It only took a month for players to finally crack the mystery behind the 26 Strange Photos scattered throughout the game. Fans of the series have been scratching their heads about its significance, but it looks like the mystery is over.
Reddit user u/DaleRobinson in Silent Hill’s Official Subreddit (r/SilentHill) solved the month-long enigma in a post. All you have to do is count the objects within each photo (i.e., open windows, flower pots, stains, etc), then count that number across the captions.
Eventually, you will get a letter for each of the 26 Polaroids. If spelled out, it reads:
"YOU’VE BEEN HERE FOR TWO DECADES."
New fans will find this cryptic message unfamiliar, but Silent Hill 2 veterans shiver at the implications. It looks like Bloober Team and Konami finally confirmed the long-running time loop theory that James Sunderland has suffered ever since his wife’s passing.
Fans have been wondering about this since 2006. The multiple endings of the original hints at the many possibilities James will succumb to his grief. Even Masaharo Ito, designer of the infamous Pyramid Head has confirmed in a Tweet that all endings are canon. Yes, that means the Dog ending could be too!
The theory is finally confirmed in the Remake. Everything we see is part of James Sunderland’s slow descent into madness. The significance behind the Glimpses of the Past memories also makes sense now. James has been living in this nightmare for two decades.
Even the dead bodies scattered all around Silent Hill are in the form of James, beige jackets and all.
Oddly enough, the message could also talk about the player or, better yet, its loyal fanbase. This meta-level reveal could mean that it’s not just James who’s been going through this cycle– Gamers, too, have been waiting two decades to get another Silent Hill game.
It’s a funny jab at fans by Konami and Bloober Team, considering that they were starved for Silent Hill content after P.T.'s untimely cancellation. The whole world was sad to see Hideo Kojima’s take on Silent Hill get canned, but it’s all in the past now.
Thankfully, it was a record-breaking success, selling 1 million copies in a week! That means we could get more Silent Hill Remakes in the future and maybe even an original that could rival Team Silent’s projects. The only thing we can do is go back to the cycle.
This is by far one of the craziest weeks for Silent Hill fans after poking and prodding at different solutions for the weird Polaroids. If you enjoyed Silent Hill, you could check out Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama’s new game, Slitterhead.
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