Silent Hill 2’s Remake Opens a Floodgate That Future Silent Hill Games Should Shut

Everything that the Silent Hill 2 remake changes notwithstanding, it’s no small feat that Bloober and Konami were able to reimagine the classic with twice as much content. In a series where no installment exceeds 10 hours in length unless played slowly or to 100% completion, 15–20 hours—at least on a cold playthrough—is incredibly disarming because of how much content is explored linearly or scripted for mandatory progression. This length is nonchalant at best and safe at worst if it was associated with any other modern AAA game. But, as a Silent Hill entry, it’s difficult to overstate how pivotal the direction of Silent Hill 2’s remake could be to the franchise’s future.

It’s impossible to predict what state the Silent Hill series will be in a decade from now, though Silent Hill 2’s remake makes a great case for Konami to pursue remakes of other entries and hopefully begin a streak of successes in a franchise that sorely needed a win. That said, it might be a mistake for future remakes or brand-new titles to take inspiration wholesale from Bloober. This remake earns its doubled length in various ways, and yet future Silent Hill games like f or Townfall shouldn’t necessarily feel an obligation to reach the same heights.

Silent Hill Games Being Short Make Them Palatable Horror Morsels

Mainline Silent Hill games being roughly 5–10 hours is a sweet spot that modern gaming has since dismissed. Big-budget first-party games have lately all seemed to follow a trend of needing to be a certain length to demonstrate their quality and justify their price, though Silent Hill installments falling on the shorter end have always kept them in the pocket.

Indeed, if many of them had been any longer, they could conceivably stretch their narratives—lackluster as many of them already are—too thin. One of the greatest advantages of a relatively shorter playtime, especially in Silent Hill games, is that it accommodates and encourages several playthroughs that can be completed efficiently and optimally as alternate endings are sought out.

The original Silent Hill 2 alone has six endings: In Water, Leave, Rebirth, Maria, Dog, and UFO. Now, the remake has added two of its own, Stillness and Bliss, ensuring that there are even more incentives to hop into subsequent playthroughs alongside the pursuit of achievement trophies.

Many of these achievements also task players with scouring environments and amassing each collectible type in a single playthrough, while the ‘Faster than Fog’ achievement suggests that being able to beat the remake in under 10 hours casually is a commendable feat. Therefore, endeavoring to witness each ending and knowingly playing through the game a handful of times to acquire different achievements is realistically a ridiculously hefty time sink hitherto unheard of in a Silent Hill game.

Not Every Future Silent Hill Game Should Need to Be a 15–20 Hour Experience

The original game’s dungeons are tiny morsels compared to the remake’s massive, sprawling locations, and that’s never more true than in a direct comparison of each title’s Toluca Prison and Labyrinth. The remake’s Toluca Prison and Labyrinth are drawn out as long as Bloober could muster and, like Brookhaven Hospital, this is achieved largely by giving players more they need to explore with winding corridors and locked passageways the original never had.

Between the prison’s animal-themed doors and the labyrinth’s three separate rotating cube passages, there’s a lot more to see and not all of it reinforces the advantages of the remake being so long. The remake still happens to be remarkably coherent despite being enlarged and elongated in every way imaginable, and that’s a testament to how strong Silent Hill 2’s narrative is. Still, there are plenty of possible remake candidates in the series whose stories and gameplay aren’t nearly as competent, and doubling their length might only exacerbate those franchise-condemning blemishes.

Systems

Released

October 8, 2024

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Themes, Violence

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

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