Blog Post 8: Final Project

For my final project, I made a presentation on the video game Silent Hill 2, with the aim to argue for it as a masterpiece of the artform. Silent Hill 2 was published by Konami in 2001, at a time where mainstream games were just barely transitioning to telling more mature stories. In order to accomplish this, I replayed the game in its entirety to keep it fresh in my mind, stopping where necessary to take screenshots of the game during moments that are relevant to my topic. This playthrough took me about 6 hours, though a typical first timer may take longer. Along the way I took notes and set save-points in my emulator at points of interest, so that they could be used to bolster my argument. Although I later felt that playing the whole game would be required to to fully allow the audience to appreciate it — so ultimately I decided on presenting just one scene towards the end of the game, wherein we listen in on a conversation between our protagonist and his late wife. I also made sure to mention how the player can choose to run through the area and skip this conversation, which does have an impact on what ending the player can get. There are many other small details like this in the game, which all change the ending of the story. For a game released twenty years ago, I feel that’s remarkable. This game is utterly beautiful, in a sad and bleak sort of way, and it leaves it up to the player whether or not to sympathize with our protagonist. I believe anyone who is interested in story telling and world building in games should play this.