Recently I’ve been fascinated with a sure big-budget horror sequel, and the various vital variations between it and its predecessor.
The first game noticed an everyman and his adopted daughter struggling to make sense of a nightmarish world – one crammed with non secular cults and his daughter’s innate capability to alter the destiny of that world. The sequel, launched a console era later, appears to be like just like the unique, however feels very completely different: it’s a game about not what you might be – a prize, a factor, a saviour – however who you might be: what you’ve performed, why you’ve performed it, and finally, whether or not you’re ready to do it once more. That game is Silent Hill 2, and The Last of Us Part 2 is – in elements – similar to it. This is an excellent factor.
Droll openers apart, it’s hanging how each games take care of how grief manifests itself on this planet across the characters; as grotesque violence in opposition to not simply their bodily wellbeing however – rather more importantly – their psychological well being too. The leads within the respective games can’t simply recover from ‘it’, as a result of ‘it’ isn’t a pandemic (broadly well-contained in Part 2) or a spiritual cult (nowhere close to as outstanding in SH2), as a result of ‘it’ is you, and the ability buildings round you. The just one approach out is to confront a grim actuality: not simply figuring out the reality, however figuring out what you’ll do whenever you discover what you had been in search of.
It’s a world the place the questions are painful and the solutions even worse. Like in The Last of Us Part 2, there isn’t a overarching international ‘mission’ within the strategic sense. In Silent Hill 2: no saving the world, no glory, no upside. As James Sunderland, you’re moving into circles in a world crammed with your individual internal turmoil over your spouse’s loss of life, in search of solace, or closure. Mostly, it by no means comes. Ellie, too, is completely misplaced, carrying a gnawing suspicion which turns into a actuality, trapping her perpetually simply as absolutely as James’s incapability to reckon together with his personal self dooms him to everlasting struggling, and low draw distances.
There’s a pivotal second where Ellie’s nemesis Abby, herself caught in a spiral of vengeance, screams virtually disbelievingly at her foe, having realised that sparing her Joel’s destiny has allowed Ellie the possibility to kill Abby’s closest buddies. ‘We let you live, and you wasted it!’ An odd selection of phrases, till you do not forget that like many victims of violence, of despair, of PTSD, merely residing is the toughest factor to do.
Which is sort of an enormous factor to say concerning the triple-A zombie game the place you craft superior gun elements out of bits of tin you present in a bed room whereas amassing baseball playing cards. But whereas The Last of Us’s loudest moments are whenever you’re all of a sudden enjoying Aliens: The Video Game or assaulting a resort, a variety of its lasting moments are quiet.
Both function a unusually stunning world, whose dominant motifs are vastly exaggerated pure occurrences which come to strangle the mundane on a regular basis: fog in Silent Hill, reclaimed nature in The Last of Us. That pure surprise is rendered in opposition to the grottiness of what went earlier than: crumbling brickwork, rotting buildings, dilapidated houses which you’ll simply inform odor like moist towels left within the drier too lengthy. That or entrails. Maybe each.
Never do the games seem extra alike than in a bit set in Seattle, as Dina and Ellie seek for gasoline to open a locked safety gate. Their mission takes them into downtown – espresso outlets and courthouses, synagogues and pet shops. You also have a very related map in each titles, used routinely to make your approach round and work out which misplaced slice of life you’re going to need to discover to unlock the subsequent a part of the maze.
The space feels curiously secure, like you possibly can’t actually be damage in any significant approach by the occasional enemies you stumble upon. Instead, the harm is completed psychologically. While James’s world is clearly metaphysical – Silent Hill being not an actual place however extra just like the cave, i.e all the things in there’s introduced in by you – simply because Ellie and Dina’s world is clearly ‘real’ doesn’t imply they too don’t fill it with their very own burdens. Much of that is expressed as incidental dialogue which belies their shattered lives.
One highly effective instance of this occurs inside a synagogue, the place Ellie’s normal lack of expertise of the world is uncovered as Dina brazenly shares tales. Then there’s the pet retailer, the place Dina sighs about how a lot she misses the pets she used to have, even when they had been mad strays. Importantly, there’s the lamentation of a misplaced future in a music store, the place the ladies muse about forming a band. Music is the throughline to a variety of The Last of Us Part 2’s massive emotional moments (Ellie and Joel are almost killed getting guitar strings, for one), but in addition its tender mercies. There’s additionally a sure scrumptious irony to the superb playable guitar, as a result of what at first looks as if a enjoyable additional brings each participant and character collectively as one: what else are you doing, if not filling an empty world with your individual previous by performing to no person however your self?
Where the games diverge is in how Silent Hill 2’s human characters are involved (or not) with escaping their previous, most of the gamers in The Last of Us Part 2 are simply attempting to get others to allow them to embrace their very own future. Silent Hill 2’s solid is primarily made up of people who find themselves punished for what they’ve performed or are affected by issues which have been performed to them (each, primarily), whereas in lots of cases The Last of Us Part 2’s solid are additionally being assaulted merely for who they’re.
Lev is hunted by his own people for being trans, whereas Ellie and Dina deal with blatant public homophobia, informed that that is ‘a family event’ as they embrace at a dance, exhibiting that whereas some issues change – the worldwide order, the idea of day-to-day residing itself – different attitudes die arduous. (They do obtain an apology of types, however that is demanded by the pinnacle of the group and seemingly not proffered by any change of coronary heart.) To this finish, they discover themselves preventing a cyclical battle: when the previous world fell, the individuals in cost rebuilt it on the identical foundations, ones the place the idea of happiness for others is outlined by how sad it makes you personally.
Ascribing intent is all the time tough, and it will be very silly to say that Naughty Dog noticed Silent Hill 2 and went, ‘Yes! Make it like that’. Regardless, each games take care of some themes you merely don’t see in big-budget video games and – mechanical similarities in Seattle apart – each deal in distress, given and acquired. Ellie, like James, is each a sufferer and instigator, a sort-of Robert Neville realising that what she believes herself to be and what she is to others merely doesn’t mesh. She can not conjure Pyramid Head or deformed nurses, however the monsters she and the remainder of the crew do unleash upon themselves with their actions are a lot, a lot worse, simply as James’s ‘bad ending’ confirmed that by refusing the admit what he had performed (murdered his dying spouse) he was doomed to repeat that cycle perpetually.
The essential distinction is that this: a minimum of Silent Hill 2 had a ‘good’ ending. No such luck for Ellie. To borrow liberally from the film Jacob’s Ladder (which Silent Hill was impressed by): essentially the most terrifying factor about Ellie’s nightmares is that she isn’t dreaming. Fun, eh.
