The upcoming remake of Silent Hill 2, developed by Bloober Team, is a game I’m not particularly looking forward to. Ever since the initial excitement over Konami’s decision to remake its classic horror IP wore off and more and more details emerged, my excitement for this long-awaited remake has turned into a kind of dread.
Manage Cookie Settings
So you can only imagine how I felt when I finally sat down to play Silent Hill 2 — I watched three hours of it last week and felt it was fresh and shiny. I had low expectations for it. I didn’t know what to think; would I walk away disappointed or happy?
Silent Hill 2 is a product of its time. It was influenced by technological limitations and experimentation. This time around, Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 is still the product of passionate experimentation, with modern technology supporting the relentless dream and desire of all developers and fans for a remake. Despite my doubts and concerns, it’s safe to say that So far, Bloober Team has done its best in recreating the troubled world of Silent Hill..
I’ll start with what everyone wants to know. Yes, there are some major changes to Silent Hill 2. The first thing I noticed was how you get the radio and your first weapon. That being said, the remake’s tweaks in no way affect or diminish the beloved psychological story. If anything, Bloober Team has built on — and actually enhanced — James’ tragic story, as well as the stories of the other supporting characters, rather than removing or drastically changing it in any way.
My preview started at the beginning of the game and ended when we were able to fight Pyramid Head at Blue Creek Apartments. During this time, I explored the expansion’s locations. Some of them, like the flower shop and Neely’s Bar, had a more Twin Peaks feel than ever before, which wouldn’t be out of place here. I fought some brutal enemies with intelligent AI and even got scared more than once.
It was really the last thing I expected (I know the base game inside out), but I welcomed the feeling of being scared again with open arms. After all, that’s what Silent Hill 2 is all about; your fear.
Woodside Apartments – the first apartment James enters in Silent Hill – looks and feels better than I expected. Bloober Team has expanded the numerous hallways in a way that makes sense; the familiar feel from the original game is still there, but it’s exciting to explore this larger area, with plenty of holes to crawl through and, of course, for James to stick his hands into…
Regardless of what you think, this change is good for Silent Hill 2. This isn’t a 1:1 remake, and in fact, the changes add interest to the game. The new elements provide enough familiarity for Silent Hill veterans, while also giving those same players a wider, larger space to explore that they can really get excited about. As you probably know, exploration is very important to Silent Hill 2.
Entering Silent Hill for the first time is daunting; you lack perspective, you lack autonomy, and you’re put in the shoes of an everyman protagonist – a man who murdered his terminally ill wife in a fit of mental confusion. It’s confusing, it’s frustrating, and it’s a feeling that reaches into the darkest recesses of your brain as you try to piece together the emotional story being told through the monsters’ manifestations. Bloober Team has found a way to successfully retain that feeling – something that’s integral to Silent Hill – while creating something exciting enough for every type of Silent Hill fan.
The puzzles from the original game are still there (with slight changes), and new puzzles have been added to add freshness and keep players on their toes. Like the fleshed-out locations, these new puzzles are great for existing fans, providing us with challenges we don’t know the answers to yet. Even more pleasingly, the answers aren’t always obvious; the Moth Room has an example worth watching for, which I won’t spoil here.
I was apprehensive about the combat, considering many fans had very strong ideas about what the combat was revealed in the combat trailer. While James can hit recumbent figures and mannequins with brutal force, they can also hit him back just as hard. They can also dodge James’ attacks, making them more troublesome than ever. And let’s not forget James’ ability to kill enemies with a stomp, which frankly feels pretty cathartic after being scared out of my wits by the mannequins.
While James does feel more capable of defeating these enemies than before (thanks, I guess, to the new third-person perspective), they also feel more threatening to him. It’s a solid balance. You also need to be careful around corners, which is Greatbecause the architects of Silent Hill seem to be obsessed with them.
My preview ended with my first meeting with Pyramid Head, whose footsteps I’d heard echoing through the apartment hallway before, preparing me for what was to come.
Original art director and monster designer Masahiro Ito delivers a slightly altered nightmare version, but the red pyramid monster is still as intimidating as ever, dragging a machete and wordlessly taunting and attacking James. It really is haunting him. The feeling of being watched while exploring the apartment reaches its climax here, with what feels like an epic first showdown between James and his nightmare, though alarms soon begin to sound and Pyramid Head mysteriously slinks away.
This encounter, and many others, are accompanied by the industrial, atmospheric soundtrack that many of us know and love from Silent Hill 2. Composed by Akira Yamaoka, the music has been significantly polished and remixed, still familiar but with a higher quality and crazier sound effects that keep you anticipating who or what you’ll run into next.
I’ve been vocal about my lack of trust in both Konami and Bloober Team in the past. Konami hasn’t done anything meaningful with Silent Hill in a long time. Even the recently released spin-off Short Message was lackluster despite trying to convey an important message.
As for Bloober Team, I wasn’t a huge fan of the latest Layers of Fear, and I’m concerned about how the developer would handle a title like Silent Hill 2; admittedly, that’s a lot of pressure for any single developer.
But Bloober Team seems to have turned that pressure into something beautiful (in a sick and twisted way). The first three hours of Silent Hill 2 Remastered are filled with pure passion and dedication to preserving the feel and story of Silent Hill 2 while creating an experience that works for a modern audience, whether you’ve played Silent Hill 2 before or not.
This year, Konami is back in a very, very big way – especially with Metal Gear Solid: Delta on the horizon – and the publisher seems to have finally understood what fans really want, and how to attract new audiences. If Bloober Team (and its collaborators) can carry over their passion for the original game and their dedication to preserving and resurrecting it into the rest of the franchise, Silent Hill 2 Remake could be everything many of us were hoping for. If not better.
Silent Hill 2 has been previewed on PS5. The game will be released on PC and PlayStation 5 on October 8.
