The upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake revealed a new image showing the protagonist, James Sunderland, with a redesigned face.
The upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake from Konami has had fans in pandemonium since its announcement back in October 2022. Now, fans have spotted that the protagonist of the game, James Sunderland, may have got a full rework to make the character appear younger than what was revealed back in the original reveal in 2022.
The game was announced that the studio Bloober Team would be developing this remake, the devs behind Layers of Fear, The Medium and Blair Witch. While the Bloober Team has yet to confirm the reworked image of James, it did look like he was a bit more youthful-looking. That said, we have seen several iterations of Sunderland since the game was first announced, so it is hard to say if this is definitive proof of a change of direction or just a pre-existing asset. However, based on the comments on social media, the fans seem to like the new look for James.
X user @RinoTheBouncer posted a nice comparison of the three different versions of the same shot of James’ face in the mirror. It showed Silent Hill 2 from the original in 2001 up to the latest speculated image in 2024. He definitely looks younger to me in the alleged new look. The main issue fans had was that the character was supposed to look like he was 29 in the original version of the game, but the 2022 reveal made him look a lot older.
Later, it was confirmed that James was made to look older, and producer Motoi Okamoto said the team “decided to raise James’s age in the game a bit.” According to Okamoto, it was decided “to depict a James who has had to suffer through more in his life as an adult,” and that making him older would also let fans of the original, who are now 20 years older than they were, relate to him better. However, the discourse emerged when Konami did not say this was a modern remake. So, it became a battle of a perfect, redone remake versus adding in some variety and offering a modern take to the Silent Hill world.
So far, the Silent Hill 2 remake does not have a release date but is expected to be released on PC and PlayStation 5 this year.
