Silent Hill 2 Remake brings back the plight of one James Sunderland in its gripping and horrific plot.
Developed by The Medium's Bloober Team, in partnership with Konami, the Silent Hill 2 Remake resurrects the beloved horror title for the modern age, giving it a new coat of paint as well as some quality-of-life improvements.
While the remake may look new, fans should not worry, as its iconic story, set in the mysterious town of Silent Hill, Maine, remains entirely intact.
The Silent Hill 2 Remake Plot Explained
Just like the 2001 original, the Silent Hill 2 remake focuses yet again on one James Sunderland, as he receives a mysterious letter from his long-dead wife.
This cryptic piece of mail sends him to the derelict town of Silent Hill, a ghost town located in the American Northeast, full of horrors, other runaways, and a whole lot of fog.
From there, James must pull the layers back on why he was sent there in the first place and grapple with the deepest darkest parts of his psyche while trying to stay alive in the process.
Below is a full spoiler-filled summary of the Silent Hill story:
It Starts With a Letter
The game begins by introducing fans to its protagonist James Sunderland as he arrives upon the instantly creepy town of Silent Hill.
He comes alone with nothing but a bag, a flashlight, and a letter from his now-dead wife, Mary, saying that she is waiting for him at their "special place." This special place is revealed to be Silent Hill, a seaside community the pair had vacationed as a couple.
At this point, as far as James knows, Mary died three years earlier, succumbing to a devastating illness and leaving him a widower.
As he initially explores the town, trying to decipher the origins of this letter, James confronts what seem to be otherworldly horrors, creatures occupying the city streets and abandoned buildings of Silent Hill hell-bent on killing anything that comes in its path.
Early on, James interacts with three other runaways who all seem to have their own reasons for being in Silent Hill as well: a woman named Angela Orosco who is on the search for her mother, a man named Eddie Dombrowski whose intentions seem unclear, and a young girl named Laura who claims to have known Mary and states that James did not love her.
Around this time, James also comes across one of the primary antagonists of the game, Pyramid Head, a brooding undead fiend with a massive metal pyramid covering his head and face, as well as a woman who looks suspiciously like his dead wife Mary, Maria.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
Maria is like Mary in almost every way with a select few heightened personality traits like a distinct confidence and hyper-sexual demeanor.
James takes Maria into his care, vowing to help her escape the city while questioning who/why she looks just like his dead wife.
That is when things start to get freaky. As the pair explore the local hospital at Maria's request, they are cornered and forced to do battle with the dastardly Pyramid Head.
While James escapes, Maria is killed in the crossfire, leaving James yet again with a sinking sense of mourning in his heart.
From there, he heads to the hotel James and Mary had stayed in all those years ago, where he, suspiciously, comes across Maria again. She is alive and well but locked in a room and seems to have no recollection of the devastating events that had happened just before.
At this time, Maria also begins describing the relationship between James and Mary, even getting into details that only Mary would know.
James decides he is going to try and save the trapped woman. After finding a key, he comes back to the room where Maria was stuck to, once again, finds her dead.
Again shaken by this discovery James comes to the rescue of Angela who has come to blows with a monster in the hotel. Upon saving the 19-year-old, she reveals some of the story behind why she ended up in Silent Hill in the first place.
She tells James that her father had once raped her, and it is implied that she would then go on to murder him, sending her on the run and eventually to the foggy streets of Silent Hill.
Also as a part of this game, James finds Eddie again, and, thanks to a misconstrued argument between the two, the pair end up in a bloody battle to the death.
This leaves James forced to murder Eddie in cold blood. This is a big, emotional moment for James, as, as far as he knows, this is the first time he has ever had to kill a living person.
There Is Something About Mary
This sets up the big reveal of Silent Hill 2. Continuing to navigate the hotel, James comes across a mysterious videotape.
Hitting play on the cassette, he finds video footage of the death of his wife, showing that she did not die because of her illness but because it was James who killed her himself (read more about James killing Mary in Silent Hill 2 here).
This seems to indicate that in a spout of grief-laden guilt James has created the delusion that his wife had passed because of her affliction and not by the hands of the pillow he smothered her with.
Exploring the rest of the hotel, James finds Angela once again. This time, she has been trapped in a burning staircase and says that she is ready to die.
James tries to talk her down to no avail, as Angela claims she deserved to be sexually assaulted as a child, walking into the fire and then never being heard from again.
This leads James to a final confrontation of sorts. He encounters a room with two Pyramid Heads trapped inside along with Maria, who is somehow alive again.
The Pyramid Heads kill Maria in front of James, leaving James with the realization that these brooding triangular cranial creatures were created to punish him and that all the horrors he has witnessed in the small town have been a manifestation of his psyche.
As he makes this discovery, both Pyramid Heads commit suicide, and James heads to the rooftop to either encounter Mary or Maria disguised as his dead wife.
The Many Silent Hill 2 Endings
From here, the game can deviate depending on how the player played the game up to this point.
Silent Hill 2 Remake features eight different endings (six from the original and two all-new ones.
The "Leave" ending sees James arrive on the roof of the hotel, converse with Mary one last time, read the letter, and then collect Laura and leave Silent Hill entirely.
"In Water," is a bit darker, depicting James committing suicide in the nearby Lake Toluca with Mary's body in the car.
In "Maria," James encounters Mary on the roof as she holds contempt for her former husband for killing her. He dismisses her as a hallucination and leaves the town with a now-alive Maria to live a happy life together.
Before the camera cuts though, Maria is seen coughing, insinuating she too will get sick just like Mary.
The two new endings added to the remake can also be achieved on the first playthrough.
"Stillness" is very similar to the "In Water" ending with a bit of a different context. This sees James in the car being greeted by the ghost of Mary stroking his cheek and asking when he will join her. It then cuts to black with the sound of the car starting and hitting the water echoing out.
The new "Bliss" ending is one of the game's most mysterious. It takes place before the final encounter with the two Pyramid Heads, showing the footage of the videotape that, in most other endings, depicts James smothering Mary to death.
That does not happen here though, as the tape now features simple footage from James and Mary's Silent Hill vacation from years before. The shows a conversation between the two former lovers, as Mary tells James she never wishes to leave Silent Hill.
The two then embrace on the tape before the game cuts back to an empty armchair where James was previously sitting. This seems to imply James is forcing himself to not address the gravity of his guilt and is happy living out his days in these pleasant memories.
The zanier Silent Hill 2 endings can only be achieved on a second playthrough of the game.
These New Game+ endings include "Rebirth" (where James attempts to resurrect Mary with some arcane objects collected during the game), "Dog" (where it is revealed the events of the game were being controlled by a Shiba Inu dog in a control room), and "UFO" (where James is abducted by aliens).
Silent Hill 2 Remake is now available on PlayStation 5 and Windows.
