There's a double-edged sword that comes with legendary games, and it's how impossible it can be to replicate that success. Both Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil 2 represent stellar entries in the Resident Evil timeline and the best Silent Hill games respectively, and for that reason, they've become time-tested titans of the genre.
That's why Capcom took a gamble when it decided to remake its most famous game ever. Thankfully, when Resident Evil 2 Remake landed in 2019, it pretty much wrote the book on how to remake one of the best survival horror games of all time. It's all about a fine balance of innovation, homage, and evolution – and with Silent Hill 2 Remake now launching to similar acclaim, it demonstrates how both Konami and Capcom went about the act in two different ways. You don't even need to play the games in full to see what I'm talking about. The evidence can be found in the first half hour of each.
Worlds apart
Silent Hill 2 Remake review: "An atmospheric and rewarding horror game"
Resident Evil 2 is flat-out iconic. Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield's first foray onto our consoles was atmospheric and creepy enough back in 1998, building the air of suspense and horror that went on to edify its place among the survival horror greats. But in its 2019 remake, Capcom went the extra mile to pad the experience out further still by adding something very important: context. Both games begin, more or less, with a man in a truck. The original sees the trucker driving alone while grumbling to no one in particular, staunching a wound and complaining about the nasty bite he just received. But in the remake, we get to see how this man got bitten in the first place.
A conversation on a radio talk show about a man getting attacked himself is interspersed with the trucker chowing down a grey-tinged hamburger, foreshadowing the zombie-infested streets of Raccoon City before we even see them. When he accidentally runs over one of said zombies and gets out of the car to help her, his fate is sealed. Even tiny moments like these feel important to Resident Evil 2 Remake. Brave, even, considering that Capcom was reworking the most famous Resi game ever, showing no qualms about expanding on its work at the same time. Capcom wanted to take time setting the scene, giving us some more exposition before introducing Leon, and it absolutely pays off.
The effect is that Resident Evil 2 Remake doesn't come across like a beat-for-beat copy of the original game, but an honest move to evolve it. We see this commitment to subtle yet meaningful changes again in Leon's introduction. Both games see him pulling up to an abandoned gas station – in his civvies in the remake, rather than already kitted out in his RCPD uniform. Upon hearing a strange noise, though, the 2019 version has Leon venture inside to investigate. Not only does this open up more of the world surrounding Raccoon City for the player to examine, giving us a greater understanding of its inhabitants as well as a richer sense of place, but it teaches us more about our playable character. Leon is a courageous rookie cop, sure, but his frequent expletive cries also prove him absolutely terrified – though Capcom makes sure to signpost that he's still the same flashy bastard we know and love from the original, as he orders Claire to "get down" before shooting the lunging zombie behind her square between the eyes. All of this happens in the first ten minutes of Leon's path A variant, and already, it's doing everything a remake should: innovating with something new, evolving what's already there, and paying homage to the brilliance that came before.
Deja-view from the bridge
Silent Hill 2 is such a faithful remake that it shies away from adding almost any new context clues or narrative.
Silent Hill 2, on the other hand, feels a little more hesitant. Where Resident Evil 2 Remake allows for moments of complete newness, reframing and expanding upon its narrative to add as well as recreate, developer Bloober Team goes easy on the newness in the name of accuracy. Aside from some clever Easter eggs, Silent Hill 2 is such a faithful remake that it shies away from adding almost any new context clues or narrative threads to its mysterious world, preferring instead to flesh out existing details lifted from the 2001 original and translating them to Capcom's third-person action perspective as popularized by the RE2 Remake.
Again, we see as much in Silent Hill 2's opening salvo. From the grimy public bathroom to the letter from Mary, Bloober's commitment to source text loyalty has been acknowledged and appreciated by ardent fans. Everything about the first half hour plays out almost identically to the original, with the exception of some new puzzles and areas of exploration. While these moments do help situate the game, giving the town distinct a personality as we uncover more of its nooks and crannies, they feel more decorative than active. I don't feel I understand James any better than I did before. I don't feel the world of Silent Hill 2 has changed or evolved since 2001. Nothing is ostensibly new to me in Silent Hill 2 Remake, and if that level of content preservation was kind of the whole point, then Bloober smashed it out the park
I understand the hesitation on Bloober and Konami's side when it comes to rejigging anything from the original. The hair-trigger sensitivities of Silent Hill 2's passionate fanbase makes touching anything at all a bit of a risk. You only need to look at the discourse surrounding Mary's wardrobe change and Angela's character model to see how much this game means to its fans, and there's something refreshing about how both Konami and Bloober Team respect them so much.
Silent Hill 2 is a remake in its purest form, down to a shot-for-shot story trailer. It's the ultimate homage to its source material, so much so that it purposely sidesteps the need to evolve or innovate. On the other hand, Resident Evil 2 Remake ambitiously pushes all three factors for a very different mix. Neither is the right or wrong way to concoct a survival horror remake, necessarily, but it never ceases to fascinate me how malleable the horror genre can be – especially when it comes to reworking the greats.
There's plenty more where Silent Hill 2 came from on our list of upcoming horror games to watch for this year and beyond.
