The Silent Hill video game series is one of those frustrating, artsy, impossible to nail down creations that has as many interpretations as it has puzzles to solve. For those unfamiliar, Silent Hill is a horror series about a sleepy little town that happens to host a horrible cult bent on raising a dread god and accessing eternal paradise, with the side effect of turning the surrounding area into an abstract nightmare version of reality, filled with various tortured monsters and impossible geometry. The explanations and logic of this world are difficult to follow, and are too often obfuscated behind fuzzy visuals and poorly translated dialog, leaving players with a general sense of despair and unease, but no real idea of what's actually happening.

The second title in the series, though, was a bit of a departure from all that. Silent Hill 2 is about grief. And it wears that narrative on its sleeve.

The Plot

The narrative opens, as so many great horror stories do, with a ghost of the past. Protagonist James Sunderland receives a letter from his deceased wife, Mary. Mary lost her battle with an unnamed illness three years prior, and James has never really moved on from that loss. Thoughts of Mary in her final years weigh heavily on him, something which becomes more and more apparent as the story progresses. Mary's letter asks James to return to Silent Hill, a small resort town they had spent so much time in while they were young and healthy.

Immediately, James heads to Silent Hill, where he eventually meets a full cast of other suffering characters. Angela, a woman wrestling with childhood abuse and patricide. Eddie Dombrowski, who spent his entire life as the butt of the joke, before finally snapping and killing his bully's dog and attacking the bully himself. We also meet Laura, a young girl who claims to have befriended Mary before she died, somehow without James ever noticing. And then, there's Maria.

Maria is arguably the most important character in the story. She is the spitting image of James' late wife, and if not for her more forward and sexual personality, you would never be able to tell the two of them apart. Maria joins and abandons James at key moments in the story, acting as both a guide and an antagonist, seemingly dropping James into trouble as often as she saves him from it. It is not long before players are left wondering whether she can be trusted at all.

This is where the general fiction that rules the Silent Hill series breaks down. For James, the town is not just a sleepy mining town or a haven for sacrificial cults. Silent Hill, in this story, is an entity unto itself. The town has agency. It shifts, morphs, and recreates itself to fit the mental states of those that enter it. As the story progresses, we realize that Silent Hill is more than a town full of monsters - it's a town full of our monsters. For Angela, the dark corners of the town appear as the hulking shape of her father, sidling into her bedroom in the night. Eddie finds himself surrounded by his tormentors - the very people that drove him to retaliate violently.

James sees a town that demands him to confront his own shortcomings, his own guilt, around Mary's death. James' monsters are sexual beings warped by disease (a theme we'll discuss in more detail a bit later). As he progresses through the town in his hunt for Mary, we slowly realize that he is literally confronting his own inner demons, and we are treated to perhaps the most accurate representation of grief ever presented in media.

James is more than just a mourning widower. As Mary's illness worsened prior to her death, James found that his despair was replaced by resentment. His beautiful wife was collapsing into herself, her perfect skin discolored and perpetually damp. Her angelic voice lost behind incessant coughs and vomiting. But still, she inched so slowly toward death that James finds himself wishing for it to finally just end. His thoughts wander to the attractive nurses that serve her. To the strip club a few streets away. It is implied that he was unfaithful at least once. And for a time, he blames Mary. It's her illness, her dying, that is hurting him and causing him so much pain.

When Mary finally dies, James is left suddenly guilty. He had wished for her death, and now it has happened, and he has been unable to find closure. His journey through Silent Hill is his psyche's way of forcing him to confront the twisted darkness that this guilt has been weaving into him ever since her death. Maria, as some interpret her, is the personification of that guilt. Maria is the wife James wished he had. She is energetic, sexual, at times matronly, and at other times, dangerous. She is everything that Mary isn't. At the game's climax, it is Maria that James confronts, and overcomes, before he can finally be at peace with Mary's death.

The Design

Two primarily elements influenced the design of Silent Hill 2, sex, and disease. As we discussed briefly in the previous section, the nightmare world of Silent Hill that protagonist James Sunderland must experience has been molded by his own personal grief. James' demons are given literal physical form, and he must overcome or avoid them in order to reach his eventual goal: discovering the truth about his late wife, Mary.

Initially, Silent Hill's monsters are somewhat subtle. Many first-time players, particularly those of us that played the game at a young age, wouldn't notice the implications behind their designs. The first monster you encounter - the 'Lying Figure seen above - doesn't appear overtly sexual. Upon further reflection, though, the symbolism becomes obvious. The Lying Figures are naked, draped only in their own lubricated skin. When attacked, they writhe and gyrate, almost imitating a lap dance or striptease. Their primary form of attacking James is to vomit at him, an act that no doubt recalls the last days of Mary's illness. Some have interpreted that vomiting attack to represent the hateful words Mary would shout at her negligent husband as she died.

In fact, the design notes for the creature make the implication even more clear. They were modeled with feminine buttocks and legs, and their feet were designed to showcase high-heeled platform shoes, encased in flesh.

Following enemies mimic this theme, playing with disease and sexuality. James encounters Mannequins, which are built entirely by pairs of attractive legs in stiletto heels. The nurses that plague Brookhaven hospital appear like living corpses, dressed in cliche sexy nurse costumes. One of the last common enemies to appear, the Abstract Daddy, takes the form of Angela's father standing in her bedroom door, a horrifying image that becomes nauseating as the monster attacks you by tackling and thrusting into your body.

And then, there's the Red Pyramid Thing.

Known by fans of the series as Pyramid Head, the Red Pyramid Thing is a relentless pursuer that follows James through his entire ordeal. Lore within the game implies that Pyramid Head is the embodiment or underling of a dark god, who is responsible for punishing the guilty. This is carried throughout his design, as he blends elements of a traditional executioner with that of a person being tortured. His characteristic triangular helmet was designed to look painful to wear, and he lumbers through the village of Silent Hill as if in total agony. His singular goal is to punish James. To force James to confront the grief and guilt he has been avoiding for so long. And, in case you were worried they forgot about the sex angle, his primary attacks are thrusting a phallic spear or great knife, literally penetrating James until death.

Outside of these monsters, Silent Hill itself reflects the same design tactics. At its most peaceful, Silent Hill is draped in fog, and filled with impassable gaps and unexplained walls. This could represent the confusion and loss James feels, confronting a town which once brought him such joy, now trapped in the context of his wife's death. The few buildings players can enter reflect James' guilt. Bars, strip clubs, hotels, and hospitals are available for exploration, among a few others.

When Silent Hill shifts into overdrive, and players are dropped into the horrific nightmare world, ruled by Pyramid Head, things get worse. The fog is replaced by rust, decay, and disgust. The soundtrack is replaced by a grating industrial thump, sounding more like a collapsing machine than a soundtrack. Players walk through what feels like the corpse of Silent Hill - a skeletal impossible space filled with darkness and hideous monstrosities. It is in these spaces that James makes the most progress as a character. Here, he faces the worst aspects of the game's other characters, and is forced to confront his own feelings. He is saved from the confusion of the fog, but in doing so, must confront the darkness that eats away at his psyche.

The Themes

All of these plot points, all of these design choices, circle around two dominant themes - guilt and grief. James is first drawn to Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his dead wife. This letter offers him a chance to close a chapter of his life that he left open for too long. He has been given the chance to speak to her once more, to admit his wrongdoing, and to confront the grief he ignored since her death.

But to do that, to truly face his grief, he must face his guilt. He must learn to admit that he began to hate Mary in her final days. He resented her inability to please him sexually, he resented her for making him bear her pain. James found himself disgusted by Mary's withered appearance, particularly when she stood in comparison to her more attractive caretakers. That guilt is carried through each of the other characters we meet in the game.

Angela feels guilty for her childhood molestation - something which is disappointingly common among abuse victims. Eddie feels guilt over lashing out at his bullies. Maria, who may not actually exist, is simply James' guilt given physical form. The only character that feels no guilt, Laura, is also the only character to whom Silent Hill appears as a sleepy resort town by a lake. She sees no monsters, faces no demons, and wonders why the adults around her won't stop ranting about a pyramid-headed man holding a spear.

As it happens, Maria ends up playing double-duty, becoming a representation of grief, as well as guilt.

While traveling through Brookhaven Hospital, Maria becomes suddenly ill, and must be left to rest in bed, forcing James to relive memories of Mary's illness and death. Shortly after this point, she is killed in a confrontation with Pyramid Head. Twice.

In both confrontations, there is nothing James can do to save her. Try as he might (and reload as many times as you want), Maria will die. She seems to continue returning - this is a nightmare world, after all - but each death allows James to get that much closer to accepting that Mary is actually gone. In one of the game's possible endings, Maria says something which makes the thematic link frustratingly obvious.

What?! But I'm what you wanted! Mary's dead. Don't you understand? She's not coming back! But I can be yours... I'll be here for you forever... I'll never hurt you like she did! So why don't you want me?!

As we approach the conclusion of the game, the final puzzle pieces fall into place. We learn that James not only witnessed Mary's death - he caused it. Unable to bear her pain any longer, James smothers Mary while she sleeps. This is the guilt, the grief, the burden, that he has been carrying for so long. Depending on how players progressed through the game, they will be faced with one of four different endings, but all of them follow the same basic idea: once he has accepted his grief and his guilt, James doesn't need Mary, or Maria, any longer. He is alone, he has atoned for his sins, and he is able to finally put Silent Hill behind him.

What does all this have to do with dying?

Playing Silent Hill 2 is not fun. It's a depressing, terrifying, and draining experience. By the end, you have spent twenty or more hours playing as a grief-stricken unfaithful murderer, facing the physical manifestations of some of the worst emotions humans can experience. There is no relief when the credits roll, only a prolonged silence and serious introspection.

For many people, this mimics the process of grief almost perfectly. Don't all of us feel some amount of guilt after the death of a loved one? Even if we didn't smother them in the hospital, we still reflect on missed conversations, pointless arguments, times when we ignored a phone call instead of answering. If you were given one more chance to make amends, wouldn't you take it?

Silent Hill 2 is a journey through grief in the most traditional possible way. James comes to Silent Hill because a letter from his wife means she isn't actually dead (Denial). Once he arrives, he is aggressively assaulted by his own emotions, forced to lash out violently in order to survive (Anger). He then meets Maria, a not-quite-accurate version of Mary, who gives him a chance to accept the best parts of her in exchange for a bit of dignity (Bargaining). In the game's third act, James spends more and more time in the town's nightmare world, plodding slowly through dark mazes and eventually ending up crying helplessly in a facsimile of Mary's hospital room (Depression). Finally, after watching Pyramid Head kill Maria for the second time, and confronting her - disguised as Mary - on the roof of the hospital, he chooses to let Mary go (Acceptance).

Is it all a bit on the nose? Yes. Tearing the game apart from an academic perspective, the story is obvious. But it is also familiar. No matter how twisted and shocking the game's visuals become, we persevere, because this is a journey we have all taken before. We believe, through the entire experience, that this story will end on a high note, because games always do. Video games don't have depressing endings.

But this one does. James does accept Mary's death, but the moment isn't triumphant. It's sad. It's dark. We are left with the feeling that James will never really be the same. In much the same way, very few of us ever leave a death feeling victorious. We don't end grief with a sigh of relief, but with a sigh of acceptance.

Next time, we take a look at the Dark Souls series - a video game experience designed to put players through a pattern of death and resurrection in search of an escape from immortality.