#The Labyrinth SH2R

[crimescrimson]

The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 (2024)

[2-d-rogue]

Their home.

[eldritch-elrics]

happy new year everyone! to celebrate the beginning of the new year at midnight, i.... did not do anything, because i didn't notice at all. i was too busy playing sh2r.........

anyway. i did the labyrinth today. as i may have mentioned, the labyrinth is my favorite level in og silent hill 2. this means that i have a lot of opinions about this segment. sh2r's labyrinth.... is hit or miss. that is to say, when it hits, it hits hard, but when it misses, it also misses hard.

first up, a surprise appearance! abstract daddy! holy shit! holy shit!!!! that was one intense boss fight, oh my god. the other bosses in the game so far have been pretty standard, not any more exciting than their og counterparts, but abstract daddy ramped it up a notch. for the most part, i loved all the changes they made. it felt like the dip into angela's otherworld was not just one little tangent in an otherwise unrelated segment, but a whole area in its own right. the environmental design was a highlight here: the fleshy, breathing walls, the huge pistons and machinery, the televisions projecting abuse, the artifacts that suggest domestic violence (smashed plates etc). the way that you're half running from abstract daddy and half fighting back! it felt like we got a better look into angela's psyche through this expanded vision of her otherworld, and that was great.

i think that the cutscene with angela was mostly the same as in the og? i'd have to look back at both side by side. i think this cutscene hit really differently for me this time around because i already know the game's twist - i was watching it and going "damn, that's a bit on the nose, angela," only to look at the og's script afterwards and discover that the line was the same in both versions, lmao.

it was a really, really interesting decision to put this scene before the maria jail cell scene. it completely changes both scenes in ways that i have complicated feelings about. i'll try to explain...

so, to me, the post-abstract-daddy cutscene kind of hinges on angela's accusation that james is only interested in one thing: that is, sex. (idk if this is really the most "important" part of the scene, but it's the one that i find most interesting in the greater labyrinths context.) both games give us a reason why it makes some sense for angela to make this accusation - a reason, that is, beyond the obvious fact that her trauma has caused her to see james's friendliness in a different light. in the remake, it feels like the whole thing is framed as a misunderstanding - james had that line in the park where he told angela he was looking for a little girl, angela took it the wrong way, and now she has fully built up a version of james in her mind where he's a sexual predator of some flavor. as players, we know that this is probably not true, but it still casts some doubt on james & his seeming good nature. was his relationship with mary really all it seems...? (spoiler alert: nope!)

in the original game, there is a layer beyond "trauma-informed misunderstanding" to angela's accusation that all james wants is sex. and that is the fact that, earlier in the level, maria says essentially the exact same thing. maria and angela make the same assumption about james, with extremely different tones.

i promise i have more to say about angela, but let me segue into the maria jail cell scene here for a moment. this was the only cutscene from the remake i'd seen before playing it! my out-of-context thoughts on that scene are posted here. anyway, as i've probably talked about before, one of the reasons why i like the cell scene so much is that it works as the setup for an elaborate joke that the game is playing on the player.

the joke basically goes like this:

james finds maria again, yay

maria tells james in no uncertain terms that they are going to fuck when he comes to find her again

james's reaction to this information is kind of ambiguous

the player, assuming they have bought into the sexiness of maria, goes through the whole grueling labyrinth segment determined to see maria again asap

this momentum is completely interrupted by abstract daddy, and especially by angela accusing james of being a sexual predator

if the player has bought into the idea that james is attracted to maria - or if they themself are attracted to maria - this is a "wait, what??" moment. it's a "making the gooners self-conscious" moment (sorry). "joke" is perhaps not the right word, but it's a rug pull. you thought you were getting sex? nope! you're getting Feeling Uncomfortable About Sex! and i think that is just great.

going back to angela, this is the second layer to her assumption that james wants sex. in the original game, to the player, angela seems like she's hit on something that might very well be true. regardless of what james thinks about all this - and i think the game deliberately suggests very little about what james thinks about all this! - he's gotten himself into a sexually charged situation with maria. this, perhaps, causes the player to rethink some things about angela. if her instincts are right, and james is pretty sex-driven, should we take her more seriously when she accuses james of infidelity and (indirectly) murder? this whole thing with maria sure resonates with angela's accusation that "you probably found someone else."

and i just think that that part of the scene hits harder if we've already seen james have this semi-sexual moment with maria. it's surprising! it's a bait and switch!

consider, then, what's different if james is mentally carrying all of angela's accusations - you only care about sex, you probably left your wife for someone else - into his interactions with maria in the labyrinth. of course he's going to deny that he wants to touch her, even if his face tells us he's conflicted! of course he's going to catch himself when he's "too" emotional over her death! it paints the whole thing in a different light. and it's an emotionally nuanced and realistic light, certainly. but man... the overall emotional arc of james here is a bit flatter & darker because of this change. and i do like how the original is a bit more ambiguous about james's feelings for maria, even if i completely accept this version as well.

to sum up, you could say that the placement of the scenes in the original gives players both more of a surprise, and more doubt about james's character thanks to angela's instincts seeming more immediately on-point. in the remake, however, the scene order feels like it moreso makes james doubt himself.

my other big question is about how to read maria's line change in this scene in this new context - from "Come and get me. I can't do anything through these bars" to "Well, if you happen to make up your mind… I'll be waiting." in the remake's version of the scene in general, she seems much less flirty & assured of his attention, and i think that is sad - i like how she comes off as totally manipulative in the original (and imo for reasons that are very sympathetic!). but it's interesting to see her more subdued & harder to read in this reworking. i take the line change as an indication of her stronger, more equal relationship with james in the remake: even though she needs him to like her, she's been doing that by building a legitimate relationship with him. she doesn't feel as strong a need to play the sex card as forcefully as possible... if that makes sense.

it kind of makes me wonder what the remake team would do if they were given the opportunity to completely rewrite the jail cell scene. now of course they can't do that, as it's possibly the most iconic scene in the game, but... i'm curious! would maria be warmer? less completely inscrutable/mysterious? would they be able to do more story-wise with the scene switch?

of course, an extremely plausible answer for why the scene order is switched around is so that players don't have to do two bosses back to back. but that switch creates some interesting story implications!

anyway. i sure do start talking a lot when maria is involved...

all that being said... let me talk about the actual content of the labyrinths!

so i think that... the nicest way i can put this is that i & the remake devs have different opinions about what the labyrinth's core gimmick is. to me, the most important thing about the labyrinth is the way it represents a complete break from the design of the levels that have come before. you are now in a lawless place. there is no map. apart from the one required to open up maria's room, there are no puzzles. this is silent hill 2 stripped of all flourishes and signifiers. you don't know where you are, or what's going on. you just have to get out and find maria.

the remake adds puzzles. worse, it adds multiple sections to the labyrinth!

i'll start by acknowledging that, visual design wise, all of these elements are extremely fucking cool. the redesign of the turning box puzzle is legitimately fantastic - the escher vibes are perfect, and i love how it's scaled up to a terrifying size. the remake certainly understands that a core part of the labyrinths' horror is how they look manmade, but don't correspond to any sort of building you might find in reality - a contrast to the rest of the game, which is set in extremely mundane, recognizable locations turned horrific by what has been added to or subtracted from them.

but... puzzles? the "rotten" section of the new labyrinth (sorry i keep switching between singular and plural for "labyrinth;" either feels like it fits wrt the remake) is just kind of... bad, in my opinion. like, taken out of context it's fine. visually it's great - i loved the dead body thing (??) wrapped in bandages where you never actually get to see what it is. and the fridge filled with guts!! and so many new things for james to stick his hand in! (really funny that this is like, a running joke in the remake now?) but having to collect items, collect keys, use them all in a centralized location to move on to the next segment... that's the sort of gameplay we've been doing all game. that's standard shit. this absolutely should not be part of the one level that is defined by how it completely does away with all of the "standard shit."

i think there's also a more psychological reason why the labyrinth should not be a long, puzzle-filled level. this is the same reason why i think i'm ultimately okay with the remake moving the position of the prisoner puzzle. that is: i believe that the labyrinth gets rid of (most) of the thinky stuff because the game wants you to focus on the fact that you have to get to maria. and it's a trek to get there, but there's not too much to distract you... until you get to abstract daddy, that is.

anyway... the "desolate" section was pretty good. felt like the og labyrinth! except with a sort of blue filter over everything? idk about that choice. it's interesting how pyramid head's lair isn't optional this time - there's something to be said about the power of making the coolest things missable, and it seems like the remake is often pretty scared to keep the missable things missable. and speaking of missing things, i really missed this james commentary:

i really liked how you can just see pyramid head standing and watching you from behind the bars here though.

finally, the "ruined" section. the visuals in this bit were really awesome, but overall i think this part sucks ass. as i've said, i do like the combat in the remake, but having a forced enemy gauntlet kind of area (or any moment outside of boss fights in which you have to kill the enemies) is simply not in the spirit of silent hill. thumbs down!

which brings us to the end of the labyrinth, and fortunately two really great moments. the first one is: james holding (dead) maria's hand!!!

my heart!!

as opposed to the original scene, where he just kind of says "mary..." out of nowhere, the remake gives a little context to that line: he stops crying, and sobers up a little, and turns away before going "mary." it extremely reads like him accepting maria's death (or rather... telling himself that he shouldn't be so sad over maria's death) because his ultimate objective is still to find mary. another james repression win...

this is an interesting interpretation! even though it gives james a clearer (and also more nuanced) emotional progression in this scene, it also still leaves open the avenues for both the "in water" and "maria" endings - your actions as a player decide whether or not james ends up repressing/rejecting his feelings about maria or not.

(also: i wonder why the door leading to maria says "208" on it? gotta think about that another time)

finally (yes this is the last thing for real this time) - continuing from the remake's tendency to make previously missable/optional weapons/areas required... pyramid head's sword is now required for one final puzzle!

i thought this whole bit was GREAT. i don't really mind that you don't get to keep the sword (it's a cheese option anyway, lol), and moreover i fucking love the symbolism of james dragging pyramid head's sword through the sea of monstrous hands. as a figment of james's psyche, pyramid head's role is to cut down distractions in james's path - whether that means dispatching other monsters, or killing maria over and over. to have james be the one to take the sword and cut a path forward shows that he is on his way to, you could say, being his own pyramid head. moving forward without maria. literally cutting himself out of the abyss of his mind. and of course... the next stop is literally into his own grave... so i think that is a really fun symbolic progression!

[h3llofaday]

The labyrinth section of sh2r has me straight up crying im so fucking scared rn someone get me out of here

[breezeinmonochromenight]

Where are you in SH2R??? And are your favorite and least favorite things about it?

I’m closing in on the end of the game, in/under the Historical Society.

Favorites

Maria/Her voice actor. I would literally listen to Maria’s new VA read a phone book. She does so much lifting to actually make Maria enticing and attractive while retaining her mysteriousness. I always found the original Maria mysterious but incredibly off-putting to the point that I’d speed run it to hospital.

Bloober’s insertion of “their own personal stories” in the form of flourishes on the world/new puzzles/changes to some old puzzles/new mini-areas/new notes. I’m actually not joking. They’re miraculously interesting and pretty well done/feel natural to the game. A good example is the jukebox puzzle near the start of the game. It ultimately triggers James’ memory of spending the day with Mary at the park, and that’s how he decides that’s their special place and why he should go there. You also get a little snippet of Mary standing in the spot where you find Maria later. I honestly like that better than OG James just kind of making the executive decision for the player with very little context.

THEY TOOK THE LETTER READING OUT OF THE MARIA ENDING THANK FUCK. It never made any sense to me that they’d have Mary read her letter in the ending where her sexed up doppelgänger who is totally healthy and will never* get sick. Maria just gives him the letter in this version, he tucks it in his jacket, and they go to leave.

All six OG endings are back and there are two new endings. One basically extends the original In Water ending and plays into the the “Mary was in the back of the car the whole time” thing the OG devs have talked about and the other is sort of an… equal but opposite version of the Maria Ending.

Most of the wonky looking and/or lame looking shit from the trailer got fixed, including some face models/James expressions/etc.

Dislikes:

The Mary’s Letter reading and her final hallway monologue are super fucking weak. For everything the Mary/Maria VA gave to Maria, Mary lost. Neither of those moments feel very raw or real in the Remake, and they don’t hit nearly as hard. It also doesn’t help that everyone has had a more “traditional” voice acting job — all of the dialogue for everyone except Mary being weird/dreamy/unhinged only enhanced a really good performance.

Eddie’s character model looks like he has been outed as The Thing and is starting to transform into the head spider monster, but got a cramp early on and said fuck it. Just an absolute fucking mutant that doesn’t look human in comparison to the rest of the cast. Genuinely hard to look at.

Angela got an epi-pen, but her story and VA’s performance is a fucking mess. Every time her VA starts building some emotion or has a really good line read, it is immediately ruined by the next line being delivered atrociously. They also changed some of her dialogue/interactions with James and it makes her backstory so much harder to follow — some of it starts feeling like a word salad. The original game said everything you needed to hear without ever actually saying it.

The Abstract Daddy fight/section is also really watered down and not nearly as visually interesting.

There’s a much more elaborate labyrinth/below the Historical Society area in the Remake, and while there’s some neat design ideas, it largely fucking sucks.

The over-the-shoulder camera feels weird and way too intimate for a protagonist that feels suspicious/untrustworthy and has a questionable grip on reality from jump street.

[crimescrimson]

The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 (2024)

[crimescrimson]

The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 (2024)

[crimescrimson]

The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 (2024)

[crimescrimson]

The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 (2024)

[crimescrimson]

The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 (2024)

[eldritch-elrics]

okay, i took a peek at a little bit of critical writing related to sh2r (not too much, i'll save that for after i finish the game) and there was one headline that articulated something i've been feeling about the remake but hadn't really thought about in detail. which is... it's a bit bloated, isn't it?

like, for sure it is cool having more to do and more to see. but where i am in the game, i'm feeling kind of like... does every single level need to be so big? does every level need multiple parts/segments to it? do you need to be able to go inside, say, every room in the hospital?

i was especially feeling this about the prison. in the original game, the prison has one layer. one map. that's it. and the remake, as if embarrassed by the simplicity of that level design, adds like four new sub-areas. why??

at best, this makes the buildings in the remake feel a bit more like their real-world counterparts, because they can add all sorts of new rooms that exist in real-life hospitals, or prisons, or whatever. at worst, it's kind of exhausting! though i think the labyrinth is the only place that actively suffers from this sort of bloat - as i said in my last liveblogging post, the entire point of the labyrinth is how stripped-down it is. adding a gameplay structure that is identical to the gameplay structure of ever other level completely defeats the purpose.

[eldritch-elrics]

things are getting exciting in sh2r!!

i made it out of dark south vale! the second half of that area was much calmer... so much nicer. REALLY interested in the new angela scene in the park also. we learn some important things, like that angela's losing hope of finding her mom. i really like the moment where james is like "let's get out of here" and angela is like "...out of where?" which, to me, implies that her otherworld has been following her beyond just silent hill. and god, james telling her that he's looking for a little girl and then not elaborating… poor angela, we all know how her brain construes that :(

i went back into the one room in the motel on a whim and i'm SO glad i did because omg. the silent hill 3 save symbol!!! the easter eggs in this remake are top notch for sure.

it was awesome to see more objects in the silent hill historical society, but i'm really sad to lose james's commentary on so many of the paintings and such:

also, the remake added this photo: i'm pretty sure it's a room somewhere in the game but i can't think what it is?

it was really interesting how they basically didn't change the tiny sewer section at all. except for making the well puzzle way easier (yippee!) and the stupid bug room a bit less stupid (you can kill the bugs now yaaay. i'm glad it's still a little stupid though).

anyway: toluca prison! it's organized so differently in the remake. very interesting. i liked the puzzle with the scales. i also think i accept the decision to move the prisoner-judging puzzle to be the climax of the prison segment? it fits more thematically here... but also idk. putting it in the labyrinth gives you this weird sense like the labyrinth might actually be part of the prison in some twisted way. also like, putting the prisoner puzzle directly after the abstract daddy fight (and while you're still looking for maria) creates some sort of a Vibe... while also giving the player some cool-down time between two fairly intense bosses. i also think the imagery used for the prisoner puzzle in the original game (with the two rooms and all) is far more striking.

i'm also sad they got rid of the tile puzzle with the seductress/glutton/oppressor or whatever the word choices were. it was just neat to see a puzzle that was so obviously referencing james/eddie/angela and their respective vulnerabilities - and having the parallels between them playing in your mind going into the labyrinth (and especially abstract daddy) is a good thing i think.

overall though i think i was a bit frustrated with the prison. they seriously overload you with enemies in some of the sections - i fear the game is starting to lose the plot on the whole "silent hill as a series is not primarily about fighting" thing. like, sure, you always have a choice between fighting and not fighting - up to you to decide what's worth it - but i think that the general enemy density throughout the game should be a bit lower? (the new mannequin behavior of climbing walls is pretty awful in an awesome way though.)

anyway i liked this bit. i enjoyed making james cause An Incident immediately afterwards.

glad they kept this room, and: is it just me or do some of the people look like they have pyramidy heads...?

also: URINAL SAVE POINT RETURNS YAY

finally: looking back through my sh2 ps2 screenshots and goddamn is the remake missing SO much good james dialogue. like. it is a crime that they could not include this.

really really looking forward to the labyrinth next time :D