Room 109 : Silent Hill 2
There isn’t a word that’s satisfactory for communicating being tremendously happy and soul crushingly sad at the same time. English is such a poor language, and it’s often more than a little frustrating that it was my first and(mostly) only one to learn. I’m not saying some other culture has strung the right collection of sounds, morphemes, and characters together to create the word that I’m searching for, it’s just I’d like to imagine someone has created it so that I can finally explain the emotion that takes me when I walk into Room 109 of Woodside Apartments and hear the first few notes of the song Promise(Reprise) by Akira Yamaoka.
I wish, terribly, that there was a word for the emotion that consumes me when I hear Angela’s voice say the words, “Oh, it’s you.”
Silent Hill 2 was developed by Team Silent following the success of the first Silent Hill videogame and published by Konami 25 September 2001 for the Playstation 2, Xbox, and Windows personal computers. The game has, since its creation and release become a milestone in the history of videogames, regularly appears on lists of greatest games of all time, and I’m not offering any hyperbole here when I write, the single most important and influential piece of media I’ve ever experienced.
The narrative is about a man named James Sunderland who’s returned to the town of Silent Hill looking for his wife who’s recently sent him a letter informing him that she is waiting for him there.
The only problem is that Mary’s been dead for three years.
I have volumes of opinions, ideas, and analysis of this incredible videogame constantly buzzing in the steadily aging gray matter of my brain, but having recently started playing it on a Playstation 2 Emulator (specifically the PCSX2) I was struck by how much the game actually has impacted me emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, and spiritually. It’s important to note I never played Silent Hill 2 on my Playstation 2, and in fact I didn’t know about the game until I was in my mid-20s when a friend told me that he wanted to show the game to me because, in his words, “It’s the Citizen Kane of videogames.”
I love my friend Michael very much, but Tim Rogers was right, DOOM is actually the Citizen Kane of videogames.
But, Silent Hill 2 is still my favorite videogame, and in Michael’s defense if he hadn’t invited me to his place to watch him play the game I don’t know where I would be in this life of mine.
Then again, given my issues with perceiving reality, I don’t know where I am now, so that sentence (like this one) is largely irrelevant.
What is relevant is Room 109 of the Woodside Apartment complex in the town of Silent Hill because it is, arguably, one of the horrific scenes in any videogame in the history of the genre. And not for any of the reasons the reader may assume.Rather than the macabre or grotesque, the scene is horrific because of a young woman named Angela.
Though before I discuss Room 109, it’s important to understand the player’s original interaction with her since it sets the rhetorical and mechanical stage for the later sequence.
James arrives outside the town of Silent Hill, has a few introspective moments about Mary, has a hauntingly iconic moment looking in the mirror of a public restroom, and then walks to a path that leads into the town. After navigating a long path that’s shrouded with fog on both sides (and populated by the occasional sounds of some unseen snarling beast)James arrives at a cemetery. Looking around it’s seemingly empty until the figure of a young woman with brown hair wearing burgundy pants and a beige top is crouched by a tombstone. When I approach, a cutscene plays in which James accidentally scares this woman. He apologizes and announces that he’s lost. A brief conversation follows and the woman tells James that her name is Angela. After a few more lines, Angela tells James she’s looking for her mother (though she uses the word “Mama” first in a foreshadowing freudian slip) and then warns James about the town of Silent Hill because, “There’s something wrong with it.”
This is the first character besides James that I encounter in Silent Hill 2 and it’s the first time I get a chance to listen to these characters interact with dialog.
Simply put it’s…strange.
Or, it is until I begin to learn more about this town and the people in it.
The dialog in Silent Hill 2 was, and sometimes still is, hastily criticized because it doesn’t come across as “normal” (whatever the flip that means). Players in 2001 and today were and are familiar with voice acting in videogames and thus had and have expectations about how the ebb and flow of humans interacting through dialog “should '' sound. Dialog in Silent Hill 2 is a shining example however of why expectations can ruin the reception of works of media. The dialog in Silent Hill 2 is not “normal” because the characters are not “normal” people; they’re individuals who have experienced a ludicrous amount of pain.
If you look at the delivery of dialog between characters in a game like Baldur’s Gate 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Cyberpunk 2077, or any Borderlands game it’s sure to strike the player’s ear as “normal.” Dialog in the previously listed videogames are typically delivered with agency and natural rhythm because they serve the purpose of inviting the player into the world, and making the characters entertaining, captivating, or exciting. Even in Resident Evil videogames, where the player is experiencing horrific visuals and events, the characters speak in a familiar register.
Silent Hill videogames lack this comforting structure.
This is because Silent Hill videogames are about psychologically damaged people, and how reality bends in and around them.
While I was writing this essay I thought about the book Silent Hill 2 by Mike Drucker which is part of the Boss Fight Books series. I’ve written a few reviews about several of the books in that series, and I intend to review Drucker’s book as well in its own essay, but for now I wanted to look at a few passages from the chapter aptly titled “Angela Did Nothing Wrong.” Drucker writes in one paragraph about the delivery of the dialog, and why it hits so many players’ ears as bizarre. He writes:
This conversation is bizarre on a first playthrough. Both characters seem cagey and confused, the voice acting elevating the game’s sense of unreality. Angela's sounds out of time and place while James is oblivious. Neither is capable of listening to the other, and both seem vaguely disturbed by the other's presence. Angela is looking for her mother in a graveyard, James is looking for his wife in a dead town, and neither seems capable of helping the other. (62).
From the first meeting when James surprises her in the graveyard outside of Silent Hill Angela is reticent, paranoid, and socially awkward. This is something that, with the exception of Laura the little girl who was friends with James’s wife Mary, all of the characters in the game demonstrate to some degree. James is an awkward man with occasional bursts of anger and Eddie, the plus-sized man first encountered in the game when I find him vomiting into a toilet, steadily becomes more and more anti-social and borderline psychotic. Angela’s behavior over the course of the game also becomes increasingly erratic as the game goes on until we eventually learn why.
James will leave the graveyard and navigate his way to Wayside Apartments. While he’s exploring the building to try and find a way to the hotel across the lake where Mary is supposedly waiting for him, he’ll navigate a maze of ruined rooms, meet Eddie, acquire a flashlight and a handgun, stick his arm into a clogged toilet, observe some strange red pyramid thing staring at him from behind some metal bars, and then stumble into room 109.
At this point a cutscene will trigger.
Angela’s lying huddled on her side in front of a wall length mirror.
She’s holding a knife in front of her face.
Her expression is distant, almost emotionless, but the body language conveys everything to the player.
When I encountered Angela in the graveyard she came across as being nervous for some unspecified reason. When I walk into room 109 that nervousness has disappeared, and there’s a tragic conviction as it’s clear that Angela is contemplating self-harm or outright suicide.
And here I need to address spoilers, and genre analysis.
Silent Hill 2 is a horror videogame, and the genre of horror, by its definition and general aesthetic, leads players and watchers with the understanding that they will be encountering situations and people who will experience some form of pain. Depending on the type of horror this could include anything from a few small scares, intense situations, and even horrendous violence. Easy examples of the latter category are games like Resident Evil VII and Outlast. Both of these games involve characters trying to avoid threats of physical harm and include graphic sequences of outright violence ranging from characters being shot, stabbed, tortured, or ripped to shreds with a chainsaw. By contrast, and I know I’m going to lose someone here, Luigi's Mansion for Nintendo Gamecube is also a horror game. The horror in that particular videogame seems pale when compared with the previous titles, but it’s important to remember that horror at its core is creating an aesthetic reaction based in and around discomfort. When I played Luigi’s Mansion I wasn’t scared the way I was when I tried to play Resident Evil VII, but the game did create a general concern either because ghosts would randomly appear from nowhere and surprise me, or because the music and atmosphere projected unease.
Also, gonna plant this flag here, the room where Luigi has to catch the ghosts that will strangle him, but he can only start catching them when he sees their reflection in a mirror (why is it always a stinkin mirror man), that, that malarky…that messed me up dude.
Twenty years later I STILL hate that room.
Moving on.
Horror as a genre attacks the player psychologically, and the Silent Hill franchise made a name (and a brand) for itself by hitting the player that way through exploring emotional disturbance.
Angela is planning on taking her own life because she’s been the regular victim of sexual assault by her father and brother. This cycle of rape continued until Angela, as we learn later in the game, killed her father and brother in self defense. And what’s worse is that she blames herself.
Looking at a few lines of dialog between James and Angela this becomes apparent.
James: Angela…okay. I don’t know what you’re planning, but there’s always another way.
Angela: Really? But… You’re the same as me. It’s easier just to run. Besides, it’s what we deserve.
Going back to Drucker’s book I found again and again a lot of valuable insight into Angela’s internal struggle. Drucker is honest about his own experiences being the victim of sexual assault, and this gives him insight into why Angela acts and behaves the way she does. Looking at the previous line Drucker offers a keen analysis when he writes:
The easy and partially correct interpretation is the most obvious one. Everyone in Silent Hill did something wrong. There's an original sin that lands you there, doomed to suffer for all eternity. They deserve it.
But it also describes the sense of shame and self hatred that stems from abuse. Angela isn't sad, she's suicidal. The mirror symbolizes Angela turning inward as she contemplates the value of her own life. She blames herself. The game lets us assume that Angela's search for her mother must parallel James' search for his wife. And if she deserves to suffer, that mean James does too. (64).
The town of Silent Hill is as much a character in the game as James and Angela are because it has a constant, almost claustrophobic presence, and as I explore the town and encounter monster-after-monster and learn more about the few souls who seem to be here with James I begin to understand how this town is operating at a narrative and mechanical level. James, Angela, Eddie, and even to some extent Laura are here because they’ve been “called” to this place. And once they’ve arrived they’ve been exposed to highly personal torments.
In Angela’s case she finds herself lost in a town trying to find her way back to her mother, but keeps getting lost and distracted by the guilt, both from being a victim of assault, as well as ultimately defending herself from her attacker.
Drucker examines how Silent Hill’s presence and nature affects Angela when he writes:
Imagine that emotion has been turned into a physical place, a physical manifestation of not just the abuse itself, but also the ways in which you doubt yourself and lash out at others because of that abuse. A place where you could relive your trauma and push back against it, getting caught deeper and deeper as you go.
With its confining geography and enemies matched to trauma, that's what the town of Silent Hill does to its visitors. And of all of those characters, Angela Orosco is easily the most tragic.(60).
Room 109 is difficult because, from a mechanical perspective it doesn’t offer the player anything in the way of choices; Room 109 is solely a narrative structure in the game. All of the interactions between James and Angela is one uninterrupted cutscene that ends with Angela giving James the knife, almost attacking him when he steps close to her, placing the knife down on a nearby table, and then crying and apologizing as she goes through a door leaving James alone in the room with the knife.
The lack of ability to talk to Angela, or influence James in any way however speaks to how cutscenes can work as an in-game mechanic for driving narrative goals. James is observing Angela’s struggle with her own guilt and suicidal thoughts, and while he offers her some kind of condolence to her, the distance between them reveals his own selfishness and how the player is steadily becoming aware of a general sense of helplessness.
Horror works when it leaves the player not just scared of the “spooky” aesthetics, but when it creates a sense of dread that something may happen that they will not be prepared for.
I wasn’t prepared for Room 109 the first time I watched it.
And to be honest, I wasn’t prepared for it when I finally played it either. Once the game gave me back controls, I paused and I cried. I cried for a long time too.
Angela’s story is a painful one because in every interaction between her and James the player is left powerless in terms of being able to alter the course of her fate. By comparison, in-game choices will ultimately determine the conclusion of the game and how James will leave the town of Silent Hill. This will involve tragic endings, morally ambiguous endings, and in some cases absurd endings that are designed to subvert and parody the tragedy the player experienced. Every choice that I make as a player can affect whether or not I save James.
There’s nothing I can do to save Angela; I can only watch her sink into her own oblivion and pain. It’s arguably the most horrific aspect of Silent Hill 2.
At its core, the genre of horror works to create artificial environments where players, viewers, and readers can observe another human being losing their agency. When done right this creates a powerful sense of empathy because human beings are social animals. We crave community, and watching another human being suffer unnecessarily disturbs us. By the time a player reaches Room 109 most of the superficial elements of the horror aesthetic have been established. I’ve wandered through an empty town, I’ve found notes left behind by people who are dead, I’ve met one or two people who seem off psychologically, and I’ve encountered monsters who are grotesque and trying to kill me. These elements however, when employed differently could create comedy rather than horror. As soon I step into Room 109, I’m greeted by actual horror, the kind that digs under my skin and leaves me with a profound sense of fear and sadness.
Playing Silent Hill 2, or watching it on YouTube, I always come away with the thought that I want so much to help Angela in any way that I could, but I’m denied that option and instead follow James on his quest to find his wife.
It’s horrific, and I’m incapable of stopping it.
Above any element in Silent Hill 2, Room 109 is a masterstroke of how horror can and should be created. While jumpscares and spooky aesthetics can create beautiful atmospheres that create enjoyable games, the design choices of Silent Hill 2 stick in my memory because of how deeply they resonate in my brain. For perspective, I haven’t thought about any videogame as much as I’ve thought about Silent Hill 2. It’s a videogame that makes me tremendously happy that it exists, and also sad for the contents of its story. It’s a videogame that endlessly inspires joy for the seemingly endless intellectual curiosity in me, and sadness as I understand it’s ever growing disconnect from the culture at large. It’s a videogame that makes me happy for its presentation of flawed humanity, and it makes me sad as I watch people like James, Laura, Eddie, and Angela who are broken and falling deeper into a manifestation of reality that will ultimately destroy them.
On a more personal level, Silent Hill 2 makes me happy that I had a friend who knew or trusted me enough to share this incredible videogame with me. He showed me the full playthrough, and he told me about the previous games, and I distinctly recall plans for me to come over and watch him play Silent Hill, Silent Hill 3, and then Silent Hill: The Room. Those plans went nowhere because of life, a baby, and a pandemic. It was fun ordering pizza, talking about Twin Peaks, sharing thoughts about videogames we played or were playing or wanted to play, and then just talking about what just happened in the game. When I think of Silent Hill 2, I think of my friend Michael. It makes me happy that I had those moments with him, and it makes me sad that he no longer lives in the same town as me, and how all too soon he’ll be leaving the country completely. I’ll probably never see him again.
So, I’ll repeat what I observed at the start of this essay, walking into Room 109 and hearing the song Promise leaves me with an emotion that, as of this writing, has no definitive name. It’s a blend of overwhelming happiness and sadness as I see the shape of Angela huddled into a ball in front of the mirror considering the weight of the knife in her hand.
A collection of code saved onto a compact disc helped me discover a human being who suffered for no good reason, and I was, and am left horrified that I’m powerless to change her fate.
I’m sorry Angela.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
2.3.2025
If you want to read Mike Drucker’s book for yourself you can buy a copy on Boss Fight Books website by following the link below:
Silent Hill 2 by Mike Drucker – Boss Fight Books
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