Silent Hill 2 Remake: A Critique of the Main Characters

In the first part, I deconstructed the first 60 seconds of the original Silent Hill 2 and the remake. Now let's examine how the remake handled the main characters and if it did them justice. Who knows, maybe we'll find something it did better than the original?

Teaser spoiler: we will.

But let’s start with the character I think is undercooked—our hero…

James Sunderland

In the remake, James has a new look that works really well. I like both the original James and the new James. The voice acting is god-tier—no false notes whatsoever. The actor is neutral enough to leave space for the player’s interpretation but expressive enough to convey emotion. Fantastic job here.

There are two smaller technical issues I’ll mention just for the record. In some cutscenes, this next-gen quality model bends in weird, janky ways that are oddly reminiscent of the cutscenes from the ‘90s. Also, in the most important cinematic in the game—you know the one—both James and Laura have odd facial animations that lessen the impact of the scene. And …from a technical perspective, that’s more or less it.

The most important thing about James, though, is his journey. And this is where the game underdelivers.

It's worth noting that the remake is getting rave reviews from players. The initial dislike against Bloober has transformed into worship and apologies. It's hard not to love this story.

But… if people love the remake and I’m pointing out issues, does this mean one side is wrong? I genuinely don’t think so. I believe the power of Silent Hill 2's story is so great that even when it’s wounded or crippled, it’s still strong enough to move mountains. Deliver 50% of the original story—and to be clear, Bloober delivered way more than that—and it’s still head and shoulders above most modern games. Not because they are bad, but because Silent Hill 2 is just that good.

Back to James.

The biggest problem with his journey is that we're not experiencing a hopeful man on a mission to solve the mystery of receiving a letter from his dead wife. Instead, we're experiencing a quiet, broken man going through the motions. As I argued before, Remake James already begins guilty, and nothing changes for almost the entire game. Growth or change-wise, he's flat.

Ironically, the developers invested in changes to the character: physical ones. His nails get dirtier, and he becomes more tired.

To me, it's a nice feature but it has nothing to do with his journey. "A man doing a lot of tiring dirty work becomes tired and gets dirtier" is not exactly a metaphor for anything.

Someone could argue that the OG James doesn't go through some incredible metamorphosis throughout the game either, right? We have the incredible opening, but then until the final reveal, nothing really happens with him.

With him... no. With the player, yes.

The OG James leaves a lot of room for players to be him. Thus, players collect more and more disturbing information about the world that surrounds them and its purpose, and it's they who begin to look at it all differently. Recall the final long corridor, where we witness a memory moment in which Mary both pushes James away and begs him to stay and love her.

Of course, most players won't really understand what's happening. It's not like someone will stand up halfway through the game and announce, "Holy shit, he killed his wife." But it all keeps boiling inside the subconscious. So when the reveal happens, all that collected info not only boosts the surprise but also confirms it.

Think of it as the twist in The Sixth Sense. When we realize what's going on, many of us go, "Oooh, so that's why the kid was initially afraid of him" or "Oooh, so his wife never really saw him," and so on. Throughout the entire movie, we didn't know what we were looking at, but when the reveal happens, everything suddenly makes sense. And later on, we all asked ourselves how on Earth we missed all the clues.

Okay, so collecting clues about the truth doesn't result in some premature lightbulb moment but pays off later. Cool. So, what’s the problem with Remake James? He and the players are given the same info as OG James, aren’t they?

The difference is that from the beginning, we either know or heavily suspect that James is guilty of something. He’s passive, hunched, quiet, scared of Maria, his eyes full of pain, his expressions full of regret. So when we finally learn that he did something bad… it’s not a reveal. It’s a confirmation.

To add salt to the injury, the second half of the reveal scene is just plain bad. I'm sorry, it just is.

First, weird facial expressions. If he just closed his eyes, that's fine. But everything else looks like a glitch or bad animation. We are digesting the most important moment of the game, but instead of focusing on just that, James becomes weird. It's distracting.

Second, speaking of digestion, the scene is rushed. Instead of letting the player digest the reveal long enough to collect the pieces of their shattered soul, the game brutally cuts it short. To give you some numbers, you have sixty seconds in the original to look at James, listen to the song, and be in awe.

In the remake, you barely get half of that, thirty seconds.

To offer an idea of how a good movie does it, it takes ninety seconds for The Sixth Sense to pick up the action again once the reveal happens. It's not a direct comparison, as those 90 seconds are filled with flashbacks of scenes we've already seen but now look at differently. However, the top idea is the same: letting people digest the news for long enough, without any real distraction or new action.

And then, believe it or not, there's an issue with Laura. But I'll talk about it in her section.

To sum it up, the audiovisuals of Remake James are fantastic, but his journey is flattened compared to the original, and the videotape scene does him -- and the players -- dirty.

In a way, it feels like Remake James is written and acted for people who've already played the original twice and know how it all ends. Why do the journey or let the reveal cook when we all already know what he did anyway, right? Well, wrong, of course, but it's a decent enough way to describe the remake.

Mary/Maria

I think we had a bit more Mary in the original, but I might be wrong. Either way, I don't have any notes on Mary; she's great. It's hard to read the final letter with the same class as the original actress, but here the remake delivers in spades.

Maria, though, is a whole different story.

There are two problems with her: her outfit and her personality.

I'm sure the clothing issue might get some eye rolls, but hear me out first.

It's not about being sexy.

Remake Maria is sexy. She is one of the sexiest ladies in gaming. This is not an issue.

The issue is she's too sophisticated. Instead of being a trashy stripper, she's an elegant MILF. Her clothes, her demeanor -- she is classy, intelligent, full of personality.

And she should not be.

In the original, Silent Hill creates Maria for James out of:

• His desire for Mary to be simple, easy, healthy, open to sex 24/7. Feel free to judge, but that's what his subconscious wants.

• Mary's body and face.

• Clothes of the stripper he saw on a poster when vacationing with Mary in Silent Hill years ago.

Why is that last thing important? So the remake changed Maria a bit. But she's still sexy, sexier even, so what's the big deal?

As I said, it's not about sex. Okay, I lied. But it's not about just any sex. It's about fucking. It's about flesh and the primal need to fuse with it.

James is not interested in erotica. He is interested in fucking. For the entire duration of Mary's sickness, he was faithful to her but also extremely frustrated. As one can imagine, for Mary, sex was last on the list of her passions. But James is a healthy man, one with needs he can't satisfy.

And so he creates Maria out of his idea of what kind of woman is the easiest to have sex with. Someone who shows off her body for money, a stripper. Again, I'm not here to discuss if this is right or wrong. But that's what James' subconscious prompts him. People describe the original Maria as trashy but, here's a trivia bit, only technical issues stopped Team Silent from making her even more …explicit.

And — this is the important part — it's not just Maria that reflects James' desire. The monsters do it as well. Hence the sexy nurses, a porn archetype, and creatures that are just female legs.

All of that creates a consistent world in which Eros clashes with Thanatos. It's primal pleasures of the flesh but twisted by the guilt and regret of the murder. This is why the aforementioned nurse is both hot and a nightmare.

Here's what Sato Takayoshi had to say about this in the Making Of documentary:

"Everybody is thinking and concerning about sex and death every day. And if we want to scare or shake or touch the users or spectators, then we have to think about sex and death deeply. To make like a death scene, you know, somebody died or monsters died or... You know, if we make that kind of scene, we try to... we try to mix erotic essence. This is kind of a visual and, you know, core concept."

And the core concept it is, woven into the fabric of the world created by James' subconscious.

But the coherency of that universe is broken when Maria is suddenly almost a lady. Could James have invented her this way, inspired by his own Mrs. Robinson he met in the past? Sure. But then she just doesn't fit the rest of the world. Or the rest of the world doesn't fit her. It doesn't matter; either way, she feels disconnected from all the other things that James' mind materialized. Things simple, stripped of sophistication, primal. Fucking and dying.

Of course, it's nearly guaranteed that the change was Konami's request. The developers pay respects to the original clothing, and that's cool…

…but it doesn't save Maria's character. She's too fine for her own good.

Another thing that just doesn't ring true about her is her behavior in the first hour after meeting James. She's suffocating him with her constant talking, guilt trips, and seduction. She's a fantastic character in vacuo but she's not what James would have created, wishing to escape the suffocating clutches of his gravely sick wife and her mood swings.

This is why the OG Maria is so much simpler. She still does a little bit of guilt tripping and other things that Remake Maria does, but not in poisonous doses.

So while James feels flat, Maria feels false.

Let me give you one final example. At one point in the game, Maria dies, but then James finds her alive and well. However, initially she behaves as if she's Mary, not Maria. This is where she says the famous words:

"James honey, did something happen to you? After we got separated in that long hallway? Are you confusing me with someone else? You were always so forgetful, remember that time in the hotel? You said you took everything, but you forgot that video tape we made. I wonder if it's still there."

Compare these two stills from this cinematic where the above happens:

See how in the original, Maria channels Mary? The stripper we know is now a demure young lady. This change in behavior is purposeful, as she is now Mary. The game messes with the player's head because the woman looks like Maria but talks like Mary and -- I'm sure players notice this only subconsciously, but that doesn't change anything, on the contrary -- sits in a pose that Mary would sit in.

Soon enough, Maria becomes herself again. "Are you Maria?", "I am, if you want me to be" -- and her voice becomes, as the creators call it, "more carnal", and her body language is now "sensual".

Meanwhile, throughout the entire scene, Remake Maria is... Remake Maria. Words coming out of her mouth may sound like Mary's, but her clothing and body language are 100% Maria. This makes the whole thing feel as if she's mocking us rather than channeling Mary.

To sum up this character, she's a sexy, well-written character that would be a riot in a different game. For the world of Silent Hill 2, even partially reimagined, she feels wrong. She is overwritten and does not feel like a creation of James' mind. Great actress, though, and a great 3D model.

Eddie

Eddie is the final character that also doesn't ring true. In his case, I don't need to write a dissertation. It's very simple.

In the original, Eddie is a low IQ fat dude that basically seems harmless, and we wonder what he's even doing here. The fact that at one point we meet him eating pizza is a well-known meme. I mean, where did he get a freshly made pizza, right?

Then we learn he was abused and laughed at due to his weight and lack of cognitive skills, and we suspect he killed someone in retaliation, but we kind of root for him. Okay, so he is a murderer, but we get it, right? He just snapped at his bullies after years of humiliation; it's not a surprise. We’ve seen this movie before.

But then, he says some of the most chilling words in the history of games, and we realize he may be a man betrayed and hurt, but he is also a sadistic psychopath.

Actually, his entire arc is encapsulated in this one speech:

"Do you know what it does to you, James? When you're hated, picked on, spit on, just 'cause of the way you look? After you've been laughed at your whole friggin' life?! That's why I ran away after I killed the dog. Ran away like a scared little girl. Yeah, I killed that dog. It was fun! It tried to chew its own guts out! Finally died all curled up in a ball... Then he came after me! I shot him too! Right in the leg! He cried more than the dog! He's gonna have a hard time playing football on what's left of that knee."

Amazing writing. Note how it all starts with us pitying Eddie; we feel for him. But then, wait a second, what's that about the dog? Bringing in an innocent dog is a stroke of genius, not to mention killing animals is something a lot of serial killers share. Anyway, we still give Eddie a chance; maybe it was an accident? After all, he does mention he "ran away like a scared little girl."

But no, Eddie shocks us with his confession, talking about the joy of watching others suffer. But it's not just his tormentors who suffer; it's the dog as well. And this is where we understand we are in the presence of a truly sick mind, and it's one of the scariest moments in the history of interactive experiences.

In the remake, Eddie is an absolute creep almost from the start. Instead of a harmless fat guy eating pizza, we have a menacing, oddly shaped man sitting in darkness and licking his hand, which is covered in melted strawberry ice cream.

And thus, when the confession scene happens, there's no surprise, no shock, no chills. At least nothing of the level when the confession is unexpected.

To be clear, as was the case with James, it's not about the fact that the developers changed Eddie. Again, this is a Remake, not a Remaster. It's fine to give him a new story, a new angle. But he is just as flat as James. There is no journey for him and with him, and once again, instead of being a revelation, a confession is merely a confirmation.

EDIT: A Twitter/X user astutely pointed out, "I feel like you're ignoring the priming for his freezer plane, which contrasts with Angela's fire plane." They're absolutely right, and I need to address this silly, unnecessary, and damaging addition.

As we know, Silent Hill creates your own personal hell. For James, it's death, primal sexual urges, and corruption, hence all the sexy body horrors in decaying hotel rooms. For Angela, her private hell is literal hell. When she says, "For me, it's always like this," surrounded by fire, it's one of the game's most profound moments.

Eddie's private hell is mutilated flesh. This obsession fits someone bullied for being overweight. It's why, when Eddie kills the dog and wounds its owner, we hear bloody details about entrails and destroyed bones. It's why a heavily mutilated corpse is nearby whenever we meet Eddie. He's obsessed with flesh destruction, despising his own and wanting to destroy his tormentors'.

This is why the final fight occurs in a meat locker, one full of mutilated flesh of pigs. The metaphor speaks for itself.

Eddie's arc has absolutely nothing to do with ice, snow, freezers, ice cream, or any other form of solid water. The remake's addition of this layer – from Eddie eating ice cream instead of pizza, with visible breath mist, to frozen corpses – is nonsensical. It's just developers trying to be clever, but it muddles Eddie's state of mind and undermines Angela's story. "She is fire, so let’s make him ice" is a shallow interpretation of these characters' personal hells.

Speaking of Angela…

Angela

Luckily for us all, the last two characters are, in my opinion, done right.

Let's start with Angela, the most tragic of all characters in the game. There's really nothing to say here. She's perfect. Her story rings true, the reveals are gradual and brutally honest.

There is an issue I have with her, but it's just about the gameplay and the metaphor that is the boss fight. In the original, you fought the Abstract Daddy in a small room. Gameplay-wise, this sucked. But it did sell the feeling of helplessness and entrapment well. With the room being an amalgam of flesh and rhythmically pounding machinery, the entire thing was appropriately disturbing and mentally taxing.

In the remake, the boss fight is a spectacular extravaganza of escaping from one closet to another while the walls crumble around you and giant machinery does its thing. It has the same goal as the original, but to me personally, it's all just too cool for its own good. You kind of admire the incredible work done on the fight instead of suffering with Angela.

Sometimes, less is more. To me, part of Angela's horror is the intimacy, and it's hard to sell intimacy in something that looks straight from a summer blockbuster movie.

Still, if it were up to me, I would keep the new version but tweak some dials.

Overall Angela is done incredibly well, and I would say her cinematics are much better in the remake. Her tragedy resonates with us even stronger than in the original, and she adds a lot to the Silent Hill’s mythos of horror.

Laura

Finally, we have Laura.

Man, that kid can act. Holy shit. W.C. Fields warned us to "never work with children or animals," and I can confirm this to be true. But here we have an exception.

I mentioned earlier that there is an issue with her in the videotape cinematic, and yeah, basically when she lashes out at James, her mouth barely moves. Here we have her screaming at the hero, but her face is almost motionless. This only further diminishes the effect of what is easily the most important scene of the game.

Other than this, perfection. In every aspect she's even better than the OG Laura. For one, it is clearer she is not some wicked bully running around kicking keys, but that she specifically has something against James.

---

So that's it, this is my take on the five main characters in the game. We do need to talk about Pyramid Head, too, but I'll keep it for the next installment.

---

The final part: