The Silent Hill 2 Remake Is Significantly Better Than The Trailers You’ve Seen

The Silent Hill 2 Remake Is Significantly Better Than The Trailers You’ve Seen https://ift.tt/wBavmTf

There is no genre quite like horror. At its best, it's so much more than guts and gore, or tired tropes and torture scenes. It's self-reflection. It's catharsis.

It's entering an implicit agreement with a work's creator: If you spill your guts out to me (metaphorically or perhaps literally), then I will wade through my own, hold them up, and take note of what makes ours similar to one another. While there are certainly qualities that make for a "good" work of horror, the transcendent variety is subjective; it relies on your own fears, traumas, and beliefs to create resonance with what's laid before you. The more vulnerable a work is, the greater its opportunity to connect with--or possibly alienate--its audience. This is precisely what makes Silent Hill 2 such a memorable and pivotal entry in the horror game genre--it's sheer vulnerability creates a game wherein even alienation feels like connection.

I say all this to emphasize that the upcoming remake of this 23 year-old game is an incredibly exciting prospect to me. Though the original holds up well, there's no denying that it feels quite dated--and not always in an endearing, "time capsule" kind of way. There's also no denying that the game is incredibly influential; its DNA is woven into countless horror games and horror-adjacent titles, with last year's Alan Wake 2 proving that, even decades later, this continues to be true. This ultimately elevates Silent Hill 2's status from "great game" to a "genre essential," albeit one that is frustrating to play--or even simply access--at the moment. A remake, then, seems entirely warranted.

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