While Bloober Team’s remake of the classic wifeguy survival horror game Silent Hill 2 follows the original text fairly closely, it does include some extras. For instance, if you visit areas where puzzles or other events were in the original, you can find echoes of them distorted by VHS static. And if you collect all the hidden Polaroids, you’ll have the pieces you need to decode a hidden message.
There’s more than one secret message tucked away in the remake, however. If you listen closely to the TVs around the town you can hear a series of clicks like something from a numbers station, and one player has managed to reduce the static hissing sound enough to translate that sound into Morse code.
The TVs in Brookhaven Hospital both play a message that apparently translates to the phrase “again and” repeated ad infinitum. Like the Polaroid message that says “you’ve been here for two decades” we could read this as confirmation of the theory that the remake is a sequel to the original Silent Hill 2, and James has been playing out a version of the same events on a loop. We could, if we ignored the way that completely invalidates the Maria ending and I shan’t be having it. We don’t subscribe to the loop theory in this house, my child.
A second TV message has also been decoded, this one playing on the TV in Wood Side Apartments. This one says, “why did you do it James?” It’s a clear reference to the guilt James feels yet remains in denial about, which is cutely referenced throughout Silent Hill 2. For instance, as another player pointed out, when you read the poster about depression symptoms, the phrase “feelings or worthlessness or guilt,” loses the final two words as it appears in your journal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more hidden messages in Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake, whether disguised by TV static or elsewhere. Like the original, it’s the kind of game players will be putting under the microscope and arguing about for years to come.