Few things are as thick and hazy as the fearsome, ensorcelling fog of Silent Hill. An ever-present specter, it’s a manifestation of unspeakable unfathomable terrors; the fog is something monstrously astounding.
Within the bone-white, low-hanging clouds that choke out what little fresh air remains in the once picturesque town, there’s something else: the gnashing of teeth, the squirming of twisted legs, and the breaking of bones are all heard in the background, like some sort of insidious chatter. There are dark things scurrying about in the fog, hidden from view, out of sight.
She’s here, he reasons, she’s here.
That damn letter compels otherwise unappealingly bland James Sunderland to the sleepy swath of dereliction that is Silent Hill. The letter is cruelly promising him that his wife is somehow alive in Silent Hill, waiting for him at their “special place”.
What he finds is a seemingly uninhabited town that is actually anything but: alien footsteps and dragging feet form long, caked lines of blood, messy writing on half-finished construction reveals nothing but gibberish, and sinister noises blanket the town in an antagonistic sapience. The place is alive, and it hungers for food: its very cells struggling towards the last slices of flesh from its few untwisted human beings.
Mary’s special place. Our special place.
The place is goddamn haunted, but you soldier on - hoping to find more clues about the mysterious letter. Was it actually from your dead wife?
It doesn’t matter: you’re not alone here. Unthinkable, impossible horrors lurk in the fog, and they hunger.
Yet, even as you scurry around and in turn listen to them scurry, there’s a little bit of safety in the cold, hard steel in your hands, the barrels strapped to your back, and the knives tucked in their holsters at your hip. Even as your every step crushes crackling leaves and falls on creaking floorboards - giving eerie breath to the far-too-sapient hallways of Silent Hill - these things have might; they can harm the enemy.
Security in Silent Hill is its currency: though it’s hard to manage - and while the controls are lackluster and the damage far too minimal - it’s a little bit of reassurance. No matter how many monsters come at you (and there are a lot), or how many shadowy objects skitter just out of your vision in the dark, you have the ability to fight back. You aren’t powerless.
Until you meet Pyramid Head.
You first glimpse this twisted monstrosity through bars in a corridor of the Woodside Apartments building shortly after leaving Room 208. Shortly after, there’s a scene where you witness Pyramid Head raping mannequins in Room 307, with James hiding in the closet to avoid it.
When you reach the stairwell of the Blue Creek Apartments, you have another run-in with Pyramid Head, this time as a part of a mini-boss battle. Pyramid Head doesn’t take any (noticeable) damage, cannot be killed, and can kill you with one hit of its sword. It’s only after a short period of time that a siren blares, sending it away and allowing you to get to get to safety.
As a plot device, Pyramid Head is effectively judge, jury, and executioner. Symbolic of James’ crushing remorse for the murder of his wife, Pyramid Head is a relentless, though crushingly slow being that seeks his death. A highly sexual creature that preys on mannequins, Pyramid Head is an aggressive mirror to James’ troubles with his wife prior to her murder.
As a mechanic, Pyramid Head is the final and most accentuated form of powerlessness that exists in the survival horror genre. In many instances, survival horror has completely powerless characters (Slender) or characters with limited power (Resident Evil). In most games where your protagonist is able to defend themselves, a boss character is a beefier, more powerful foe that must be destroyed in order to progress. Silent Hill 2 tricks you into believing you can win, but establishes very quickly that the fight is immensely asymmetrical.
Pyramid Head’s invincibility is tied to the plot, firmly associated with James’ sense of remorse. As his persistence grows, so does Pyramid Head’s role and invincibility, manifesting in an unstoppable, immovable force in the stairwell. Until Pyramid Head, the monsters of Silent Hill 2 are gruesome, but ultimately mortal - they could be taken down.
But not Pyramid Head.
The first confrontation with him is set up in a what seems like a boss battle: an enclosed space with a considerable amount of room to maneuver and fire, but it doesn’t work. His highly telegraphed attacks are easy to dodge, but there’s no room for error: one hit and you’re dead.
For the first time, you’re left completely helpless, at the mercy of this sadistic beast. Like a headless chicken, you’re stuck running left and right, hoping to avoid the blade as you’re uncertain of what to do. To someone unfamiliar with the fight, it’s equal parts terrifying and stressful: the safety mechanism of inflicting damage is gone, and the one-hit kill, the lack of direction and instruction, and the lack of a timer indicator magnifies any sense of oppressiveness already present in the battle.
Just as you start to wonder if there’s something you’ve missed, some tactic you need to employ, the encounter ends. A siren blares, and Pyramid Head takes one last swing at you before deciding to saunter off. For those few minutes, you’re stuck without direction. Just as suddenly as it began, the fight is over.
In a way, it’s a fine-tuned portrayal of the town’s on-and-off vile omnipotence, toying with James as he descends into his own personal purgatory. Everything about Pyramid Head paints the town as a some kind of sentient, psychopathic deity: all too willing to wrestle any sense of control, might, and agency from the player. By setting up a boss on a stage that looks like it can be defeated, only for an arbitrary siren to have established a win state, the game cleverly reinforces James’ own fragile position. You didn’t win the fight, you survived simply because the town let you survive. It’s toying with you.
Pyramid Head, like everything else in Silent Hill 2, operates according to a very linear set of rules, with specific conditions and requirements obfuscated by a conscious and clever decision to omit information on how those systems work. In this light, Pyramid Head is probably the game’s longest puzzle - more exciting than the number of limbs on an animal or the positions of a clock, and certainly more dangerous as well.
It’s an enigma, an artifact as mysterious as Silent Hill itself.
Joe Yang
@yaochongyang
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