There’s something to be said about the satisfaction that comes with “flipping the script”, and turning a situation on its head.

What the monsters in Silent Hill look like when they realize I’m not going home until I pay every single one of them back in full for my first visit

Most of the time, I’m right out of the gate with my point, possessed with the creative fever of an unbounded phantom of analysis….other times, I yearn for a meandering through the fields of aimless intent. Maybe not totally aimless, but certainly not on task. I often ask myself “what works?” on ATE, as I know people read my stuff, but it is hard to gauge what really puts butts in seats. Sometimes I think the battle is won long before the eyes reach the body of my article; an intriguing thumbnail and a title with a great hook being enough to get eager folk through the door. There is a genuine lust to inspire thinking, not just the silliness of the endless quest involving the numbers game. Such hollow pursuits do indeed end with a whimper, and any reasonable soul would be better suited with a more noble aim, and one that endeavors to enrich any given individual that has the fortune of stumbling upon this deposit of creative currency. Just a random thought I had, following one where I was just musing myself with the notion of just how long I am able to talk about a game in written form….weeks upon weeks, even. Oh, the humanity.

I think I’ll explicitly preface my approach today with the idea that I’m merely offering perspective on the Silent Hill 2 Remake (SH2R), and I do that because in the game realm, anything less than glowing praise is seemingly akin to emphatic condemnation, which is such a silly standard to cope with. This is more so just critiquing a piece of media as it seems to exist, and it’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, which is apart of analyzing what could be considered a work of art, something I’ve touched on before, quite a few times, actually, as it is a topic that never ceases to invite more discussion surrounding the reality of the situation.

To that point, in following up my recent playthrough with a jog through of new game plus, it really does strike me how much the SH2R is predicated on kind of the first time visitation, when one isn’t accustomed to the tricks and traps of the town or the game itself. This makes sense on some level, as I’ve speculated somewhat recently that some media has a greater tolerance built in to it than others, in terms of the ability to “stay fresh”, as it were, and it’s certainly not an indictment on SH, or other games that benefit from more of a one and done kind of approach. With the SH2R, I think the notion as to why this is, beyond its roots in horror, is that it feeds into my premise that perspective does matter when considering media, as what the piece is varies from individual to individual, and that might mean it doesn’t necessarily align with your own personal preferences of what that entails.

One could look at it as “functionality”, but then one would be committing to the sin of which I speak, in that upon further review, the SH2R, much like the source material, aims to be a creative endeavor or work of art first, and a consumer product second. I comment on this, borrowing from a realization I had when playing through Hollow Knight: Silksong, as what gamers wanted from the title, “missed the point” of what the intent was, when demanding certain compromises from the title itself. In Silksongs case, it was an address of people pushing back at the difficulty of the title, saying Team Cherry didn’t do a good enough job of making the game more accessible, as the difficulty was too much to contend with, and even lacked a choice in terms of difficulty options. I contended that, much like one wouldn’t reasonably expect something outlandish from a creative in a different regard, like for Tarantino to tone down the violence in his films, for Picasso to produce more realistically portrayed works, or Slayer to moderate the amount of metal inherent in their music, one would similarly come to the same forgone conclusion of foolish endeavor to want Team Cherry go parse the difficulty level on Silksong in the same fashion.

In the same way, the SH2R, in terms of its delivery, focuses on the raw emotion of the initial playthrough, really priding itself on the atmospheric tension created through the clever usage of audio design, combining with the unsettling aesthetics, in-conjunction with the uneasiness of the monster design, blending with the off-putting nature of the world itself, and the all too mortal fragility that James must belabor under. The focus was predicted upon the delivery of the raw potential of delivering an authentic horror experience first and foremost, with the pretense of a game being purely secondary. I say this in terms of the replayability factor involved with my navigation of the town a second time, noticing how in essence, how railroaded of an experience it really is, the point A to point B almost a series of hallways, with little deviation to be had, and a simplistic combat system with few weapons to even consider. All of this leads one to believe that whoever worked on the game, knew this to the case, and was not worried about the sense of it, as it was the delivery of the experience, in its untouched state, that mattered the most, and which was the priority throughout.

When one takes all of this into consideration, mixed in with details involved with familiar notions of replayability inherent in other games like this, in relation to speedrunning for example, with ideas like pathing, time savering, combat maneuvering, shortcuts, etc. That all still exists, on some level, as a mere byproduct of the facets of basic reality that compromise the metaphysical fundamentals of the nature of a game itself, but none of it intentional, as it the SH2R operating in such a “video gamey” kind of way, was never the concern, intent, or priority, and viewed through that lens, the experience doesn’t suffer for it, if one sees it as a creative expression of Team Silent/Blooper Team, then a consumer product with the stipulations of a traditional video game first and foremost

What I posit may be controversial, though any worthwhile philosophy should challenge the ideas normative standards by read dressing the status quo, and opening up view points of basic realities reconsidered. I think these notions are worthwhile posits, and ones I look forward to revisiting and implementing further, in seeing just how true they continue to ring. This is all in the name of critiquing art after all, and the aim of doing as such is to enhance the piece of the art itself, in what it accomplishes

In this way, I think my posit is safely secured by reason, and deserves consideration thereafter.

-Pashford