BA6 - Silent Hill 2

Analyzing Silent Hill 2

The Silent hill franchise was published by Konami, Silent hill 2 being released in 2006 on the PS2.  Silent Hill 2 is a survival horror game that is disturbing, gory, uncomfortable, scary and puzzling to play, view and hear.   You begin to discover the plot and pretext to the story as it unfolds, but as there is much symbolism in the game that is rather unclear to you, a lot of the game is up to interpretation.


Entertainment

Silent Hill 2 is certainly entertaining, even though you are on the edge most of the time.  Nothing is handed to you in the game of how to play, where to go or how to do things. So, there is pressure on you to figure out where to go and what to do which can be frustrating - especially at the beginning when you enter Silent Hill.  At the beginning,  there is some narrative that gives you an understanding of your character James, a little pretext and your objective.  Your dead wife sends you a letter, so you go to Silent Hill to try to find her. The music already sets in and immediately sets the tone for everything you do.  At the very start when you are in the toilets, there is this eerie, dark, mysterious music playing when James talks to himself.  You then go outside and he starts to talk about the letter from his dead wife, where the music changes into a happier, thoughtful tune.  This only lasts for that section of dialogue as he reminisces on his marriage and his late wife.  The music goes back to the first dark, eerie piece of music.  Through out, the music changes and even stops to match with whats happening and what tone the creators wanted to set - everything about this game is atmospheric and to enforce a certain unnatural, dark and disturbing feeling.  Through the game there are various monsters which do seem to be disturbing manifestations of the real world. For example, the first creature you confront which is in the street resembles that of a dead human corpse.  In the street there are a couple of dead bodies, and the monsters could resemble people normally walking around a bustling town.  Another example is when you enter the first apartment building of the game and you first gain your flashlight, there is a creature there that had legs for both top half and bottom half of the body.  In that room, it appears to be a sewing room where there are deconstructed mannequins resembling the construction of the creature.

Ethics

There are moral principles and ideas given in the game, about committing various drastic and violent actions, their effect on the individual carrying out the actions and the players own personal feelings towards the individual.  For example, Angela killed her father after years of abuse from him.  Her guilt from what she has done, this part of her psyche manifests itself into a monster. The player can sympathies with Angela and feel that her action for killing her father was justified.  Whist others can say she still killed someone so she deserves to be tormented.  Another example is Eddie.  He was verbally abused all his life for his size and eventually killed a dog and shot the owner of the dog in the leg.  He then went to Silent Hill to escape, but in Silent Hill he has killed some people and has clearly snapped; Eddie refuses anyone to mock him again and becomes hostile.  Players could sympathies  saying he is mentally unwell and he was bullied all his life.  Whilst other players could say he has snapped and killed innocent people; he has become a monster himself.  Throughout the game, and finally realizing what James has done, it is the players individual moral perception of what is right, what is wrong and what is justified.

Social Responsibility

As the player, you can act independently and not have your decisions in the game influenced by authorization and society.  You explore the town and you choose where you want to go - where there are multiple paths to choose and places to investigate.  You can then go on to make your own decision about the situation with the information you gather that is not influenced by external factors in the game world.

Realism

As it is a PS2 game the graphics are not hugely high and realistic looking, but its as realistic as it can be - it is not cartoony or stylized. The human figures are meant to resemble real humans, the buildings to resemble real looking buildings, cars to resemble actual cars etc.  The only things that are not realistic are the monsters and the Otherworld.  The monsters in the game do not exist in the real world, nor does the Otherworld.


Social Realism

There aren't any statements, influences or points to class, society or any political agenda for you to relate to or question.  The main story has a lot of symbolism about the natural human mind and the idea of physical manifestation of the psyche, which has nothing to do with society (real world or game world).