much more complicated, because there is so much stuff you could be missing!

one detail of the original game that i was very sad not to see in the remake is the abundance of commentary that james has on a bunch of the objects around him. and they could have added at least some of this! just a couple dozen more voice lines! but a lot of it is, well:

it is usually not particularly profound commentary. but it encompasses far more than the sorts of things to which the remake adds an interaction indicator, and i assume that is at least one reason (apart from its general characterization of james as taciturn) why the remake does away with it entirely. because there is such a black and white distinction between "interactable" and "non-interactable," they can't justify adding that little symbol to every potentially interesting thing in a game full of interesting clutter. why would gamers want to be told to focus on something, only for james to tell them right back that it's not worthy of his focus?

now, these objects things may not be important or noteworthy. but what makes them interesting - and what makes me as a player want to interact with every possible thing i can, just so see if it has associated dialogue - is that james tells you that they aren't important or noteworthy, and this tells us a lot about james. it makes us feel like we're seeing the game through his eyes, not the eyes of the developers who are putting in the buttons telling us what to focus on. instead, james is deciding what is "not a particularly special photograph," what is "...just a regular stage," and what is a collection of bottles so mesmerizing that he feels compelled to expatiate on his alcohol problems.*

*this is a particularly interesting example, because it's a completely missable detail from the original game that, as far as i'm aware, isn't in the remake's version of heaven's night. and yet... the remake references it! the scene in the remake where james refuses to drink the glass maria offers him in heaven's night reads completely differently whether you know this detail or not!

it's also possible that the lack of random commentary from james - the more substantial stuff, that is, not just "i don't need toilet paper right now" - is a deliberate choice on the part of the remake dev team to get rid of something that they saw as only in the game because the design decisions of the original silent hill games necessitated it. maybe they thought that the only reason for james to have that much commentary at all was because the game needed to give players feedback as a little reward for exploring around - a type of exploring that the remake does not incentivize. maybe they thought that a more "true" version of james would not say anything at all when faced with an object he had no strong feelings about. (especially as opposed to a protagonist like heather, for whose characterization this object-commentary is vital.)

but the thing is... even the presence of the less substantial commentary adds substance to james's characterization! it tells us what he's interested in, what motivates him or doesn't, what reminds him he needs to get a move on (shows us his one track mind - his drive towards his quest!), and what he's noticing but deliberately not thinking about (for example, sexually charged imagery). and it's so interesting that, very likely, this design decision is in part a consequence of an entirely different decision that was made because "that just how AAA games are" !

so, in short, the cascading effect is:

realism -> more detail -> harder to see what objects are important so devs need to add ui elements to point out what you can interact with -> you're not going around and interacting with everything you see -> james doesn't do random commentary on unimportant stuff -> changes how his characterization feels

[eldritch-elrics]

happy new year everyone! to celebrate the beginning of the new year at midnight, i.... did not do anything, because i didn't notice at all. i was too busy playing sh2r.........

anyway. i did the labyrinth today. as i may have mentioned, the labyrinth is my favorite level in og silent hill 2. this means that i have a lot of opinions about this segment. sh2r's labyrinth.... is hit or miss. that is to say, when it hits, it hits hard, but when it misses, it also misses hard.

first up, a surprise appearance! abstract daddy! holy shit! holy shit!!!! that was one intense boss fight, oh my god. the other bosses in the game so far have been pretty standard, not any more exciting than their og counterparts, but abstract daddy ramped it up a notch. for the most part, i loved all the changes they made. it felt like the dip into angela's otherworld was not just one little tangent in an otherwise unrelated segment, but a whole area in its own right. the environmental design was a highlight here: the fleshy, breathing walls, the huge pistons and machinery, the televisions projecting abuse, the artifacts that suggest domestic violence (smashed plates etc). the way that you're half running from abstract daddy and half fighting back! it felt like we got a better look into angela's psyche through this expanded vision of her otherworld, and that was great.

i think that the cutscene with angela was mostly the same as in the og? i'd have to look back at both side by side. i think this cutscene hit really differently for me this time around because i already know the game's twist - i was watching it and going "damn, that's a bit on the nose, angela," only to look at the og's script afterwards and discover that the line was the same in both versions, lmao.

it was a really, really interesting decision to put this scene before the maria jail cell scene. it completely changes both scenes in ways that i have complicated feelings about. i'll try to explain...

so, to me, the post-abstract-daddy cutscene kind of hinges on angela's accusation that james is only interested in one thing: that is, sex. (idk if this is really the most "important" part of the scene, but it's the one that i find most interesting in the greater labyrinths context.) both games give us a reason why it makes some sense for angela to make this accusation - a reason, that is, beyond the obvious fact that her trauma has caused her to see james's friendliness in a different light. in the remake, it feels like the whole thing is framed as a misunderstanding - james had that line in the park where he told angela he was looking for a little girl, angela took it the wrong way, and now she has fully built up a version of james in her mind where he's a sexual predator of some flavor. as players, we know that this is probably not true, but it still casts some doubt on james & his seeming good nature. was his relationship with mary really all it seems...? (spoiler alert: nope!)

in the original game, there is a layer beyond "trauma-informed misunderstanding" to angela's accusation that all james wants is sex. and that is the fact that, earlier in the level, maria says essentially the exact same thing. maria and angela make the same assumption about james, with extremely different tones.

i promise i have more to say about angela, but let me segue into the maria jail cell scene here for a moment. this was the only cutscene from the remake i'd seen before playing it! my out-of-context thoughts on that scene are posted here. anyway, as i've probably talked about before, one of the reasons why i like the cell scene so much is that it works as the setup for an elaborate joke that the game is playing on the player.

the joke basically goes like this:

james finds maria again, yay

maria tells james in no uncertain terms that they are going to fuck when he comes to find her again

james's reaction to this information is kind of ambiguous

the player, assuming they have bought into the sexiness of maria, goes through the whole grueling labyrinth segment determined to see maria again asap

this momentum is completely interrupted by abstract daddy, and especially by angela accusing james of being a sexual predator

if the player has bought into the idea that james is attracted to maria - or if they themself are attracted to maria - this is a "wait, what??" moment. it's a "making the gooners self-conscious" moment (sorry). "joke" is perhaps not the right word, but it's a rug pull. you thought you were getting sex? nope! you're getting Feeling Uncomfortable About Sex! and i think that is just great.

going back to angela, this is the second layer to her assumption that james wants sex. in the original game, to the player, angela seems like she's hit on something that might very well be true. regardless of what james thinks about all this - and i think the game deliberately suggests very little about what james thinks about all this! - he's gotten himself into a sexually charged situation with maria. this, perhaps, causes the player to rethink some things about angela. if her instincts are right, and james is pretty sex-driven, should we take her more seriously when she accuses james of infidelity and (indirectly) murder? this whole thing with maria sure resonates with angela's accusation that "you probably found someone else."

and i just think that that part of the scene hits harder if we've already seen james have this semi-sexual moment with maria. it's surprising! it's a bait and switch!

consider, then, what's different if james is mentally carrying all of angela's accusations - you only care about sex, you probably left your wife for someone else - into his interactions with maria in the labyrinth. of course he's going to deny that he wants to touch her, even if his face tells us he's conflicted! of course he's going to catch himself when he's "too" emotional over her death! it paints the whole thing in a different light. and it's an emotionally nuanced and realistic light, certainly. but man... the overall emotional arc of james here is a bit flatter & darker because of this change. and i do like how the original is a bit more ambiguous about james's feelings for maria, even if i completely accept this version as well.

to sum up, you could say that the placement of the scenes in the original gives players both more of a surprise, and more doubt about james's character thanks to angela's instincts seeming more immediately on-point. in the remake, however, the scene order feels like it moreso makes james doubt himself.

my other big question is about how to read maria's line change in this scene in this new context - from "Come and get me. I can't do anything through these bars" to "Well, if you happen to make up your mind… I'll be waiting." in the remake's version of the scene in general, she seems much less flirty & assured of his attention, and i think that is sad - i like how she comes off as totally manipulative in the original (and imo for reasons that are very sympathetic!). but it's interesting to see her more subdued & harder to read in this reworking. i take the line change as an indication of her stronger, more equal relationship with james in the remake: even though she needs him to like her, she's been doing that by building a legitimate relationship with him. she doesn't feel as strong a need to play the sex card as forcefully as possible... if that makes sense.

it kind of makes me wonder what the remake team would do if they were given the opportunity to completely rewrite the jail cell scene. now of course they can't do that, as it's possibly the most iconic scene in the game, but... i'm curious! would maria be warmer? less completely inscrutable/mysterious? would they be able to do more story-wise with the scene switch?

of course, an extremely plausible answer for why the scene order is switched around is so that players don't have to do two bosses back to back. but that switch creates some interesting story implications!

anyway. i sure do start talking a lot when maria is involved...

all that being said... let me talk about the actual content of the labyrinths!

so i think that... the nicest way i can put this is that i & the remake devs have different opinions about what the labyrinth's core gimmick is. to me, the most important thing about the labyrinth is the way it represents a complete break from the design of the levels that have come before. you are now in a lawless place. there is no map. apart from the one required to open up maria's room, there are no puzzles. this is silent hill 2 stripped of all flourishes and signifiers. you don't know where you are, or what's going on. you just have to get out and find maria.

the remake adds puzzles. worse, it adds multiple sections to the labyrinth!

i'll start by acknowledging that, visual design wise, all of these elements are extremely fucking cool. the redesign of the turning box puzzle is legitimately fantastic - the escher vibes are perfect, and i love how it's scaled up to a terrifying size. the remake certainly understands that a core part of the labyrinths' horror is how they look manmade, but don't correspond to any sort of building you might find in reality - a contrast to the rest of the game, which is set in extremely mundane, recognizable locations turned horrific by what has been added to or subtracted from them.

but... puzzles? the "rotten" section of the new labyrinth (sorry i keep switching between singular and plural for "labyrinth;" either feels like it fits wrt the remake) is just kind of... bad, in my opinion. like, taken out of context it's fine. visually it's great - i loved the dead body thing (??) wrapped in bandages where you never actually get to see what it is. and the fridge filled with guts!! and so many new things for james to stick his hand in! (really funny that this is like, a running joke in the remake now?) but having to collect items, collect keys, use them all in a centralized location to move on to the next segment... that's the sort of gameplay we've been doing all game. that's standard shit. this absolutely should not be part of the one level that is defined by how it completely does away with all of the "standard shit."

i think there's also a more psychological reason why the labyrinth should not be a long, puzzle-filled level. this is the same reason why i think i'm ultimately okay with the remake moving the position of the prisoner puzzle. that is: i believe that the labyrinth gets rid of (most) of the thinky stuff because the game wants you to focus on the fact that you have to get to maria. and it's a trek to get there, but there's not too much to distract you... until you get to abstract daddy, that is.

anyway... the "desolate" section was pretty good. felt like the og labyrinth! except with a sort of blue filter over everything? idk about that choice. it's interesting how pyramid head's lair isn't optional this time - there's something to be said about the power of making the coolest things missable, and it seems like the remake is often pretty scared to keep the missable things missable. and speaking of missing things, i really missed this james commentary:

i really liked how you can just see pyramid head standing and watching you from behind the bars here though.

finally, the "ruined" section. the visuals in this bit were really awesome, but overall i think this part sucks ass. as i've said, i do like the combat in the remake, but having a forced enemy gauntlet kind of area (or any moment outside of boss fights in which you have to kill the enemies) is simply not in the spirit of silent hill. thumbs down!

which brings us to the end of the labyrinth, and fortunately two really great moments. the first one is: james holding (dead) maria's hand!!!

my heart!!

as opposed to the original scene, where he just kind of says "mary..." out of nowhere, the remake gives a little context to that line: he stops crying, and sobers up a little, and turns away before going "mary." it extremely reads like him accepting maria's death (or rather... telling himself that he shouldn't be so sad over maria's death) because his ultimate objective is still to find mary. another james repression win...

this is an interesting interpretation! even though it gives james a clearer (and also more nuanced) emotional progression in this scene, it also still leaves open the avenues for both the "in water" and "maria" endings - your actions as a player decide whether or not james ends up repressing/rejecting his feelings about maria or not.

(also: i wonder why the door leading to maria says "208" on it? gotta think about that another time)

finally (yes this is the last thing for real this time) - continuing from the remake's tendency to make previously missable/optional weapons/areas required... pyramid head's sword is now required for one final puzzle!

i thought this whole bit was GREAT. i don't really mind that you don't get to keep the sword (it's a cheese option anyway, lol), and moreover i fucking love the symbolism of james dragging pyramid head's sword through the sea of monstrous hands. as a figment of james's psyche, pyramid head's role is to cut down distractions in james's path - whether that means dispatching other monsters, or killing maria over and over. to have james be the one to take the sword and cut a path forward shows that he is on his way to, you could say, being his own pyramid head. moving forward without maria. literally cutting himself out of the abyss of his mind. and of course... the next stop is literally into his own grave... so i think that is a really fun symbolic progression!

[eldritch-elrics]

okay, i took a peek at a little bit of critical writing related to sh2r (not too much, i'll save that for after i finish the game) and there was one headline that articulated something i've been feeling about the remake but hadn't really thought about in detail. which is... it's a bit bloated, isn't it?

like, for sure it is cool having more to do and more to see. but where i am in the game, i'm feeling kind of like... does every single level need to be so big? does every level need multiple parts/segments to it? do you need to be able to go inside, say, every room in the hospital?

i was especially feeling this about the prison. in the original game, the prison has one layer. one map. that's it. and the remake, as if embarrassed by the simplicity of that level design, adds like four new sub-areas. why??

at best, this makes the buildings in the remake feel a bit more like their real-world counterparts, because they can add all sorts of new rooms that exist in real-life hospitals, or prisons, or whatever. at worst, it's kind of exhausting! though i think the labyrinth is the only place that actively suffers from this sort of bloat - as i said in my last liveblogging post, the entire point of the labyrinth is how stripped-down it is. adding a gameplay structure that is identical to the gameplay structure of ever other level completely defeats the purpose.

[eldritch-elrics]

wait i just fucking realized i'm already at the LABYRINTH and james doesn't yet realize he's heading towards the boat launch that will get him to the hotel. oh my fucking god. like, it's not like the remake entirely loses the terror of the impossible geometry + not knowing where you are, but these are two entirely different scenarios:

either you go into the historical society, expecting to just pop right back out the other side and go across the lake to where the hotel is on your map, and instead are taken deeper and deeper and deeper into the earth, and you don't know how deep it's going to go, and you don't know how you're ever going to make it to the hotel at this rate, and you know exactly where you need to be but you don't know if you're making any progress, and this is the first time in the game where you are not contained within a structure you could see on your map from the start so anything could happen -

OR, you go into the historical society with nothing but a couple random clues to guide you, looking vaguely for "mary" or mayyyybe laura but not really having a destination otherwise, and are taken deeper and deeper into the earth, which is terrifying of course but this entire journey has been terrifying impossible situations so you guess you might as well go along with it?

like i guess the idea is for james to learn he needs to go to the hotel when maria tells him in the cell scene? but like. man. what a way to just kill half the tension of that entire segment. it is astounding how much two tiny decisions (not telling james about the hotel in the first maria cutscene, plus not giving james access to the entire map of silent hill from the start) affect the entire plot's pacing and makes james feel much less driven. i changed my mind remake sucks

[eldritch-elrics]

things are getting exciting in sh2r!!

i made it out of dark south vale! the second half of that area was much calmer... so much nicer. REALLY interested in the new angela scene in the park also. we learn some important things, like that angela's losing hope of finding her mom. i really like the moment where james is like "let's get out of here" and angela is like "...out of where?" which, to me, implies that her otherworld has been following her beyond just silent hill. and god, james telling her that he's looking for a little girl and then not elaborating… poor angela, we all know how her brain construes that :(

i went back into the one room in the motel on a whim and i'm SO glad i did because omg. the silent hill 3 save symbol!!! the easter eggs in this remake are top notch for sure.

it was awesome to see more objects in the silent hill historical society, but i'm really sad to lose james's commentary on so many of the paintings and such:

also, the remake added this photo: i'm pretty sure it's a room somewhere in the game but i can't think what it is?

it was really interesting how they basically didn't change the tiny sewer section at all. except for making the well puzzle way easier (yippee!) and the stupid bug room a bit less stupid (you can kill the bugs now yaaay. i'm glad it's still a little stupid though).

anyway: toluca prison! it's organized so differently in the remake. very interesting. i liked the puzzle with the scales. i also think i accept the decision to move the prisoner-judging puzzle to be the climax of the prison segment? it fits more thematically here... but also idk. putting it in the labyrinth gives you this weird sense like the labyrinth might actually be part of the prison in some twisted way. also like, putting the prisoner puzzle directly after the abstract daddy fight (and while you're still looking for maria) creates some sort of a Vibe... while also giving the player some cool-down time between two fairly intense bosses. i also think the imagery used for the prisoner puzzle in the original game (with the two rooms and all) is far more striking.

i'm also sad they got rid of the tile puzzle with the seductress/glutton/oppressor or whatever the word choices were. it was just neat to see a puzzle that was so obviously referencing james/eddie/angela and their respective vulnerabilities - and having the parallels between them playing in your mind going into the labyrinth (and especially abstract daddy) is a good thing i think.

overall though i think i was a bit frustrated with the prison. they seriously overload you with enemies in some of the sections - i fear the game is starting to lose the plot on the whole "silent hill as a series is not primarily about fighting" thing. like, sure, you always have a choice between fighting and not fighting - up to you to decide what's worth it - but i think that the general enemy density throughout the game should be a bit lower? (the new mannequin behavior of climbing walls is pretty awful in an awesome way though.)

anyway i liked this bit. i enjoyed making james cause An Incident immediately afterwards.

glad they kept this room, and: is it just me or do some of the people look like they have pyramidy heads...?

also: URINAL SAVE POINT RETURNS YAY

finally: looking back through my sh2 ps2 screenshots and goddamn is the remake missing SO much good james dialogue. like. it is a crime that they could not include this.

really really looking forward to the labyrinth next time :D

[eldritch-elrics]

today in sh2r: i finished brookhaven!

again, not too much to report here. very glad to see the triple-padlocked box puzzle back (with some very striking scenery this time! all those chains!). and the lady of the door! and the fridge-opening scene! and the really funny way maria delivers the word "ANYWAY" in the scene where she and james reunite! and trick or treat!!!! (though i wish it had given a clue about where to go for your prize... i had to look that up...)

generally i thought that the nightmare hospital had a super cool atmosphere. especially in moments like how the pool turns into an unknowably deep black pit!

i was also interested in the addition of all those memos from (presumably) the director detailing the horrific & abusive lengths he went to to "cure" his patients. gotta love an "evil asylum" setpiece where the implied true horror comes not so much from ~ooh spooky mental illness~ but from the fucked-up-ness of psychiatric institutions & the lack of respect they have for patients...

also: pyramid head choking james. very good. yes. i enjoyed that.

i was not super excited about flesh lips but tbh i think they changed that fight for the better? i remember the original boss being a little bit bullshit - this time, it was nice to have a bigger arena + only one enemy + a simple but interesting second phase gimmick.

i can't quite say the same thing for the pyramid head chase... it felt really really easy this time around. james moves so slowly when running that i didn't get a "running for your life" vibe at all. maybe this was just because i knew what was going to happen, but that sequence just wasn't scary for me. huh!

i stopped maybe halfway through dark south vale. i honestly can't remember how i felt about this sequence in the original game - i was motivated to go as fast as i could because i wanted to see what would happen next - but in the remake i am just not enjoying it. i'm really feeling the more aggressive enemies, and at a certain point that just becomes exhausting. this is probably mostly my fault for tiring myself out by playing way more of the game today than i should have...

also. i liked this moment. for obvious reasons but also just because the rain falling inside is a great vibe:

[eldritch-elrics]

today (in sh2r) i was just running around between the park & the hospital, because... wow! there is so much to see! most of all, i really loved hearing the idle banter between james and maria. not to mention all the new cutscenes, oh man???

as far as the larger story goes, i think it's really really good to put all this development of james and maria's relationship in here. not just because i love them. also because... she's gonna stop being a companion after the next dungeon, so they've gotta frontload this shit to make sure her (first) death hurts as much as possible!

pacing-wise... very odd that there's still no mention of the hotel. not a fan of that. as i detailed in my last liveblogging post, i really think we should know by now that the hotel is the final destination!

anyway... plenty of good stuff here. some fun references, like maria not-quite-remembering baldwin mansion, or james assuming (seemingly for no reason) that maria doesn't want to go into the bowling alley. i also enjoy james shutting down maria's attempts to ask about mary - "i don't think you're that much alike"... ouch. it's not anything new, but this bit just kind of underscores the fact that his dream babe (sorry) is Not Mary and he probably subconsciously hates himself for this.

i like how the pipe is now required. i missed it in the og so i'm excited about this!

also! oh my god! heaven's night!!!!! i loved everything about this part, holy shit. the way maria turns on the lights & music for him and pretends to give him a little performance?? her mini breakdown about how scared she is? the two of them just sitting and chatting, her telling him that he sounds hopeful rather than crazy? james being obviously uncomfortable with being offered alcohol? (i wonder if they'll make his alcoholism problems as explicit in this version as they are in the og... i hope so.) and then so many other details, like: the posters! ("is that.. you?" "would you like it to be?" - foreshadowing!) the photo implying that the "mysterious photographs" are taken by maria! the ring in the lost and found! the sexy nurse outfit?? what the fuck is this implying????

also, maria's flirtations just keep getting better. like james, she's definitely a different character than she was in the original game, but i'm loving her characterization regardless. even if she is ultimately manipulating james to some extent, i love how genuine and approachable she feels. she's relatably scared and tired! she wants the two of them to have a good relationship! i feel like... even though i love the evil seductress vibe of og maria, and i think it's fascinating in its own right, it was probably a good decision for the remake to lean a little less into that trope? yes, the original game is aware of & playing with the misogyny of the "evil seductress" thing, but it's also cool to see an alternate take building an equally interesting character out from a slightly different angle you know?

anyway. i already knew about this line but it still killed me:

i don't have a strong opinion on the new garden area (moonlight grove), but it does set up a few cool things, such as affirming that maria is In The Know about the general culture of silent hill, plus giving us context about the island where the rebirth ending takes place. so that's neat!

also, uh... foreshadowing. haha.

this is a tiny and petty complaint, but the reason maria gives for staying outside the theater while james goes to meet eddie and laura is way too natural imo. this is not an actual problem, it just (unlike the weird awkward "i hate bowling" line from the og) doesn't add any fuel to my "maria avoids running into other npcs because she doesn't want james to know he's the only one who can see her" headcanon...

i continue to have no strong opinions about eddie or laura either. kinda sad to see eddie's still a bit of a fatphobic stereotype...? we'll see how his later cutscenes go. anyway, movie theater setting was great!

i forget if i mentioned this in the last post but i love how maria reacts to you smashing windows. sorry maria, i love items.

finally: love how sh2r has its own wacky advertisements

[eldritch-elrics]

silent hill 2 remake continues to delight me. even more so, now that maria is here :D

i enjoyed blue creek apartments quite a lot. it seems like the remake has taken the opportunity to completely rethink what once were fairly simple puzzles in the original - things like the clock puzzle feel very intentionally designed. the souls-like nature of the level design shines through in this dungeon especially - finding each clock hand requires you to go out in one direction and then circle back to the save point by opening shortcuts, which i liked. i did not like dying a handful of times and losing quite a bit of progress... but i think that is mostly a problem with me no longer playing on emulator, lol.

speaking of the puzzles... i noticed that it's now pretty explicit about what objects you should be looking for:

i don't think i like this decision. the remake's new interact button already makes explicit what objects are important, and i think that one of the fun things about silent hill as a series is picking up random shit and going "now how is this going to be useful..." without knowing beforehand what you're looking for.

let's see, more blue creek notes. the expanded moth room was great! i liked the big moths! also, they added a few new shots to the angela mirror cutscene that i thought were quite cool. i don't thiiink they changed that cutscene much? angela's voice actor is good, though.

also.... toilet!!!!! plus the original "stick hand in strange hole" bit! wow, they upped the amount of weird places for james to put his hand in the remake. i love that the toilet is no longer optional.

look at him. he's having a great time.

and finally: pyramid head!! i was glad to have more space to do the fight this time hehe. honestly, even more than the fight, i loved the huge knife-gashes that appear in the floor at a certain point... even though i knew what was coming, that was such a great way to create a sense of dread. (also, the mannequins near the clock room that move closer and closer to you...)

i liked seeing this staircase in hd also. that was just a neat touch. (in general, all the glitchy memory-moments are very fun... a great sort of easter egg!)

speaking of pyramid head, i noticed that if you try and reload the autosave before his bossfight, it's listed as "red pyramid thing"! even though james doesn't say that line in this version :|

anyway... most importantly.... MARIA 💖💖💖

i haven't even seen much of her but i already have so many things to say! james seems more scared(?) than fascinated by maria in the remake; he has a definite Repressed Energy here. (the way he delivers the line "can't you just tell me where it is?" kills me, oh man, he's so breathless...) maria also seems more like a normal person...? she still has a playful and slightly weird energy, but it's way toned down & laid back compared to the "suspicious seductress" vibes of the original. i'm a lil sad about that tbh; i love how in the original she's coming onto james really hard. she's also more teasing/presumptuous in the og - i miss her line where she's like "oh so the hotel was your special place? i'm sure it was ;)" like that's so obnoxious... though i am glad maria keeps her flirtiness, even if it's a bit more subtle.

funny how maria rather than james is the one to think of the hotel as the second "special place"? maria's just kind of like "oh yeah i'll take you there, it's not far." i do like how this sets maria up as a sort of authority rather than a passive "following james around" figure, AND i really like how it foreshadows james's memory issues (to put it mildly), BUT in terms of the overall plot of the game i think it loses something significant by not immediately naming the hotel as the other potential destination. now, i'm only as far as jack's inn so it's possible that maria could say something at any time that will invalidate this entire thread of commentary, but i think something that makes the original sh2 feel so tight plot-wise is that for the entire game, you're always heading towards one of two destinations: the park, or the hotel. not having james immediately knowing that he needs to go to the hotel makes him feel less driven - makes it feel like the plot has gotten away from him a bit. unless... this is intentional? giving that power to maria is definitely interesting... it's a whole new way of making her a little suspicious! like maybe she's untrustworthy, but james has to trust her now!

also extremely fun to see the small changes surrounding maria's line where she's convincing james to let her come along. in the og, "i look like mary... you loved her, right?" seems deliberately provocative: she's giving him a reason to accept her. whereas in the remake, the one extra line ("is it because i remind you of her?") recontextualizes everything. here, maria seems more empathetic: she recognizes that her similarity to mary is a reason for james to hesitate, but she still spins it into a reason for james to care about her ("you loved her, didn't you. ...didn't you?") as another note, i like that second "didn't you?" a lot more as a sudden moment of doubt than the original line ("or maybe you hated her!"). the og one speaks more to maria's obnoxious/provocative streak that i enjoy, but i think the remake line, because it's less ridiculous/out of nowhere, works a lot better to subtly cast doubt on james's relationship with mary.

also this made me rewatch the original "meeting maria" scene and i have to note that i love the way james delivers the "oh yeah, three years ago... but i got a letter from her! :D" bit. it's like.. bro forgot she was dead..... (not like this doesn't also happen in the remake, just.. the original's voice acting is something special man)

okay ummmm i didn't mean to spend so many words close reading the minutiae of that scene. anyway. more maria things! GOD i love that she banters with james now while they're walking. just an inarguably positive addition to the game. it's always the best when two characters chat during gameplay - like 2B and 9S from nier automata! i fucking love how maria startles when james breaks windows (but also sounds kind of excited about it). also her checking out her og outfit in the one hotel room?? really good moment. also this:

finally:

silent hill 3 reference babey!!!!!!! very very subtle. i like this a lot.

my final thought of the night (unrelated to maria sorry) is that i think the game is reaaally missing a lock-on/target enemies button. maybe that would make it too easy, but idk... the original had that... and it seems like a good thing to put in if you're making combat a bigger part of the game...... not to be like "dark souls!" but even dark souls has a lock-on button......

[eldritch-elrics]

today in silent hill 2 remake, i did woodside apartments. not even blue creek! i spent like 3 hours straight just running through woodside apartments. i think this is gonna be a common theme... that is, i'm gonna be slow as fuck playing this game because there is so much to see!

speaking of woodside vs blue creek, when i played the og i completely did not realize that blue creek apartments are supposed to be an otherworld. like, it makes sense in retrospect! but the little achievement that pops up in the remake and straight up tells you that you're in the otherworld is pretty obnoxious, imo. it's more fun for the game to just ease you into it.

i think my biggest observation about this area is: whoa, it feels like silent hill again! i'm not sure what it is - maybe the cramped indoor spaces and familiar sh dungeon gameplay patterns - but i finally felt like i was playing a silent hill game. that's great! i quite liked how they reimagined the apartments too, taking familiar puzzles and moments (putting the juice down the chute! eddie! pyramid head behind the bars!) and placing them into a totally rearranged version of the dungeon.

all the ambiance was perfect. i like the mannequins' new behaviors (they are so sneaky!). also, i said in my last post that i wasn't finding the remake very scary, but i definitely got creeped out in this area, so i will have to amend that thought. it's scary! (also, tonight, i was playing by myself in a room with the lights off - unlike last time, where i had my friend with me offering commentary lol... so that may have affected things)

i continue to enjoy the James Noises. had my headphones this time so i could better hear his scared breathing when things get spooky + his whimpers/screaming when he steps on an enemy. great sound design!

it seems like the remake is more intent on adding features like shortcuts - stuff like the fire escape on the second level that you can access from the courtyard. this is a super welcome addition. on some post somewhere i talked about how i think silent hill would benefit from a design philosophy like that of dark souls 1, and this is a perfect example of that! it helps if you're dying a lot... and man, i feel like i'm dying a lot. and at low health a lot. health items & ammo feel more scarce than they were in the og... or maybe i'm just suffering from lack of save states. lol.

let me think... plenty of great moments here. i liked the new room with writing all over the walls; that's a pretty good setpiece. i like the new twist on the coins in holes puzzle - it's a little more complex, and it's cool how it kind of tells a story. i also got to the cutscene with pyramid head! unfortunately i found it more funny than scary this time around but i think that was mostly because i've played the game before and don't really find pyramid head scary anymore. interesting how it kind of toned down the sexual overtones of the part with the mannequins? i know that at least one of the devs on the og has said that that scene wasn't meant to read as overly sexual, so maybe the remake team had that in mind.

also i JUST remembered that james doesn't ask eddie about the "red pyramid thing" in this version. sad!!!! (maybe he does if you go back to talk to him before moving on to blue creek... but who knows...)

i'm still missing the James Commentary but there's been some fun little bits, like the part where he comments on the kids' artwork in that one apartment. it's cute! i wonder if the lack of commentary on random objects kind of changes his personality or makes him feel more endearing. in the original, he's so blunt and unemotive about most of the things he's describing. it's interesting to lose that side of him.

this is an interesting new memo also? seems kind of on the nose to me though; it's pretty obvious what it's referring to. does this confirm sh2 timeloop theory?

finally: this moment made me laugh

james... you can jump over these carts. i promise you. you're capable of this.

[eldritch-elrics]

oh also, i was talking to my friend who was kind of annoyed that they made james more vulnerable and pathetic (uwu-ifiable?) in the remake, and personally i don't think that's a bad thing at all... well first of all because sad wet pathetic guys are a weakness of mine, sorry, but also because i think the story hits harder the more sympathetic james initially seems. it's all about grappling with the fact that this normal, likeable guy committed a horrible act! something i really like about sh2 (the original at least, i can't speak yet to how the remake handles this) is that it is both committed to understanding why james did what he did, and committed to reaffirming that no reason, no matter how sympathetic, would have ever made his actions okay

[eldritch-elrics]

i started playing the silent hill 2 remake!

uhh... buckle up i guess, because i have a LOT to say. probably too much to say. (and probably will have even more to say in the future - i will make a liveblogging tag!)

i got as far as the entrance to the woodside apartments and then stopped. overall, i'm really enjoying it!

i think that what surprised me most - as someone whose experience with game remakes admittedly comes most from nintendo games and the 2018 shadow of the colossus - is how much this is not an attempt to redo sh2, but to rework or remix it. i knew this would be the case to some extent, but it both surprised and excited me how little of the original game's finer details of progression are left intact. i thought i would know where to go, which paths to take, which items to look for, and then... i didn't! this is very fun! it means that even though i played the original about a month ago, and it's still fresh in my mind, i'm still getting the "new player" experience to some extent. on a meta level, it feels like the town's ever-shifting nature has caught me off guard. it's leading me to doubt my memories of the original game, and that's just very cool!

side note: there have been a handful of moments so far where the screen pixelates a little and james clutches his head. i wonder what those indicate! i know that one of these moments happened when i tried to get onto the road where you get the radio/plank in the og, so perhaps they're little hints like "hehe, you're remembering the wrong game!" (i also love all the new little mysteries: new memos, new strange photographs that have their own space in the inventory...)

even with the changes, it feels like, so far, the new/remixed levels are in keeping with the spirit of the og. for one, you've got displaced iconic moments from the og that have been inserted into new contexts - such as the "james sticks his hand in the suspicious hole" bit, which also has a fun little difference in the fact that you have to make him stick his hand further in. (does this indicate that remake!james is less unhinged?)

overall it feels like the game is taking full advantage of the fact that it has a ton more processing power to work with. it is legitimately so cool to see silent hill rendered in such realistic detail. it makes it feel like a real town! it's so beautiful, even when it's gross and run-down. i looooove being able to enter into so many of the buildings around town. i love how much it feels like people really did live here. i love the rendering of the fog and how much consideration has been given to even the smallest, most mundane of visuals. i LOVE being able to smash windows and interact with objects inside display cases. it's like a whole new layer of the town has been unlocked. that's exactly what a remake should do - reimagine the original game with new technology.

speaking of new technology... my god are the autosaves a welcome addition. by far the aspect of the og that felt the most dated!

the acting is also very good. don't have much to say on that front yet. james undeniably feels different - a little more open, vulnerable, cautious, certainly more emotive - but i still completely accept him as a version of james. there's lots of good additions here, such as the way he clutches his side when he's hurt (had me going "poor baby..." out loud way too many times, to which my friend who was watching responded "that is a grown ass man.") or the way he looks in the direction the camera's pointing. the one James Thing i sorely miss is the way he comments on random objects he interacts with. even if it's not a lot, it's a great way to learn about him as a character, and i'm sad to lose it.

i'll use this to segue into some of the game choices i don't like:

the ui decisions are for the most part quite bad. i haaaate that the main font looks exactly like the default font in microsoft word. doesn't fit at all. i also hate the way the screen goes red around the edges when james gets hurt. it's way too unsubtle an effect, and it makes it suck ass to run around at low health. (i turned it off pretty quickly - james's slow pace and stumbling at low health are more than enough incentive to keep him healthy.)

i will begrudgingly accept the general "tutorialization" of the whole game; that's probably a necessary addition to a modern game that doesn't come with a manual, even though one of the things i enjoyed about the early silent hills was how little they explain themselves to you. some parts of the remake veer close to encroaching on the "fuck around and find out" spirit of silent hill - i didn't appreciate the reminder (like 2 hours into the game) that you can break windows to find pathways and items; that's something the player can figure out from earlier tutorials. but it's probably for the best.

another "probably for the best" decision is the little dot that turns up on screen to indicate an interactable item. it's a change that i'm definitely grateful for, but it does ruin a little bit of what i might call the "rpgmaker spirit" of running around trying to interact with every item in case james has some funny dialogue about it. (hmm, maybe that's why they have less environment-thing-description dialogue now?) but overall, in a world with this insane level of detail and realism, you kind of have to find a way to signal to players what they can interact with. maybe that could have been done in a more elegant or diegetic way? maybe they could have preserved that feeling of "oh man, the protagonist could potentially have something to say about anything!" or "whoa, anything here could be important" somehow? but who knows. it's an interesting dilemma regardless.

i'm not a huge fan of the combat so far. it seems too fast-paced. wish it were clunkier. i'm sure i'll get used to it, though.

by far i think the worst decision in the game is the "over the shoulder" camera perspective. i know that this is ultimately a holdover from resident evil 4. i know that it probably makes combat easier. i do not care. it makes james feel too separate from his environment. i want to see his whole body in the frame! i want him to feel small! like he is just one more character in silent hill! it's unfortunate but understandable that the remake had to do away with the iconic fixed camera angles of the og, but, if they were willing to make that change, i don't understand why they couldn't be more lenient with player camera control. ugh.

my final thought for now is a bit of a larger scale question. as i wandered through the town, listening to the familiar, spooky akira yamaoka ambiance, i had a very strange thought: why is there silent hill music? which is obviously a silly question, but i phrase it this way for a reason. despite everything, despite all my positive feelings on it, there is some significant way in which the remake, at least so far, does not feel like silent hill. i'm not sure what it is. it might be the slight surfeit of ui. it might be the fact that there's no grainy filter, that i'm playing it on my friend's 4k monitor. the extreme level of detail creates a fundamentally different type of realism than that which was achieved on the ps2 in 480p - a world that was uncannily realistic because you could see light and shape but little detail. honestly, it might just be the fact that the lighting and shading is so, so different. the original trilogy has an incredibly strong identity, and this remake just... doesn't fit in with a lot of the hallmarks of that identity.

there's a bit of the "shadow of the colossus 2018" question in here. i've talked before about how i think the sotc remake creates a beautiful but ultimately uninspiring atmosphere because it goes for a very generic sort of video game realism, as opposed to the bright, stark emptiness of the original game. it's hard to say that sh2r doesn't benefit from the particular aesthetic it's got going on. the level of detail legitimately does so much for it. but it also loses some parts of itself too. loses some of the spookiness for sure - i talked earlier about how much it looks like it could be a real town, but there's also some important affect that's gained from the og's feeling of stylistic wrongness, the ways in which it doesn't feel as real as it should. just something to ponder...

[eldritch-elrics]

not too much to report today in sh2r. i did most (but not all) of brookhaven hospital - for some reason it's a really damn long segment!

up front i should say that i'm enjoying the combat more than i expected! even though silent hill is not really a series that should have a combat focus, i don't think the addition of a dodge button detracts anything - it's more or less at the same level of difficulty as the original. the new enemy behaviors (like mannequins hiding) is great too. if i had anything to complain about, i do wish the enemies had smaller aggro ranges/lost aggro more quickly? it feels like i'm having to kill way more of them than i did in the og, and that's a little annoying. but overall... i'm not the biggest fan of third person shooter combat, but this gets my seal of approval.

anyway... damn, what do i even have to say about brookhaven. it seems a bit too big? like, wow, i'm really going into so many more of these rooms. i miss the og games, where multiple wings of a building could just be blocked off. other than that... i like laura's drawings! it's interesting also to get a deeper look into some of the patients there, through the puzzle and all the memos. i wonder if we'll get the "maybe it's kinder to let people live in whatever reality they want" memo. as a contrast to that, the remake adds this one voice recording where the director talks about wanting to cure the "problem" patients at all costs. perhaps a parallel to james's condition, where he is so fixated on solving the "problem" of mary (either before or after her death...) that he'll resort to drastic measures...?

speaking of the patients, there's one of them who seems to have had a delusion that the doctors were feeding him rotten food and bathing him in moldy water. and then we find the bathtub, and it's all moldy! i wonder if this is a tiny interaction with that person's otherworld?

even though it's interesting to learn more about the patients and the director, the puzzle for this area does seem a little bit weird/out of place. like why does the director even have a hand statue that can only be unlocked with the patients' wristbands. i really shouldn't be questioning this in a game like silent hill, but the equivalent puzzle in the original game (with the quadruple(?)-locked box containing a single strand of hair) made a bit more sense. like... you can imagine the emotional state someone would have to be in to make something like that. i wonder whose hair that was...

very sad that maria has to take a rest in this version too. i am missing her! it was cool to have her come down to the basement for the extra sh1-style generator puzzle, though. and she did have some other really sweet interactions with james! i got the extra cutscene which happens if you come check up on her after completing part of the level, and she tells james it's sweet of him to come back... that made me happy :) (will this influence my ending? we shall see...)

james also sure had Some sort of reaction to seeing maria lie down on that hospital bed. concern? fear/discomfort from remembering mary? repressed horny? who knows..

they are so cute :)

also. i liked this poster:

and here's a screenshot of james getting in a Situation. loved this bit:

i like how he just crawls down into that tiny little hole with no hesitation. there's the unhinged horror protag i know and love :)

looking back at these screenshots on my normal laptop in normal brightness is definitely making me miss the high-contrast lighting of the original game. i do overall like the particular variety of realism that the remake uses, but you can't deny it's a little boring.

anyway, i'll finish the hospital another time. not too excited about flesh lips, but i hope we get the pyramid head on the roof scene... and i do quite like the puzzle in nighmare hospital, so i hope that isn't changed too much.

[eldritch-elrics]

thinking about this post again as i play multiple hours of silent hill 2 remake and subsequently write thousands of words about every tiny detail in silent hill 2 remake. i’m so glad that the last game i played (sable) could remind me that the normal way to engage with video games is as a way to relax and take your mind off things

the problem with playing dark souls late at night is that i not only have to stop playing at a reasonable hour, i have to factor in the three hours i will inevitably spend, awake, sitting and thinking about everything that happened in today's dark souls play session