Two supporting characters in Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake have had their redesigned looks unveiled, and fans are a little split on them.
Yesterday brought a terrifying new Silent Hill 2 remake trailer during the PlayStation State of Play showcase, unveiling an October 8 release date. Outside of the release date, combat, and protagonist James Sunderland, the trailer also gave us a new look at returning characters Angela and Maria.
You can see Maria’s redesigned look just below, the first character that James meets during the new trailer. Somewhat surprisingly, a lot of older Silent Hill 2 fans in the comments of the Reddit post are only just finding out, via Angela’s redesigned look, that she wasn’t meant to be 40 years old in the original game, but rather 19.
“This thread is how I found out Angela is 19 and not 40,” reads one comment. “…Apparently this is how I find this out too. I thought she was like in her early 30s or something. I was hearing some people don’t like how she looks in this remake but now that I know this they just made Angela look her age,” reads another.
The second comment touches on a debate that’s raging on right now surrounding Angela’s redesigned look. A lot of people aren’t happy with Angela looks now, primarily because she actually looks like a regular human being. An oft-relayed rumor is Angela was originally modelled on Sandra Bullock, and while the two do bear some similarity, this might have stemmed from Angela being named after Bullock’s character in The Net.
A fair few people aren’t happy with Maria’s redesign, but for different reasons. In the original Silent Hill 2, Maria’s character design was overtly sexualized for story-centric reasons surrounding protagonist James, which we won’t spoil here for the sake of anyone who’s yet to experience Konami‘s classic game. Comments under the Reddit post below argue Maria has lost this – supposedly critical – element of her character design.
I’m just gonna come out and say it: the old Maria character design was objectively better. from r/silenthill
“Maria’s character requires her appearance to be overtly sexual. This is not even close,” writes one comment. “Oh absolutely. The new one really doesn’t fit her characterization at all,” adds another comment, adding that they’re intrigued as to why developer Bloober Team has moved Maria’s tattoo of a butterfly to her chest instead of her hip/torso.
On the other hand, another commenter rightly points out that “for a narrative, there are far more ways to sexualize a character and another character’s intent towards her than making them clearly more provocative in dress and demeanor.” Considering we’ve barely seen 10 seconds of Maria in Silent Hill 2 remake, the redesign might not be representative of Maria’s entire character in the final game.
Find out where Silent Hill 2 ranks on our list of the best horror games ever made.