The Need The subconscious mind holds the desires, dreams, wants, and needs that carry you forward onto your goal or desired object. in the case of James Sunderland his wants, needs, and desires are all jumbled up in a cosmic mental mess of "I need." I need to find Mary; I need to get out of Silent Hill. With hunting monsters and shooting your way through to the next "layer of fear" so to speak, we witness sexual abuse, intonations, and themes of mental illnesses, and complex psychological themes. These get darker as the game progresses while we go from a calm storm to a chaotic mental blood bath of nurses that want to kill us and a reaper Esque character that's the only narrative is to exact justice on its victims.
A Classic In the Modern World:
In Silent Hill 2 we see the concept of psychological horror brought to the forefront. For a game created over fifteen years ago, it was way ahead of its time. Both in concept and in the way it was developed. Let's face it, the game is old and for an older game, the story and gameplay harmonize so well in such a united fashion that it truly caught me off guard in the best way possible. Silent Hill Two tackles subjects such as rape, death and many more intricate topics that you would think would be a little too much for a person to handle in a video game. These topics create a long-term effect on the viewer/player rather than a spurt of a few jumps scares. After fifteen years, these monsters, themes, and morbid concepts still stay with us, they challenge the way we look at modern games to an extent.
Our Special Place:
James is an interesting character. He is built on a foundation of self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-satisfaction in searching for answers to what he lost. in his search for Mary, his dead wife, James returns to Silent Hill uncovering what he tucked away in his subconscious mind. While the game looks at three characters it truly focuses on James. This game is much like a lucid dream in the sense that it can all be tied back to James and his underlying guilt about killing his wife. I have to say looking for your dead wife in an abandoned town is creepy enough, to add into that mixture of creepy monsters, other characters that have severe social, and behavioral problems and this sort of Freudian Esque sexual frustration makes this game complex in ways that tickle me mentally.
The reason I say this game has a level of Freudian Esque tension is that:
A) The pyramid head represents this strong male figure who punishes those around him who have done wrong. On top of that, early on in the game, we see a pyramid head rape a mannequin to assert his dominance
B) Angela's reoccurring "daddy issues"
To put it simply this game is rooted and constructed with a pre-conceived notion of what happens in sexually abusive relationships. Now, I realize, there is more than just that to the game, but it is a large part of the theme of Silent Hill Two. This takes "dealing with someone's demons" to a whole new level. These characters create these demons in their heads to cope with the sad reality of what their trauma was in order to deal with it in a way they know how to handle it. The brain is amazing in that it creates things as a coping mechanism to deal with trauma. With this game discussing trauma in such a carnal deliciously beautiful way that makes the player in a sense uncomfortable (in a mind-expanding way of course) is the best way I feel to create a safe world in which we can educate ourselves better about trauma and its impacts.
Becoming Human:
Every monster reflects the weakness of each character, slowly deteriorating bit by bit as we progress through the game. The omnipresent fog glooms over everything and everyone like a personification of depression. To bring it back to the construct of a lucid dream, much like the human brain we witness different aspects of James through each character we see, and vise -versa.... Even the monsters show us a mirror into James's mind and his subconscious. We see each character sink further into their own Silent Hill. Their humanity becomes challenged and becomes frailer. Angela, a young woman who is trying to find her mother explains to James that there is "something wrong" with the town of Silent Hill. James is trying to find his dead wife with little hope, and finding a woman who resembles her to a T. The woman he finds, whose name is Maria, is the pure personification of James's need to find his wife. There is a separate ending you can achieve called Born From A Wish, which means born from James's wish to find his dead wife Mary. We then have Eddie, a frat boy from what I've gathered who "snaps mentally" after verbal abuse in his younger years. Then, lastly, a character named Laura, who was in the same hospital as James's wife. Laura I feel is James's representation in the game of his last hope. Even though James killed his wife, he still has to believe. Believe in what you might ask? I feel as if he's still clinging to a false nutritive that Mary will still be alive and that his delusion will become a reality.
Realization:
At the end of the game, James encounters a manifestation of his dead wife and Maria combined. This is just my theory, but I believe in this last portion of the game she becomes the very thing he needs to fight in order to be free. He couldn't help Angela with her sexual abuse and suicidal tendencies, even though he minimally tried by keeping a knife from him that she gifted him. By Angela giving the knife to James she passed on her depression unto him, the knife symbolizing what she hated about herself, the thing she tries to get rid of.
While this was my first time ever going into a Silent Hill game, I felt like I must mention the gameplay in terms of the controls. The gameplay itself is cumbersome at first. Since this game is from 2001 it lacks in fluidity for the most part. The camera angles lack in everything upon construction since they don't move well with the character, and "get stuck" at a certain points when not moved a certain way. the gun controls are automated upon fighting an enemy or boss which is nice, but a feature that a lot of early games had. all enemies are easy to kill and can be avoided for the most part unless you come face to face with a pyramid head, then you have to see that fight through until the very end, symbolic right?
What's Next?
Silent Hill Two is a place where sorrows are personified into your worst nightmares and the wants of a tumultuous mind come to the surface and rear their ugly head. Silent Hill two is looked at as one of the most intricately done horror games ever created filled with psychological intricacies, cheesy camera angles, dialogue that is creepy enough to make you look over your shoulder, and characters that are diverse yet meld into each other, each character being drastically different yet the same...They are all looking for something, solace, peace, or simply an answer.
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