Silent Hill 2 remake may be changing its protagonist’s face following fan feedback

The upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake may have given its protagonist a makeover to make him look younger.

When the game was officially announced in October 2022 it was accompanied by the first trailer, showing protagonist James Sunderland as he arrives at Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his dead wife asking him to return.

However, some fans of the series pointed out that James looked older than he did in the original version of Silent Hill 2, where the character was supposed to be 29 years old.

It was later confirmed in a January 2023 interview with IGN that James had indeed been made older, with producer Motoi Okamoto saying 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.

It would appear, though, that this decision may have been reversed, with a new screenshot appearing in the game’s Steam backend, as tracked by SteamDB.

This new image appears to show James with a new, younger-looking face. X user Rino put together a comparison image showing the new image at the top, the 2022 trailer in the middle and the original game at the bottom.

The Silent Hill 2 remake has been the subject of much debate since its announcement, and a second trailer in January 2024 which focused on combat did nothing to quell it.

This second trailer proved divisive, and currenlty only has 51% likes vs dislikes on YouTube.

The following month, Bloober Team president Piotr Babieno said the trailer “does not reflect the spirit of the game”, saying the marketing side of things was Konami‘s responsibility.

“It is not the spirit of either what it used to be or what we are creating now,” Babieno said. “We are trying to fully reflect this romantic vision about the game, which debuted 22 years ago.

“We think that when players see the real gameplay, the real game, they will judge it in a completely different way.”