There is one thing that I forgot to put in the red squares section: why they appear on the faces of the nurses. I give a detailed explanation of that in my video titled "The Red Squares - Silent Hill Mythology." But I'll give a quick answer here. SPOILER ALERT ... ... ... The shape/form of the nurse's heads are meant to symbolize James' smothering his wife's head with a pillow. Seeing that the red square symbolizes the memory that James is trying to bring from unconsciousness into consciousness, having it rest over the nurse's face is very appropriate. I also personally interpret their placement over the mouth as symbolic of bringing something from unconsciousness into consciousness. When a thought isn't expressed, it is functionally unconsciousness. It is only when something is spoken that something can become truly tangible.
Here's another amazing detail that may hint at a timeloop: In appartment 217 where you get the gun, there's 1000+ bullet holes. And if you aim the gun around that room for the first time, especially toward the TV, James will always accidentaly shoot 1 bullet. So all those bullet holes may be from every loop James did.
James reaching into gross areas to retrieve key items makes me think about my own experience with being a caregiver for a dying loved one. Especially with wound care. I had to tend to my dad’s bed sores and keep them packed (one was a cavity type wound) and clean. It wasn’t something I particularly enjoyed, but it was obviously necessary. The only way past it was to do it. And that’s the same kind of visceral distaste that I see in James. I feel like anyone who has experienced caregiver burnout will find a lot to unpack in this game. I’ve never been so personally impacted by a game before Silent Hill 2.
This is such a fascinatingly new angle for me to look at! I just always assumed that it was a metaphor for "reaching into unpleasant parts of yourself, be it your traits or memories, that you'd really REALLY would rather stayed buried". I love it when my understanding of something is enriched by other people's experiences like this! And of course I'm sorry you had to go through that, it must've been the opposite of easy, but you're a real trooper
@ Well there are no wrong answers - yours makes a lot of sense too. It can be both, ya know? But that’s why SH 2 is always going to be a classic, the OG and remake alike. These themes can be interpreted in so many unique, personal ways. There’s really no limit to how a person analyses James’s trauma, or their own.
I actually have directly spoken with Ito on X regarding the interpretation of Pyramid Head, and I can confirm straight from the source that Pyramid Head's role in the story is, in fact, near-identical to his counterpart Valtiel's role in Silent Hill 3. The important part to take away from Pyramid Head's actions is the fact that he is *targeting the monsters* that represent the things that are plaguing James' soul. The reason these actions seem brutal and sexual is because *that is how James is perceiving them.* In reality, Pyramid Head is forcefully stripping James of his delusions and his repression. That is why he is no longer needed once James accepts what he has done. Ito agreed with me that his role is analogous to what Louis tells Jacob in the movie Jacob's Ladder: "Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So the way he sees it, if you're frightened of dying and... and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it, that's all." Source: x.com/adsk4/status/1844536439717101753?t=J4ItCFgWgwkSMG3HURnAFA&s=19
What he thought he was creating, and what he actually created, might be different. The creator can be wrong about what the final result actually is Pyramid Head will kill James in multiple locations - Valtiel NEVER kills.
It's so annoying that creators have to censor themselves and say things like "self terminate" or "unalive themselves" on TH-cam out of fear of demonetization.
It's a bit silly considering that you're still expressing the same idea. It's like censoring a part of a swear word with an asterisk. It's still very clear what is being conveyed.
I believe the dog is the real threat from Silent Hill. I mean, he/her was planning everything and “dog” is very similar to “god”. This can’t be a coincidence.
I like to think Mira is the Dog Eddie has killed. I also have a theory that he ate it, that's why he was vomiting when we first meet him and why Doge was growling when Eddie's belly was shown in the OG SH2's Dog ending credits.
I will never forgive Konami for screwing over Hideo and Guillermo. The whole lore and potential of multiple Silent Hills, portraying the actual town as a sort of deity, is left unexplored for no reason. It would allow so many theories like time travel, purgatory etc. to perfectly co-exist in the same "universe" without having to exclude each other out based on the different SH titles, stories and canon. We have Lovecraftian monsters, but the idea of "Lovecraftian" EXISTENCES AND REALITIES, where the world itself is the actual anomaly, monster and unknown deity, is something SH barely scratched the surface of so far.
The town as a deity sounds kind of cliche the town being mysterious but implicitly somewhat sentient or some force of nature is a bit cooler Also i thought we had zero idea what SHS was gonna be about anyways
@@chandlerbursethere are some leaked parts of what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to have asynchronous multiplayer like death stranding does hence all these different players worlds colliding. Also it was supposed to have AR elements where you would get notifications on your irl contact info related to the game blending reality and the game.
No Part of the allure of SH is that it’s a SINGLE place. This, “it can be anything and anywhere bs” is nonsense and I’m not surprised it was cancelled.
The maze where you face Angela's father is a better addition, in my opinion. Because it symbolizes how much Angela had to get away from him and her brother, or at least how much she tried, without succeeding. Another important addition is the scene with Maria when she offers James a drink. I got the impression that not only did he want to drink and sleep with her, but perhaps he did it when Mary was still alive and sick. Maybe James has had another "Maria" before, that's what I mean. Another detail in this part is the Lost & Found ring. Perhaps James has already lost his ring in this or another nightclub.
James is missing his ring. He has a tan line on his ring finger. Also, something that was in the original but left out in the remake, if you examine crates of alcohol in Heaven's Night James will make a comment on how he used to drink a lot. It's unclear if he was an alcoholic, but he was still most likely a heavy drinker. Though I did notice that James did want to drink when Maria offered but had to hold himself back.
I finally beat the remake today (31/10/24) and man, this video and playing the game myself really really makes me appreciate the thought and effort gone into both the remake and original. It’s truly a master class in story telling and beats not just video games in the way it expressed the story and story itself, but also a lot of other stories presented in different mediums ( e.g books and movies ). Thank you so much for this video and all the other videos you’ve done explaining and talking about this game. In general, I love your content Max and I’m very grateful for you and your content. Keep on keeping on and I hope you have a lovely day whenever/ if ever you read this (:
Yes, let's make a 5 hour long video assay about that. And about why the pyramid head is still daddy and is not based off of the grand wizard of Silent Hill 😂
I think the true end of Silent Hill 2 is actually not participating in another loop as the player. playing again and again only extends James's torture if you think about the Meta of it . Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams, the Hd Remaster and the Remake are all continued loops theoretically. The town changes slightly, more information becomes known, the town gets clearer and more detailed but one thing never changes, what James did. The true end is not reliving it over and over. I argue it is the acceptance of the player in what ending was received was the end for James. Not to mention acceptance is the final stage of Grief ;) Just a fun alternate way to think about it, great video.
@@atomskthepirateking2776 Every player is a willing participant in James's torture. an every time you fire up the game to get a new ending you pretty much send him through hell again.
Masahiro Ito has said Pyramid Head is supposed to be getting rid of the manifestations for James so he would be able to understand what this is all about. It’s weird. He even said the cutscene with the moan before the boss fight wasn’t what you think it is.
I personally dislike the time loop theory. From the original game it became kinda clear to me that James's death impulse (Thanatos) was responsible for projecting his image onto the corpses. Plus, the town has significantly changed between said loops, from timeline differences (the og taking place in the 70-80s, and this in the 90s) to Heaven's Night being in two completely different locations. To me this theory doesn't add up, but who knows, maybe the devs confirm it.
The original takes place in the 90s too, going by what is found in Born from a Wish. But you are right, the bodies in the town are because James is suicidal when he gets there. I don't think the town waits for James to reach the climax of his story after it is very clear he didn't learn his lesson, just to spawn Angela, Eddie, Laura and Maria again so they can all give it another try together, because otherwise the disparity would mess each others runs too much xP
Some people theorize that the remake takes place in 2001, since the desk that may or not be James' has a mouse with a scroll wheel. And while mice with scroll wheels came out in the 90s, they weren't really widespread and mainstream until the early 2000's
Reason for the order of the book puzzle is that it’s the sequence of the seven heavens, such as is Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s the order of the seven Ptolemaic planets, which is the order of the (visible) solar system just with the sun and moon reversed.
About Maria, have you ever considered that she may not entirely be a creation of James's mind but also out of Mary's will? Things like wanting to be what she couldn't be for James in her last moments could've played a part in creating her (the want to please the man she loves). Also things like caring for Laura would make sense too. When James asks her why she cares she just says "I dont know I feel like it's up to me to protect her." Imo that wouldn't make much sense if Maria is entirely James's projection as we know he had no idea who Laura was until stepping into Silent Hill and Mary deeply cared for and considered Laura a friend. All that and the fact that Mary wanted to keep being by James's side
@@elena8073 tie that with Mary's ''in my restless dreams''.... here's an idea: the events throughout the game are just Mary's dreams, and Mary is dreaming of/remnants of a premonition she had of her fate and James guilt ..and now James is living it. kinda like how Alessa's nightmares and pain spawned a living nightmare world ig?
I definitely think the theory is what bloober is going for. If all the endings are canon, from what’s been said then all the bodies that look like James, which there is a lot, make sense with the theory in mind.
@@Robert-oq8yeall the endings of the game are canon, so if there was a time loop that’s how all the endings would be able to be canon because the whole thing repeats but how you get to the end is different.
23:20 - Max: it is not a mistake that gold is in the middle. The order of the symbols on the books is the Chaldean Order of the planets, the order of descent through the tree of life. Gold is The Sun, which is Tiphareth, the exact center of the tree. The final step before Malkuth (manifest material substance) is Silver / The Moon / Yesod. Although Gold is often viewed as the material goal of metallurgic alchemy (i.e. transmuting lead into gold), it isn't the same as the Philosopher's Stone, which is not a physical substance.
Something interesting to think about near the end game right before the final boss, you encounter some enemies that don't attack you, one bag enemy in fetal position , a nurse that just collapses to the ground as you get near her, and a leg mannequin that avoids you and even looks terrified of James as you approach it. Any thoughs on this?
I think it's safe to say that we will never get a game with such depth as SH2 ever again. I hope I'm wrong but it seems that way. I've never known a game that still has secrets and hidden meanings being unveiled 23 years later.
I really love your videos, they are actually very informational and simple to follow. It touches metaphysics in a clearer way, none of the riddle stuff (which is a way to convey an secret), and you showed us how vastly Alchemy and Philosophy influenced Silent Hill ethos. Silent Hill really introduced many people to esoteric and gnosis, thanks to your videos haha.
Maxdarrat your content is always a nice breath of fresh air. I love your depth of detail when navigating the deep mythos of silent hill. Much love Raven. 🐦⬛🐦⬛
The sun is sitting in the correct place for the labeling on the books, if you consider the planetary alignment for each. The sun is in the center of all the planets, which is actually the balance between the solar system and the void and perfection (the exterior of the solar system). This would also make sense as far as no Earth representation for these symbols (in a Terran-centric view) as it would almost be Terra viewing the heavens as the viewer might be viewing the books. The eyes drawn to the largest thing in the solar system: the sun.
One thing I'd like to know is, what happened to the people of the town? James seem to have come to SH with Mary and have a normal vacation there, so at one point the town was a normal town. We find notes left by people with normal works, lives etc. So, when did the town get deserted, and where did the people go?
from my limited knowledge of the SH universe, I am pretty sure that the people/population of SH have either been killed by the monsters of the unreality, or, are currently suffering through their own versions of the unreality, much like how James does - as well as all the various protagonists in the other SH games. For some characters who's fates are integral to the lore progression of SH as a whole, like important people in the history of SH, their outcomes are more or less static. but the other inhabitants of SH could probably be a toss-up in terms of whether they are dead dead, or just... sorta dead. i'm also pretty sure that the fates of some citizens would depend on their connection, whether bad or good, to Alessa, as I'm pretty sure that Alessa was the catalyst, or gateway, that finally turned SH into hellscape that it is currently. Also, because reality and unreality are all sortof mushed together and bleed into each other randomly in SH, some of the notes and messages that we find in the games could be left by people trapped in their own versions of SH, and don't necessarily share timelines with the protagonists in the games. i don't know how often the games touch on this "parallel realities" concept, as i haven't played every single SH, but in the first movie, which is the good one, it is heavily implied that Rose and Harry are in the school at the same time, but in separate realities.
They are there still living their normal lives. The characters, at least when we play, never visit the "real world" town, they are always "transported" into the "alternate reality" of the fog world and the otherworld (the quotes are because those words are the easiest to use to explain what is going on, but might not be the most accurate). In the games Sillent Hill is always a touristic town, and keeps growing into modern times. There are characters that don't like it because there are cults, drug trafficking, missing people and lots of urban legends (and other problems tbh), but none of that is big enough to stop the town from being a nice place to spend holidays. So most people in town are living their normal lives while all the shit goes down in an "alternate reality", at least for the most part, as there are events where things leak into the real world, or many people are affected at the same time, but then again, it's never so bad that the town stops being a touristic place xP And the affected people just seems to either disappear or appear insane, the "monsters" never escape or anything like that.
@@Andriej69 I did, with emulation and if that game was the only one, I'd understand what happened with the town, but having more games after that I get confused. Notes and messages in the rest of the games seem to imply the town is a normal town with people living and working and stuff, but that's quite confusing for me. When you go into the "otther world" I get the idea that, that's the unreality, right? That'd be when everything is rusty and here ar fans, and bars and all that... then the intersection between reality and unreality would be the fog world. But then what's the "real" world. Because non of the protagonits seem to ever be in it. I mean, Henry escaped the town with Heather, then Heather goes back and when she enters the town she's already in the fog. James seem to have been to the real town in a vacation previous to the game, but now he went to look for Mary and is immediately inside the fog.
@@xian1978 As far I've heard James' vacation in SH took place before the events that initiated SH1. After that the town was abandoned, aside from Dahlia and Kaufman, who had the opposing goals when the "spell" eventually does it's function. It's open to interpretation if events of SH2 happened after Harry went with CHeryl to SH, or before - before Cheryl grew up, demonic forces of SH might've been luring in and consuming people like James. Notes and documents you're mentioning are leftovers, frozen in time when town itself changes it's shape
Hey man. I will do a video on that one day. COUNT ON IT. Probably around the beginning of next year. The thing is though, I am going to approach the video much like my fellow TH-camr, Ragnarrox, approached the movie "Solaris", where he reviewed it, but also talked about how it influenced Silent Hill. The Holy Mountain influenced Silent Hill as well. However, because I have spent the last month doing nothing but Silent Hill, I am going to take at least a couple of months off from that franchise.
@@maxderrat It's fine even if you don't make a video on it. I just thought i'd share one of my favorite movies since it meant so much to me as a lover of philosophy. I do hope you enjoy it. Take care.
God with all this talk about alchemy, A Silent Hill game themed around item crafting a survival in the town sounds fun with the goal of the game is to craft a Philosopher's Stone that grants you a wish like bringing the dead back to life. But to make the Philosopher's Stone you have to craft the nigredo, albedo, and rubedo items.
I love your work Max! Although i find approaching Jung to be a daunting task, it is also profoundly rewarding. People like yourself help me understand his concepts in a way that is applicable to many pieces of art that i personally resonate with, which gives it so much more meaning and depth that in many cases can be easily overlooked. Thank you for your hard work. And PLEASE do an analysis of control. That game is one of my favourites and i was shocked to discover you didnt have a video on it!
You forgot to mention the second Pyramid Head that is theorized to be his second sin (killing Eddie), and their eggs representing Mary with the disease and Eddie's youth.
To be fair this is Max' interpretation, I wouldn't go so far to claim it as fact. Max uses the term "I believe" throughout this video. The only people who know the true meanings are the original writers.
@@robertl426 I was actually referring to the fact that he always does his research and brings a lot of sources regarding the essence of very obvious inspirations for the series, such as psychoanalysis or alchemy-themed subjects, not really about the true meaning of SH at all.
You know I'll love to see them do a Silent Hill game that take place in the wild west era, Specially a story that take place after the civil war. That seems like a ripe setting and scenario world building of Silent Hill and story telling, In that kind of story I'd either want to see something like a grizzled old man who wishes to make up with his Daughter or Granddaughter or a bonnet wearing Victorian woman who comes to Silent Hill to claim an inheritance from her Ex-husband who mysteriously died.
I think the issue with that is that the BIG thing that made Silent Hill be the way and tore the city to the real world and the otherworld its the events with Alessa that led to Silent Hill 1, which is pretty recent time wise.
Great video! The order of the planets on the spines of the books is the Chaldean order, which goes from the planets that move slowest as observed on earth to the planets that move fastest, which was relevant to early astrologers and astronomers. This is also the order the planets appear on the Kabbalistic/Qabalistic Tree of Life counting down from the top sphere (Keter). 3 = Binah = Saturn, 4 = Chesed = Jupiter, 5 = Gevurah = Mars, 6 = Tipheret = Sol, 7 = Netzach = Venus, 8 = Hod = Mercury, and 9 = Yesod = Moon. The gold of Sol is at the center of the tree and represents where the soul crosses the veil and becomes aware of higher things. It represents the merging of the higher/supernal forces with the lower/earthly forces (and also represents the balance point between Chesed/Mercy and Gevurah/Severity) and is considered perfect in that way. In esoteric/occult magic Tipheret/Sol represents Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (which is understood to some to be an avatar of the Higher Self), which is the goal of magical practice though it is also possible to temporarily experience higher states of mystic consciousness. Gold/Sol/Tipheret is basically the integrated ego and the highest state a functioning ego-self can be in for long periods of time as per the "map" offered by the Tree. In other words, "Stay yellow" has some mystical/magical resonance :)
Disclaimer: Jungian Psychology has actually come a long say since Carl Jung, please do not attempt to apply any of this to real humans that you work and interact with, it will result in utter disaster. Also, please do not treat women like they're concepts, that's what Jimmy boy does. A full human is in front of him, and he's busy chasing after a "concept" of a woman while ignoring the one right in front of him. If you're gonna walk out of this game with one thing, let it be that all women are human.
People being fixated on finding Pyramid Head sexy is no surprise given the state of the world today. I worked with a woman who was talking to another girl one day about horror movies, and the woman said: “Michael Myers can get it.” Plus there’s the absolute meme ‘I can Fix Him/Her’. You can’t. 😂
I'd love to see a video about your thoughts on the NG+ endings, especially the new ones unique to the SH2 remake. I know your philosophy has always been to only make videos about a topic you fell you can provide a unique perspective on, but I think your robust understanding of the series, and critical eye in general would add a lot to the conversation at large, especially with it all being so fresh.
Isn’t the town the way it is because of Alessa? Yes, all that backstory you mentioned is true but the town was a normal town until Alessa unlocked “unreality” and her psychic powers turned into the desolate place we see and it’s her psychic powers that allowed unreality to break through and allowed the creation of the monsters from people’s subconscious. Feels like a big miss not to mention the catalyst for why SH is a hellish place.
I don't know about it being a "time loop", since the only one affected by "the loop" seems to be James. It seems to me to be more analogous to when you save in a video game and die, only to have to redo a certain section. It's as if the bodies who look like James represent James's past attempts at going through Silent Hill. But, failing to do so, he restarts his attempt, leaving his past selves dead where they were. However, the town itself, as well as others in it, like Eddie and Laura, also move on, since they're not caught in the same "loop" that James is, but rather, their own. That's why Eddie and Laura are not in the same place you found them in the Remake as they were in the Original. The Remake and Original are two iterations of James's journey. Edit: Put another way, Silent Hill is sort of a merging of Jung's and Freud's psychoanalytical views, where the town itself represents Jung's collective unconscious while the individuals who get trapped there represent Freud's theories about individual drives or instincts: the manifestation of an individual's psyche in the primordial soup of the collective. Until James (as well as everyone else caught in Silent Hill) can sort out his emotional turmoil, he'll need to repeat his journey (dying every once in a while the way any player of the game might) even as the town itself keeps bringing in new people through time. TL;DR It's less like Groundhog Day and more like Memento, if that makes sense.
Simpler psychological analysis: Pyramid head is primarily James's desire for punishment for what he did... and only stops when James thinks he's suffered enough. Maria is his ever present temptation to avoid ever dealing with what he did... one of their first conversations has her tempting him sexually and with booze, which he is implied to have already been struggling with
The whole time loop concept makes the game very close to Signalis. In that game, it's implied that the events of the game is a time loop, including dead bodies of the playable protagonist.
Here’s an amazing detail that I found that I don’t see more people talk about for some odd reason. When going through the labyrinth while searching for a key to get another part of a lighter you enter an office room with a nurse in it, in James original bio it was said he was a clerk. This alludes to him not just fantasising about Nurses through his sexual frustrations with Mary but also with his co workers while working as a clerk. This meant everyday he had not just thoughts of the nurses at the hospital but including his female co-workers. Pretty sad
11:28 in the end of the movie 'jacobs ladder' (which was a huge inspiration for silent hill) someone tells the protagonist (who has been tormented by demons) " The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you,' he said. 'They're freeing your soul. If your frightened of dying, and your holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth." I think this mirrors the whole idea for pyramid heads existence
Oh my god i just realized that red haired LeeLou from the Fifth Element is the philosopher's stone. Even the TITLE of that movie. Oh my lord. Also THANK you for the Pyramid head thing, I am also forever raising my eyebrow.
The born sexy yesterday, the uncomfortable trope.... Yeah, see if you know what happens in Born from A WIsh, that's not Maria. Btw, Luc Besson apparently cheated on his wife, whom he married when she was 15, with the young Mila Jovovitch. We're not really gonna take that man's ideas and praise them ... Especially the ones about this topic. Because it was one thing for inc3ls to project onto James, but now we're gonna get PDF files? Wow, it takes an especially f+-ked up person to do that. But hey, he recommended Evangelion so...
@@samf.s.7731 hey bud genuinely what on EARTH are you talking about? Never connected it with born from a wish. I was literally just noticing for the first time that the fifth element references alchemy pretty blatantly. Thats it. Also gonna block you after this nonsensical weird hater mansplaining reply. Good gracious.
I forget the exact context but when you first team up with Maria (in the remake) she says it's odd that a gate is locked, this made me think she was confused because the area was different in the original game
Pertaining to the color red, it really feel like it was a missed opportunity with the black and white vs. red filter. Yes the red squares are, well, red. But nothing else is. I was so disappointed when I encountered pyramid head on my second playthrough while using the filter. Then in the other world, in a few spots. I absolutely love the way that silent hill 2 looks in general,especially the black and white. It reminds me of an old twilight zone episode. Maybe I’m just a sucker for that “sin city” style. It just would’ve been really cool to have red be a prominent thing, against the black and white, other than just the squares.
I'm new to any of this, in my interpretation the red squares are guilt-mirrors. Let me explain, the fact that the first encounter is put on words as a pain that hurts the brain from the inside out led me to think about the anatomy of the brain itself, the amigdala and the hippocampus are nearly in the center of the brain, explain why it hurts in that specific way, James cannot remember what he has done, he is experiencing a mental breakpoint where he denies his own reality. that's why just before the great judgment there are nine guilt-mirrors, he has fully face his guilt. All this interpretation got stronger with the remake and that small detail of using the save points as a POV where we see James from this mirrors.
Last detail I found included the more frequently used enemy type this time around, the Mandarins. In the original they could only stay underground, the book of lost memories found in the rebirth ending explained that due to their symbolism of overwhelming, incomprehensible anguish they were permitted to stay underground. However the remake changes this by allowing you to fight them head on. I believe that Blooper Teams symbolism is their biggest denominator for why James killed Mary, her verbal abuse towards him. They rarely ever use their fists but spikes that come from their mouth, meaning that her words hurt him. They hang from the ceiling and under the floor to show how her words quite literally ‘hanged’ onto him, how he couldn’t go by a day thinking how much she hates him. This is the reason to why they’re the strongest of the 4 enemy types, because they were the biggest reason to why James killed her. His sexual frustrations were clearly crucial but her verbal abuse is what made him commit to his heinous action of ridding her from his life.
For those circling the topic of mathematical idealism and reconciling man's ambitions with (continually) discovered limitations on our measurement OF reality: The integers are entirely contained by tha rationals. The rationals are entirely contained by the constructables. The constructables are entirely contained by the algebraics. The algebraics are entirely contained within the computable numbers. But there's even larger sets. The set of definable numbers is larger than the set of computable numbers, and the the set of reals is larger than the set of all definable numbers. We could never square the circle because we are limited to using a compass and straight edge. Basically this restricts us to asking questions related to x-squared and square-root of x (there's excellent videos on TH-cam related to the problem of constructability)
This is my first SH game to play and of course got the leave ending. Here is something interesting I have noticed from watching lore videos after finishing. I had to use a PC software tool to change the FOV of the game due to motion sickness. In my game with FOV pulled back during the leave ending, Angela is seen standing over a tombstone while James and Laura walkout. When watching lore vids with normal FOV she's not there. Might be nothing just thought it was interesting, anyway love the deep dives!
I personally don't buy much of the timeloop theory. I like the idea and it's his subconscious projecting himself onto the corpses because of the guilt and suicidal tendency he's facing. I do like to believe that James can either fail his journey in silent hill and perhaps trigger another loop to do it again. But the "leave" ending is probably where he get away from the town for good after facing the inner demons... It fits with the theme of facing your shadow and growing as a person.
I've always interpreted Pyramid Head's aggression towards James as another metaphor for James's shadow attempting to consume him. This is most telling in the end section of the final Labrynth when James has to let Pyramid Head assist in his escape. James is accepting aid from his shadow without letting it consume him (ie, staying far enough away or dodging PH's attacks)
:0 13:00 I've always had this personal belief that there was the concept of the divine feminine/masculine and most of us are predisposed to one but that we can all channel both. It's so wild learning that something similar was said by a famous psychologist
I feel that next to the Anima, Maria in the remake also embodies a dark version of the Jungian “Caretaker” archetype. She is one of the worst influences for James but she seems to be quite a nice and playful woman while doing it. She is adamant that she wants to help James in his “noble and hopeful” search for Mary. Whenever James has a moment of clarity, Maria is there to pull him right back into his delusions. She also tries to enable James’ worst traits a few times. She is very seductive and subversive in the remake.
And then there's me who thought the red squares were simply a symbolic representation/glimpse of memory of the TV in the hotel. After all, you can also see James's face mirrored each time you look at these squares
Hi max I think you forget to refer you video about explaining why Ito-san might think he didn't create pyramid head with James' repress sexual frustration. This video summarize what you have made so far with SH2 mythology I really love it.
I thought James, Angela, Eddie and Laura are already dead? James, Angela and Eddie all comitting suicide and Laura died of whatever illness she had in hospital. There simply cannot be a good ending when mary's body is still in the car. This game is about repenting and limbo. Crossing the barrier after death.
@@differentsame9402 I think I mean in the original. But yeah there's very heavy implications of suicide between the 3 characters. Or are their physical bodies stuck between worlds? Angela can't move on so she's stuck there? It's easy to forget that this game is a spin off from Silent Hill so it's not really explained.
In regards to the notes, my friend and I were watching a stream of the game yesterday and he made an interesting point about them. Silent Hill tends to shape itself based on those within. Only James is finding these notes, or at least the only one acknowledging them from what we've seen so far. Therefore one could assume this is James' psyche at work again. The notes could very well be based on how James views himself. Whether his past iterations are writing them, or someone else is, doesn't matter. His psyche is still very much pulling the strings on these messages. Both guiding and taunting him like you'd expect your inner demons to do. I agree with my buddy on this one as I've seen another person mention this idea too when mentioning the There was a hole here note. You find that note in a bar of all places, a clear nod to the fact James cannot escape his mind, what he's done. The bottom of a bottle can't save him this time, it can't be an escape. I also keep thinking back to Sleep Token now everytime you mention the Anima Theory of yours. I saw an analysis of the band's work recently and the person doing so pointed out how the songs seem to be pleas to Vessel's(lead singer) Anima. Sometimes the songs are angry and combative, other times they're soft and gentle, and naturally you also have desperate cries for help too. Highly recommend this group if you wanna add a bit more insight for the SH 2 Anima theory. That and Sleep Token is very much worth the deep dive. The channel I mentioned before didn't cover every single song, just the ones that held the most symbolism on each album and EP.
Oh and honestly enough I oughta thank you Max. As your explanations on Alchemy and Jungian psychology led to the furthest dive into it that I ever took. Your work alongside Sleep Token, Loreena McKennitt, Tool, and a few other bands, has actually helped me reach a far better understanding of my own Shadow. Given I'm a Witch who performs Shadow Work, such a thing was long overdue. I even listened to all of the main albums of Sleep Token after hearing about the Anima Theory for the songs. The result was a beautiful journey, one I've gone on twice now and intend to go on again should the need ever come up. These days my Shadow and I are in much better accord with one another(for lack of better ways to put it). That said, I must say it feels like I may have both an Anima and Animus. My Animus hasn't really made itself known, at least not in ways I can readily make out or point to. My Anima however certainly has, and I think was partially embedded into my Shadow. Or at the worst became one with it. Hard to say given my own knowledge of Alchemy and Jungian psychology is still fairly limited. Nevertheless, one thing that came from my deeper understanding with my Shadow, was a desire to embrace my femininity again. This time on my own terms in my own way. I had initially turned away from certain feminine things due to it being forced down my throat when I was younger. Amazing how much better one feels when you dive into things on your own time and terms instead. Very liberating for sure. Freyja and Hel were certainly happy about this change too. Not that Anubis and Gabriel weren't happy for me too of course.
@@UnseelieFaelass If you are having issues you should seek professional help such as therapy. Jungian "psychology" is just mysticism. It's a religion not a science and was left behind over 100 years ago by psychology. Don't get me wrong using it to tell stories and create characters makes great fiction. Using it for psychological issues though would be the equivalent of using blood letting to get rid of the bad blood instead of medicine when you are sick, or calling a priest for an exorcism because someone is showing signs of mental illness.
One thing Id like to know is what connection Paimon has to everything. A certain puzzle in the hotel flat out has you constructing their sigil which I cant imagine has no meaning to it
Hey Max; do you have any idea on what the strange photos are all about? No one seems to be explaining them in any of the videos I've looked into other than them being a collectable.
Further evidence of the loop can be seen in Downfall where a character named Howard Blackwood, the African American Mail Man, told Murphy Pendelton than he's been stuck in Silent Hill for the past 2 centuries and gave up trying to escape the town.
James is a character I deeply sympathize and relate to. The notion of the pain of having to think of your past mistakes and as you remember them they pain you greatly. Is as raw of a human truth as it gets.
Honestly, if the devs or Ito confirm that SH2 is one big timeloop, I would be extremely disappointed. Instead of SH2 being a self-contained story about three people confronting extremely dark parts of their lives, it becomes a shallow story of endless suffering. It would also make the town of Silent Hill be part of the plethora of takes on purgatory instead of a seemingly self-aware, eldritch being that deliberately has goals, motives and lessons for the people it calls to. The town wouldn't be a character anymore. Anyway, I doubt it's something they will confirm anytime soon. Though the time loop theory is becoming increasingly more popular, unfortunately.
I love how bloober has simply built on what was already there and slightly expanded on it while wholely respecting the original. We were all rightiously sceptic. But they did a fantastic job. And honestly, im rather curious to what their next game is gonna be. So far it seems highly inspired by dead space. I might not love all of bloobers game, but these people truly have proven themselves with this remake. They understand well written horro
I initially thought the purgatory/time loop aspect was a lame change, I think mainly because I've always preferred leave and I was in a reactionary mood. The more I think about it the more interesting it becomes to me.
I think pyramid head is “punishing” the mannequins (Mary) in that scene in the only way he knows how. His whole thing is punishment, and we know Mary was verbally mean to James, so I think in his mind, she should also be punished for it. Idk just a thought
Pyramid head has been solved for literally decades. Pyramid head IS James. Specifically the part of James that wants to be punished for what he did. It’s that simple
I'm partially through your playthrough of Silent Hill 2. I was going to watch yours knowing your love for it. I hope you played the whole thing and uploaded it with commentary or am I just wasting my time and you only played partially?
It isn't connected, but the Pyramid head figure in the Crimson and White Banquet of the Gods painting is in the same pointing pose with a cloth face-covering like the pointing figure from Ringu. It showed up in the reflection of a TV screen. It's also similar to the person from the tape in the Ring. Same face-covering and pointing in the same pose. Maybe there's an old folklore reason from Japanese History, but either way it's unsettling as hell.
There is one thing that I forgot to put in the red squares section: why they appear on the faces of the nurses. I give a detailed explanation of that in my video titled "The Red Squares - Silent Hill Mythology." But I'll give a quick answer here. SPOILER ALERT
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The shape/form of the nurse's heads are meant to symbolize James' smothering his wife's head with a pillow. Seeing that the red square symbolizes the memory that James is trying to bring from unconsciousness into consciousness, having it rest over the nurse's face is very appropriate. I also personally interpret their placement over the mouth as symbolic of bringing something from unconsciousness into consciousness. When a thought isn't expressed, it is functionally unconsciousness. It is only when something is spoken that something can become truly tangible.
Does Silent Hill 2 remake have replay value?
Hi Max
I've been following your channel for a long time and i love your content.
Hey max have you watch the video titled silent hill if James regrets nothing, I need a breakdown of that😂
There’s also a photo of the red square that James finds that’s captioned Shape Forces the Mind
@@davidtharp2125 different endings/dialogue events and unlockable weapons I would say yes also the born from a wish dlc will come next year
Here's another amazing detail that may hint at a timeloop:
In appartment 217 where you get the gun, there's 1000+ bullet holes.
And if you aim the gun around that room for the first time, especially toward the TV, James will always accidentaly shoot 1 bullet.
So all those bullet holes may be from every loop James did.
No way! I gotta try that on my next run
OH MY GOD I DIDN'T DO THIS, BUT IF IT HAPPENS IT'S BRILLIANT
Wow. Thanks for pointing this out!
Yeah had this happen to me my first run. Was getting used to the aim and had him fire off a bullet without pressing anything
Loop? Is Silent hill suddenly become Alan Wake?😊
James reaching into gross areas to retrieve key items makes me think about my own experience with being a caregiver for a dying loved one. Especially with wound care. I had to tend to my dad’s bed sores and keep them packed (one was a cavity type wound) and clean. It wasn’t something I particularly enjoyed, but it was obviously necessary. The only way past it was to do it. And that’s the same kind of visceral distaste that I see in James. I feel like anyone who has experienced caregiver burnout will find a lot to unpack in this game. I’ve never been so personally impacted by a game before Silent Hill 2.
This is such a fascinatingly new angle for me to look at! I just always assumed that it was a metaphor for "reaching into unpleasant parts of yourself, be it your traits or memories, that you'd really REALLY would rather stayed buried". I love it when my understanding of something is enriched by other people's experiences like this!
And of course I'm sorry you had to go through that, it must've been the opposite of easy, but you're a real trooper
@ Well there are no wrong answers - yours makes a lot of sense too. It can be both, ya know? But that’s why SH 2 is always going to be a classic, the OG and remake alike. These themes can be interpreted in so many unique, personal ways. There’s really no limit to how a person analyses James’s trauma, or their own.
I actually have directly spoken with Ito on X regarding the interpretation of Pyramid Head, and I can confirm straight from the source that Pyramid Head's role in the story is, in fact, near-identical to his counterpart Valtiel's role in Silent Hill 3.
The important part to take away from Pyramid Head's actions is the fact that he is *targeting the monsters* that represent the things that are plaguing James' soul.
The reason these actions seem brutal and sexual is because *that is how James is perceiving them.*
In reality, Pyramid Head is forcefully stripping James of his delusions and his repression. That is why he is no longer needed once James accepts what he has done.
Ito agreed with me that his role is analogous to what Louis tells Jacob in the movie Jacob's Ladder:
"Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So the way he sees it, if you're frightened of dying and... and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it, that's all."
Source: x.com/adsk4/status/1844536439717101753?t=J4ItCFgWgwkSMG3HURnAFA&s=19
Ss pls 🙏🏻
i think someone speculated that Pyramid head is trying to shove the mannequinns down the drain cuz James entered the room
with this I think we can safe to assume that Pyramid Head is much like a Shadow Projection just like how James project his Anima to Maria.
I hate how Ito explains everything instead of letting it up to us to decide. I wish he was more like Lynch.
What he thought he was creating, and what he actually created, might be different. The creator can be wrong about what the final result actually is
Pyramid Head will kill James in multiple locations - Valtiel NEVER kills.
It's so annoying that creators have to censor themselves and say things like "self terminate" or "unalive themselves" on TH-cam out of fear of demonetization.
I despise shadow banning comments even when you don’t say anything wrong
@@chandlerburseJoin the club...
Yup.
It makes me want to unalive myself
It's a bit silly considering that you're still expressing the same idea. It's like censoring a part of a swear word with an asterisk. It's still very clear what is being conveyed.
I believe the dog is the real threat from Silent Hill. I mean, he/her was planning everything and “dog” is very similar to “god”. This can’t be a coincidence.
Oh no... Heather! What have you done?!?!?
THIS!!
Oh my god! "Dog" is "God", but backwards! How could I have never noticed that!? :O
I like to think Mira is the Dog Eddie has killed. I also have a theory that he ate it, that's why he was vomiting when we first meet him and why Doge was growling when Eddie's belly was shown in the OG SH2's Dog ending credits.
The dog being named “Mira” I strongly believe is a nod to “Mirror”/“Ymir”, the part of James that’s really pulling the strings
I will never forgive Konami for screwing over Hideo and Guillermo. The whole lore and potential of multiple Silent Hills, portraying the actual town as a sort of deity, is left unexplored for no reason. It would allow so many theories like time travel, purgatory etc. to perfectly co-exist in the same "universe" without having to exclude each other out based on the different SH titles, stories and canon. We have Lovecraftian monsters, but the idea of "Lovecraftian" EXISTENCES AND REALITIES, where the world itself is the actual anomaly, monster and unknown deity, is something SH barely scratched the surface of so far.
The town as a deity sounds kind of cliche the town being mysterious but implicitly somewhat sentient or some force of nature is a bit cooler
Also i thought we had zero idea what SHS was gonna be about anyways
@@chandlerbursethere are some leaked parts of what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to have asynchronous multiplayer like death stranding does hence all these different players worlds colliding. Also it was supposed to have AR elements where you would get notifications on your irl contact info related to the game blending reality and the game.
@@aadipie that honestly sounds like it would end being one of those over hyped games that would end in a buggy broken mess.
No
Part of the allure of SH is that it’s a SINGLE place. This, “it can be anything and anywhere bs” is nonsense and I’m not surprised it was cancelled.
@@mattcollins3591 the phenomenon has occurred in other places before like with SH4
The maze where you face Angela's father is a better addition, in my opinion. Because it symbolizes how much Angela had to get away from him and her brother, or at least how much she tried, without succeeding. Another important addition is the scene with Maria when she offers James a drink. I got the impression that not only did he want to drink and sleep with her, but perhaps he did it when Mary was still alive and sick. Maybe James has had another "Maria" before, that's what I mean. Another detail in this part is the Lost & Found ring. Perhaps James has already lost his ring in this or another nightclub.
James is missing his ring. He has a tan line on his ring finger. Also, something that was in the original but left out in the remake, if you examine crates of alcohol in Heaven's Night James will make a comment on how he used to drink a lot. It's unclear if he was an alcoholic, but he was still most likely a heavy drinker. Though I did notice that James did want to drink when Maria offered but had to hold himself back.
I like with the idea of him possibly being a recovering alcoholic that that scene is effectively doubling up on temptations for him
I thought the scene of Maria offering James a drink was a direct reference to The Shining, the Town is reflecting his own struggles and tempting him.
I finally beat the remake today (31/10/24) and man, this video and playing the game myself really really makes me appreciate the thought and effort gone into both the remake and original. It’s truly a master class in story telling and beats not just video games in the way it expressed the story and story itself, but also a lot of other stories presented in different mediums ( e.g books and movies ). Thank you so much for this video and all the other videos you’ve done explaining and talking about this game. In general, I love your content Max and I’m very grateful for you and your content. Keep on keeping on and I hope you have a lovely day whenever/ if ever you read this (:
What I want to know is why James didn't roll up his sleeve before reaching into that filth toilet?
He was too busy Mary maxing to even think about it
Yes, let's make a 5 hour long video assay about that.
And about why the pyramid head is still daddy and is not based off of the grand wizard of Silent Hill 😂
This toilet is the least of his problems. That one fridge from the Labyrinth will stay with me forever...
probably because he isn't right in the head,i mean he went into silent hill to search for his wife who he knew was dead
I think the true end of Silent Hill 2 is actually not participating in another loop as the player. playing again and again only extends James's torture if you think about the Meta of it .
Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams, the Hd Remaster and the Remake are all continued loops theoretically. The town changes slightly, more information becomes known, the town gets clearer and more detailed but one thing never changes, what James did. The true end is not reliving it over and over. I argue it is the acceptance of the player in what ending was received was the end for James. Not to mention acceptance is the final stage of Grief ;) Just a fun alternate way to think about it, great video.
It's also Meta when you think about. The player themself finds acceptance by finishing the game and not playing it ever again 😂😂
@@atomskthepirateking2776 Every player is a willing participant in James's torture. an every time you fire up the game to get a new ending you pretty much send him through hell again.
Masahiro Ito has said Pyramid Head is supposed to be getting rid of the manifestations for James so he would be able to understand what this is all about. It’s weird. He even said the cutscene with the moan before the boss fight wasn’t what you think it is.
There is no way I found you here, I used to watch your godzilla videos .D
@@gillik7801Used to? lol thanks though man
@@RickDaSquirrel Nah I am still watching the theater reaction ones. All the other ones outside of NA just watch in pure silence
@@RickDaSquirrel (except India, but i dont even know they just scream at everything and they cheer only for kong )
I mean Pyramid Head always seems to be leaving a wake of manifestation corpses in it's wake so I think that kind of makes sense.
I hope Bloober Team will also remake "Born From A Wish"
Yes, hopefully 😊
They better
I personally dislike the time loop theory. From the original game it became kinda clear to me that James's death impulse (Thanatos) was responsible for projecting his image onto the corpses. Plus, the town has significantly changed between said loops, from timeline differences (the og taking place in the 70-80s, and this in the 90s) to Heaven's Night being in two completely different locations. To me this theory doesn't add up, but who knows, maybe the devs confirm it.
Of course it doesn't add up, that's exactly why some fuckwits will shill it. I can't express how much I hate Reddit
The original takes place in the 90s too, going by what is found in Born from a Wish. But you are right, the bodies in the town are because James is suicidal when he gets there.
I don't think the town waits for James to reach the climax of his story after it is very clear he didn't learn his lesson, just to spawn Angela, Eddie, Laura and Maria again so they can all give it another try together, because otherwise the disparity would mess each others runs too much xP
"Wait, I know you..."
Some people theorize that the remake takes place in 2001, since the desk that may or not be James' has a mouse with a scroll wheel. And while mice with scroll wheels came out in the 90s, they weren't really widespread and mainstream until the early 2000's
@@ivanaviNiebla yeah this is my other problem with the remake, aside from it feeling (to me) like it really cheapens the journey.
Reason for the order of the book puzzle is that it’s the sequence of the seven heavens, such as is Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s the order of the seven Ptolemaic planets, which is the order of the (visible) solar system just with the sun and moon reversed.
About Maria, have you ever considered that she may not entirely be a creation of James's mind but also out of Mary's will? Things like wanting to be what she couldn't be for James in her last moments could've played a part in creating her (the want to please the man she loves). Also things like caring for Laura would make sense too. When James asks her why she cares she just says "I dont know I feel like it's up to me to protect her." Imo that wouldn't make much sense if Maria is entirely James's projection as we know he had no idea who Laura was until stepping into Silent Hill and Mary deeply cared for and considered Laura a friend. All that and the fact that Mary wanted to keep being by James's side
Mary arrives dead in Silent Hill, so how can she have a will to impose?
@@shawnwolf5961 Kinda like a dying wish in a way, the feelings she carried in her death
@@elena8073 tie that with Mary's ''in my restless dreams''.... here's an idea: the events throughout the game are just Mary's dreams, and Mary is dreaming of/remnants of a premonition she had of her fate and James guilt ..and now James is living it. kinda like how Alessa's nightmares and pain spawned a living nightmare world ig?
This remake was so damn fantastic man, bloober team deserve all the praise, and i hope they remake other SH games too
The time loop theory is even more apparent in the remake I think.
I definitely think the theory is what bloober is going for. If all the endings are canon, from what’s been said then all the bodies that look like James, which there is a lot, make sense with the theory in mind.
That theory makes absolutely no sense at all
@@Robert-oq8yelook at all of the corpses in the freezer room before eddie's fight
@@thecheeseblock9880 ok. That doesn't prove a loop at all.
@@Robert-oq8yeall the endings of the game are canon, so if there was a time loop that’s how all the endings would be able to be canon because the whole thing repeats but how you get to the end is different.
23:20 - Max: it is not a mistake that gold is in the middle. The order of the symbols on the books is the Chaldean Order of the planets, the order of descent through the tree of life. Gold is The Sun, which is Tiphareth, the exact center of the tree. The final step before Malkuth (manifest material substance) is Silver / The Moon / Yesod. Although Gold is often viewed as the material goal of metallurgic alchemy (i.e. transmuting lead into gold), it isn't the same as the Philosopher's Stone, which is not a physical substance.
I’m drinking Dr Pepper right now
How is it?
This comment made me spit my dr.pepper out
Y'all tried the coconut Dr pepper yet? Pretty good imo
@eicoo2 I haven't but that's what I've heard
mmm dr peppa
whatsinmy AI fixes this. Silent Hill 2 Remake Explained
Your videos always feel like a college lecture. A good one, the ones that make you feel smarter afterwards.
This is deeper than I expected, wow!
AMAZING AS ALWAYS
Incorrect, unfortunately though. 😂
Something interesting to think about near the end game right before the final boss, you encounter some enemies that don't attack you, one bag enemy in fetal position , a nurse that just collapses to the ground as you get near her, and a leg mannequin that avoids you and even looks terrified of James as you approach it. Any thoughs on this?
I think it's safe to say that we will never get a game with such depth as SH2 ever again. I hope I'm wrong but it seems that way. I've never known a game that still has secrets and hidden meanings being unveiled 23 years later.
I really love your videos, they are actually very informational and simple to follow. It touches metaphysics in a clearer way, none of the riddle stuff (which is a way to convey an secret), and you showed us how vastly Alchemy and Philosophy influenced Silent Hill ethos. Silent Hill really introduced many people to esoteric and gnosis, thanks to your videos haha.
Maxdarrat your content is always a nice breath of fresh air. I love your depth of detail when navigating the deep mythos of silent hill. Much love Raven. 🐦⬛🐦⬛
The sun is sitting in the correct place for the labeling on the books, if you consider the planetary alignment for each. The sun is in the center of all the planets, which is actually the balance between the solar system and the void and perfection (the exterior of the solar system). This would also make sense as far as no Earth representation for these symbols (in a Terran-centric view) as it would almost be Terra viewing the heavens as the viewer might be viewing the books. The eyes drawn to the largest thing in the solar system: the sun.
One thing I'd like to know is, what happened to the people of the town? James seem to have come to SH with Mary and have a normal vacation there, so at one point the town was a normal town. We find notes left by people with normal works, lives etc. So, when did the town get deserted, and where did the people go?
Put in some effort and play SH1
from my limited knowledge of the SH universe, I am pretty sure that the people/population of SH have either been killed by the monsters of the unreality, or, are currently suffering through their own versions of the unreality, much like how James does - as well as all the various protagonists in the other SH games. For some characters who's fates are integral to the lore progression of SH as a whole, like important people in the history of SH, their outcomes are more or less static. but the other inhabitants of SH could probably be a toss-up in terms of whether they are dead dead, or just... sorta dead. i'm also pretty sure that the fates of some citizens would depend on their connection, whether bad or good, to Alessa, as I'm pretty sure that Alessa was the catalyst, or gateway, that finally turned SH into hellscape that it is currently.
Also, because reality and unreality are all sortof mushed together and bleed into each other randomly in SH, some of the notes and messages that we find in the games could be left by people trapped in their own versions of SH, and don't necessarily share timelines with the protagonists in the games. i don't know how often the games touch on this "parallel realities" concept, as i haven't played every single SH, but in the first movie, which is the good one, it is heavily implied that Rose and Harry are in the school at the same time, but in separate realities.
They are there still living their normal lives. The characters, at least when we play, never visit the "real world" town, they are always "transported" into the "alternate reality" of the fog world and the otherworld (the quotes are because those words are the easiest to use to explain what is going on, but might not be the most accurate).
In the games Sillent Hill is always a touristic town, and keeps growing into modern times. There are characters that don't like it because there are cults, drug trafficking, missing people and lots of urban legends (and other problems tbh), but none of that is big enough to stop the town from being a nice place to spend holidays. So most people in town are living their normal lives while all the shit goes down in an "alternate reality", at least for the most part, as there are events where things leak into the real world, or many people are affected at the same time, but then again, it's never so bad that the town stops being a touristic place xP And the affected people just seems to either disappear or appear insane, the "monsters" never escape or anything like that.
@@Andriej69 I did, with emulation and if that game was the only one, I'd understand what happened with the town, but having more games after that I get confused. Notes and messages in the rest of the games seem to imply the town is a normal town with people living and working and stuff, but that's quite confusing for me. When you go into the "otther world" I get the idea that, that's the unreality, right? That'd be when everything is rusty and here ar fans, and bars and all that... then the intersection between reality and unreality would be the fog world. But then what's the "real" world. Because non of the protagonits seem to ever be in it. I mean, Henry escaped the town with Heather, then Heather goes back and when she enters the town she's already in the fog. James seem to have been to the real town in a vacation previous to the game, but now he went to look for Mary and is immediately inside the fog.
@@xian1978 As far I've heard James' vacation in SH took place before the events that initiated SH1. After that the town was abandoned, aside from Dahlia and Kaufman, who had the opposing goals when the "spell" eventually does it's function. It's open to interpretation if events of SH2 happened after Harry went with CHeryl to SH, or before - before Cheryl grew up, demonic forces of SH might've been luring in and consuming people like James. Notes and documents you're mentioning are leftovers, frozen in time when town itself changes it's shape
I really love your views and analysis of the silent Hill universe its all so deep and fascinating. Your voice is also very relaxing xo
Max, since you're so fascinated by alchemy and symbolism i'd like to recommend a movie called "The Holy Mountain".
Hey man. I will do a video on that one day. COUNT ON IT. Probably around the beginning of next year. The thing is though, I am going to approach the video much like my fellow TH-camr, Ragnarrox, approached the movie "Solaris", where he reviewed it, but also talked about how it influenced Silent Hill. The Holy Mountain influenced Silent Hill as well. However, because I have spent the last month doing nothing but Silent Hill, I am going to take at least a couple of months off from that franchise.
@@maxderrat It's fine even if you don't make a video on it. I just thought i'd share one of my favorite movies since it meant so much to me as a lover of philosophy. I do hope you enjoy it. Take care.
HORIZONTALLY!
love the silent hill content coming out. We are all creating videos again about a series we truly love
Cool, I discovered yohr videos after finishing SH2 Remake and was catching up with the 5 year old videos you had. Very nice content, keep it up!
Good recollection and rundown of a little bit of everything. Good work!
Good shit Max - keep doing what you're doing!
God with all this talk about alchemy, A Silent Hill game themed around item crafting a survival in the town sounds fun with the goal of the game is to craft a Philosopher's Stone that grants you a wish like bringing the dead back to life. But to make the Philosopher's Stone you have to craft the nigredo, albedo, and rubedo items.
I mean, you're kinda did with the Rebirth ending.
I love your work Max! Although i find approaching Jung to be a daunting task, it is also profoundly rewarding. People like yourself help me understand his concepts in a way that is applicable to many pieces of art that i personally resonate with, which gives it so much more meaning and depth that in many cases can be easily overlooked. Thank you for your hard work. And PLEASE do an analysis of control. That game is one of my favourites and i was shocked to discover you didnt have a video on it!
You forgot to mention the second Pyramid Head that is theorized to be his second sin (killing Eddie), and their eggs representing Mary with the disease and Eddie's youth.
Incredible video. Just finished the remake, and this was great
Always on point and with all the facts. You're the best, Max!
To be fair this is Max' interpretation, I wouldn't go so far to claim it as fact. Max uses the term "I believe" throughout this video. The only people who know the true meanings are the original writers.
@@robertl426 I was actually referring to the fact that he always does his research and brings a lot of sources regarding the essence of very obvious inspirations for the series, such as psychoanalysis or alchemy-themed subjects, not really about the true meaning of SH at all.
You know I'll love to see them do a Silent Hill game that take place in the wild west era, Specially a story that take place after the civil war. That seems like a ripe setting and scenario world building of Silent Hill and story telling, In that kind of story I'd either want to see something like a grizzled old man who wishes to make up with his Daughter or Granddaughter or a bonnet wearing Victorian woman who comes to Silent Hill to claim an inheritance from her Ex-husband who mysteriously died.
I think the issue with that is that the BIG thing that made Silent Hill be the way and tore the city to the real world and the otherworld its the events with Alessa that led to Silent Hill 1, which is pretty recent time wise.
I mean Toluca Prison was a civil war POW camp but whether SH phenomenon was happening then is debateable
Great video! The order of the planets on the spines of the books is the Chaldean order, which goes from the planets that move slowest as observed on earth to the planets that move fastest, which was relevant to early astrologers and astronomers. This is also the order the planets appear on the Kabbalistic/Qabalistic Tree of Life counting down from the top sphere (Keter). 3 = Binah = Saturn, 4 = Chesed = Jupiter, 5 = Gevurah = Mars, 6 = Tipheret = Sol, 7 = Netzach = Venus, 8 = Hod = Mercury, and 9 = Yesod = Moon.
The gold of Sol is at the center of the tree and represents where the soul crosses the veil and becomes aware of higher things. It represents the merging of the higher/supernal forces with the lower/earthly forces (and also represents the balance point between Chesed/Mercy and Gevurah/Severity) and is considered perfect in that way.
In esoteric/occult magic Tipheret/Sol represents Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (which is understood to some to be an avatar of the Higher Self), which is the goal of magical practice though it is also possible to temporarily experience higher states of mystic consciousness. Gold/Sol/Tipheret is basically the integrated ego and the highest state a functioning ego-self can be in for long periods of time as per the "map" offered by the Tree.
In other words, "Stay yellow" has some mystical/magical resonance :)
Disclaimer: Jungian Psychology has actually come a long say since Carl Jung, please do not attempt to apply any of this to real humans that you work and interact with, it will result in utter disaster.
Also, please do not treat women like they're concepts, that's what Jimmy boy does. A full human is in front of him, and he's busy chasing after a "concept" of a woman while ignoring the one right in front of him. If you're gonna walk out of this game with one thing, let it be that all women are human.
People being fixated on finding Pyramid Head sexy is no surprise given the state of the world today. I worked with a woman who was talking to another girl one day about horror movies, and the woman said: “Michael Myers can get it.”
Plus there’s the absolute meme ‘I can Fix Him/Her’. You can’t. 😂
People were simping for him long before modern day
We have people legit simping for serial killers and the like. It's goofy lol
It's all fun and games until Shinji picks up the steel pipe
I am surprised there are no Amnesia videos on this channel. Some of the cooler analysis videos on YT, no doubt.
I'd love to see a video about your thoughts on the NG+ endings, especially the new ones unique to the SH2 remake. I know your philosophy has always been to only make videos about a topic you fell you can provide a unique perspective on, but I think your robust understanding of the series, and critical eye in general would add a lot to the conversation at large, especially with it all being so fresh.
Isn’t the town the way it is because of Alessa? Yes, all that backstory you mentioned is true but the town was a normal town until Alessa unlocked “unreality” and her psychic powers turned into the desolate place we see and it’s her psychic powers that allowed unreality to break through and allowed the creation of the monsters from people’s subconscious. Feels like a big miss not to mention the catalyst for why SH is a hellish place.
Excellent video, Max
I don't know about it being a "time loop", since the only one affected by "the loop" seems to be James. It seems to me to be more analogous to when you save in a video game and die, only to have to redo a certain section. It's as if the bodies who look like James represent James's past attempts at going through Silent Hill. But, failing to do so, he restarts his attempt, leaving his past selves dead where they were.
However, the town itself, as well as others in it, like Eddie and Laura, also move on, since they're not caught in the same "loop" that James is, but rather, their own. That's why Eddie and Laura are not in the same place you found them in the Remake as they were in the Original. The Remake and Original are two iterations of James's journey.
Edit:
Put another way, Silent Hill is sort of a merging of Jung's and Freud's psychoanalytical views, where the town itself represents Jung's collective unconscious while the individuals who get trapped there represent Freud's theories about individual drives or instincts: the manifestation of an individual's psyche in the primordial soup of the collective. Until James (as well as everyone else caught in Silent Hill) can sort out his emotional turmoil, he'll need to repeat his journey (dying every once in a while the way any player of the game might) even as the town itself keeps bringing in new people through time.
TL;DR It's less like Groundhog Day and more like Memento, if that makes sense.
Simpler psychological analysis:
Pyramid head is primarily James's desire for punishment for what he did... and only stops when James thinks he's suffered enough.
Maria is his ever present temptation to avoid ever dealing with what he did... one of their first conversations has her tempting him sexually and with booze, which he is implied to have already been struggling with
The whole time loop concept makes the game very close to Signalis. In that game, it's implied that the events of the game is a time loop, including dead bodies of the playable protagonist.
Here’s an amazing detail that I found that I don’t see more people talk about for some odd reason. When going through the labyrinth while searching for a key to get another part of a lighter you enter an office room with a nurse in it, in James original bio it was said he was a clerk. This alludes to him not just fantasising about Nurses through his sexual frustrations with Mary but also with his co workers while working as a clerk. This meant everyday he had not just thoughts of the nurses at the hospital but including his female co-workers. Pretty sad
11:28 in the end of the movie 'jacobs ladder' (which was a huge inspiration for silent hill) someone tells the protagonist (who has been tormented by demons) "
The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you,' he said. 'They're freeing your soul. If your frightened of dying, and your holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth."
I think this mirrors the whole idea for pyramid heads existence
Oh my god i just realized that red haired LeeLou from the Fifth Element is the philosopher's stone. Even the TITLE of that movie. Oh my lord.
Also THANK you for the Pyramid head thing, I am also forever raising my eyebrow.
The born sexy yesterday, the uncomfortable trope....
Yeah, see if you know what happens in Born from A WIsh, that's not Maria.
Btw, Luc Besson apparently cheated on his wife, whom he married when she was 15, with the young Mila Jovovitch.
We're not really gonna take that man's ideas and praise them ... Especially the ones about this topic.
Because it was one thing for inc3ls to project onto James, but now we're gonna get PDF files?
Wow, it takes an especially f+-ked up person to do that. But hey, he recommended Evangelion so...
@@samf.s.7731 hey bud genuinely what on EARTH are you talking about? Never connected it with born from a wish. I was literally just noticing for the first time that the fifth element references alchemy pretty blatantly. Thats it. Also gonna block you after this nonsensical weird hater mansplaining reply. Good gracious.
@@samf.s.7731 what are you talking about?
@@samf.s.7731 he was just talking about the movie not what the director did
I forget the exact context but when you first team up with Maria (in the remake) she says it's odd that a gate is locked, this made me think she was confused because the area was different in the original game
Pertaining to the color red, it really feel like it was a missed opportunity with the black and white vs. red filter. Yes the red squares are, well, red. But nothing else is. I was so disappointed when I encountered pyramid head on my second playthrough while using the filter. Then in the other world, in a few spots. I absolutely love the way that silent hill 2 looks in general,especially the black and white. It reminds me of an old twilight zone episode. Maybe I’m just a sucker for that “sin city” style. It just would’ve been really
cool to have red be a prominent thing, against the black and white, other than just the squares.
Welcome to Max Derrat. I love you.
Max I think you would love the Boogiepop animes! Just that. Happy spooky month!
24:55 "YOU HAVE BEEN HERE FOR TWO DECADES"
I'm new to any of this, in my interpretation the red squares are guilt-mirrors. Let me explain, the fact that the first encounter is put on words as a pain that hurts the brain from the inside out led me to think about the anatomy of the brain itself, the amigdala and the hippocampus are nearly in the center of the brain, explain why it hurts in that specific way, James cannot remember what he has done, he is experiencing a mental breakpoint where he denies his own reality. that's why just before the great judgment there are nine guilt-mirrors, he has fully face his guilt. All this interpretation got stronger with the remake and that small detail of using the save points as a POV where we see James from this mirrors.
Last detail I found included the more frequently used enemy type this time around, the Mandarins. In the original they could only stay underground, the book of lost memories found in the rebirth ending explained that due to their symbolism of overwhelming, incomprehensible anguish they were permitted to stay underground. However the remake changes this by allowing you to fight them head on. I believe that Blooper Teams symbolism is their biggest denominator for why James killed Mary, her verbal abuse towards him. They rarely ever use their fists but spikes that come from their mouth, meaning that her words hurt him. They hang from the ceiling and under the floor to show how her words quite literally ‘hanged’ onto him, how he couldn’t go by a day thinking how much she hates him. This is the reason to why they’re the strongest of the 4 enemy types, because they were the biggest reason to why James killed her. His sexual frustrations were clearly crucial but her verbal abuse is what made him commit to his heinous action of ridding her from his life.
For those circling the topic of mathematical idealism and reconciling man's ambitions with (continually) discovered limitations on our measurement OF reality:
The integers are entirely contained by tha rationals. The rationals are entirely contained by the constructables. The constructables are entirely contained by the algebraics. The algebraics are entirely contained within the computable numbers. But there's even larger sets. The set of definable numbers is larger than the set of computable numbers, and the the set of reals is larger than the set of all definable numbers.
We could never square the circle because we are limited to using a compass and straight edge. Basically this restricts us to asking questions related to x-squared and square-root of x (there's excellent videos on TH-cam related to the problem of constructability)
great quality video as always
This is my first SH game to play and of course got the leave ending. Here is something interesting I have noticed from watching lore videos after finishing.
I had to use a PC software tool to change the FOV of the game due to motion sickness.
In my game with FOV pulled back during the leave ending, Angela is seen standing over a tombstone while James and Laura walkout.
When watching lore vids with normal FOV she's not there.
Might be nothing just thought it was interesting, anyway love the deep dives!
Maaaan I got the “In The Water” ending for my first playthrough. I was speechless when credits rolled…
I personally don't buy much of the timeloop theory.
I like the idea and it's his subconscious projecting himself onto the corpses because of the guilt and suicidal tendency he's facing.
I do like to believe that James can either fail his journey in silent hill and perhaps trigger another loop to do it again.
But the "leave" ending is probably where he get away from the town for good after facing the inner demons...
It fits with the theme of facing your shadow and growing as a person.
I've always interpreted Pyramid Head's aggression towards James as another metaphor for James's shadow attempting to consume him.
This is most telling in the end section of the final Labrynth when James has to let Pyramid Head assist in his escape. James is accepting aid from his shadow without letting it consume him (ie, staying far enough away or dodging PH's attacks)
:0 13:00 I've always had this personal belief that there was the concept of the divine feminine/masculine and most of us are predisposed to one but that we can all channel both. It's so wild learning that something similar was said by a famous psychologist
I feel that next to the Anima, Maria in the remake also embodies a dark version of the Jungian “Caretaker” archetype. She is one of the worst influences for James but she seems to be quite a nice and playful woman while doing it. She is adamant that she wants to help James in his “noble and hopeful” search for Mary. Whenever James has a moment of clarity, Maria is there to pull him right back into his delusions. She also tries to enable James’ worst traits a few times. She is very seductive and subversive in the remake.
And then there's me who thought the red squares were simply a symbolic representation/glimpse of memory of the TV in the hotel. After all, you can also see James's face mirrored each time you look at these squares
Max, "Sех explained" when?
Karl yung brutally smashed sigmund and his mommy kink idk
Hi max I think you forget to refer you video about explaining why Ito-san might think he didn't create pyramid head with James' repress sexual frustration. This video summarize what you have made so far with SH2 mythology I really love it.
I thought James, Angela, Eddie and Laura are already dead? James, Angela and Eddie all comitting suicide and Laura died of whatever illness she had in hospital. There simply cannot be a good ending when mary's body is still in the car. This game is about repenting and limbo. Crossing the barrier after death.
Maria is the only one who is not real.
Angela never committed suicide.
@@differentsame9402 I think I mean in the original. But yeah there's very heavy implications of suicide between the 3 characters. Or are their physical bodies stuck between worlds? Angela can't move on so she's stuck there? It's easy to forget that this game is a spin off from Silent Hill so it's not really explained.
In regards to the notes, my friend and I were watching a stream of the game yesterday and he made an interesting point about them. Silent Hill tends to shape itself based on those within. Only James is finding these notes, or at least the only one acknowledging them from what we've seen so far. Therefore one could assume this is James' psyche at work again. The notes could very well be based on how James views himself. Whether his past iterations are writing them, or someone else is, doesn't matter. His psyche is still very much pulling the strings on these messages. Both guiding and taunting him like you'd expect your inner demons to do. I agree with my buddy on this one as I've seen another person mention this idea too when mentioning the There was a hole here note. You find that note in a bar of all places, a clear nod to the fact James cannot escape his mind, what he's done. The bottom of a bottle can't save him this time, it can't be an escape.
I also keep thinking back to Sleep Token now everytime you mention the Anima Theory of yours. I saw an analysis of the band's work recently and the person doing so pointed out how the songs seem to be pleas to Vessel's(lead singer) Anima. Sometimes the songs are angry and combative, other times they're soft and gentle, and naturally you also have desperate cries for help too. Highly recommend this group if you wanna add a bit more insight for the SH 2 Anima theory. That and Sleep Token is very much worth the deep dive. The channel I mentioned before didn't cover every single song, just the ones that held the most symbolism on each album and EP.
Oh and honestly enough I oughta thank you Max. As your explanations on Alchemy and Jungian psychology led to the furthest dive into it that I ever took. Your work alongside Sleep Token, Loreena McKennitt, Tool, and a few other bands, has actually helped me reach a far better understanding of my own Shadow. Given I'm a Witch who performs Shadow Work, such a thing was long overdue. I even listened to all of the main albums of Sleep Token after hearing about the Anima Theory for the songs. The result was a beautiful journey, one I've gone on twice now and intend to go on again should the need ever come up. These days my Shadow and I are in much better accord with one another(for lack of better ways to put it).
That said, I must say it feels like I may have both an Anima and Animus. My Animus hasn't really made itself known, at least not in ways I can readily make out or point to. My Anima however certainly has, and I think was partially embedded into my Shadow. Or at the worst became one with it. Hard to say given my own knowledge of Alchemy and Jungian psychology is still fairly limited. Nevertheless, one thing that came from my deeper understanding with my Shadow, was a desire to embrace my femininity again. This time on my own terms in my own way. I had initially turned away from certain feminine things due to it being forced down my throat when I was younger. Amazing how much better one feels when you dive into things on your own time and terms instead. Very liberating for sure. Freyja and Hel were certainly happy about this change too. Not that Anubis and Gabriel weren't happy for me too of course.
@@UnseelieFaelass If you are having issues you should seek professional help such as therapy. Jungian "psychology" is just mysticism. It's a religion not a science and was left behind over 100 years ago by psychology.
Don't get me wrong using it to tell stories and create characters makes great fiction. Using it for psychological issues though would be the equivalent of using blood letting to get rid of the bad blood instead of medicine when you are sick, or calling a priest for an exorcism because someone is showing signs of mental illness.
One thing Id like to know is what connection Paimon has to everything. A certain puzzle in the hotel flat out has you constructing their sigil which I cant imagine has no meaning to it
Hey Max; do you have any idea on what the strange photos are all about? No one seems to be explaining them in any of the videos I've looked into other than them being a collectable.
Hey Max, are you going the make a video on the Polaroid photographs you find scattered throughout the remake? I think it'd be awesome!
Further evidence of the loop can be seen in Downfall where a character named Howard Blackwood, the African American Mail Man, told Murphy Pendelton than he's been stuck in Silent Hill for the past 2 centuries and gave up trying to escape the town.
James is a character I deeply sympathize and relate to. The notion of the pain of having to think of your past mistakes and as you remember them they pain you greatly. Is as raw of a human truth as it gets.
There is one more person who would see Abstract Daddy in Silent Hill.
Picasso's son.
I still got it baby...
19:20 "suppressed it a long time ago"
It was *not* a long time ago. In fact, it may have been *minutes* ago.
I've watched the neon evangelian on Netflix I thoroughly enjoyed that show too. I also got really creeper out by the machines and their eyes.
teeth
I think I was in that hotel longer than any other location.
Thanks Max, question: does the remake James look like you? Do you consider him yellow?
ive been taking your advice you bestow at the end of every video and my doctor says i have a severe case of jaundice
Brilliant! Nothing more to say...
Honestly, if the devs or Ito confirm that SH2 is one big timeloop, I would be extremely disappointed. Instead of SH2 being a self-contained story about three people confronting extremely dark parts of their lives, it becomes a shallow story of endless suffering. It would also make the town of Silent Hill be part of the plethora of takes on purgatory instead of a seemingly self-aware, eldritch being that deliberately has goals, motives and lessons for the people it calls to. The town wouldn't be a character anymore. Anyway, I doubt it's something they will confirm anytime soon. Though the time loop theory is becoming increasingly more popular, unfortunately.
I love how bloober has simply built on what was already there and slightly expanded on it while wholely respecting the original. We were all rightiously sceptic. But they did a fantastic job. And honestly, im rather curious to what their next game is gonna be. So far it seems highly inspired by dead space.
I might not love all of bloobers game, but these people truly have proven themselves with this remake. They understand well written horro
My biggest question is...what's the Shiba dog's name?
Mira
@@danieljenkins5610Cognate with “Ymir”
@danieljenkins5610 wait they gave the dog a name?
@@tomo8940yes the devs called it Mira
@@chandlerburse cute
I initially thought the purgatory/time loop aspect was a lame change, I think mainly because I've always preferred leave and I was in a reactionary mood. The more I think about it the more interesting it becomes to me.
I think pyramid head is “punishing” the mannequins (Mary) in that scene in the only way he knows how. His whole thing is punishment, and we know Mary was verbally mean to James, so I think in his mind, she should also be punished for it. Idk just a thought
Pyramid head has been solved for literally decades. Pyramid head IS James. Specifically the part of James that wants to be punished for what he did. It’s that simple
Thanks. NOW: WHAT ABOUT THE CORPSE IN THE BACK OF JAMES’ CAR?!?!?!
It does beg questions for sure. How did he get her body into the car without detection? How did he ignore the smell from a week old corpse?
@@robertl426 Why a week? Why not hours?
I'm partially through your playthrough of Silent Hill 2. I was going to watch yours knowing your love for it. I hope you played the whole thing and uploaded it with commentary or am I just wasting my time and you only played partially?
It isn't connected, but the Pyramid head figure in the Crimson and White Banquet of the Gods painting is in the same pointing pose with a cloth face-covering like the pointing figure from Ringu. It showed up in the reflection of a TV screen. It's also similar to the person from the tape in the Ring. Same face-covering and pointing in the same pose. Maybe there's an old folklore reason from Japanese History, but either way it's unsettling as hell.
:) love these
What I want to know is...why are the bullets named after birds?
9:08 "Large subset of *female* fans" LMAO
Tell me you have no gay friends without telling me you have no gay friends.