You Probably Shouldn't Include The Nails.

Riona: Why does the Silent Hill 2 manual feel the need to tell me that the plank James wields is between 32 and 40 inches long? What am I expected to do with this information?
Rei: Craft a custom dildo.
Riona: I don't like this answer.

My other favourite detail about the Silent Hill 2 manual: each character bio opens with a rundown of age and occupation, but it's just 'Age: Unknown. Occupation: Unknown' for every character. Apart from James, for whom we get 'Age: Unknown. Occupation: Protagonist'.


A few notes I forgot to include in my previous entries on replaying Silent Hill 2:

- It cracks me up that James's reaction, if you try to examine the stage with the pole on it at Heaven's Night, is '...Just a regular stage. There's nothing strange about it,' ellipsis and all. (There's also a great 'James desperately tries not to pay attention to how sexy Silent Hill is' moment if you examine the locker with a poster of a woman in a bikini on it: 'The locker won't open. ...This is no time to be looking at a stupid poster.')

- An unsettling detail I never noticed before: the prison morgue is not included on the prison map, suggesting this is not an entirely above-board affair. Although I should probably have guessed that from the fact that their corpse disposal system appears to be 'just shove the corpses in a big hole'.

- I examined the piano in the hotel, and James's thoughts slightly broke my heart. 'There's a piano here. I remember how much Mary liked to play the piano. She wasn't very good... But I still loved to hear her play. That was so long ago, before we were even married. Why am I thinking of that now...' Oh, James/Mary, one of my longest-standing and most doomed ships.

- Another devastating bit of internal narration I don't remember ever seeing before: 'There's a book open on top of the desk. It looks like a medical book. I've already read enough medical books. None of them ever did any good.'

- I actually missed examining the liquor bottles in Heaven's Night this time around, which I was sorry to realise, because it's the single piece of examination text I remember most vividly: 'Liquor bottles. I don't need that right now. It’s not that I don't drink. In fact, I drink a fair bit. To get away from the pain and the loneliness... But the drinking never changes anything... Anyway, I don't need it now. There's something I have to do.' It feels like a significant characterisation detail; I'm surprised that it's so easy to miss it entirely.

- god, James, you're such a wreck, I can't believe I love you so much

- 'The symbolism of Silent Hill 2 clearly illustrates that James is an ass man,' I appear to have written in my diary at some point. I regret this.

Even So, I Still Want To Believe.

Still talking about Silent Hill 2, I'm afraid! All these years later, and I think it's still the most interesting game I've ever played.


( Full-game spoilers for Silent Hill 2. )

I really like the subtleties of Silent Hill 2's ending system: both the subtle differences like this between the endings and the subtle ways the game determines which ending you should get. Usually, if a game has multiple endings, it'll have clear decision points; you're actively choosing what sort of story you want. Silent Hill 2 will pick up on smaller details about the way you play - whether you keep James in good health, whether you examine certain things, how much interest you show in particular characters - and it uses those details to determine which ending would be the most fitting for the story you're telling. Without foreknowledge, you'd have no idea that these actions are influencing the route of the story. I can't think of any other game I've played that has a similar system.