Note: This article contains spoilers for the story of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 2 Remake. Read on at your own risk.

Silent Hill 2 players have been speculating about what’s really going on in the game since its release in 2001. Even on its most surface level, it’s impossible to say definitively what’s happening to protagonist James Sunderland. Is he trapped in a hallucinatory nightmare of grief and guilt? Has he wandered into some kind of supernatural space situated around a small American town, created by cultists and elder gods? Or is he dead and in Hell, paying for his sins?

Expanding the Story

With Silent Hill 2 Remake, developer Bloober Team seems to provide more details and clues related to those questions. In doing so, the developer has expanded the story of Silent Hill 2. The remake, it seems, isn’t just a revision of the story–it’s an expansion of the original, existing separately from the original Silent Hill 2. In the same way that Final Fantasy VII Remake revisits the same story while adding to it to make something new, Silent Hill 2 Remake is a secret sequel of Silent Hill 2.

The original Silent Hill 2 included several hints that what James was experiencing was something more than it appeared to be. Wandering through the town, players would come across several bodies of people apparently killed by the vicious monsters James repeatedly fights off. What was weird about these bodies, though, was that while their faces and heads were often covered or obscured, fans noticed that they often seemed to be wearing bloodied versions of James’s clothes.

Evidence in the Game

In the 2001 Silent Hill 2, it’s a little bit tough to tell what’s going on with this choice–did the developers intend for players to see just a bunch of nondescript bodies, and used the James character model as a cost-saving measure, because the game just didn’t really include many other characters? Or were these bodies meant to be a subtle hint at something deeper happening in Silent Hill? A theory developed around the latter, culminating with a particular body in the Wood Side Apartments building, which appears to have died by suicide, and though their face is covered, they look suspiciously like James Sunderland. It’s a theory of the game that suggests James is already dead.

Silent Hill 2 Remake makes some changes to the elements of the Silent Hill 2’s story, puzzles, and combat, but it’s still pretty faithful to the broad strokes of the original tale. In fact, as you navigate through the town in the remake, you’ll find bodies killed by monsters. And just like in the original game, those bodies look a lot like James Sunderland.

Scattered throughout the town are notes, usually found near those bodies, scrawled in a bloody and manic hand. Several have the same messages as were seen in the original game, but there are more in the Remake. They suggest these other people were also trapped in Silent Hill, and for some, apparently for a long period of time. A few leave behind warnings and information, such as a map of Silent Hill like the one James carries that’s annotated in the same way he marks up his own. Some speak directly to the reader, hoping you can use what was learned before you to move ahead.

The more of them you read, though, the more they sound like they were written with James in mind.