Silent Hill 2 Spoiler

"Silent Hill 2" redirects here. For the upcoming Silent Hill film sequel, see Silent Hill 2 (film).
Silent Hill 2
A video game cover. At the top is the PlayStation 2 logo, followed by a distorted, green-tinted close-up of the side of a man's face above the Silent Hill 2 logo. At the bottom is the Entertainment Software Rating Board's rating of the game as Mature, and Konami's logo.
North American PlayStation 2 cover
Developer(s) Konami
Team Silent
Creature Labs (PC)
Publisher(s) Konami
Designer(s) Masashi Tsuboyama
Composer(s) Akira Yamaoka
Series Silent Hill
Platform(s) PlayStation 2, Xbox, Microsoft Windows
Release date(s) PlayStation 2[1]
NA September 24, 2001
JPN September 27, 2001
EU November 23, 2001
Xbox[2]
NA December 20, 2001
JPN February 22, 2002
EU October 14, 2002
Microsoft Windows
NA December 2, 2002
EU February 28, 2003
Genre(s) Survival horror
Psychological horror
Mode(s) Single-player
Rating(s) ESRB: M
BBFC: 15
Media CD, DVD
System requirements

Pentium 700 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, DirectX 8.1, 8 MB DirectX-compatible 3D accelerator, DirectX-compatible sound card, 1.8 GB HDD space[3]
Input methods Gamepad
Keyboard and Mouse

Silent Hill 2 is a survival horror videogame for Sony PlayStation 2 developed by Team Silent and published by Konami. It is the second installment in the Silent Hill series. It was released in North America on September 24, 2001, in Japan on September 27, 2001, and in Europe on November 23, 2001.[1]

While it is set in the series' namesake town, Silent Hill 2 is not a direct sequel to the events and characters of the first Silent Hill game.[4] Instead, it centers on James Sunderland, who enters the town after receiving a letter written by his deceased wife, saying she is waiting for him in their "special place" in Silent Hill. Joined by a woman who resembles her except for a more provocative outfit and personality, he searches for her and discovers the truth about her death. Silent Hill 2 features four possible endings and two "joke" endings.

Silent Hill 2 was well-received by the audience and critics. Within the month of its release in North America, Japan and Europe, over one million copies were sold, with the greatest sales in North America.

Plot
See also: List of Silent Hill monsters and List of Silent Hill characters
[edit] Characters

James Sunderland is the protagonist and primary player character of Silent Hill 2, who comes to the town after receiving a letter from his deceased wife Mary.[10] While exploring the town, he encounters Maria, who strongly resembles Mary except for a more provocative personality and clothing; Angela, a gloomy and cynical teenager who ran away to Silent Hill so she could search for her mother; Eddie Dombrowski, who harbors a darker side to his easy-going personality; and Laura, an eight-year-old girl who befriended Mary during her last year alive, having been a patient at the same hospital as her, and seems to have no knowledge of the monsters in the town.[11][12]
[edit] Story

After arriving in Silent Hill, James decides to search Rosewater Park,[13] where he meets Maria, who claims that she has never met or seen Mary and, as she is scared, he allows her to follow him. While looking for Laura inside a hospital, James and Maria are ambushed by a monster called "Pyramid Head", and Maria is killed by the monster just as James escapes;[14] He nonetheless resumes his task of finding Mary, and chooses to search the old Lakeview Hotel, where he and Mary spent their vacation.[15] While en route, James inexplicably finds Maria alive, unharmed and locked in a prison cell.[16] She greets him with a lascivious pose, claims ignorance to their previous encounter, and discusses elements of James and Mary's past that only Mary would know.[17] James then sets off to find a way to release Maria from the cell, and returns only to find her dead once more.

Traveling deeper into the underground catacomb, James saves Angela from a monster whom she calls "daddy"; she confesses that her father used to molest her,[18] while a newspaper article that James finds implies that Angela stabbed her father to death. Further on, James confronts a gun-wielding and insane Eddie, who admits to maiming a bully and killing his dog before fleeing to Silent Hill;[19] James kills him in self-defense when he attacks. Mary's letter reverts to a blank piece of paper, calling into question whether or not James actually received it, or if the letter was all in his mind.

At the Lakeview Hotel, James locates an old home-made videotape, which depicts him smothering his dying wife with a pillow, much to the horror of Laura, who was friends with Mary in her time at hospital.[20] At this point in the game, the letter from Mary vanishes entirely from the envelope. In another room, a final meeting with Angela sees her giving up on life and unable to cope with her guilt any longer. She walks into the flames of a burning staircase and is not seen again.[21] Two Pyramid Heads appear, along with Maria who has been resurrected once more; as she is killed again, James finally realizes that Pyramid Head was created because he needed someone to punish him. The envelope from Mary finally disappears. Accepting this, he defeats them, and makes his way to the rooftop, finally reaching what seems to be Mary. Depending on the choices made by the player throughout the game, this may be either Mary[22] or Maria disguised as her.[23]

Silent Hill 2 features four possible endings, and official statements from Konami have kept their canonicity ambiguous.[24][4] In the Leave ending, James has one last meeting with Mary, reads her full letter, and leaves the town with Laura, while the In Water ending sees James commit suicide; In Rebirth, James plans to revive Mary using special occult objects collected throughout the game.[25] In contrast, the Maria ending sees Mary as the woman on the rooftop, who has not forgiven James for killing her. After her defeat, James dismisses her as being just another hallucination and then discovers Maria, inexplicably resurrected again, and leaves town with her;[26] Maria starts coughing.[27] There are also two "joke" endings available on replay games: in the first, James discovers that, beyond a normally locked door, a Shiba Inu which has apparently been controlling all the events of the game from a vision mixer, and the second is a continuation of the UFO ending of the first game, in which James is abducted by aliens with the help of the first game's protagonist, Harry Mason.

Born From a Wish

Born From a Wish is a side-story scenario in the special editions and re-releases of the game in which the player takes control of Maria shortly before she and James meet at Toluca Lake. After waking up in the Heaven's Night club with a gun, and having contemplated suicide, she resolves to go out and find someone.[28] Her wandering eventually brings her to the seemingly deserted Baldwin mansion, where she hears the voice of its owner, Ernest Baldwin. At first Maria is relieved to have found another living human, but Ernest refuses to let Maria into the room where he is and will only talk to her through the closed door.[29] After Maria completes a few tasks for him, including passing him a birthday card from his daughter, Ernest warns her about James, whom he describes as a "bad man".[30] Maria open the door to Ernest's room, and finds it empty. Leaving, she again contemplates suicide. After pointing the gun at her head, she abruptly tosses it over a nearby wall and, after whispering James' name, walks into the fog to await his arrival.