A Silent Hill 2 fan has solved the mystery behind the PS5 remake’s new Strange Photos collectibles, as confirmed by Bloober Team’s creative director and lead designer Mateusz Lenart. Posted to Reddit, user DaleRobinson has worked out the 26 Polaroids spell “you’ve been here for two decades” after counting how many objects there are inside each picture and then matching that number with the phrase written on the picture to get a letter.
As the user explains, the first Strange Photo features six windows, and comes with the phrase: “So many people here!” Count six letters along the sentence and you get the letter Y. Following this method for all the Polaroids gives you the overall phrase. Mateusz Lenart confirmed this is indeed the solution to the puzzle on Twitter, saying the team thought “the puzzle might be too hard”.
The Strange Photos were one of two new types of collectibles in the PS5, PC remake of Silent Hill 2, with the other being Glimpses of the Past, which worked as callbacks to the original PS2 classic where Bloober Team had slightly changed the environment. Memos also return, and you can track all of them in our Silent Hill 2 guide.