Silent Hill 2 Works Because James Sunderland Is Pathetic

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Jade King

Published Oct 18, 2024

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Spoiler Warning For Silent Hill 2

One thing I didn’t expect from the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Silent Hill 2 remake is for certain fans to develop a cutesy fascination with James Sunderland. A man so pathetic and endearing you want to take him under your wing and𝓰 nurse him back to health, or do other things I’m not allowed to mention here without getting in trouble with my boss. People are sympathetically horny for this man.

This wasn’t the case when the original horror masterpiece arrived in 2001. The internet was hardly a thing, let alone a place where fandoms could collectively define favourite characters and subsequently thirst over them. But now, my timeline is awash with art that is thirsty, cute, disturbing, and everything in-between. The fandom may be twisting James Sunderland into this new fꦿorm for the first time, but the truth is, he’s always been a pathetic weꦦasel of a man.

Silent Hill 2 Is An Encapsulation Of James Sunderlands’ Guilt

It’s this characterisation that drives so much of Silent Hill 2. When the game begins, we see James as a courageous everyman, someone who is so indebted to his late wife that he has travelled to the titular town in search of her, despite the fact she 🔴died years ago. A letter was enough to set him off on this journey, which should be our first red flag. He talks in a surreal tone, as if nothing he’s saying or doing is remotely real. Like he’s lying to himself.

Eagle-eyed PC players have also gone out of bounds and discovered that Mary’s body can be found under a blanket in the bacꦐkseat. James loved her too much to throw the 🐎corpse into the boot I guess...

The opening hours are a whistle-stop tour through Silent Hill as unknown terrors attack our hero, painting him in a sympathetic lඣight as we stumble across old haunts and try to survive. Everyone that James comes across he tries to help, whether it be a suicidal man with a gun to his head or a little girl stealing keys right from beneath him. James knows this place is not safe and wants everyone to walk alongside him, like he’s afraid of being alone.

James Sunderland in the Silent Hill 2 remake.

His true nature slowly begins to unfurl with Maria's arri𒐪val, and the game starts to make subtle changes to James’ character model to visually express his true nature. Maria is basically defined as a sexier version of his late wife, a delusion manifested from the guilt of never accepting the fact that he was responsible for her murder. She is sexy, confident, and yet another soul that James is d♓etermined to protect. Putting his meekish demeanor aside, beneath it awaits a monster. One who acts gracious and welcoming, but is only residing within Silent Hill 2 because he refuses to accept reality.

The fact she is killed in front 🃏of him again and again🌠 and again by Pyramid Head drills the point home. It’s not subtle, nor is it really meant to be.

And It Wouldn’t Be The Same With Another Character

Silent Hill 2 Remake A Closeup of Maria.

Every enemy you encounter is a manifestation of this denial, adding additional layers to the messed-up decisions James has made in not just rejecting his wife, but ending her life. The scantily clad nurses you stumble across in Brookhaven Hospital aren’t just sexy for the sake of it, but to represent the objectification James projected onto them when his wife was sick. It’s disturbing, and if Silent Hill 2 were simply a g༒🐎eneric horror game featuring a protagonist that could only be interpreted as morally righteous, it wouldn’t be the same.

You begin by supporting James, sympathetic to his tragic circumstances and how the only way to escape his grief is to visit a haunted town that will swallow him whole. Silent Hill 2 is masterful in how it systematically pulls the wool over our eyes and turns the hero into one of the medium’s most despised villains. His grief is very real, but that doesn’t make what he did ꦗany less ba𒅌rbaric, and Team Silent/Bloober Team do a spectacular job of subverting our expectations ahead of the big reveal. If you pay attention though, it’s easy to see it coming.

Social media is awash with, or a submissive man staring pensively at the woman stood above him like he’s done everything wrong in the world and only wants to be forgiven. It’s fairly typical of modern fandoms, and how they will take a character out of context only to paint them in a certain light for the purposes of humour. Here though, I love how it eagerly reinforces the themes of the game, encourages you to dig deeper with another playthrough or discuss lore, theories, and character moments withꦍ the comm൲unity.

Silent Hill 2 has been in desperate need of a revival like this for a long time, and I’m chuffed the fandom is already taking it to places nobody could꧒ have expected. James is pathetic in ways that deserve to be scrutinised and celebrated, even if you want to simp for him.