Silent Hill 2 remake is best when it's like the original

Before sitting down to play for three hours Silent Hill 2 remake At a recent Konami press event in London, we were shown a new trailer. Like previous trailers, it left me sceptical. Although I'm not against the remake project Silent Hill 2I'm wary of any modernizing instinct that replaces the outdated, the weird, and even the repulsive with the same glossy generality of 2020s AAA games.

After getting my hands on it, I think some of that skepticism is justified. I also think the original Silent Hill 2 very, very good video game.

In the opening sequence, James running through the streets could be any multi-million dollar game you can buy on PS5. It's vague, yes, but otherwise bland. Switching to an over-the-shoulder camera, smashing windows to find health items in crates, and the white cloth marking interactable locations feel vague.

The last two mechanics also indicate that the game is getting bigger, potentially significantly. We’re told the game is 12+ hours long, compared to the original game’s eight or so. For example, Neely’s Bar — once a small, colorful place with a clue marked on the map — becomes a quest location that involves visiting another new part of town to pick up an item before running back to solve a puzzle. We’re told these new puzzles add to the franchise’s lore, a promise that will excite some — but I know I’m not alone in finding them tiresome.

I don't think it would do any good to the pacing. Konami PR recommended several times that we only spend an hour at the start of the game before using a preset save point to get to the apartment section. I did that, so I can't say what kind of lore might have been buried in the Neely's Bar puzzle. I also can't say what it would be like to spend a long stretch in the modern version of this city before getting to anything else, but the suggestion not to do it speaks for itself, to an extent.

On the other hand, the move to apartments has erased the overall feeling. They are claustrophobic, labyrinthine and tense. Their design highlights part of what made Silent Hill 2 great in the first place, but it's not a common practice in modern AAA games. For example, gradually exploring with the help of James's scribbled map feels infinitely better than any game with a mini-map or a marked overhead compass.

This section also highlights the remake’s improvements. Watching a YouTube video of the original apartment segment after the game, I was stunned by the difference in sound design. The original James clanks with every step, but he strikes enemies with a kind of silent disdain. In the remake, he sounds scared and terrified as he swings at a dummy. The combat changes aren’t exactly earth-shattering, but actor Luke Roberts deserves credit for selling them.

Roberts and the other voice actors also apparently played a key role in finalizing the remake's script, says Maciej Głomb, lead producer at Bloober Team. “They were all professionals,” he says. “So they often had ideas about how to sell a scene or a certain line of dialogue. As long as they matched the tone we wanted, we usually [trusted] their experience and their skill.”

The script has also been slightly reworked to be more “understandable,” says Glomb, and edited to account for how new technology like facial motion capture has allowed the team to “show rather than tell” certain aspects, like emotional beats. But while many mechanics have been updated for the remake, it’s the narrative that Bloober Team is trying to keep “as close as possible” to the original, says creative director Mateusz Lenart: “The characters from the original game, their specific storylines and endings, and what these characters represent.”

There will be additional endings, however. “I think that was one of the first requests from Konami, early on,” says Glomb. All of the original endings will be present — “even the funny ones,” though “with our own twist to expand on them a little bit.” But new runs of the game will also have the option to get different outcomes. While Bloober Team wouldn’t reveal anything directly, Glomb said the developers will “add some from different worlds; from another game,” presumably hinting at overlap with other Silent Hills.

In my last question to Glomb and Lenart, I wanted to know if they drew inspiration from outside sources when creating the remake. Silent Hill 2 is known for drawing on film – Jacob's Ladder and the works of David Lynch — and paintings by artists like Francis Bacon. I'm having a hard time thinking of another game with 2024 Silent Hill 2budget that reflects that influence, and in particular I want to know if there was anything in the last 20 years in the art that influenced how the game was updated.

The answer is basically no. Lenart cites the work of the Italian artist Nicola Samori and the French artist and performer Olivier de Sagazan, who continue to influence his work, starting with Layers of FearBut this project mainly involved a return to Inspiration from the original game“For the whole team, going back to those films was the first thing we wanted to do,” Lenart says. But “there was no need to look for anything more,” he says. “We didn’t feel the need to look for modern references because the game was kind of stuck in that era.”

At that time I was again skeptical about it. As I said, the reworked Silent Hill 2 is very much a product of its time in the way it has been modernized. It often looks and mostly plays like any other AAA game; it wasn't meant to. But then I saw Pyramid Head for the first time.

Like the original game, you first encounter Pyramid Head, illuminated in an ominous red light behind a precariously partitioned hallway in the Wood Side Apartments. Unlike the original game, you already know who Pyramid Head is.

I can't overstate the terror I felt when I first saw Pyramid Head. Even though I'd never played the game before, cultural osmosis unknown to me until that moment had ingrained in my bones the fear of being stalked and killed by this creature. I stood there, looking at Pyramid Head through the bars, and being looked at through the bars. And then the man next to me coughed, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. At best, Silent Hill 2 (2024) the biggest inspiration is Silent Hill 2 (2001) And again, Silent Hill 2 (2001) is a very, very good video game. It is, in the most crystallized sense of the word, iconic. Where a remake can make that iconicity work, and build on what made it that way, it will also be very, very good. It won't always be, but it can be good enough.

Silent Hill 2 will be released on October 8 on PlayStation 5 and Windows PC.

Disclosure: This article is based on a preview event held by publisher Konami in London, England on August 12. Konami provided Polygon with travel and accommodations for the event. You can find More information about Polygon's ethics policy here.