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Silent Hill 2 Remakeachieved the impossible task of somehow making a faithful remake while adding in a healthy degree of brand-new flourishes to make the game feel like its own new experience. With that came two brand-new endings to unlock.
Those endings are very interesting because they feel genuine, rather than more joke endings like the UFO and Dog endings. So what exactly do these endings mean for James and Mary? Though we can’t say for certain, we can definitely make it a bit clearer.
The Bliss Ending, Explained
One of the new endings added in the Silent Hill 2 Remake isthe Bliss ending. Like the Stillness ending, it is a rather complicated process to unlock, and can only be seen in aNew Game Plus run. That said, the ending itself is unlike any other the game offers, and gives an interestingglimpse into both James' psyche, and the wider lore of Silent Hillas well.
What Is White Claudia?
To trigger the Bliss ending,James must drink the White Claudia he obtains in Brookhaven Hospital. However, the rest of the game makes no mention of White Claudia. So what exactly is it? White Claudia is most prominently mentioned in the original Silent Hill, where it is used to createa drug known as PTVwhich is used prominently by The Order in its various rituals.
White Claudia’s seeds areseen as being hallucinogenic, inducing visions in any who consumes them. This is what led The Order to harvesting them. The White Claudia is native to the surrounding of Toluca Lake, only furthering the religious prominence of them in the eyes of The Order.
So how does it end up in Brookhaven Hospital? In the original game, Michael Kaufmann sells PTV on the side to line his own pockets,allowing The Order to use his hospitalunfettered in exchange. One of his own nurses was addicted to the substance, making it a prominent product within the hospital. As such, it’s not too far-fetched to assume it would end up in Brookhaven Hospital.
White Claudia has never been seen in a liquefied form like this. It has either been the raw plant, or processed into the PTV drug. Clearly, however, even in a less-processed liquid form,the White Claudia still has hallucinogenic properties.
What Happens To James?
In the Bliss ending, the videotape begins much like it does in the other standard endings. James sits down to watch the tape, prepared to witness his sin. Yet when it comes to the point when Mary is meant to cough, she just smiles and asks James if they could return to Silent Hill in future.He suddenly puts down the camera and enters the frame himself, an ahistorical event. So what exactly happens here?
White Claudia is a hallucinogenic drug, of which James consumed prior to the tape. In the simplest viewing of this ending,James is literally just hallucinating. None of what you see after he drinks the White Claudia can be trusted, not even the contents of the tape. This can only be seen in New Game Plus as well, so you are guaranteed to already know the genuine contents of the tape.
What is notable in this updated video tape is thatMary no longer coughs, not once in the rest of the video. In the bliss induced by the White Claudia, he hasinvented a past that never actually happened. In this world, Mary never got sick. James never killed her. They revisit Silent Hill like he promised her they would. Everything is happy ever after, forever. Until death do they part.
When we return to reality,James is nowhere to be seen. There’s no definitive way of answering this. James may have simply left the room, satisfied with his conclusion. He may have died himself, happy now to rejoin Mary in death. Or simply, it is a metaphor to tell us thatJames no longer lives in any world adjacent to realitybut within his own mind, in the bliss of not acknowledging his own actions.
Does James Change The Past?
We could, however, look at this from another perspective. What if the reason that James is not seen in his hotel room after the videotape ends is becausehe was never there in the first place? What if, in consuming the White Claudia and entering his own mind, he stopped the events of Silent Hill 2 from occurring in the first place?
While it is distinctly possible this is overthinking the ending, bypassing what are some strong themes, it is fun to theorise on. Those who are pulled to Silent Hill are made toface their sins and pass judgement upon themselves. We see Angela deal with the abuse and murder of her father, Eddie with the trauma inflicted by him by bullies, and James with the death of his wife. Yet ifin James' head Mary never died,why would he be drawn to Silent Hill?
He no longer feels guilt becausethe White Claudia allowed him to fashion a world in which those events never occurred. And since they never happened, there is nothing to punish. While this does not actually change what happened in the past, it does perhaps present the idea that in forgiving himself preemptively, there is no punishment to be doled out. So James is no longer in Silent Hill.
The Stillness Ending, Explained
Stillness is the second of the new endings added in Silent Hill 2 Remake, as well asthe most complex to triggerin the first place. It requires some seriously obscure items, and overrides any other ending that could place. It’s one that the game wants you to see if you’ve went to the effort of achieving all of its conditions. So what exactly happens in this ending?
Is Stillness An Extended In Water Ending?
Unlike the majority of the extra endings,Stillness requires you still go to the very end of the gameand defeat Maria once you’ve picked up the Toluca Postcard. The whole sequence leading into the Stillness ending, such as the conversation with Maria,flows identically as it would in the In Water ending, and it’s not until after she’s defeated may you know the ending is any different. In fact, you might not even know then.
When the scene cuts to James sat in his car, it opens in the exact same fashion as the In Water ending, following similar dialogueuntil the moment when Mary appears to comfort him. At this point, James no longer talks to himself but has a back and forth with Mary, though disjointed.We never see her fully, only parts of her such as her hands or a reflection of her smile. After all this, the ending goes much the same with the screen fading to black followed by the sounds of James' car plummeting into Toluca Lake.
So then, is Stillness just the In Water ending but with some extra added dialogue from Mary? Well, not quite. At first glance, that would appear to be the case. It could be assumed that Mary speaking is really justJames summoning up a vision of her to forgive himand grant him some solace in death. She even says she was always waiting for him, even though the letter as we saw in previous endings urges him to keep living.
SoStillness isn’t an extended version of In Water, even if it ultimately ends the same. Instead, it’s more ofa different interpretation of the In Water ending where James cannot forgive himselfand views death as the only way of paying penance for what he did to Mary. He holds that she still loves him through this figment of his imagination. James dies no matter what, butStillness offers him some extra closure, even if it isn’t genuine.
What Is The Relevance Of The Toluca Postcard?
After collecting the Key of Sorrow and working out the code for the safe in the Otherworld Lakeview Hotel, James acquires the Toluca Lake Postcard. This is the key to accessing the Stillness ending, and nothing else. Sowhat makes it so important, and how does it relate to the ending?
Yet that framing might not be the correct way to look at it. Instead,the Toluca Postcard is the culmination of James' journey, rather than the ends justifying the means. The Stillness ending can only be acquired after the In Water has first been achieved, meaning you’ll have seen the full letter from Mary, the one that James has always had in his possession.
So why Toluca? Both endings have James plummet into the lake, and the postcard even says ‘a place you’ll always return to’. Yet before he achieves the postcard, he must have fallen into the lake once already. And where do you get the Key of Sorrow?In the backseat of a green car very similar to the one James drives. The numbers for the safe are also spread across various books talking about hotels and tenants. It’sall recurring elements to James.
The Toluca Postcard is a reminder, just like every other item he achieved to get it was. That ultimately,his journey will end in Toluca Lake. A running theory prior to the game’s release was that the remake wouldfocus on a timeloop story, showing James cyclically stuck in Silent Hill. While that may not strictly be the case, the Stillness ending perhaps showcaseshow easy it is for James to make the same mistakes, just like how the Maria ending does.
Is Mary Really There?
One of the most distinct differences in the Stillness ending compared to the In Water ending isthe presence of Mary. Is she really there though? In reality, no.Mary is dead and there is no changing that. A theory held over from the original game is thatMary’s corpse was in the backseat of James' car from the very beginning of the game, a theory that the remake seems to make much clearer.
In the In Water ending,you can see James focus on the backseatafter acknowledging that Mary is not really there, with a blurred blanket seen. You can actually see this in the backseat of the car at the very beginning as well. Mary was there all along, just dead. In the Stillness ending,James noticeably does not glance behind himself, perhaps so as not to ruin the illusion that Mary is not actually there at all. If he looks behind himself he would just see a reminder of his own actions.
Mary is dead, but the version James sees may not strictly be Mary, either. James looks at the letter before the end, though doesn’t read it.He doesn’t actually read the words of what Mary really wants. The vision of Mary he conjures up is how he remembers her,not how she wanted to be remembered. She wanted him to live, yet the Mary he sees almost seems to beckon him to join her in death. It is a Mary that smirks just like Maria as well. It is a version of Mary that isn’t quite there. The Mary that James needs to convince himself to die.
There are many other subtle differences in this ending compared to the In Water ending, and somany other interpretations are still possible.
Are Any Of The New Endings Canon?
The question that has always been asked of Silent Hill 2 is which ending is the true ending. It doesn’t exist though. The way in which you play the game determines the ending you get. It is a more honest way of reaching an ending, and one that naturally fits. You are not making arbitrary choices to get there, and soeach ending has a degree of canonicity to it.
With the New Game Plus endings, you can view them more easily as non-canon, though the Bliss and Stillness endings add an extra wrinkle. They don’t revel heavily on absurdity nor actions that seems distinctly detached from what James would genuinely attempt. He already struggled to accept Mary’s death.These two endings just give him another two means of coming to termswith that.
So while no ending can strictly be called canon, the Bliss and Stillness endings are unique in thatthey keep James very in-character unlike the other extra endings. As such, the two new endings hold as much weight in terms of valid endings as the original In Water, Leave, and Maria endings.
