After watching and responding to Max Derrat's video about Silent Hill's timeline not making sense, I went back and watched one of Max's older videos, and I have some more I want to say. Don't worry, this time, I'm actually agreeing with Max, and want to add my 2 cents to what he has to say about the topic of the upcoming remake of Silent Hill 1. In Max's video, titled "Let's Talk About Silent Hill 1 Remake...", he mentions that he thinks Harry's character needs to be more fleshed out and developed for a modern re-telling, so that he doesn't come off as stale and robotic as he does in the original game.

I personally don't think that expanding the character is strictly necessary. I think more emotive character models and vocal delivery would go a long way by itself, without having to necessarily change anything about Harry's character or backstory. But even though I don't think it's strictly necessary to expand Harry's character, I do still think it has the potential to be a great idea, if Bloober does it well and stays true to Harry's original character. And if you already watched my first critique on the Return To Silent Hill movie, then you know how I feel about Harry, and specifically about his role as a heroic single father figure.

I do not think that Bloober will make the same mistake the Christophe Gans made, and recast Harry as a mother in order to conform to outdated gender stereotypes. Bloober sure as hell better maintain Harry as that heroic and somewhat idealized single father that he is in the original game -- a single father who unconditionally loves his adopted daughter, and will go through literal Hell and back to protect her. Part of what made me love the first Silent Hill game was that I loved Harry as a character. I saw him as an aspirational figure -- the kind of father that I would like to be if I ever had children, or if I ever decided to adopt a child. I absolutely want that to be preserved in any remake or adaptation of the first Silent Hill.

Max Derrat is one of my favorite YouTube content creators. He specializes in talking about occult and psychological (Jungian or Freudian) themes in videos games, with a special emphasis on Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, and FromSoftware. He recently posted a video titled "The Silent Hill Timeline Makes No Sense", in which he attempts to place the original 4 Silent Hill games on a timeline, in response to the trailer for Silent Hill: Townfall stating that game takes place in 1996.

Well, Max, I (and others) have tried this exercise in the past. I specifically wrote a lengthy blog about a decade ago in which I tried to create a timeline for Silent Hill. It was a bit of a cluster fuck then, and it's still a cluster fuck now, as Max found out. The problem gets even worse when you try to account for the games that have released since Silent Hill 4.

Max largely comes to similar conclusions as I did, with Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 being shifted by a few years. But we did have one major point of disagreement, which is the placement of Silent Hill 4 on the timeline. Since Max is directly addressing an issue I attempted to solve a decade ago, I thought I would make my own response video to express both my agreement with the majority of Max's research and conclusions, but also my [respectful] disagreement with his placement of Silent Hill 4. So I spent the last week or so writing and editing a video response to Max, which you can watch below.

I'm not going to rewrite that entire video's script here, especially since most of what I discuss is based directly on my original blog from a decade ago. So I recommend you read that blog for all my detailed arguments, evidence, and reasoning. I will however, take a moment to summarize some of the key points of my response for my faithful readers.

I may have posted a written review of Return To Silent Hill, but there were still other things that I wanted to expound upon that I did not feel were appropriate (or in the scope of) a simple movie review. So I decided to adapt my extended thoughts into a video critique. I was planning on doing after having seen the movie in theaters and writing the review, but things kept coming up, and I kept pushing it back until eventually it got to the point that the movie was already available on DVD and streaming.

I decided to split the critique up into 2 separate videos. The first video is already available on YouTube. It is specifically about the sexist and chauvinistic attitudes and biases that I felt underlined many of the creative decisions that went into butchering Silent Hill 2's stories. More specifically, I compared and contrasted how Christophe Gans chose to adapt the characters of Harry Mason (from the first game) and James, and how these adaptation decisions seem to reveal those underlying sexist attitudes and biases. I used this video to vent some long-standing frustrations that I had with the first Silent Hill movie, and its gender-swap of single father Harry into married mother Rose.

Obviously, I don't have a problem with gender or race-swapping in adaptations of media. But, as I explain in the video, I felt that the character of Harry Mason presented a golden opportunity to present a competent single father character in a medium that is largely devoid of such examples. The gender-swap from male-to-female, in this particular case, and the reasons that director Christophe Gans cites for having made the casting decision, only serve to reinforce out-dated gender stereotypes, while also missing out on an opportunity to present a particular demographic that is under-represented in popular media.

The second video is about the other characters in the movie, with an emphasis on Mary -- considering that she is basically the only other character in the movie.

Today, I posted a pair of new videos for my Patrons. These videos discuss what I consider to be the best and worst parts of Bloober's Silent Hill 2 Remake. Both videos can be viewed by Patrons by visiting the following link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-and-worst-2-131192586.

The first video is about the best thing about the remake. It will be a Patreon exclusive for about a week. At that point, I will release it to the public, and the second video will remain a Patreon exclusive for a couple weeks before it goes available to the public. Once both videos are publicly available, I will update this post to embed both videos for all my readers to be able to watch. In fact, I might even embed them here a little bit early, for all my loyal readers. It will really depend on how busy I am over the next few weeks (I will be very busy).

Of course, if you already read my full written review on this blog, then you probably have a good idea of what each video's topic will be.

As always, thanks to all of my Patrons, past, present, and future. Your support has meant a great deal to me, and has helped me offset some of the costs of maintaining this blog and of creating my YouTube content. I wish you all the best.

By the time you read this, the remake of Silent Hill 2, being developed by Bloober, is less than 2 months from its expected release. So nothing I write here can possibly change the game. But there has been something that has been nagging at the back of my brain ever since the first trailer for the remake released. Since most of the concern about Bloober's Silent Hill 2 is focused on their historically awful depictions of mental health and trauma, I haven't seen a whole lot of content addressed at this particular concern of mine. So I thought I'd share my thoughts.

First and foremost, I will be discussing the story and ending of the original Silent Hill 2, as well as speculation regarding whether Bloober will change this ending, or somehow botch its execution. As far as I'm concerned, the announcement trailer has already shown that it will be one or the other: a changed ending, or a botched ending. But in any case, if you haven't played Silent Hill 2 before and don't want to be spoiled, then don't read this post. You've been warned.

Before moving on, feel free to check out the announcement trailer in its entirety, above. You can also watch this complete analysis in video essay format on YouTube.

The original opening

For anyone still here after the spoiler warning, let's talk a little bit about the opening scene of Silent Hill 2, how it relates to the game's ending(s), how this same scene is depicted in the remake trailer, and what the changes to that scene mean for the ending. Silent Hill 2 opens as such:

A mostly calm and collected James Sunderland stares at himself in a dirty bathroom mirror, taking a deep breath, and then walking out to a scenic overlook to explain the premise of the game. He got a letter from his wife, who died of a terminal illness 3 years ago. The letter says that she's alive and waiting for him in Silent Hill. He knows it can't possibly be true, but if there's any chance that she is somehow still alive, he has to know.

This opening shows us a James who is supposedly 3 years removed from the death of his wife. He isn't necessarily grieving any more, but doesn't seem to have completely moved on; otherwise, why be here? Regardless, he is completely surprised by this letter and in disbelief. This is a subtle, subdued opening that gives the player little reason not to take this all at face value. And it goes on to follow this up with a slow-burn opening act to the game, in which James strolls casually through a wooded path along the lake and doesn't encounter anything overtly scary or threatening for a good 20 or 30 minutes, depending on the pace that the player is going.

The original is subdued and gives little reason to not take the premise at face value.

This puts the player in the same headspace as James. We are just as confused, surprised, and curious as him, but with that nagging certainty that all must not be as it seems. This allows the player to role play as James in good faith and sets up the game's eventual twist, and also sets a relatively clean slate for the various ending triggers. The player doesn't see James as anything other than a confused husband, desperately hoping to see his possibly-not-dead wife again. The player is able to play James as such, and how you role play as James will inform how he eventually deals with the game's twist revelation. But the game will be slowly pulling the rug out from under James and the player over the course of the game, gradually establishing him as an un-reliable narrator.

Considering the additional context that this is a sequel to Silent Hill (which was about a father trying to rescue his daughter from a demonic cult), players may have had even less reason to not trust James. They have no clue that this game is going to deviate from the first game's premise and be an introspective and metaphorical tale that is almost completely divorced from the first game's plot. They just know it has the number 2 in the title, so it probably follows from the story of its predecessor. Maybe Mary really is alive? Maybe she's another vessel for the cult's demon god? Or maybe her soul was also split and there's a psychic Mary doppelganger living in Silent Hill who is summoning James to help her stop the cult's plans? Or maybe that doppelganger wants to trick him into helping the cult? And hey, guess what? A few hours into the game, we do indeed meet a Mary doppelganger!

Based on the opening minutes of the game, Silent Hill 2 can go in a lot of potential different directions, either introspective, supernatural, cult-driven, or any combination thereof.