Silent Hill has really been ramping up its headline presence lately, mostly due to the absolute debacle that’s been Silent Hill: Ascension (the less said about that, the better. I’ve said my pieces). So let’s just pretend that never happened and hope that they don’t make whatever crappery is going on there canon, shall we? Yep, moving on…
In other news, a Best Buy listing has suggested that the Silent Hill 2 Remake is going to have “a special origin story,” which is certainly intriguing, but the wording has gotten fans a little worried. See, whoever (or whatever AI) wrote the listing up bundled Pyramid Head into the same bullet-point as the ‘special origin story’ stuff, which has led some to deduce that the story in question will be about Pyramid Head. Here’s how it reads:
“Fan favourite character, Pyramid Head, makes a return along with a special origin story for fans to play through.”
I can see why that would get fans razzed up, but an editor (or Word Dictator) like me would demand a clarification, because that wording actually implies that the return of Pyramid Head and the origin story are two separate points, albeit foolishly bundled into a single bullet-point: Pyramid Head’s returning, and a special origin story is returning. So based on that, no, the origin story in question is not about Pyramid Head, and how as a child he got a triangular prism grafted to his head.
Some things are best left unexplained
Because let’s be clear on this: that would be a terrible, terrible idea, not least because Bloober Team shouldn’t be trusted with going off-script and adding its own story elements into Silent Hill canon (it’s bad enough that we have fans supposedly “changing Silent Hill canon forever in Ascension), but because Pyramid Head already has an origin story, and it’s really quite simple: he’s a monstrous manifestation of protagonist James Sunderland’s subconscious guilt-addled desire to be punished for his role in his wife’s death.
There already is an excellent origin story built into Silent Hill 2: it’s called Born from a Wish
It’s a semi-abstract demon spawned from a jumbled, traumatised brain. That’s all there is to it, and that’s all there should be to it. Pyramid Head is beautiful and terrifying in its mystery—an inexplicable menace that’s been nebulously prowling Silent Hill for over two decades now, and we really don’t need the dicey storytelling of Bloober Team to try and explain it for us. I say this as someone who’s played and enjoyed much of Bloober’s work, and think they have the technical nous to make the Silent Hill 2 remake great, but they’ve fluffed the lines on a fair few of the stories in the past, so I’m seriously hoping they stick rigidly to the script for this legendary game (and everything they’ve said on the matter so far suggests to me that they will).
My wish come true?
So if an ‘origin story is returning,’ like the listing actually says, what could it be? Well, there’s only really one option there, and that’s Born from a Wish, the excellent and oft-forgotten chapter that charts the ‘birth’ of the character of Maria, the sassy, sexualised doppelganger of James’ wife Mary. A lot of people missed this expansion, because it only came out in the later special editions and re-releases of the game, but this listing news gives me renewed hope that it’ll be included in the remake.
I actually rambled a few months ago about why I’d like to see Born from a Wish included in the remake (don’t read if you don’t want spoilers!). Despite rarely being talked about as part of the core Silent Hill 2 story, it’s a chapter that both shines a light on some of the strange rules of the Silent Hill universe, as well as giving the character of Maria a much more sympathetic look-in than the base game (which, let’s remember, is from the not-so-great James’ rather limited perspective).
So yes, I too think a Pyramid Head origin story would be a bad move for the game (and lord knows Konami has made a lot of bad moves with the Silent Hill franchise over the past 15 years or so), but I think what’s being teased here is actually something much better: a forgotten, under-appreciated Silent Hill 2 chapter that really deserves to resurface.