Whether it’s the original or the remake, I can’t unsee Silent Hill 2’s wonky parking
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This article contains spoilers for Silent Hill 2, including some of the game’s endings.
In my restless dreams, I see that stupid selfish parking lot pig, James Sunderland. That’s not exactly how Silent Hill 2 works, but I can’t stop thinking about protagonist James’ terrible, terrible parking lot.
As with many things, this disturbing revelation started with Twitter. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve played Konami Y silent team‘s famous survival horror, but I guess it was okay in double figures. In all that time, I never thought twice about the way James left his car, taking up a space clearly intended for a larger vehicle.
but thanks to this tweetArguing that the recently announced remake “fixed James’ horrible parking lot at the beginning”, I absolutely can’t stop watching it and it sent me down a mental rabbit hole as murky as the foggy streets of Silent Hill.
Admittedly, bad parking is something that really turns me on. As Alice Cooper sang, “It’s just the little things that drive me crazy,” and my instinct, seeing a car parked on the markings, is to park close enough that they have to go through the passenger door.
Is that ridiculously petty? Yes. Does it leave me with a warm, fuzzy glow? Also if. So when I realized this revelation, I began to see James in a different light. My hatred started out small, but the more I thought about his lack of respect for others, the more it grew and grew.
Forget any pillow-related transgressions I may have committed, poor parking was the real offense. Maybe the real reason Pyramid Head was harassing James was because he wanted him to move his car. He just couldn’t balance his Traffic Warden cap on that pointy head of his.
With this newfound knowledge and a head full of resentment, I chose to play Silent Hill 2 again, just to make sure it wasn’t bothering me too much. I do not help. She had forgotten that James had left his car door open, so she had something else to think about as she left the overlook rest area and headed down the forest path.
Normally, I’d be wondering if, despite playing the game to death, this would be the moment something jumped out of the woods at me. Instead, I internally complained about James’ lack of consideration. Yes, James was supposedly in mourning, but he was still baffled by the thought process that would lead to this kind of parking calamity.
“Wait…” you might be thinking… “Isn’t Silent Hill completely abandoned?” You might think so, but it’s canon that Silent Hill is still inhabited. Foggy Silent Hill and Otherworld Silent Hill are the stuff of nightmares, but there’s also a regular, populated Silent Hill.
And, since Maria’s ending from Silent Hill 2 shows James’ car sitting on a fogless Silent Hill, there is at least one setting where she exists in the normal world. Perhaps a family of four stopped by, wanting a break, only to find there was nowhere to put their mobile home. Forget the Silent Hill 2 episode Born of a Wish, how about an add-on where you can wander around town, find a garbage truck and park it right behind your car? Take that, you loose-haired, guilt-ridden asshole.
At least, that’s how I used to view James’ selfishness and/or lack of parking skills. Either he was so inept that he couldn’t park in the regular spaces, or he actively chose to be a jerk. I even imagined that the ending on the water had James crashing into someone’s boat before landing on Toluca Lake.
But then something occurred to me. What if it wasn’t that I was overthinking the situation, I just wasn’t reading enough? After all, Silent Hill 2 is packed with little touches. Some are designed to disturb you, while others are clues to what’s really going on with James.
Take the body you find at Wood Side/Blue Creek apartments. In plain sight they took their own lives, another lost or guilty soul summoned to Silent Hill. But the body, darkened as it is with blood, is James’s. Then there is the symbolism of the various monsters you encounter. They are summoned or at least shaped by James’s subconscious, revealing more about James than he is willing to admit. What if his space hogging is just as revealing?
The In Water ending is the generally accepted canon ending, certainly going through Silent Hill 4. So on some level he knew he wasn’t going to get much more out of his car. And if he wasn’t there when he returned, he would have found some other method to end his life.
So James’s sloppy parking may be literally just that: He doesn’t care, and it’s not just because he’s mourning the loss of his wife Mary. While he doesn’t admit guilt to himself until much, much later in the game, he subconsciously feels that he deserves to be judged. He doesn’t plan to come back, not really. Actually, now that I really think about it, assuming he’s a complete jerk is the least depressing option.
Whether or not it discusses James Sunderland’s parking lot crimes too much, it’ll bother me at least until the Silent Hill 2 remake comes out. As for the remake, despite @Shanksspeare’s claim, there’s still a diagonal cantilever, which raises its own questions. Is it just a coincidence? Or has Bloober decided to mirror, to a lesser degree, the parking atrocity of the original Silent Hill 2? Either way, I can already feel my eye twitching.
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