Silent Hill 2 Remake’s reinvention of its most underrated character means so much more in 2024

We should review the facts first: Angela Orosco is 19, she’s unhappy, and she has a knife.Since Konami debuted the melancholic character in Silent Hill 2’s original 2001 release, these facts have been both true and disturbing. But developer Bloober’s 2024 Silent Hill 2 remake imbues Angela with solemn dignity, too, a transformation that means more to me in a yeaCasino Onliner when people were especially weird about women in games.For months, some Silent Hill fans and self-described gaming purists argued that Bloober’s Angela looks too soft, too young, not pretty enough to feel the chasmic pain inside of her. They preferred how Angela appeared 23 years ago, when her face was severe and bloodless in an apparent demonstration of how raggedly trauma ages you.Up to a point, their position is understandable. Angela’s life has been a nightmare. Throughout Silent Hill 2, as Angela dives in and out of the game’s sea of fog, she incrementally reveals the extent of the torment she’s been evading. In one of protagonist James Sunderland’s earliest encounters with her, Angela is lying on the floor in front of a mirror, but staring at her reflection in a smudged chef’s knife instead. She hasn’t found her mother in Silent Hill, as she had set out to do, so she contemplates death. Out-of-towners Silent Hill 2 Remake review: “An atmospheric and rewarding horror game up there with the Resident Evil remakes for reinventing a classic””It’s easier just to run,” Angela tells James. “Besides, it’s what we deserve.”These haunting lines, in Konami’s Silent Hill 2, are delivered with the incredulousness that makes most of the voice acting in that game sound as uncanny as a birthday clown declaring it’s time for cake.I’ve always felt that this childish acting paired with Angela’s incongruously matronly appearance turns her into a caricature, a passing thought of who a victim is. Stunted and wrinkly, right?Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

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