scribbles 1 10/1/24
mere days away from silent hill 2's remake, the following is something i wrote in regards to what was very likely only for promotional purposes and not necessarily indicative of the final product, especially considering a great deal of very warranted backlash was seemingly addressed to varying degrees by the devs since. the original date of this short writing was 3/2/23.
It seems all subtlety is lost on the Remake devs. they see the original scene and in their attempts to recreate it they assume there was no significance in having the camera far away and looking down at James and the lake beyond him.
The mostly stationary camera has a peculiar voyeuristic quality to it which is aided by the lateral tracking of the camera when James walks left or right, as if we're following him at his same walking pace. It feels like the player inhabits this world as an onlooker and yet completely detached from the world James moves through and interacts with. I think this fits perfectly with the clear disassociation James experiences in the mirror scene just prior. Perhaps this view the player is experiencing is in fact how James feels at this very moment? Detached from the world, acting as an observer rather than a participant, he watches himself move about this world from afar.
I think another reason for the camera looking down at the earth and not giving any attention to or indication of the sky is to give a subtle sense of claustrophobia, dread and doom. Without the sky, we feel boxed in by the world around us, natural or otherwise. It's by no mistake that the sky is associated with heaven. It's unexplored and uninhabited space, it's freedom from the shackles that bind us to the earth, it's hope. Something as simple as pointing the camera away from the sky and keeping it bound to the earth will always give this feeling of hopelessness and inescapability.
tags:
#composition / #arcade