Psychologist Reacts to Silent Hill 2's Characters and Themes

this is Alexander Chris a clinical psychologist and author based in New York he's also a big fan of Silent Hill 2 having written about the game and his personal relationship to it in his book The Gaming mind I have to say I'm so excited about this idea I mean when I was a kid it was yeah it was all about it I dressed up as James for Halloween one year yeah I was like I was a big fan today Alex joins us to break down how Silent Hill 2's nightmarish locations and horrific monsters are drawn

from the complex minds of its characters and see how the Remake adapts the most beloved psychological horror game of all time one really interesting thing about the game and about James as a protagonist is the way that even when you're indoors everything is foggy and hard to see and so it is perhaps a way that he deflects guilt and responsibility the things he swings at and shoots at it's only after the fact that he really sees what they are and that that yeah perhaps is not an inherent feature of Silent Hill but that is part

of James's Silent Hill we've got another episode with Alex about Silent Hill 2's endings coming very soon but this video still contains spoilers for the entire game so consider yourself warned right without further Ado it's over to Alex I think that video games have often been dismissed and overlooked in terms of what they can teach us about the individual who is playing them in my writing and in my work with individuals who play video games I'm just really interested in seeing video games is another extension of an individual's life and psychology I'm particularly interested in

not just what people play but how they play them which is something that's particularly interesting and unique in Silent Hill 2 which we'll talk more [Music] about Silent Hill to presents this sort of portrait of grief and loss and guilt through this very dreamlike setting that kind of has this lynchian quality where it kind of seems like it's not entirely clear that everyone is actually awake or in reality as we understand it so everything has this kind of heightened quality in any horror movie or game right there's always a moment where the main character is

like what the f you know and is like so shocked by something going on and that never happens in Silent Hill 2 which I think is so important to the psychological experience of playing it and sort of seeing narrative through everyone is in there with this these bizarre horrific in congruous experiences but maintaining this pratal calm that that what they're going through is not actually scary in like the uh visceral fearful sense but something Dreadful this plotting towards an inevitable ending that is tragic but but seems unavoidable but there's this glimmer of maybe there can

be a resolution right I think that's really what the game is about is this tiny glimmer of hope that maybe there's a way to work through something terrible even though it seems that all that ever happens is the same thing over and over again and each character is reliving that Loop in their own way and each ending offers maybe a different never entirely clear picture on whether it's possible to escape um the patterns that we get locked into when we go through trauma and tragedy Mary died of that damn disease three years ago what a

fantastic opening right you to open in this filthy bathroom essentially seems to be looking in the mirror being like am I really going to do this is this is this real and I think one really interesting thing about the game and about James as a protagonist is the way that he oscillates between moments where he's seems open to the idea that he is suffering psychologically he's going crazy and then other times when he's incredibly defensive about that idea especially around ideas about him potentially being suicidal and really pushes back and Trust to distance himself from

other characters saying like I'm not like you already from the start we see this like tension that exists not in the world but actually in James this is a cool way to start a game excuse me I'm sorry I I was just hey it's okay I didn't mean to scare you I think in some ways Angela is the most fully realized of the people that James meets the player meets over the course of the playthrough every character that James meets is dealing with their own demons and struggling with their own past and they also then

bring bring different things out of James Angela really brings out tension between james' desire to save and even take on a kind of Savior like complex and this desire to really defend against his own Despair and deny that he is in any way like Angela or in any way as close to the edge as Angela more clearly is there is uh I think a clear but not over-the-top presentation from the get-go from this initial encounter with Angela that this is someone who is traumatized she is really reactive when James approaches her there is this way

that she can subtly shift States from seeming kind of out of it or dissociative or even childlike to then being very upset or angry and their points throughout James and Angela's interactions with each other where she can switch very quickly from seeming helpless to being you know kind of frightening and all of those are indications right of somebody who is in some state of disorganization in their own mind often times because they've experienced things that don't makes sense right and have overwhelmed them someone with like Angela based on her behavior and then also what we

come to learn about her this is someone who probably didn't just experience single traumatic event but was raised in a chronically frightening environment and so she brings with her this fractured mental state can easily be misinterpreted or even taken advantage of by others again one of the interesting things about the relationship between James and Angela is this question of like how much does James or by ention the player really care about this person right like how much are you sympathizing with her when James says hey maybe we should travel together like does he mean it

do you as the player actually want a sidekick like versus extent to which the player is frightened of her or feels like she's too difficult and doesn't want to have to deal with this the game never answers those questions and or provides neat endings right it forces us to sit with the complexity and intensity of people who are in severe states of distress and I I do think that the acting in the remake you know for the weirdness that maybe it loses it brings a layer of depth that did not exist in the original I'm

kind of lost lost okay so this is one moment I do have to highlight in the original James says I'm kind of lost and Angela says lost in the craziest line read that is imaginable she goes like lost lost it's so weird it's the first interaction you have with someone else in the game it sets this tone valid criticism that it was 2001 they weren't doing motion capture who they were paying to do these voices like you know it's a different world on a practical level but it also just as the way the characters Express

themselves it does set this scene of like this is not our normal reality this is a heightened version of reality in which not only is one character overacting in this extreme way the other characters does not seem to be phased by it at all not even to say that it's better or worse but I do think it probably orients the player to a different psychological position if you're playing this for the first time and seeing these two talented actors very naturalistically have a conversation together it's just a different experience that makes it feel less unreal

from the start is it dangerous [Music] maybe it's kind of hard to explain but I'll be careful I'm not lying no I believe you it's just I guess I don't really care if it's dangerous or not I'm going either way so I think this is a really purposeful interesting way to start a horror game where you know any horror game needs to basically explain why the character doesn't just immediately leave right and often times that's done mechanically because they get trapped somewhere right they're they're on a you know spaceship that's been cut off from you

know Communications whatever it might be but here from the get-go it's this idea of I'm going into town regardless of what I encounter I'm going to I'm doing it anyway it's not a mechanical functional external reason that's going to keep me here I'm going to stay here because that is where I'm at at this point in my life right I I is that this is somehow for James preferable to the alternative of not being in Silent Hill the the scene with Angela you know also just establishes there's this blurriness of reality right she says she's

looking for someone and meanwhile she's amongst these Graves so it's like okay does she is she looking for grave site right is she is she aware that the people she's looking for are no longer here or not or does she lose track of that at some point right James is explicitly looking for someone he knows is dead but hopes is alive the term psychological horror can be thrown around a lot but there's really something special about how Silent Hill 2 asks the player from the get-go to really be viewing this in terms of what is

going on in the minds of the player character and the other characters they meet Angela okay look I'm not sure what you're planning but there's always another way an interesting theme in Silent Hill 2 is the idea of there being another way versus there being only one way which is particularly interesting for a video game where the player is playing and has choice and there are multiple end when you meet Angela she says there's only one way into town you meet her again now and James is suggesting well you know there's maybe another way and

she says I'm not you know I'm not so sure about that for a game that originally came out kind of at the dawn of the you know open world video game that was trying to really forward this idea that video games were a place where you could feel like you could do anything like here is a game that is explicitly asking whether anything you're doing matters whether the choices you make actually can affect the outcome her name's Mary she's my wife that's a very nice touch that was not possible in the original game is to

be very clear that Angela does not make eye contact with the photograph seems like both a comment on her dissociation from the scene but also this broader question of like are they even in the same reality like what does that photograph even look like to her like what is he holding can she even see what he sees I can't remember exactly what happens before the scene but like you're fighting some monster and then you walk into the room and This Woman's just draped on the floor and there's no comment of like what the hell are

you doing get up like you know there's things out there like none of that it's just it all makes sense and yet it doesn't make sense and they're immediately trying to understand each other and failing right they they are not on the same page at all in the reality of that room that they're in together it's like all of a sudden the monsters don't exist right the only danger is within themselves Angela is a character that can be easily dismissed as again kind of childlike or naive but in some ways she seems the most clued

in from the beginning about the nature of what's going on and she's most in touch with the hopelessness that is so pervasive throughout the game but that for James is often then projected out in the the monsters he's fighting in this sort of innan crazy puzzles and architecture he's navigating Angela is more self-aware in that sense that this might all be for nothing I'm happy to see you happy to see me alive I mean oh yeah so yeah that I mean that's a new scene from this version interchange that suggests right that Angela really has

never really experience feeling wanted or loved by anyone except maybe her mother and even then there's maybe questions about what that relationship was really like gives another touch point in that relationship before we sort of see her again in a more intense way next if we stick together we might just make it out of here out of where this town Silent Hill no it's fine I I like the you know him saying getting out of here and she seems very confused about what he even means maybe on some level she's the most aware of there

is no like here right that they're trapped in something that they that they carry with them wherever they go this is just a much more human portrayal of Angela which from a point of view which is a point of view I care a lot about of sort of how mental distress mental disorder is portrayed in media I think is a real step forward it's less caricature it's less over the top but then there's also the loss of that more bizarre presentation where everyone is kind of over the top or wooden and you you sort of

have to almost treat them more as archetypes or exaggerations of real life so I don't think that they've changed sort of Angela's basic perspective or psychology I think she is this traumatized woman who is Shifting between different states in which she is at times completely helpless and terrified at other times despairing and hopeless and at other times has more insight into what's going on than anyone else in the game they've just presented it in a more naturalistic way than I think the original achieved or maybe even tried for please I'll be good I promise tell

him I'll be good please should talk about abstract Daddy yeah Daddy there is a progression that James is going on in addition to in parallel with his quest to find Mary in which the possibility that he can actually connect with other real people is being explored right and there's a open question of whether he'll actually make contact with another person or just be another one of these lost souls kind of drifting through each other until they meet some inevitable tragic conclusion here for the first time they are experiencing some version of shared reality but it

doesn't make sense yet um she is calling something daddy that does not look remotely human right he fights this thing that from the player's point of view is very uncomplicated it's just a weird blob and so even though he is saving Angela you know in some sense of that word from this monster it doesn't mean anything similar to him as it does to her right the significance of what he's doing and who he's fighting is so far away from whatever Angela must be seeing right and whatever her Association to this creature or character is James

is actually maybe getting a little bit of real through staticky noise right information about Angela That's not filtered through his own stuff and even having to yeah physically move through space in a way that is maybe an empathic connection to what Angela had to do rather than just his own thing which then I think directly informs the conversation they have at the end of the boss fight I see what you're doing it's always the same with you you're only after one thing Angela please you don't have to [Music] lie go ahead say it or you

could just force me like he always did it I really like this update of their interaction after the daddy fight Angela is so been so chronically exposed to malevolence that it's hard for her to see the world through any other lens right the expectation is that even if James is doing something ostensibly beneficial for her there's some evil intent and it's it's made more explicit the kind of sexual abuse that she likely faced in this scene than it ever is I think explicitly in the original game admit [Music] it you didn't want her around anymore

no you probably found someone else no they pair her distorted view of reality right in which there's this assumption that James is pursuing her as a sexual object with her having again this incredible Insight even as she is seeing her own world in such a confused way she sees right through James she is absolutely correct in the first one to say before James gets there by probably many hours of play that he didn't want Mary around anymore and that his guilt is what is driving so much of this experience and he becomes angry for the

first time manifestly with her for for poking that idea that he's trying to keep at Bay I think it honors Angela's Arc in a certain way right that she's so she's so trapped within herself and her oppressive world but she also has this capacity to understand that is remarkable but is not appreciated and is not being reciprocated uh and so again she runs off right and and they're sort of left alone again scene still gives me chills every time it's I think one of the most poignant cutcenes in a video game one of the most

poignant sort of culminations of uh relationship spread out over the course of a game or any work of art on a fan Theory level right it's this confirmation that everyone that we what we by that point felt we knew to be true which that everyone in Silent Hill is experiencing it differently but on this inter personal emotional level right it's the one and only time when James really steps into someone else's reality right and the player steps into somebody else's reality he feels the heat of it he gets a sense of what it's like to

be in Angela's mind and feel her type of distress and her type of pain and history it's hot as hell in here you see it [Applause] too for me it's always like this but at the same time right it is sad even sort of tragic scene because they they're not able to meet each other enough to find a way out together they continue to go their separate ways and James continues to hold on to this idea that he is different and he can find a different way out they changed a line from the original where

when she asks for the knife back and he says no and she says saving it for yourself I think he says in again this very kind of dreamlike monotone like I would never kill myself me no I never kill myself and it's very eerie and I think maybe particularly for me as a teenager at the time thinking a lot about the impact of suicide that made a particular impression on me but this version too I think captures this sense of connection but ultimately sort of being necessary but not sufficient for these two people to be

there for each other have it your way it doesn't change anything Flames definitely have seem to me like this sense of this constant heat and pressure what Angela says in an early scene of like maybe it's better just to run like needing to be at a constant Sprint just trying to get away from these Flames that are always licking at your heels and and can never quite be escaped and that that is her experience yeah whereas James is is one of everything being obscured even when you're indoors everything is foggy and hard to see and

so it is perhaps a way that he deflects guilt and responsibility right the things he swings at and shoots at it's only after the fact that he really sees what they are only when he's kicking their heads in you actually get a good look with your flashlight because otherwise it's all too obscured and that that yeah perhaps is not an feature of Silent Hill but that is part of James's Silent Hill hey who's there it wasn't me I didn't do it I didn't do it I swear hey are you okay I didn't do anything he

was like that when I got here so yeah Eddie's on a different Journey he is a less fleshed out character who presents as a slovenly Manchild but then is harboring this bottomless rage that we come to discover so this version of Eddie like Angela is much more nuanced and humanized the original Eddie in that first scene is vomiting constantly and it elicits this strong sense of disgust you can't wait for this cut scene to be over it's gross I understand why as things are becoming more naturalistic in this version they they chose to make Eddie

less kind of viscerally gross and maybe a little more relatable someone that you're a little more inclined to empathize with which then has its own kind of reward so to speak when you come to understand more of what Eddie is capable of I see that you didn't make it out yet yeah I just didn't get around to it yet at least you got your appetite back yeah one other thing I'll say about Eddie right is that in this version I think James comes off more of as a [ __ ] this snide comment about getting

your appetite back and the but there is this interesting idea Angela is just constantly running from these oppressive flames and doesn't know what else to do but look for this maybe one source of joy that she vaguely remembers from years ago and James is tortured by this guilt that he cannot no matter how much he tries like fully obscure it's like what is Eddie doing here like it seems like he just doesn't have anywhere better to be which is when you think about it like maybe the most tragic character of all right that he just

didn't get around to leaving Silent Hill yet like it makes no difference here there like it's all the same to him it's a different kind of prison that he is in he is in a more maybe truly hopeless place there's not even anyone clear that he's looking for perhaps that's why as we're about to see Eddie was never going to make it I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the fact that he's not eating pizza in the scene but he's eating a giant tub of ice cream with his hands I wasn't even sure

what it was I thought it was like popcorn with butter but yeah okay so yeah ice cream melting on his hands you know my first reaction to that is it's way more pathetic as opposed to kind of gluttonous he found ice cream he can't even be bothered or couldn't like didn't care that he couldn't find a utensil to eat it with then it has this quieter moment where James points out his appetite right he tries to wipe his hand clean right and there's this shame that is brought up right that is probably a central emotional

experience for Eddie it's maybe part of a general attempt to make Eddie a little less sort of objectified as a you know sort of disgusting person and a little more sort of sad and pathetic it's my take you want to talk down to me some more tell me to relax you're just like the rest of them James no I don't want shut up you think I'm stupid you think I don't see it but you've been laughing at me all along ever since we first met but you ain't laughing now are you in this portrayal when

Eddie says you know you're you're laughing at me too does that resonate with the player have we been laughing at Eddie I don't know if that if we have versus just feeling kind of sorry for him because I think there's something to this idea similar with Angelo where on the one hand we're seeing this person who is trapped in their horror and their trauma and their exper experience and they can't see the world for anything else than that and that is what feeds their suffering and leads them to recreate these situations over and over again

there's also this idea that they are reflecting something about James right that even though you spend so much of it by yourself solving puzzles fighting monsters it's this game of diads of relationships coming into contact with one other person at a time and this idea of projecting something onto you but you're also projecting something onto them right James's dysfunction is this need to be the hero and the Savior until he feels unappreciated and that is what occurred before the events of the game with Mary where he was sort of he took care of her until

he you know it made him too angry and he felt like she was no longer like playing the role in the way that he wanted and then he was sick of it and um took control rather than you know trying to explore what Mary wanted or letting things follow a more natural course I think that part of the experience of playing Silent Hill 2 is inhabiting a character that from the beginning seems like pretty stock just a regular white guy trying to find his wife kind of thing and I think ideally if you're really absorbed

in the game and really appreciating these complexities and you know getting into these relationships that form by the time you find out he killed Mary it's not like the shocking reveal it's the it's the natural conclusion of you're understanding this person to be just as lost and confused and conflicted and damaged as anyone else that he's encountered James keeps reliving with all these characters this kind of Savior likee complex he's the good guy coming in trying to be reasonable But ultimately failing to do so failing to actually connect uh and help the other person feel

understood there's again as with Angela this idea that James ostensibly is trying to be helpful but he's not being helpful and he does think he's better than Eddie right he does think his quest is nobler he does think he's a better person that is partly why there is no alternate solution to their final exchange than just it being combat and and James fighting him like he would any other monster in town with the ability to really see the detail on James's face it has the potential for a really nice double meaning for someone who's new

to the game it reads as he's killed a person for the first like he he touches his hands like he's weighing in and for someone who knows where this is going there's this sense of is is there beginning is this the just the spark of a deeper awareness right and of this not being a totally new experience or sensation obviously there's a scene which Angela explicitly where you explicitly see the world that she's living in we never really get that in the original game with Eddie every time you see Eddie in the remake his breath

freezes in air and my interpretation of that was that it eludes that you are Seeing Eddie in his world which is frozen which is cold that's super interesting yeah and I feel like I should have noticed it now that you mention it but yeah the breath thing is is real yeah I mean I I and you know that your final battle with him is in a meat locker and yeah my memory from the original right is that the the closest you get to understanding Eddie's world is just there's a bunch of dead bodies around it's

not very fleshed down it's an interesting thought and and is a kind of Elemental contrast maybe to Angela's room a world on fire right that Angela lives in is he's in this cold Frozen place he's not even looking for anyone in particular or the person that he's looking for is also was also his Tormentor his bully who he has to kill again you know if Angela had to endure so much pain and abuse at home but also had this idealized mother whoever she really was right that she holds out as someone to seek and run

for Eddie is alone right he's just by himself it's not a world populated by people just corpses or yeah Frozen hunks of meat it paints a very isolated picture of what this you know guy who was clearly pushed around and there was no one apparently around right to provide Eddie with an alternate view or an alternate way of dealing with the feelings that that generated for him yeah that's super interesting I I'm glad they did that right it's brings a little more coherence than I think existed probably in the first one in terms of what

Eddie brought with him into Silent Hill Alex had so much to say about Silent Hill 2 and its endings that we've got another video coming very soon in the meantime you can find links to Alex's books including the gaming mind in the description below don't forget to comment below with what other games you'd like to see on the show in the future and be sure to subscribe for more content like this and Beyond