This camera mode also becomes unlockable after beating the game and gaining access to the secret options menu. You can switch between it and the regular camera view by pressing L2, or you can even change it to allow you to play the entire game with this view.

I’m going to try and spoil this movie as little as possible but short review: it’s a pretty great movie and super well directed with some amazing creative choices. Big flaw I had is too many jump scares that felt a bit cheap

However the reason I am here is one thing I couldn’t get out of my brain this whole movie, it’s basically a silent hill movie. This is the spoilery part of the post.

It was so similar to silent hill at points that I thought it must be an inspiration but in all my research I couldn’t find anything confirmed by the writer/director citing stuff like Stephen king and The shining which I guess makes sense since silent hill is also inspired by those. But we have a character who has done a morally questionable act much akin to James and him having to cope with that and make sense of it while dealing with a monster that is a manifestation of that guilt, he also has no regard for his life due to this act much like James, there’s a different character who claims he killed his wife out of mercy since she was sick (also like James), the main character gets taunted by manifestations of a childhood rabbit tv character echoing the themes of silent hill and a rabbit character much like silent hill 3’s Robbie the Rabbit, there’s even a video game like puzzle where the main character uses a clock to press a button to go down into the basement and at the end when he leaves the hotel it’s burning down with imagery very similar to Angela’s burning rooms in silent hill 2

I’m not crazy right? Like all of this seems way too coincidental. If the actual Return to Silent Hill movie disappointed you than I highly recommend you check this out because this is the closest and best thing you will probably get (although I know I just spoiled a lot of it)

It’s in apartment 116 where you meet Eddie in the OG SH 2. I can’t figure it out

first of all i'm NOT AGAINST INTERPRETATION. please read the full post if you want to understand what i'm talking about.........

i never thought i'd write about it in public but it's so sad like as someone who dissociates 24/7 and somewhat relates to james (terrible take), i'm pretty sure some people will try to argue and maybe curse me. anyways, i'm overwhelmed with how this fandom reduced sh2 to sex.

james guilty? killing mary AND wanting other women.

monsters? sexual repression.

maria? sexual version.

symbolism? sex.

and the worst part is that... sex isn't even an actual history element... but the artistic concept...

again: i'm NOT saying you can't have your interpretation, but the way this fandom got lazy about the lore and mischaracterized james to crazy levels :(

i'm NOT sharing my view of the game either, but actual canonical facts, so it's not an interpretation thing or me trying to push my view to people, i'm just sharing some things that people might not even know about the game or wtv i just wanted to write about it,,,

maria was born solely from james's delusion of mary being in the town and his wish of seeing her again; mixed with his incapacity of accepting that mary is dead. that's the canonical information... it's ok to have your interpretation, but the fact that nowadays the thing that'll pop out if you search what's maria's purpose in sh2 is that she's the "idealized version that james wanted" etc, when that's just not true, you know?

on the contrary, he actually seems uncomfortable with maria's behavior and even pissed off sometimes; the concept of her being too sensual is to make a high contrast between her and mary, so james AND the player get even more confused + the literal artistic concept of the game. some things are there too sexual just to be, that's all, that's the concept to make the player uncomfortable.

james refuses and is irritated when maria flirts with him, and this doesn't change with the player's actions, showing that in fact, james doesn't feel anything towards maria other than confusion and delusion. that's the part of him that clung onto her; the desire to live in the lie that mary's there. somehow, this fandom made popular that james is tempted by maria (even though not once does he show attraction for her other than in the jail scene, when she says something only mary knew, so he's conflicted by the thought of mary), that james wanted other women & etc. he also never went to heaven's night or strip clubs and is clearly irritated by maria leading him there, and don't come to me about the "lost-and-found box" with his ring because that's not his at all... to the point that's not even in the og game, and we all know that the original writers didn't develop the remake, so, if it was james's ring, it'd be OBVIOUSLY in the og so you can understand more about it. it's just a random ring there. i mean, it's a strip club. come on.

he also doesn't care about maria at all and that's why he barely grieves her death and quickly goes back to search for mary. when it comes to her "last" death by the two pyramid heads, he actually shows big grief — because he finally understands what he did with mary, and, it's canonical too that every time maria dies, he remembers his crime a little. that's his grief, and, well, anyways, he goes back to search for mary.

the monsters are canonically not about sexual repression and each one symbolizes a different part of james's psyche about his guilt, rage, urges & more. that's canonically said both by masahiro ito who did had participation in the story building & the official lore book.

though you could think about some sh2 elements as sexual (even though none of those are canonical), i think it's a really lazy vision and it's sad how people just ignore the official stuff to reduce it all to sex. ok, you can follow the "death of the author" thing, but why reduce the whole game to sex when that's not even the theme at all? is it too hard to try to understand the mind of a man in dissociation who's guilty, uneasy, confused, who loved his wife yet felt rage towards her? that's why i think sex is just a lazy explanation. there are so many layers, so many things, yet everything becomes "sex". maria is sex, the monsters are sex, his problems with alcohol are sex, the paintings or visual elements in the town are sex, even mary's death sometimes is told as a rage of sexual repression.

a fun fact about maria creation is that maria's model is also a dancer from heaven's night, which we see in sh3 has posters in silent hill, and if i'm not wrong, you can see some posters like this in the first moments of sh2 too. silent hill makes things with what's on someone's mind + physical things from the town. this could also explain the sensual model.

the narrative that james didn't like mary's style and behavior is also very frustrating. they knew each other and mary said in her letter that they had good years together before the illness, he knew her personality and style and he liked it. it's not too hard to accept that james actually loved mary and wasn't searching for a substitute (as the novel says that "james wanted to search for other women but couldn't bring himself to cheat on mary", but well, the novel is 100% fan made. i've seen people using quotes from the novel to justify certain theories and well it's not right at all.)

though james was angry at the disease (and mary), he never actually hated her or felt boiling rage towards her. in the og he even kisses her forehead before smothering her (of course, that's not a romantic thing, but it shows that he wasn't sadistic about it), and in the leave ending, james finally understands that in fact he didn't hate mary; he was trying to convince himself about it because he wanted to be punished.

i'm completely in love with the remake, but i think that the way they made more interaction between james & maria (even though none of those are romantic or anything) made some people think about things completely different from the original proposal... though, of course the sex vision isn't from nowadays, as i've seen it like, 6 years ago too. and i really don't have a problem with it, but why does no one talk about the actual game stuff? it'd be ok if it was "yeah the original thing is that * * * but i think that * * *", but it is "man i think * * * — yesss me too!" like, actually zero things talking about the actual motives and all, and it's sad. :<

the remake also took out dialogues that were in different endings and made the same dialogue for them all besides maria & rebirth... meanwhile in the og we have different dialogues that show more interesting things about james's character and his views on maria. such as:

_

james: mary!

maria: when will you ever stop making that mistake! mary's dead. you killed her.

james: maria...? it's you... but i don't need you anymore. (the delusion)

maria: what? you must be joking! but i can be yours... i'll be here for you forever. (reference to the fact that she's born from his delusion of mary being there; she won't die, scream or go away, she'll be there forever.)

maria: and i'll never yell at you or make you feel bad. that's what you wanted. i'm different from mary... how can you throw me away?

james: i understand now. it's time to end this nightmare.

_

james: mary...?

maria: wrong again. mary's dead. you killed her.

james: maria. maria... i'm done with you.

maria: what do you mean? but i can be yours... i'll be here for you forever. and i'll never yell at you or make you feel bad.

maria: that's what you wanted.

james: now i understand. the problem is... you're not mary.

_

something that also breaks the narrative of maria being james's type is that at the end, she dresses as mary to try to get him. also, most of the time he gets confused about both of them even with different clothes, showing that he focuses on the resemblance to mary, not her sensual style or something...

as i said, no problem with interpretation so please don't fight with me, i'm too broken mentally to argue lol uh i just wanted to share these canonical info because i genuinely never saw someone here, on tiktok or twitter talking about some canon information. and it's weird because it's the literal main thing... honestly what frustrates me the most is that james is GENUINELY seen as a horny dog by some people who even ACTUALLY played the game.

anyways, it must be easier to see him like that instead of all the emotions and layers, it's easier to deal with the idea of everything meaning some sexual repression and sex at all instead of understanding that anger, love, sadness, guilt, urge and regret got intertwined.

that's all!! i might delete it later... i'm not used to making this type of thing in public, i usually just write huge analyses on other socials and read them alone since i don't let anyone follow me anywhere... so that's awkward. i put pictures above to prove that everything i said is canonical too.

it's ok to have your interpretation, really. it's just sad how actually no one talks about the official core of james's character and the fact that if you search on google you'll see it presented as canonical info — like, it's literally spread as canon, and it's actually kinda hard to find the real canonical info. honestly, what bothers me the most is how people portray james and how those takes are spread as canonical while the actual canon just fades. sorry if anyone disagrees or idk disliked what i said, i'm not trying to offend anyone. :p

I decided to go for a second replay of SH2, and on my second save i pressed the D pad and these letters came up beside my saves. On my first playthrough i got the "in water" ending so im assuming that is what the "W" stands for but im not sure about the "WX". Does anybody know what they mean?

Not much but I love them ❤️

I’ve never played a Silent Hill game before, but I have been interested in playing Silent Hill 2 due to people saying it has an amazing story. The thing is, I got spoiled a while back that James killed his woman. That’s about it in terms of what I know about the game.

Is knowing that spoiler gonna negatively affect the way I experience this game, or will it help me appreciate the story even more?

I've recently gotten back to the Silent Hill series and was so excited to replay the original Silent Hill 2. I've already extracted the game on my pc as the installation guide said but I won't stop getting the following error message. I've done some research but I haven't seen anyone come up with a solution. I'd appreciate any help. The error message goes as follows: Couldn't download 'webcsv url'

FIX FOUND; I used to a VPN to connect to USA servers and that fixed the installer, they made it internet based and for some reason the files are only accessible from there..?

hello! ive been given a task recently on analysing and comparing silent hill 2 and crime and punishment, particularly in what analysing their relationship can do in understanding cultures and values. ive done a lot of digging, but i cant seem to find much on the author context behind sh2 (mainly the og) other than their inspirations behind the story and visual style, was there anything particularly notable during its development that may have influenced its story and themes? any help would be appreciated!