In Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake, James Sunderland is a nice guy. He has plenty of bleak moments, like most human beings, but these get lost in the horror story of his life like a wedding band down the bathtub drain. This is a very different character from the one that appears in the original Silent Hill 2, which presents James as a bumbling, sex-obsessed pest. In contrast, Bloober’s survival horror game is calculated in slowly revealing every decaying piece of James' heart, heightening both his and our anxiety around it. 

James has been in denial since 2001. His amnesia surrounding his wife Mary (did she die three years ago? Did she write him a letter recently?) is rotten food for shapeshifting Silent Hill, which mirrors its inhabitants' distress. In the original SH2, James is sometimes flippant about the vomit-soaked guilt that follows him around town — it comes in the shape of things like the Bubble Head Nurses, with their miniskirts, and the patient executioner Pyramid Head. 

"I'm looking for Mary," 2001 James tells Maria, in her miniskirt, "have you seen her?" His voice pitches up a couple times like he's reciting his dinner order. His face, which is admittedly embattled by PlayStation graphics, is placid, or borderline enthusiastic.

This version of James comes across as nearly psychopathic when it's ultimately revealed that Mary is dead, and he killed her. Nietszche said something like that in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, then he wondered "How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?" 

Bloober's James is different. The passing years have made him more exhausted and desperate. He doesn't need comfort; he spends all 15 hours of the Silent Hill 2 remake looking like he's ready to shave his head and accept a life of asceticism. There is no evidence of 2001 James, who always sounded so surprised and swore to Angela that "no…I'd never kill myself…" 

During this same scene, Bloober's James stays silent when Angela asks if he's planning to use her bloodied chef's knife on himself. We feel sorry for him. Outside of his relationship with Mary, which holds the worst minutes of his life, James seems to have a fair moral compass. He chastises Eddie for blowing up a bully, as he did in the original Silent Hill 2, but not before trying to learn more about why Eddie felt threatened. And, when he finds Maria bruised and unresponsive, he cries like he might have loved her instead of squawking "why…why!" like 2001's unbelievable James.  

Bloober's James has dimension. That means he has a shadow, too. By the end of either iteration of Silent Hill 2, we understand that James is the kind of nice guy people are terrified they'll meet on Hinge. Deep down, James is angry. He's mad at young Laura, yelling that she needs to "stop lying!" when she says she met Mary at the hospital last year. Laura rewards him by calling him fartface. He's angry at Maria, too, for not being clear about who she is, and, eventually, at himself when he remembers what he's done. 

We can't trust him. James spends so much of the Silent Hill 2 remake acting caring and determined, but we can sense that's not the entirety of who he is. We make him squirm for this repressed violent streak, subjecting him to boss fights with interdimensional assholes and undeniably vaginal monsters. 

Still, James is a sympathetic character. In Bloober's hands, he becomes real in his contradictions. He only buries his monstrosity because he believes it's all he's capable of. We, with our own shadows, can understand that.