Silent Hill 2 analysis

[Living in Death]

I remember when I played through the game, I was oblivious to all this.

I was just thinking, "This is weird. Huh. That noise was weird. These tablets are weird."

I actually watched the film, the first one, before I played any of the games. So my entire outlook on Silent Hill was that it was some kind of purgatory, and since I didn't fully understand the plot of the film (realising that the otherworld was a projection of Allessa's sufferings from bygone times), I thought that was supposed to resemble Hell. I guess, theoretically, it's both converging. 

Though it brings me back to the point you made before (the one in the hidden captions), and that I spent the entire time watching the films and playing the games, always thinking that this was the revelation. But it's far more complex than that, the lore and history goes far deeper (with Samael and the incubator from SH1, for example). But of course, getting a certain ending in SH2 will certainly produce a similar result to what you were proposing. It was actually the first ending I got, and I felt awful for it.

[robvalue]

Ah, that's interesting. Yeah, I can see it would make you feel quite differently having seen the film first.

I always naively thought James was really in the towns as were the other characters like Angela and Eddy, and the town was messing with them based on their subconscious.

But really, the game is whatever you want it to be. The devs have made the clues so subtle, and never concretely explained things (except perhaps in extra-game material), that I think they want you to interpret it yourself.