Silent Hill 2 is a survival horror game published by Japanese video game giant Konami for the Playstation 2 in 2001. The game was developed by “Team Silent”, a specific, independent department of Konami that was dedicated only to the development of games within the Silent Hill franchise. Although the game is the second within the franchise, it is not a continuation of the first game’s story, and instead takes place within a different part of the same town upon another individual’s story. Since there is no dedicated timeline published by Konami or Team Silent, there is still wide scale debate upon which game actually takes place first in a chronological order.

The game is concerned only with the psychological events of its main character James Sunderland, a widower who ventures to the town of Silent Hill, Maine after receiving a letter from his presumed dead wife, telling him that she is actually alive and awaiting him in the elusive town in which they took a trip to years ago. However, the town turns out to be nothing more than a hallucinated fever dream, in which James faces his darkest demons. This much is evident after the eventual realization that the monsters that James is fighting are actually there to punish him for the exposed responsibility he actually has in the death of his wife. The game is actually centered around the concept of one’s past demons coming back to haunt them in the worst way possible, which was a revolutionary decision back in 2001, as the genre of psychological horror was indefinitely not as established as it is in most horror games today. Most actually accredited Silent Hill 2 specifically for exposing the psychological horror genre, and giving it the main platform it needed to become a mainstream concept within the world of horror games like it is today.

Despite only having a small development team, and massive amounts of distaste from the higher-ups at Konami although the game was a massive success, Team Silent are highly accredited for the cultural acclaim that is Silent Hill 2. From revolutionizing the horror genre by introducing psychological horror into mainstream video games, to recreating how the development process takes place, Silent Hill 2 is a cornerstone of modern day horror. Major names in the game development industry have begun or involved their early horror careers on Silent Hill 2, such as world-renowned CGI director Takayoshi Sato. Through this, Silent Hill has been able to ascend to the heights of the cinematic world, although the movies are most often judged on a separate basis from the games. Regardless, to say that Silent Hill 2 revolutionized horror games is a bit of an understatement.