Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Silent Hill Again

“In my restless dreams, I see that town, Silent Hill. You promised that you’d take me there again someday. But you never did.”

In 2001, Team Silent released one of the most terrifying horror games ever made for the PlayStation 2, Silent Hill 2. It occupies not only the restless dreams of those who played it, but also the waking nightmares. A cult classic, Silent Hill 2 is the definitive survival psychological horror game.

We live in the era of remakes with nostalgia pumped into our veins. With the success of remakes like Final Fantasy VII, Dead Space, and the Resident Evil series, players can revisit their old haunts and see old friends in a whole new light, everything is enhanced in terms of graphics and performance.

The Silent Hill series had been largely out of the loop, forgotten (other than for those who had played it) like memories of a dream when you wake up.

Until now.

Konami, the company that published the Silent Hill series, has decided to breathe second wind into the franchise. In 2022, they confirmed that a remake was in the works alongside three other games, as well as a live-action film Return to Silent Hill (based on Silent Hill 2). Polish video game development company, Bloober Team decided to undertake the unenviable task of remaking Silent Hill 2.

In today’s world, everyone’s a critic. Revisiting nostalgic titles is akin to playing Russian Roulette. You either get showers of praise for doing justice or, you get brickbats and hammers for ruining someone’s childhood. It’s especially the case when it comes to games like Silent Hill 2 where symbolism is everything, so there is bound to be a backlash. People are going to go through this game with a fine-toothed comb and an electron microscope.

In the days leading up to the release, looking at the trailers, the character models (especially the character models), the visuals, the hope for this game was bleaker than setting foot in the town of Silent Hill. Expectations for this game were at an all time low.

And then on Oct. 8, 2024, the doors to the town of Silent Hill were thrown open for visitors once again.

There’s a strange feeling of déjà vu standing in the dark, grimy bathroom as James Sunderland. You’ve been here before, and he’s been here before. Everything is the same yet different.

James could theoretically just leave this eerie town (and you can right at the beginning, you even get an achievement for that) but no. A letter from his deceased wife Mary has brought him here, telling him that she’s waiting for him at their “special place.” What has he got to lose?

The streets of Silent Hill are less foggy than James remembers, but the layout is the same. Even the map, down to the little red squiggles and points of interest that he jots down with his pen, crossing them off when he hits a dead end. It’s peaceful you think, deserted, other than the few enemies James dispatches with his makeshift weapon. The bloodied notes and the hurriedly written warnings he comes across seem to be an exaggeration.

That’s until he picks up the key to the dreaded Woodside Apartments. The wind howls, trash flies and the Lying Figures crawl out from every corner — the fog is so dense James can’t even see where he’s going.

That’s when you know, you’re truly back in Silent Hill. When the cold fog hugs James’ body and terror is breathed into his lungs, he’s (you’re) home.

The remake nails down the sound design and atmosphere, with both Akira Yamaoka (composer) and Masahiro Ito (creature designer) returning from the original team. The monsters you encounter are more gruesome and horrifying than they were 23 years ago. No longer limited by technological constraints, you can see their terrifying forms in clearer, crisper, high-definition resolution.

At times, neither you nor James can see what he’s hitting because it gets so dark, which adds to the eerie and unsettling atmosphere. The radio static warns you when monsters are closing in but there’s a sense of helplessness when you can’t even see where they are coming from.

The original game had a clunky combat system, and the remake preserves this aspect while improving on it. James isn’t a combat veteran, he’s your average guy who has found himself in an utterly baffling, unfathomable situation where he has two options: fight or flight. Some battles in Silent Hill, you will evidently learn, are better to avoid. It feels more visceral and brutal when James whacks his enemies and stomps them to death.

The enemy encounters have been improved in the sense that it’s more difficult than the original game. James doesn’t have a moment to catch his breath, even while checking his map. The Mannequins, for example, will hide behind doors waiting to ambush you when you cross over the threshold and will engage you in combat, ducking away when you try to hit them.

One aspect that is mildly frustrating is coming across enemies that are playing possum. They lie lifelessly on the ground and give no indication that they’re about to come at you even when you preemptively strike to ‘confirm the kill’. Instead, after you’ve finished playing whack-a-mole and are turning your attention to the puzzle at hand, they leap at James.

Boss fights are different from the original as well. The Abstract Daddy boss fight is more haunting and engaging in the Remake. Pyramid Head’s first boss fight on the other hand is lackluster this time. Somehow, the original fight at the top of the stairs up close and personal gets the adrenaline pumping rather than playing ring around the roses in a large room. 

Don’t worry though, the game is generous with health and ammo. There is a lot more environmental interaction. James can and will turn to a vandal, breaking windows of shops and cars to get all the goods he needs to make it through this town in one piece.

Silent Hill 2 is the sort of game that doesn’t hold your hand at all. It is up to you to guide James and solve the puzzles and navigate Silent Hill. It’s a nice touch that the puzzles simply aren’t ‘press x to solve’; instead you must manually move the button to the correct slot in the Jukebox and pull the levers to slot in a broken record. It has been a long time since that aspect of horror game puzzle solving has made a comeback, so that’s good to see.

There are a lot of optimization settings available. Combat too hard? Change the difficulty. Puzzles too hard? Put it on easy. Perhaps you want to experience Silent Hill as a less physically dangerous environment and more of a mental challenge? Set the combat difficulty to easy and puzzles to hard mode. The same goes for visual aesthetics, there are splatter effects of the Lying Figures’ projectile vomiting on screen, your health filter etc. You can change how you see this game and choose how you wish to experience the story.

While the Remake is faithful to the Original, it has also added a lot of elements and expanded a lot of areas and story beats. 

The remake is also much, much longer than the original. You could finish the original Silent Hill 2 in around 10 to 12 hours if you wanted to. Here in the remake, it will easily take you around 20 hours. If you are the kind of person who plays like a completionist, then searching for trophies and exploring every nook and cranny will take a while. Spending around two and a half hours in Woodside and Blue Creek Apartments starts to get a little claustrophobic but it adds to the horror. This is a game where you need to take a breather every once in a while.

As you progress further and further into the story you realize that it’s not the Silent Hill 2 you remember. Certain conversations are different, locations are altered and characters have also changed. It’s not necessarily a bad thing — Bloober Team did say that the remake is made for a more modern, newer audience.

The most notable change is that of Maria. In the original, she seems much more playful and flirtatious. There’s something otherworldly about this lookalike of James’ late wife Mary. Here in the remake, Maria is more akin to a school teacher or an office assistant hovering behind you the entire time. Or she could even be a realtor trying to sell you a lovely property in Silent Hill.

Somehow the ‘seductive nature’ of this Maria just feels off. The butterfly tattoo looks out of place in the business suit she’s wearing. There is a callback in this game to Christina Aguilera’s 1999 Teens Choice Award outfit which Maria wore in the Original. It’s strange that they changed it in the Remake. Even the extra banter as well as the added scenes to boost her character development just makes her more uncomfortable. Not to mention the way she sometimes sneaks up on James. We wonder if she is the true terror of Silent Hill.

Move over Pyramid Head, Maria has won Silent Hill’s scariest resident award.

With the advent of technology, the graphics, visuals and sounds have improved in quality. James and Co. feel more human in the Remake, their lifelike movements and little gestures really add to the immersion.

But the Remake does feel more like a survival horror game rather than a psychological horror game.

The Original had a more dreamlike quality. How much of it was real? How much was a fantasy? Probably why the Labyrinth section in the Remake doesn’t quite feel like the terrifying nightmare it was in the Original.

The events in the original Silent Hill 2 play out like a fever dream. James himself is strange and unusual, it comes across in his awkward conversations. And since James is peculiar, the other characters appear more mysterious and as lost as him.

Here James is a lot more relatable and lucid. He’s in complete control and seems a lot more guarded than he once was. Same for the others, they aren’t so much lost but rather move with more purpose in the fog.

The crux of the matter is that the Remake and the Original should be viewed and treated as entirely separate entities. In fact, rather than a remake, it would be more apt to call this a reimagining of Silent Hill 2. There is a marked difference, the game even draws your attention to it in various locales. When James just stands still and focuses on a set of stairs, he is not having a moment, he is just reminiscing the time he had fought Pyramid Head there in another life.

In the Original, the atmosphere makes it as though James is trapped in limbo which lends a dreamlike quality to the events and people in the game. In the Remake, things are a lot more grounded and realistic. Both have that distinct suffocating and oppressing atmosphere but in completely different ways. It’s natural, as you need to bring something new to the table and change things up a bit. 

Full disclosure, I admit I never played the original Silent Hill 2 in the night. It was strictly reserved for bright sunny mornings when it was still terrifying. Even now, remembering the walkway with the Mandarin below brings my heart up to my throat.

The Remake however has me playing well past midnight without too much of a problem. While it is scary, there is a certain eagerness that drives you forward to explore every inch of the town rather than cowering in fear. Perhaps it is because James is having more fun than he should, vandalizing the town. The Remake also comes with two new endings aside from all the ones in the original, bringing the total up to eight.

The only thing that really feels missing from the Remake is the iconic cinematic intro with the “Theme of Laura” playing in the background that shows up on the title screen. There was a version of it that they aired for the story trailer but unfortunately, it did not make its way to the menu.

One certain thing is that this Remake has laid strong foundations to revitalize the Silent Hill franchise.

Whether this is your first time coming here, or if you are a returning visitor, the town of Silent Hill is eagerly waiting to welcome you in with open arms. Just be careful not to trip over a Lying Figure in the dense fog.