sh2r might be the best kind of a remake we can hope for in this day and age

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different kind of a blog post today; if you have been watching the status on the front page, you may be aware that i have been on Silent Hill 2 Remake Lockdown for the past 4 days! i had a lot of disjointed thoughts on the remake and i am going to crosspost them from fedi to here.

silent hill 2 / remake spoilers BIG time ahead. you have been warned.

seriously, this is going to be a very disjointed ramble about endgame shit. turn around if you havent finished the game. okay? im going to put a little fuecoco here now and past him is the spoilers. thanks

alright. so.

this is a loosely organized version of my fediverse thread, so if you follow me there, there wont be much new to this. lets thoughtdump.

ultimately, i think this remake is a fucking masterpiece. i was really scared for it and i think they delivered.

marys letter being changed is divisive as fuck in my mind. i miss the old one. the og performance was literally lightning in a bottle, a one-take dub that could never be replicated, and i honestly dont HATE the new mary voice actor - there is a lot of line reads i think she absolutely nails. but the problems are twofold:

1, they changed the actual wording of her letter and removed the iconic "i don't want you to remember me, but i can't bear for you to forget me" line as well as made mary weirdly accepting of her fate rather than a terrified woman caught between the two,

2: they cut lines from the bedside scene in the leave ending which reflects this same problem

those lines and scenes really fucking hammered home that mary was Literally Some Woman. she was terrified. she was in pain. she was suffering. the fact marys letter is instead "im not afraid of it anymore / i just hope the pain will end" honestly kind of removes some of the moral and ethical weight behind james' actions?

--NOTE: the original text of marys letter read:
"I can't tell you to remember me, but I can't bear for you to forget me.

These last few years since I became ill... I'm so sorry for what I did to you, did to us...

You've given me so much and I haven't been able to return a single thing."

in the remake, this becomes:

"But that's okay. I'm not afraid of it anymore.

I just hope the pain will end soon.

So that you remember me for who I was. And not what the disease made me.

I want you to live. For yourself, and for others. Like you did for me."

this change is actually worse than i originally scribbled furiously on fedi imo. it really changes the entire tone of marys character and i dont like it, okay?

idk i knew they couldnt recreate the original letter read that was literally once in a lifetime. but i am annoyed they changed the letters script, and i feel like the maria/mary voice actor was sliiiiiightly out of emotion for her line reads in some pivotal moments. i still think the remake is fucking incredible, it surpassed almost all of my expectations, it is a shame that it falls just SLIGHTLY short at the finish line when imo the best part of sh2's voice acting for the whole game was the letter and final scenes with mary, so... the monkeys paw curls, i guess. its still powerful, i think if a lot of people play sh2r for the first time rather than og sh2 youll still come away very emotionally impacted, but i wish they hadnt modified some of the lines at the very end.

i just dont like mary as being portrayed as so much more... accepting? of her fate? in the letter. i dont think it fits this woman who has been lashing out rapidly cycling between furious at her fate and reasonably fucking terrified to, in what she was writing as essentially her dying will, become so complacent to her fate. it does change the tone of the game significantly and i dont Like It. i dont think this ruins the remake for me, but it definitely is a pretty fucking big damper on what was otherwise imo a masterpiece in remaking a game in the modern era. this surpassed all of my admittedly pretty high expectations and i havent really reconciled my feelings on feeling like it dropped it at the very, very end?

it does make me wonder if the original intent WAS for james to come across as more sympathetic than he did and if that is the reason for the lines removing marys general fear of dying and conflicted emotions i think thats a stupid intent. but. overall, this was like a 9.5/10 if the og is a 10/10 to me, and the ends still made me tear up. i will say and this might be a controversial opinion but outside of mary i think i preferred the remakes voice direction for every other character. ESPECIALLY laura she sounds like a real child now lmao. mary being the outlier is a genuine shame, and i say mary over mary/maria because i feel like the va was honestly more In Tune with marias vibes?

do i think i would recommend sh2r over sh2 for the first-time experience of silent hill 2's story? i dont know. ive been turning this around in my head constantly since finishing the remake. genuinely i feel like the optimal viewing experience is specifically 99% of the remake, and then you switch to sh2 for mary's letter & the hallway scene before you reach the rooftop of the lakeview hotel. it is frustrating me to the end of the world and back that the remake dropped the ball on probably THE scene that brought together the og's voice acting into a beautiful, justified web. in a remake where every other voice actor feels vastly, vastly fucking improved (and im not even a hater of the original voice acting!) it is really such a shame that marys voice actor fell short at the finish line - but also, i genuinely wonder if it was a fair setup that they gave her? can you recapture the original voice actors raw passion and single takes that she did that were literally lightning in a bottle? i do feel like she was set up to fail, a bit, and it is really, really hard to reconcile that i think.

hard to know. hard to come to a conclusion. i think this game was a masterpiece. i also feel like you NEED to experience the original still.

anyways why do i say this is a masterpiece in remaking a game? because it somehow fucking captures the vibe of the entire original game, expands on it a bit without losing the plot and feeling genuinely like something that would fit in the original, the voice actors sincerely threw their fucking heart into it for this game, the combat is improved (for silent hill.)... it is literally everything i wanted for a remake. i fucking love this remake. i just dont know if it replaces the og the way you might be able to seamlessly replace your r/b with fr/lg for example.

idk. play silent hill 2, the og and the remake. i will be observing konami and bteams progress with great interest. thanks for coming to my ted talk

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