When Konami announced their plans to remake the iconic horror classic Silent Hill 2, I, like many others, was skeptical. The original game, with its unique visual style and unsettling atmosphere, seemed almost impossible to replicate. How could any studio capture the awkward voice acting, jerky animations, and intentionally off-kilter aesthetic that made the original so special? My reservations were further amplified when it was revealed that The Medium developer Bloober Team was taking on the task, a studio whose games have often felt like they were trying too hard to recreate the atmosphere of older games, often leaning on the limitations of PS2-era technology.
However, after playing the first three hours of Bloober Team’s take on Silent Hill 2, my fears have completely evaporated. It’s immediately apparent that Bloober Team has understood the immense responsibility of reimagining this classic. The remake masterfully captures the visceral eeriness of one of the horror genre’s greatest games, expanding upon it in ways that respectfully preserve its core essence and mystique. While the remake is bound to be divisive, it might just surprise the skeptics this October.
My lengthy demo spanned from the opening scene to navigating the unsettling Blue Creek Apartments, showcasing both similarities and significant differences from the original. The Unreal Engine 5 visual upgrade is immediately noticeable, adding layers of detail to James Sunderland’s tormented expression. It’s almost uncanny. When I reached the town cemetery and encountered Angela, an iconic sequence from the original, it felt almost otherworldly. The hyper-realistic characters stood out against the swirling fog, like they were floating in another universe. Initially, I was unsure about this stylistic choice, but as I delved deeper into the story, I was slowly won over.
What truly elevates these moments is the remake’s new voice cast. Bloober Team worked with a seasoned group of professional actors, a stark departure from the hauntingly wooden performances of the original. I worried this approach could lead to over-the-top melodrama that lacked the original’s weird charm, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case. The cast delivers intentionally stilted performances, creating a sense of unease and displacement.
In an interview with Digital Trends, lead producer Maciej Głomb explained Bloober’s approach to recreating the original’s uniquely unsettling performances: “We understood that the [off-kilter] feeling was a big part of the original, but at the same time, we wanted to flesh out the emotions of the characters much more. Using professional actors allowed us to go much deeper into the psychology of those characters and create those arcs of their specific details of their emotions changing throughout the game. Recreating that feeling with the new actors wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be very hard to do it in a good way and not feel weird. You’ll never get the same feeling unless you use the same voice-overs, which wasn’t possible with the flow of the game.”
This philosophy is particularly evident in the encounter with Eddie. The baseball cap-wearing character, with his alien voice performance, was one of the most unsettling figures in the original. The version of Eddie I met in the remake, cowering in a dilapidated apartment, is equally disturbing. He’s more manic, laughing and crying through bouts of vomiting. Although delivered by a professional actor, there’s an unsettling quality to his performance that makes you feel like you’re on another planet.
Creative director Mateusz Lenart highlighted how these moments mark the biggest difference in the remake’s performances, which incorporate physicality and nuance: “Having actors with a lot of experience helped us a lot with the actual shooting process. They often had their own ideas of how to make a scene more interesting. Maybe with some very subtle show-don’t-tell techniques, actually selling a specific feeling or emotion without telling it to players’ faces. As long as the notes from them actually made sense in terms of the story, we were more than open to explore them. That’s the biggest change.”
This interplay between old and new ideas becomes even more apparent as you delve deeper into the remake’s gameplay. My three-hour session showcased expanded exploration, more involved puzzles, and a completely overhauled combat system. It’s in these areas that Bloober Team’s own mark on the remake truly shines through.
Głomb noted that this is the biggest leap in scope between the studio’s projects, and it shows. The game’s systems feel significantly more involved than the relatively streamlined The Medium. Lenart explained that this design approach stemmed from the studio’s decision to divide the game into two distinct parts: “We made a very clear distinction from the very beginning to divide it into the story part and the gameplay part. For the story part, we always felt like what was there in the original we didn’t need to change. We might tweak a few things here or there to flesh out the story even more, but we wanted to keep the core as it was. But gameplay was a completely different story. We needed to overhaul all the systems because of the transition to a third-person camera, which impacts all the level design and monster AI … How do you create horror without having as much control over what players see, because we didn’t have access to the fixed camera?”
This challenge is palpable as you play. The lack of fixed angles can sometimes diminish the original game’s mystique. James’ initial walk into town feels less tense compared to the original, with the camera trailing behind him instead of fixed angles obscuring the fog-shrouded threats. However, this dynamic has pushed Bloober Team to make some creative decisions that compensate for any lost horror. This is evident in the Wood Side Apartments, where you encounter the remake’s fiendish enemies.
Mannequins, for example, love to flank players like they’re auditioning for a role in a Dark Souls game. They pop out from corners, latching onto you with their gnarly limbs. Adding to the paranoia, some apartment rooms feature inanimate mannequins standing around, prompting you to fire at motionless statues. It’s a masterful piece of level design.
My personal favorite enemy behavior is their tendency to skitter away when you shine your flashlight on them. In one room, I witnessed an enemy dart to the right as soon as my light hit it in the doorway. You know it’s somewhere in that apartment, but you have no sense of the space’s layout as you chase it. While you have complete control of the camera, Bloober Team’s reactive world design ensures that they’re still in control, leading to plenty of jump scares.
When it comes to expanding the gameplay, Bloober Team’s efforts yield varying degrees of success. The town is largely unchanged, but there are a few additional storefronts to explore for supplies. This is essential because the remake emphasizes item scarcity, with limited ammo and health pickups, keeping you on edge until the very end. Bloober Team hasn’t gone overboard, though, avoiding a needless open-world overhaul. Instead, they’ve added a few well-crafted spaces and rooms that give the town more depth.
The remake’s expanded focus on puzzles is another success. At Neely’s Bar, I encountered a jukebox missing both a record and a number two button. Through exploration, I found two halves of a record and some vinyl glue scattered around town. Using a Resident Evil-like combine feature, I put the record back together and then used tactile manipulation to pull out the correct disc tray, similar to the original game. Once it was in, I figured out the correct buttons to play the record, earning a key as a reward.
Another involved puzzle required collecting medallions with iconography on each side and slotting them into a machine in a specific order based on a series of poetic hints. Later, I had to crack a safe code using a similar riddle, shining my flashlight in a graffiti-covered room to illuminate doodles and the corresponding numbers attached to them. Each puzzle is more complex than anything found in the original game, adding a distinctive Bloober signature that fits seamlessly into the game’s world.
What might prove more polarizing, I suspect, is the remake’s increased focus on combat. The apartment complexes are heavily infested with enemies, making it difficult to simply avoid them as in the original game. Instead, players must either use a wooden plank or fire their handgun from an over-the-shoulder perspective, reminiscent of Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes. James even has some defensive capabilities, allowing him to dodge attacks in any direction. It’s not terribly inventive, but it’s functional. Bullets are a precious resource, easily wasted as enemies contort unpredictably. In several encounters, I was forced to make split-second decisions about whether to waste ammo or try to knock an enemy down before it could attack, depleting my limited supply of Health Drinks.
The trade-off is that there are significantly more enemies in the remake. This detracts from the unnerving isolation of the original and makes the monsters feel a bit predictable after a while. The radio static always telegraphs their appearance, so they’re never a complete surprise. In the early hours, the combat system feels too shallow to justify the frequent interruptions to deal with these creatures.
This is one of the few concerns I have, a far cry from the multitude of reservations I had before playing the demo. I’m still unsure how well Bloober Team will handle such a sensitive story about mental trauma, something they notoriously mishandled in The Medium. The iconic introduction of Pyramid Head seems to imply that Bloober Team may have toned down the original game’s more grotesque moments in response to this. A scene that has long been interpreted as sexual assault now plays out in a more ambiguous manner, appearing more like the hulking monster dismembering a body off-screen.
How these changes will affect the overall tone and story, for better or worse, remains to be seen. There’s always a chance that these directional shifts could derail the remake by the end, but I’m far more optimistic now than I was before playing it. Bloober Team has openly acknowledged the influence of Silent Hill 2 on their games, and this admiration for the source material is evident thus far. The remake retains its unsettling weirdness, and the changes largely feel like thoughtful ways to preserve the original’s psychological horror while transitioning to modern gameplay.
The best thing I can say about the remake is that, even with its impressive visuals and high-quality voice acting, it still feels unlike any big-budget game I’ve played since Silent Hill’s heyday. This is a testament to the original game’s enduring foundation and a credit to Bloober Team’s understanding of how to stay true to that vision while weaving in their own unique elements. If the full game can maintain this momentum, the keys to the series might finally be in safe hands. Silent Hill 2 launches on October 8 for PS5 and PC.
