Silent Hill 2 Bug Patched After 20 Years Of Misery
It might be one of the greatest video games of all time, but let's be honest, Silent Hill 2 is far from a perfect affair. While we wait for news on where Konami takes the dormant IP next, fans have gone back and fixed an issue that has plagued us for the past 20 years.
Although there would be no Silent Hill 2 without 1999's OG, Konami's franchise really found its feet in the 2001 sequel. Following widower James Sunderland to that tormented town, Silent Hill 2 was a batsh*t outing that famously introduced us to Pyramid Head. There's a lot of love for Silent Hill 2, and although it's considered something of an art form, it's got a game-breaking bug.
What Is The Silent Hill 2 Bug?
Silent Hill 2 previously had a notorious bug that affected PC players using a multicore processor. This could cause the audio to skip and eventually crash the game. Given that a multicore processor is a common feature of most modern PCs, it's a widespread problem.
Step in Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition to fix things (hopefully) once and for all. The bug is fixed using a custom streaming audio engine that apparently bypasses the problem. Until now, the only workaround was to disable every processor core except one in BIOS, which while manageable, is hardly a long-term fix.
Unlike the disastrous Silent Hill HD Collection that Konami released for consoles in 2012, this fan project actually works. Speaking to GameSpot in 2020, modder Andrew Bondarenko explained how this buggy and broken PC port was being given the justice it deserves: "The HD collection is incomprehensibly broken in the visual/audio department," Bondarenko says. "It's not possible to confirm any of the theories [of how it ended up that way], but the Silent Hill 2 in the HD Collection can't even compare to the default, vanilla PC port."
What's Next For Silent Hill?
Fans making Silent Hill 2 playable again is all well and good, but where is Konami in all of this? Presumably drafting cease and desist letters to the team behind Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, it doesn't seem to be doing much in terms of actual work on the IP. Remember, it was Konami that let the Silent Hill domain expire and be bought by someone else.
In a rare bit of good news, there are hints that an official new-gen reboot could be revealed on July 11. We've heard a lot about multiple games being in the works, and alongside the inevitable sequel/reboot, there are whispers of a potential remake of Silent Hill 2. Although Bloober Team won't confirm or deny whether it's working on James Sunderland's official return, we'll be keeping our eyes on this one.