Expect a new, interesting update by the end of this month.

IN THE VIDEOS / TRAILERS PAGE:
Xbox Teaser | Xbox Preview | Xbox Trailer | PC Teaser

Pay special attention to the “Xbox Teaser” trailer: It shows clips from the early TGS trailer in sharper detail (since it’s running off the Xbox) along with other small changes (color tone differences, lens flare on flashlight differing, etc.).

Foremost, I’d like to give a huge thanks to Mr Gimmick. For without his help, trustiness and love for Silent Hill 2 this article would not have been possible. Thank you.

A new article has been added to the Rarities page called “Silent Hill 2 Ver. 0.10.” This page is an article that covers the content and differences found in an early prototype build of the game (labeled as Version 0.10).

In Silent Hill 2, we are treated to a different side of Silent Hill. No cult, no Alessa, no feelings of malevolence.  To James Sunderland, Silent Hill is eerily personal and guiding, ensuring he is shown a way through the darkness should he keep moving forward. The town is decisive and intelligent, constantly changing in an attempt to best show James the truth it has been desperately hinting at.

With a sentience of its own, Silent Hill calls to those whose lives have gone astray, luring in broken, guilt-ridden minds and providing them with the rare opportunity to see the truth and find closure. The town is compassionate in providing this chance, a chance the characters of Silent Hill 2 would otherwise never get.

When the town attempts to guides those it calls to redemption, it never does so forcefully, leaving it to the individual to redeem themselves. If effort is shown, however, the town will provide, opening up paths and providing tools, such as the wirecutters. This idea is inversely illustrated by the many corpses of James discovered at key points throughout the game; representations of him giving up. This is further reinforced by Angela, a girl drawn to the town under similar circumstances. Unlike James, however, she gives up, committing suicide. James, staying strong, finds his closure._{1 2}

The town always clears a path, granted James makes the effort to discover the truth. Whether it be the right keys for the right doors, or a fortuitously-timed siren summoning away Pyramid Head, as long as James is willing to march forward, the town guides him through it’s challenges, forcing him to confront a nightmarish world to reach the truth and ultimately change him for the better.₃

The town take James exactly where he needs to go, to show him exactly what he needs to see. He often stumbles upon places familiar to him, especially those pertaining to his wife. While Brookhaven and the Lakeview Hotel are the most obvious, he also visits obscure, dark places such as the Labyrinth. While seemingly unrelated, the challenges within must be overcome for James to reach the truth. The town provided for James to reach Room 312 near the end of his journey, just as he was beginning to rouse from his state of denial, not as soon as he jaunted into town. Silent Hill laid out a path for him that would test him, not punish him.

Because of James’ highly-delusional state, the town must take extreme measures to show him the truth. By the time James reaches Silent Hill, he wholeheartedly believes in the illusion he creates. Because of this, the pure, psychotic horror mirrored in the atmosphere of the town need to be gruesome; anything less wouldn’t have penetrated James’ muddled psyche.

Silent Hill again proves benevolent by leading James directly to the characters he needs to see at the appropriate times, disregarding all logic to achieve the ultimate affect, illustrated best by the many unexplainable appearances of Maria. As if a stage, actors are introduced strategically for greatest impact, such as Pyramid Head suddenly manifesting to shove James off the roof. Set pieces of the plot mysteriously appear and disappear at opportune times, and James walks into amazing coincidences in a large, otherwise locked-up town, never hitting a dead end.₄

The way James committed his crime also serves to further justify the extremes the town undergoes to show him the truth. He killed Mary with a pillow on a bed, not a bayonet on a battlefield. The gruesomeness associated with death was absent; no blood, no mutilation. It was very easy for James to disassociate death with the murder of his wife. This forces the town to shock him into the truth by presenting him with the polar opposite of the calmness and cleanliness of Mary’s murder, reflected in every aspect of his journey.

In short, the town is alive, thinking and calculating. It draws troubled souls into Silent Hill and gives them a chance at redemption. Even though the measures it takes are quite radical, it is a force of good, for sometimes such extremes are the only things that can reveal the truth to us.

Unfortunately, there is little to no official evidence as to why the town changed the way it did. In addition, the motivations behind the town’s actions are equally as mysterious. But from simple elimination and reasoning, the following theory is highly plausible.

[1] While Angela’s fate is never revealed, it is greatly hinted at through in-game evidence related to her, the developers, and her own words. For all intents and purposes, this article assumes that, at the least, she gave up her journey to find closure.

[2] This is regardless of endings. While the Leave ending is canonical, and the In Water ending was the intended original, in both James eventually found his redemption before deciding what to do next.

[3] While necessities for gameplay, it goes beyond that, for it cannot be forgotten that Silent Hill 2 is a beautiful story presented as a game. When a key opens a door, you have a game. But when you have to solve an eerie coin puzzle in an abandoned apartment complex to eventually discover you’re in denial over murdering your wife, it becomes more than a game. The designers knew this well, which is why they went to such lengths to make the puzzles as deep as they are.

[4] This occurs in the first and third games as well, yet with the crucial difference of Alessa being there to guide Harry/Heather. In James’ case, he had no such luxury, so either he is the luckiest man to grace this earth or the town is the one guiding him.

Introducing a new section: “INSIGHT”

The Insight page is a new, user-controlled section for fans of the game who like to theorize and analyze Silent Hill 2 to submit their own insights about it. This is a great chance for theorizers to post their analysis to help garner further public attention on the most comprehensive site on Silent Hill 2. Whenever a new article has been added to the Insight page there will be a front page announcement (like the one seen directly below this update) and become populated on the Insight entry archive. 

So to start off this exciting new addition SH2-fan Ryan has become the first member of the Insight team. You can read his first submitted article here. In the future, Ryan, myself and a few others will be actively searching for and recruiting new people to submit their analysis. So be sure to keep an eye out on the Insight page for new theories. 

Introducing a new sub-section: “MAGAZINE SCANS”

Found within the confines of the Interviews / Articles page is a new sub-section called “Magazine Scans.” Just as the name implies, the new section houses a wide collection of magazine scans discussing Silent Hill 2. I’d like to give a big thanks to Whitney, who supplied the PSM Issue 46 scan, and Great Knife* who supplied all the other scans. You guys are awesome! 

Existing pages that have changed and are worth noting

Media > Images: Change of user interface. Image groups are seperated by category and only show when you click the link on the list above. 

Media > Videos & Trailers: New playlist interface and now the “Share URL” per video will automatically highlight when you click it for easy copy and pasting. 

Media > Merchandise / Collectibles: All the images are now displayed on the page without clipping for faster viewing. Additionally, David Rojas submitted a new picture for this page entitled “Japanese Promotional DVD (Image 3).” Thanks again, David! 

I hope everyone enjoys the sexiness and functionality of the site’s new design. Have any thoughts about it? Let me know!

1. He’s an executioner, a metaphysical construct borne of guilt that James unconsciously manifests to torment and punish himself for his crime. This is the most commonly-accepted version, mostly because it appears in official literature with the greatest frequency.
2. He’s a symbol representing James’ repressed sexual urges, acting out by raping monsters.
3. He’s the servant of some higher-power, tormenting James for his master’s diabolical purposes.

Regardless, the consensus is that Pyramid Head is the general villain of the game. This is understandable, because, after all, he does appear to be hunting James, tormenting him and trying to cause him bodily harm, and reminding him of his crime by slaying Maria over and over.

This is where I diverge.

Pyramid Head and Maria have a common point of origin, that being James’ subconscious. Maria, obviously, is Born From a Wish. Pyramid Head seems to be Born From a Desire For Punishment. The common view is that one of the ways Pyramid Head exacts this punishment upon James is by slaughtering Maria every chance he gets. It happens blatantly twice, and a third time it is very easy to assume, and it’s happening because the r.p.t. intends to remind James of what he did, and make him feel pain for it as punishment.

I disagree.

What is really going on is that a battle is raging inside of James’ head, and thanks to the mystical power of Silent Hill and its resultant Otherworld, James has the misfortune of seeing this battle unfold in what appears to be live-action. Pyramid Head and Maria both represent divergent aspects of James’ psyche, and in the end, only one of them can win.

Maria, we are told, represents the ideal Mary, the Mary James could not have once her illness began to ravage her body and ruin her moods. She is sharp-tongued and sexy. She remembers a lot of things only Mary should, by all rights, know. She seeks closeness with James.

But, if Letter From Silent Heaven has a true villain, Maria is it.

It would be too simplistic to slap labels like Good and Evil on either r.p.t. or Maria, and in no case would they really be appropriate. Neither is, after all, an independent entity. It is more accurate to attribute them to James’ eventual outcome of the Silent Hill experience.

James is delusional. Little of what he sees has any strong connection to objective reality. This is because little of what he thinks has any strong connection to objective reality. Mary did not die three years ago, and it wasn’t her disease that directly caused her death. By the end of the game, we’re very aware of the truth: James killed Mary. In truth, until we know this, we cannot really understand what either Maria or the r.p.t. are really about. This is why Pyramid Head has the reputation of a punisher. With James ignorant of his deed, Pyramid Head’s frequent assaults on him and Maria make little sense, and Pyramid Head would appear to be little more than another of the monsters he encounters, though obviously much more powerful and determined. James has little luxury to spend on analyzing the monsters he sees. He’s too busy trying to stay alive and follow his letter to its destination. This extends to us playing the game. We have to wait until later to figure everything out, so we make our assumptions.

But while Pyramid Head does dole out some physical punishment to James, that is not his overriding purpose. He’s not there to punish James. He’s there to enlighten. Pyramid Head, in the town’s ethos, was more of the Order’s symbolism. Many believe that his appearance hearkens to one of their pantheon, though few agree on which and I’m not sure I buy it anyway. It is from this source that the Toluca Lake executioners designed their outfits, and their deeds have ensured that the imagery has manifested within Silent Hill ever since.

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If you play Silent Hill 2 and pay careful attention, you’ll notice that James can encounter the red pyramid thing on eight separate occasions:

1. Woodside Apartments, second floor hallway.
2. Woodside Apartments, Room 307
3. Blue Creek Apartments, Stairwell
4. Brookhaven Hospital, Roof
5. Brookhaven Hospital, Basement
6. Catacombs
7. Catacombs again (in two separate locations)
8. Lakeview Hotel

Pyramid Head serves as the game’s penultimate boss battle, and recurs several times again as shown above. Yet, in only three of these encounters does Pyramid Head actually assault James (3, 4, 8). In the first two encounters, the red pyramid thing does not actively threaten James at all (in fact, it is James who attacks Pyramid Head first, in the 307 encounter, though you can’t really blame him for doing so). In the hospital Basement, Pyramid Head targets Maria exclusively, and will only harm James if he gets in the way. While in the Catacombs, there are two different locations where Pyramid Head lurks. They are looping areas, and Pyramid Head is essentially patrolling. It is worthy to note that if James does not stand in Pyramid Head’s path, Pyramid Head will not attack. He will simply continue on and ignore James, even if they are within eyesight of each other.

Pyramid Head does attack James on the Hospital roof. However, there are two things about this that suggest that it’s not an act of sheer aggression:

Pyramid Head pulls his punch:
He catches James by surprise and has him trapped. If Pyramid Head wanted James dead, it would have happened right there. Note that he swings his weapon in the non-lethal manner (as opposed to the instant-kill overhead chop).

James benefits from the encounter:
The attack causes James to fall off the roof and through the ceiling, landing in the Confinement Ward. It is essential that he visit this place, and were he not to fall through the ceiling, he could not access it any other way.

The first battle encounter, in the Apartments, do show Pyramid Head in open aggression against James. It is the only time he can kill James instantly (with the Great Knife), and it happens before James really has any idea what’s going on. Yet, the battle concludes when Pyramid Head leaves of his own volition. If James waits long enough, he does not even have to attack. The battle will end on its own (though it takes much longer). This again suggests that punishment is not Pyramid Head’s primary purpose. Time means nothing to such a being. He could have extracted it all right there if he wanted to. There was, after all, nowhere for James to run.

Finally, there is the final battle, in which two Pyramid Heads tag-team James in the Hotel. The presence of the second r.p.t. is often attributed to the fact that, by now, James has killed two people. I don’t buy this, exactly. I’m still not entirely sure what meaning exists behind the second manifestation, but I think there are two because James has, by this point, remembered what he did, and the guilt that only simmered before has now finally boiled over.

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Before I go further, there is one other thing about Pyramid Head that is rather characteristic in this game: He kills Maria. A lot. You see it happen twice and a third instance is heavily inferred. And this is where Pyramid Head’s real purpose comes into play.

Maria is the doppelganger of James’ dead wife, Mary. She is mysterious, knows things that she has no business knowing, and has a strange knack for dying and not staying dead. She knows James’ name without him ever mentioning it to her. She knows about Laura. She knows about the Lakeview tape. She knows these things because she can harness Mary’s knowledge. In some ways they are the same person. But while Mary is depicted as kind and loving, Maria often treats James with scorn and anger, and in one particular moment of weakness for James, she intentionally screws with his head, seizes his confusion and purposefully makes it much worse.

Pyramid Head personifies guilt. But James does not understand the guilt because he is trapped in a delusion. Until he reaches Room 312, James has no idea he has any reason to feel guilty. Maria personifies this illusion. She acts against James in subtle ways, trying often to divert him from his goal of finding Mary. By the end, she states outright that she intends to replace Mary, to be everything for James that he has wanted, and that Mary was unable to give him. She is a delusion, the central delusion, made manifest in the same way the r.p.t. is.

Pyramid Head’s real purpose is to make sure James realizes what he has done, to make sure that he ends his own delusions and understands the truth. Maria serves as a direct counter to this influence. In the Maria ending, James has fallen victim to his delusions and decides that they are preferable to the harshness of reality, and by doing so damns himself. The Maria ending is the only ending that cannot be construed as positive in any way. The Maria ending occurs if Pyramid Head fails at his task.

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Though Pyramid Head does serve as a sort of punishing mechanism for James, he also acts as a guide of sorts, and his advice is simple and often-repeated:

KILL MARIA.

Pyramid Head does this three separate times. She does not stay dead in any of them, however, because James must do it himself for it to mean anything. The r.p.t. can only show him what to do. It cannot do it for him.

If you notice, almost everything that Pyramid Head does acts to ensure that this takes place. Sometimes it’s very subtle, and sometimes he’s blatantly acting out his advice, but in all ways, Pyramid Head is making every effort to keep James on the right path:

• When James witnesses the rape scene take place in Room 307 (acting out aggression on creatures of James’ delusion), the eventual result is that James finds a key he must have to proceed.

• When he attacks James in Blue Creek apartments (after acting out on other creatures of James’ delusion), it’s not out of malice. It’s because Maria awaits James very close by, and Pyramid Head is attempting to stand between them, a sort of test of James’ will. If James falters, he dies. If he stands firm, he passes. Pyramid Head moves slowly, so James can only fail if he isn’t careful. James meets Maria after this, and and once he does, Pyramid Head never attacks any other monsters ever again. The regular monsters are elements of his delusion, but none are stronger than Maria.

• When Pyramid Head knocks him off the roof, it ends up being a blessing in disguise.

• In the Hospital Basement, Pyramid Head gives James his first taste of what Maria has coming.

• In the Catacombs, as mentioned, Pyramid Head will only attack if James gets in his way. Furthermore, if you take the most direct route through this area, you’ll never even see Pyramid Head. You have to go out of your way to encounter him. He’s simply keeping you focused on your true path. You are, after all, close to the end by this point.

• Finally, there is the final encounter with the twin r.p.t.s in the Hotel. By this point, James knows that he killed Mary himself. Now, the delusion is beginning to unravel. It is now that the Pyramid Heads tell James, one final time, that his nightmare cannot ever end until he puts an end to Maria. James says at this point “I know the truth. Now it’s time to end this.” He understands now that Maria is his enemy. He also has come to the point where the Pyramid Head is no longer required, so James must put an end to them (note that they put up less of a fight than the single Pyramid Head does in the Apartments. The Pyramid Heads eventually break away from James and skewer their own throats, an important gesture: They understand that their services are no longer required. It is after this that James encounters Maria for the final time, knowing what is real and what isn’t, and ready finally to shatter his own haunting illusions once and for all.

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Maria, as stated before, is Mary’s doppelganger. Similar in appearance, very different in attitude. She comes into being unaware of what she really is, coming into her knowledge over the course of the side-game Born From a Wish At first, she seems to be just a luckless young woman caught up in Silent Hill’s apparent madness, but right from time James meets her, her behavior is inappropriate to the situation. It is she who points James to the Lakeview Hotel, and together they set off in search, though are ultimately diverted into Brookhaven Hospital. Here, she dies her first death at the hands of the red pyramid thing. We see and hear nothing from her until James is deep in the Catacombs, where we find her alive and well, much to our surprise. She makes no attempt to explain her presence, and is either unaware of her apparent death or lying about it. And when James tries to question her further, we see that her manner has changed considerably. She is no longer the scared and vulnerable woman we see in Rosewater Park and the Hospital. Now, she is reciting memories she cannot possibly know. Now she is enticing James with the implied promise of sexual favors. And when James finally reaches her, she is dead once again.

When next they meet, Maria is suspended upside-down on a rack, seconds away from one of two r.p.ts. impaling her on a spear. They do this without preamble.

And we meet her yet again just moments later, alive and well again, though now she has taken on Mary’s appearance not in suggestion but in totality. Her overtures to James are refused, because now James knows what’s going on, and she transforms into a hideous demon in an attempt to kill James.

Maria is James’ delusion made manifest. She is born from his wish to have Mary once again, alive and vivacious. All of the game’s outcomes involve James learning the truth about Mary, though in one of them, James decides that the delusion is preferable to reality and embraces it. This is the Maria ending. This is what Pyramid Head is designed to prevent. This is the game’s Bad Ending.

In this scenario, Pyramid Head has failed. James’ desire to embrace his madness is so powerful that he overwhelms them in their final combat, and when he continues forth, it is not Maria but Mary who attacks him. Symbolically, James finally eradicates Mary from his mind when he defeats the monster in her form. He has learned the truth but opts to purge all of those painful memories forever and continue with the alternatives that Silent Hill seems to offer. Of course, we are left with the impression that even if James and Maria do manage to exit Silent Hill, their life together is destined to follow the same tragic path as happened with Mary.

Maria represents James’ attachment to the lies he tells himself. This is understandable. The thought of his wife succumbing to disease is much more palatable than the knowledge that he ended her life himself. Even the very letter that drew him here is a lie. He is in Silent Hill to ultimately either dispel his delusions or surrender to them. In all endings but Maria, he opts for the former.

Maria herself is not ‘evil’, just as Pyramid Head is not ‘good’. They are simply chess pieces designed to bring about one of two outcomes. James following Maria does not mean that he is literally lusting after his wife’s doppelganger. It means that he does not truly wish to know the truth, and is willing to ignore it once he does know. It means that James really did want Mary out of his life, because in this scenario he is definitely most willing to move on. If he does not, and she ends up attacking, it is simply James taking the final step to rid himself of the deception for good, lest it overtake him in spite of his revelations.

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If you stuck with me this long, thanks and congrats. I hope I’ve broadened your horizons a bit, and now you have a better idea of the tremendous depth and complexity that even secondary characters are given in Silent Hill 2.

IN THE MERCHANDISE/COLLECTIBLES PAGE:
“Japanese Poster 1″ (Image revised)
“Japanese Poser 4″

IN THE MERCHANDISE/COLLECTIBLES PAGE:
2 images of the “Japanese Promotional DVD”
3 images of various Japanese Posters 

IN THE VIDEOS & TRAILERS PAGE:
Jimmy vs. Fence (For Laughs)

To say contributor Great Knife* loves Silent Hill would be an understatement for this fan is passionate for the series and in particular, Silent Hill 2. Thanks to his passion for SH(2), he was kind enough to provide various scans of magazines that offer interviews and reviews for SH2. Currently, one of these articles is finished and is up on the site. Expect to see more articles contributed by Great Knife* along with other reviews in the future.
ARTICLE: Fear Factor – October, 2001 by Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine