Silent Hill 2

[Sacred Jellybean]

Finally, the voice acting, which is an immeasurable improvement over the first game. Every character is given an appropriate voice, the writing is decent and the lines are almost always delivered as intended. Angela's voice actor, in particular, is incredible, even moreso considering that her voice role was by far the most demanding and the hardest to portray correctly. Through their voices you can easily determine their correct personality, and in an entertainment medium where voice acting is usually awful, this is an important achievement.

Wait, really? I thought the voice acting in the first Silent Hill was far superior, though still not perfect. It's one of the first things I noticed on my first play-through. A good example is when James first meets Angela and tells her that he's lost, and she dramatically tilts her head forward and says in the most exaggerated voice imaginable, "Lo-OO-OSST???" As if she's never heard the word before and is trying hard to properly pronounce its subtle phonetics. There are barely any points in the game I can remember where I didn't find the terrible voice acting to be a great distraction, which, as the case with any game with a good story, is a shame.

I'm on my second playthrough of the main scenario because I enjoyed the game and want to see if I can pick up more about the various nuances of the story.

(warning, spoilers below)

For instance, a friend of mine, who is another great fanatic of the series, was telling me that James and the other characters are, in fact, dead, and trying to work their way through some kind of Dante's Inferno purgatory where the demons of their life are tormenting them. Perhaps I'm hard-headed, but in the main scenario (not the sub-scenario, where I thought it was pretty clearly hinted at), I didn't see a lot of evidence to support that James was dead, ghost-town aside. I got the In Water ending, and it seemed to me that James was alive up until the point where he carried the ghost of his dead wife to his car to drive off a cliff and into a river.

Here's something interesting which you've probably heard before: my aforementioned friend, who was obsessed with this game and read plenty about it online, told me the theory that all the monsters that James sees are manifestations of his sin, which is why most of them look feminine (as he had killed his wife in real life). If this is the case, why does Maria see the same monsters? Will this be explained when I get the Maria ending? (I read about the other endings online and how to get them, but not their content, so please be spoiler-wary in your explanations if possible. At this point, I've only beaten the main scenario with the In Water ending, as I said, and the sub-scenario, which judging from your post, only has one ending).

I also heard somewhere the theory that James had seen the Pyramid Head painting in real life, which is why he sees them now. Is there any evidence to support this? He doesn't seem to recognize the painting when he sees it again in the Silent Hill Historical Society, beyond the fact that he recognizes Pyramid Head itself. I've also heard that it wouldn't make sense for other characters to see Pyramid Head, but why would this be so if the painting had existed in real life?

I like the interpretation that Pyramid Head was supposed to be an executioner of the Civil War and is supposed to be a source of great guilt or malice, and that's why he chases after James. Very interesting to be sure - it's not every day that you get this much subtext out of a video game. :) Overall I liked Silent Hill 2 a lot, probably about the same amount as the first. The plot is a little better, but the first game is terrifying as all fucking hell. I need to play through that again. SH2 wasn't nearly as scary, but holy shit, the jail portion of the game... it still gives me chills to think about it.