Really enjoyed the video man. Love this game & the second one. It kinda reminds me of the Prototype games in how you're a brooding overpowered monster. I was wondering if you ever played the Prototype games & if you enjoyed them, but wouldn't be surprised if you didn't
I played this game in college 22 years ago. I was so blown away and speechless and confused. I desperately needed explanations and remember vividly wanting some closure on what exactly I had just experienced. I didn't know about message boards. RU-vid didn't exist for these great analysis channels. Obviously, time goes by, and I eventually forgot about that closure. I just remembered that the game absolutely floored me. Best horror game ever, and I never really thought about it again outside of that. Fast forsard to now. The remake is on the horizon. I notice that and think, wait. Now we have all these great breakdowns on youtube. Weather its twin peaks all the way down to skyrim. There is a deep dive on EVERYTHING. So now I'm here and this is beautiful. She was in the car the whole time. Incredible. I definitely dont have all the answers and still kinda feel like silent hill is your own purgatory. But the town being a character like twin peaks and it being the half real, half fever dream judge and jury is pretty good Thanks for this. Even if i needed it 22 years ago.
Thank you for a great video essay 🎉 I experience the same thing with silent hill 2 I always come back to it. It is such a sad horrific story, yet it is cathartic. It's so human. It's my favourite game series and I love it to bits. Team silent made art
I've read mostly all of Tolkien's work, and I still enjoyed The Rings of Power very much. I don't care if it's not accurate to the lore, I just love seeing some of my favorite characters going on new adventures that I've never read about. If I had it my way I'd rather have a show about The Children of Hurin or Beren and Luthien, or about other conflicts with Morgoth in the 1st age. But, The Rings of Power had enough references to things that only Tolkien scholars are aware of that I felt satisfied. Honestly, it's a fresh take on a story that I've read over and over again, and I appreciate that it still managed to surprise me despite my in-depth knowledge of the history of Arda.
Oh my god! I didn’t know that the radio part literally says: “James, why did you killed me?” I have seen dozens of SH2 reviewers but never, NEVER have anyone detailed their dialogue. Thank you so much.
An excellent analysis of an excellent game. ONE thing I do want to say, which isn't a dig at you or anything because I see most of Silent Hill 2's fans repeat this, is the idea of "In Water" being the accepted canon ending. It isn't. There IS no canon ending. All the writers and devs deliberately leave it open ended, because they wanted people to just pick their preferred ending. Even if some of them have their preferred outcome, that doesn't make them more canon than the others. Far as I can tell, this is based largely on an interview with James' VA saying he believes that the In Water ending is canon, the novelization using it as the basis for the ending, and it been the most common ending you get on a first playthrough. And while I fully concede that it IS a tragically beautiful ending that makes sense thematically, I'd argue ALL of the endings do this. One personal observation I have (I don't know if this is a common reading) is that the characters pulled into Silent Hill can represent the darker roads James can take at the end of his journey. All of them have one thing in common: they're killers, in some form of denial over what they've done. The town has summoned them for one reason: to force them to confront what they've done. How they respond to it... well, that's up to them. To me, Eddie represents the Maria ending. He comes to terms with his crimes, but he has taken the wrong lesson out of it. Once Eddie accepts the things he's done, he decides that it wasn't so bad, and that the people he hurt deserved it. He doesn't need forgiveness, he was right all along. Similarly, the Maria ending is James taking the wrong lesson out of Mary's death. Yes, that he was wrong to kill her, but also that replacing her with Maria will make everything better. It shows no matter what, just like Eddie, James will never truly learn from his mistakes, and is always doomed to repeat them. Angela, on the other hand, represents the In Water ending. Angela confronted the reality of what she had done, but in the end, it breaks her. She loses her will to live, convinces herself that she deserved to be abused, she deserved to be punished, and she deserves the torment that Silent Hill is putting her through. She's not in denial, like Eddie, but her pain completely consumes her. Which reflects James' In Water ending: he confronts the reality of what he has done, but when it's all over, he just can't move on. He can't forgive himself. The pain and guilt is just too much for him to overcome. He'd rather die than keep living in a world where Mary is dead because of him. That''s why I think there's a good case for the Leave ending being my preferred one. Because it's James finding the path forward that neither Eddie nor Angela could find. Confronting his sins, facing them head on, and accepting them. He can't change the past, he can never forget what he's done, but that doesn't mean he can't have a future where he can honor his late wife in his own way. It also plays into the concept of Silent Hill that I like the most: the town isn't TRYING to kill these people, necessarily. But it IS testing them. If you fail (whether by deluding yourself like Eddie, or succumbing to your pain like Angela), you'll never leave Silent Hill alive. But if you can face your own personal hell and accept your sins while refusing to be crushed by them, the town will let you go, with a new purpose in your life.
Most long form analysis videos on Silent Hill and games in general are usually just summarizations of linear gameplay. This is the antithesis to that - a real analysis of all elements of what makes video games as a medium so capable, and what made SH2 one of the most striking games ever made. Well done, and a video worthy of representing SH2 as fans regard it
Its a phone exclusive, but IcePick Lodge made a.... relationship simulator.... that's pretty, um... IcePick Lodge-y. PWYW. I finished ... how much I cared to play of it (at a logical end game state, not quiting in the middle or anything) doing a few five minute sessions over the course of one day. It gave me the same vibes, at first, as your review about the lofi game where the MC lives under a house and adores their holes until some cryptozoologists start messing with them. Wallows around in the Meta and asks questions about the value of certain types of 'relationships', sort of like Reflexia. You might.... Love it? Abhor it? Have hard to parse feelings towards it? It's called Franz. She's over on the Google and Apple stores. This is not a recommendation, as that implies an advocation or a generally positive assessment, and she's too much a product of IPL to qualify her in such binary terms.
The right way to make an anime adaptation based on *Street Fighter Alpha, The King of Fighters* and *鉄拳TEKKEN* (just about any fighting game with a large roster of characters): Don't make it into a one-and-done OVA film, make it into a series with seasons (like how *Virtua Fighter Animation* did). Because *Alpha 1, 2 & 3* has a total of 32 backstories of 32 street fighters to explore. The whole plot of *Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation* is dark and unique, but also way too terse and meager to the original source material's story.
Silent Hill isn't just some wacky anthology. The occult aspect is more a part of Silent Hill than Pyramid Head is. The Order is important to the town. Silent Hill was falling apart in Homecoming because the cult was falling apart.
21:58 I don’t mind the voice acting, knowing they took inspiration from twin peaks and other of Lynch’s properties- the stiff nature makes perfect sense to me haha
If Rings of Power didn't suck I don't think there would be so much whining about lore breaking elements, it's because Shadow of Mordor is such a good game we can overlook some of it's missteps.
Konami making an indie level game basically. The writing is so cringe and heavy handed with its messsaging. And the gameply looks no different than the cheap unreal engine games you can find on steam. Konami has a track record of dishing out shit games without an ounce of originality and nuance. Their last good game was probably mga 5 but even then, it is all thanks to kojima, not konami. The last good silent was silent hill 3 or 4.
God i love that conversation with Angela in the graveyard (all of the scenes with her are great too though imo) but the way she responds to James with "... lo-ost?" Is just * chefs kiss *
Ive seen alot of murder-docus and some rly wanted to be caught since they couldnt deal with their own actions…and when wondering why james simply doesnt turn back to his car and keeps walking into that creepy fog…now u know why…unconscious he knew he killed her he remember hes driving her body around in the car…he brought her back where she mostly wanted to be once more
I kid you not I was not waiting for you to make more Silent Hill content. In fact I only clicked on this video because RU-vid has been forcing it upon me for weeks. I only realised this was made by the same person until you spent so long talking about it.
Great video. Hope you get to playing Stasis: Bone Totem as well soon - a sequel that absolutely builds on everything in this game but is a stronger experience overall. Easily one of my favourite point and clicks of recent years.
So glad you enjoyed it! Stasis is a special game to me - always happy to find out that people are still discovering it! When you get a chance - check out Stasis Bone Totem. I'd be interested in hearing what you think about it!
29:37 - That's the part where i had to put my PS2 controller down cuz' of terror when i was like 9 and i never gave this game a try until a decade later only that time on PC and it was still scary for me but somehow i managed to beat it. (Also the Water ending made me cry)
Tldr version: James killed his Ill wife in a selfish act, thinking it was mercy. He felt so guilty about it afterward it consumed him. He did receive a letter from marry but not 2 years ago. In his guilt (this part is not confirmed but is highly likely) he stuffed her corpse in the trunk of his car and drove to silent hill as promised but lost his mind on the way there. He wants to be punished for what he did and that's where the events of the game starts. Pyramid head is his punisher and only stops hunting him once james accepts what he did and confronts his sin and guilt, Maria.
You missed the most obvious influence on the musical style; one that hits right along with the plot: the music of Angelo Badalamenti in David Lynch/Mark Frost’s seminal work on a small town in the northwest plagued by supernatural elements and dreamlike qualities: Twin Peaks. The comparison on musical scores is so similar.
I recently played this game, it was a great experience, so it's a great surprise that you came with it. However, while it's true the doctor is like an antagonistic presence, I felt the real antagonist was the corporation and how it felt like much of the horrible things were normalized in that setting
Yeaaaaah the corporation is very much the Weyland-Yutani deal of the game - it's the 'true' antagonist, but the doctor is your more 'immediate' villain... and he's a whole lot more blah sadly Hope you enjoyed the game though!
lol, true. And for some characters they did a good job, angela never supposed to be that super hot model type girl in the first place, lol I dont understand why crying about her new looks
