Silent Hill 2 is a survival horror video game published by Konami for the PlayStation 2 and developed by Team Silent, a production group within Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo. The game was released in September 2001 as the second installment in the Silent Hill series. An extended version of the game containing a short bonus scenario and other minor additions was published for Xbox in December of the same year. In 2002 it was ported to the Microsoft Windows operating system. A remastered high-definition version of the game was released for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in 2012 as part of the Silent Hill HD Collection.
While set in the series' eponymous fictional American town, Silent Hill 2 is not a direct sequel to the first Silent Hill game. Instead, it centers on James Sunderland, who enters the town after receiving a letter written by his deceased wife, saying she is waiting for him in their "special place" in Silent Hill. Joined by Maria, who strongly resembles her, he searches for her and discovers the truth about her death. Additional material in re-releases and ports included Born from a Wish, a sub-scenario which focuses on Maria before she and James meet.
Plot
Setting
While not a direct sequel to the events and characters of the first Silent Hill game, Silent Hill 2 takes place in the series' namesake town, located in the northeastern United States. Silent Hill 2 is set in another area of the town, and explores some of Silent Hill's backstory.The town draws upon the psyche of its visitors and ultimately forms alternative versions of the town, which differ depending on the character. The concept behind the town was "a small, rural town in America"; to make the setting more realistic, some buildings and rooms lack furnishings.
Letter from Silent Heaven
James Sunderland (Guy Cihi) is the protagonist of the main scenario of Silent Hill 2. He comes to the town after receiving a letter from his wife Mary (Monica Taylor Horgan), who died of an illness three years before. While exploring the town, he encounters Maria (also Monica Taylor Horgan), who strongly resembles Mary except for her different personality and clothing; Angela Orosco (Donna Burke), a teenage runaway searching for her mother; Eddie Dombrowski (David Schaufele), another teenage runaway who was somehow brought to the town; and Laura (Jacquelyn Brekenridge), an eight-year-old who has met and befriended Mary.
After arriving in Silent Hill, James decides to search a local park, where he meets Maria, who claims that she has never met or seen Mary. As she is scared, he allows her to follow him. While looking for Laura inside a hospital, James and Maria are ambushed by the monster Pyramid Head, and Maria is killed by him just as James escapes. He resumes his task of finding Mary, and chooses to search a local hotel where he and Mary spent their vacation. On the way, James finds Maria alive and unharmed in a locked room. She claims ignorance of their previous encounter and discusses elements of James' and Mary's past that only Mary would know. James then sets off to find a way to release Maria from the room and eventually returns to find her dead again. Later on, he rescues Angela from a monster; she confesses that her father used to sexually abuse her, and a newspaper clipping James can find implies she killed him in self-defense before coming to Silent Hill. He also confronts Eddie, who admits to maiming a bully, and killing a dog, before fleeing to Silent Hill. Attacked by Eddie, James kills him in self-defense. At this point, it is revealed that Eddie saw a different version of Silent Hill - while James sees monsters that reflect his relationship with his wife, Eddie sees people laughing and taunting him to violence.
At the hotel, James locates a videotape which depicts him killing his dying wife.At this point in the game, the letter from Mary is shown to have been a blank piece of paper the entire time. In another room, a final meeting with Angela sees her giving up on life as she is unable to cope with her trauma and guilt any longer. She walks into a fire and is not seen again. At this point it is revealed that in Angela's version of Silent Hill the town is always on fire.
James later encounters two Pyramid Heads, along with an alive Maria, who is killed again. James realizes that Pyramid Head was created because he needed someone to punish him, and all the monsters have been manifestations of his psyche. The envelope from Mary disappears and both Pyramid Heads commit suicide. James heads to the hotel's rooftop; depending on choices made by the player throughout the game, he encounters either Mary or Maria disguised as her.
Silent Hill 2 features six endings, all presented as equally possible; Konami has kept their canonicity ambiguous.In "Leave", James has one last meeting with Mary, reads her letter, and leaves the town with Laura. "In Water" sees James commit suicide by driving his car off a cliff. The "Maria" ending sees Mary as the woman on the rooftop, who has not forgiven James for killing her. After her defeat, James dismisses her as a hallucination and then leaves the town with an alive Maria, who briefly coughs, suggesting she will become sick just as Mary did, and the cycle will repeat.The other three endings are only available in replay games, including "Rebirth", in which James plans to resurrect Mary using arcane objects collected throughout the game, and two joke endings: "Dog", where James discovers that a dog has apparently been controlling all the events of the game, and "UFO", where James is abducted by extraterrestrials with the help of the first game's protagonist, Harry Mason.
Born from a Wish
Born from a Wish is a side-story scenario in the special editions and re-releases of the game in which the player takes control of Maria shortly before she and James meet at Silent Hill. After waking up in the town with a gun and contemplating suicide, she resolves to find someone. She eventually encounters a local mansion, where she hears the voice of its owner, Ernest Baldwin. Ernest refuses to let Maria into the room he is in and will only talk to her through its closed door. After Maria completes tasks for him, Ernest warns her about James, whom he describes as a "bad man". After Maria opens the door to Ernest's room and finds it empty, she leaves the mansion. At the conclusion of the scenario, Maria contemplates suicide once more, but ultimately resolves to find James.
Silent Hill 4
Silent Hill 4: The Room is a survival horror video game, the fourth installment in the Silent Hill series, published by Konami and developed by Team Silent, a production group within Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo. The game was released in Japan in June 2004 and in North America and Europe in September of the same year. Silent Hill 4 was released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows. Its soundtrack was released at the same time. In 2012, it was released on the Japanese PlayStation Network.
Unlike the previous installments, which were set primarily in the town of Silent Hill, this game is set in the fictional town of South Ashfield, and follows Henry Townshend as he attempts to escape from his locked-down apartment. During the course of the game, Henry explores a series of supernatural worlds and finds himself in conflict with an undead serial killer.
Plot
Characters
The protagonist and player character of Silent Hill 4 is Henry Townshend, a resident of the South Ashfield Heights Apartments building in the fictitious town of Ashfield. Henry is an "average" man who has been described by Konami as an introvert in his late 20s. For the most part Henry navigates the game's world alone, although he eventually works with his neighbor Eileen Galvin. Henry also deals with the new supporting characters of Cynthia Velázquez, Andrew DeSalvo, Richard Braintree and Jasper Gein.
Silent Hill 4: The Room incorporates two unseen, minor characters from previous installments: investigative journalist Joseph Schreiber and deceased serial killer Walter Sullivan. Joseph was first referenced in Silent Hill 3 with a magazine article he has written condemning the "Hope House" orphanage run by Silent Hill's religious cult, which the game's protagonist, Heather, can discover. In Silent Hill 2, Walter is referenced in a newspaper article detailing his suicide in his jail cell after his murder of two children. Sullivan appears in two forms: an undead adult enemy and a neutral child supporting character. Walter's previous victims play a small role in the game as enemies.
Story
A model of the hole in Henry's apartment on display at the Games Convention 2004
At the beginning of the game, Henry Townshend has been locked in his apartment in South Ashfield for five days with no means of communication and having recurring nightmares. Shortly afterwards, a hole appears in the wall of his bathroom, through which he enters alternate dimensions. His first destination is an abandoned subway station, where he meets Cynthia Velázquez, a woman convinced she is dreaming and who is soon killed by an unknown man. Awakening in his apartment, he hears confirmation on his radio that she is indeed dead in the real world. Similar events repeat with the next three people Henry finds: Jasper Gein; Andrew DeSalvo, a former employee of an orphanage run by Silent Hill's cult; and Richard Braintree, a resident in Henry's apartment complex. All the deaths bear similarities to the deceased serial killer Walter Sullivan's modus operandi.
Henry finds scraps of the diary of his apartment's former occupant, journalist Joseph Schreiber, who was investigating Walter's murder spree. Walter is an orphan who has been led to believe his biological mother was in Henry's apartment, where he had been found abandoned after birth. To "purify" the apartment, Walter, now in an undead state, is attempting to complete a ritual, which requires twenty-one murders to be committed. Midway through the game, a child manifestation of Walter interrupts the murder of the intended twentieth victim, Eileen Galvin, and she joins Henry trying to find Joseph. At the same time, supernatural occurrences begin to manifest in Henry's apartment. The two eventually find Joseph's ghost, who tells them that their only escape is to kill Walter and reveals that Henry is the intended twenty-first victim.
Shortly after Henry acquires Walter's umbilical cord, an item required to kill him, Eileen leaves Henry and returns to his apartment, either hoping to stop Walter from completing the ritual or under Walter's possession. He finds her with Walter, possessed and about to walk into a deathtrap, and a fight between the two men ensues. There are four possible endings, determined by whether or not Eileen survived the fight and on the condition of Henry's apartment.The "21 Sacraments" ending sees Walter and his child manifestation in his apartment, while the radio reveals that Henry and Eileen have died, along with the superintendent Frank Sunderland and several others. In "Eileen's Death," Henry awakens in his apartment, and learns from his radio that Eileen has died, to his sorrow. In "Mother," Henry escapes from his apartment building, and brings flowers to Eileen, who plans to return to the apartment building. His apartment, meanwhile, has become completely possessed."Escape" begins similarly to the "Mother" ending, but Eileen resolves to find a new place to live, and his apartment is not shown to be possessed. There is no UFO "joke ending", a staple of the series.
