Silent Hill 2 no UI mode should be the standard way to play the game

The Silent Hill 2 remake is on the horizon, and I didn’t know what to make of it for the longest time. Credit where credit is due, I find the dense amount of mind fog preventing me from gauging my own hype for it to be an aptly positive sign, but it’s Bloober team’s latest update that really made me feel like this could be the real deal.

I’ve been following the Silent Hill series ever since Konami included a demo for the original game in the original PAL package of Metal Gear Solid. Was that a more charitable Konami from a nicer time in gaming, or had the company been evil all along and was trying to get 10-year-old me to pee his pants? I don’t know, but I’m cool with either option because that demo changed my perception of what games could and should be.

I’ve always been skeptical of remasters and remakes. The too-polished nature of some remasters might erode the beautiful memories we have of some of our favorite classics’ rough edges, and remakes can completely replace them, sometimes by what many deem “soulless” elements. I don’t agree with the soulless part.

I’m pretty sure everyone involved with a high-profile remake is certainly putting their heart and soul into it, but that doesn’t mean that the new project’s soul understands or is connected to the original ones. I was never a fan of Bloober team, and my sentiment didn’t change for the better when the company showed gameplay for the Silent Hill 2 remake via a combat trailer. Things didn’t need to get worse, but they did when the company announced it was done with psychological horror — while developing the quintessential psychological horror game that it’d chosen to do.

Things only began to look better for me when PlayStation revealed an exploration trailer, which mostly seemed to get the tone and ambiance of a current-gen Silent Hill right.

I also liked the diegetic way in which James interacted with the items and accessed the map, but I wasn’t crazy about the way in which we’d get a social media-like notification on the left side of the screen that came accompanied by a “BWAM” sound. It felt like Bloober had the right vision, but they also had to pair every right move with a slight step back.

Then Bloober announced the “No User Interface” mode, an option that basically removes all non-diegetic information the base game shows you on screen. I believe that this mode would, among many other things, fix the missed opportunity at immersion.

The fact that Bloober made the announcement with such joy leads me to believe that this is how the studio has always wanted you to play the game. Did Bloober have to tone it down to avoid the ire of a bigger company? One that wants a game that is more in line with modern releases and not one that would dare to take horror in a more horrifying direction?

No UI helps Silent Hill in more ways than one

Silent Hill works great with fixed camera angles because the original trilogy featured fantastic horror direction. Even though we no longer had the hard-fixed angles of Resident Evil’s pre-rendered backgrounds, we were still looking at the game in the way that the developers had wanted us to. It worked masterfully.

It also works in first person, as we saw with P.T. However, the point of view chosen for the remake doens’t work as well. It worked with Resident Evil 4, which popularized the over-the-shoulder camera to great effect, but even RE4’s biggest fans will tell you that it just isn’t as scary as the previous games in the Resident Evil series. It gives us too much control over the camera to set the mood and give players great jump scares. Nath, the developer of ’90s revivalist horror title Hollowbody, shows it pretty well in this tweet showing a modded Silent Hill 3 with an over-the-shoulder 3rd person perspective:

There are things you can’t help but lose by going with RE4’s camera, but the removal of the UI could dramatically help with the immersion. It’ll make you feel like there are important pieces of information you don’t immediately have access to and, thus, things you’re not in control of.

I’m of the mind that a remake should make bold moves — sometimes even crazy-sounding ones — like the ones seen with FFVII Remake/Rebirth. Tinkering with the gameplay in a way that would make it even scarier and seemingly less welcoming could do the game a great service. The problem? The awesomeness of these moves might take a while to realize. Silent Hill 2 didn’t enjoy the commercial success of the original game, and it took people some time to realize that they were, indeed, experiencing something far better than even the first game.

Team Silent suffered because of that back in 2001 because Silent Hill 2 cost much more to make and made much less money than the first one, and those were more forgiving times. The Silent Hill 2 remake might have to hit a home run on day one to avoid the Internet’s vitriol — even if a genuinely spectacular game exists within.

That is not to say that “No UI” should be the only way to play the game. I’m not applying the same Dark Souls purist logic that rejects any idea of an easier difficulty setting — but I think this should be the base way to play the game. I’m saying that right after the brightness settings recommendations, you should see an important figure from the series canon, say, the Shiba Inu from Silent Hill 2’s dog ending, recommending you to turn off the UI.

As a person who’s often resorted to turning off the UI in horror games, I believe that this will likely be the best way to enjoy Silent Hill 2 by far. It would be a shame if the game fails to capture the hearts of players just because they unwittingly decide to engage with the most horrifying game in existence in the safest way possible.

The remake will also allow players to toggle a “’90s filter”. I immediately thought that sounded cool, but then I realized that the game already had the most iconic ’90s filter of all time: its fog. So what’s that about? We’ll find out on October 8 when the game comes out for the PlayStation 5 and PC.