Someone Finally Solved Silent Hill 2 Remake's Biggest Mystery

Image: Bloober Team / Konami / Kotaku
Image: Bloober Team / Konami / Kotaku

The recently released remake of Silent Hill 2 is one of 2024's best horror games and a fantastic adaption of the original 2001 classic. Since the game’s launch, one mystery involving a series of strange Polaroid photos has remained unsolved...until now. Interestingly, the answer seems to confirm a fan theory, too.

Silent Hill 2's remake is a fairly faithful adaption of the OG PS2 game. It once again stars James Sunderland as he explores the creepy, fog-filled town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his supposedly dead wife. While the game is advertised as a remake, there are hints in the game—available now on PS5 and PC—that this remake is actually a loosely connected sequel. And after solving a puzzle involving mysterious photos in the Silent Hill 2 remake, a Redditor has seemingly confirmed this popular theory.

Warning! Spoilers below for Silent Hill 2!

In the Silent Hill 2 remake, players can find 26 photos scattered around various places in the game. Each photo shows different, seemingly unconnected things—like flowers or broken glass. These photos also have a number on them and hand-written sentences that don’t seem to connect to anything in the image. Some players wondered if these were just creepy notes meant to make players confused and anxious. But others assumed they were part of a yet-to-be-solved puzzle.

On November 3, Dale Robison posted on the Silent Hill subreddit that they had seemingly solved the photo mystery. They looked at each image and counted any peculiar or noticeable things within the image, like open windows or birds in the sky. They then looked at the sentences on the images and matched the number with a letter. So, for example, photo 1 features 6 windows. And that photo has the note “SO MANY PEOPLE HERE!” on it. The sixth letter is “Y.” They then used the image numbers to order the letters, starting with 1 and ended up with this message:

“YOUVE BEEN HERE FOR TWO DECADES”

In case you are wondering if this person is lying or if this is the correct solution, Silent Hill 2 remake’s creative director and lead designer, Mateusz Lenart, confirmed this was the accurate solution on Twitter.

So, what does the Silent Hill 2 photo puzzle solution mean?

Well, it seems to confirm a popular fan theory that suggests James Sunderland, who killed his wife and mentally blocked that out as he returned to Silent Hill to be punished by the town, is stuck in a time loop. This is seemingly referenced in the game by the fact that throughout Silent Hill 2 (the OG and the new one), you can find corpses that resemble James Sunderland dotted around the town of Silent Hill.

Further adding evidence to this interpretation of the story is that the Silent Hill 2 remake contains moments where James and the player can stumble upon glimpses of the past, which are moments that happened in the original game but were changed in the remake. Almost like James is stuck in a time loop that changes slightly but always ends in the same way.

Of course, others point out that the message could be a direct reference to how long people have been playing Silent Hill 2. Or, as some suggest, both options are true, and this is a confirmation of the time loop theory and a reference to people still playing Silent Hill 2 in 2024. It would be very on-brand for a Silent Hill 2 puzzle to be a meta-commentary that confuses the player and leads to more questions. Either way, the photo mystery is finally solved!

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