With Silent Hill 2's source code still MIA, a dedicated fan has decided to restore the game's CGI renders: 'Takayoshi' Sato's work was incredible for its time'
We already have a modern version of Silent Hill 2 thanks to Bloober Team's excellent 2024 remake. But I wouldn't say no to a remastered version of the original game as well. Since Bloober Team's overhaul makes significant changes to elements like mechanics, perspective, and how the story is told, there remains plenty of reason to experience Silent Hill 2 as its original designers intended.
Sadly, such an eventuality seems unlikely, given Konami lost the source code to the final version of the game. While you technically don't need a game's source code to remaster it, doing one without access to the source code is generally a bad idea. Konami itself discovered this with 2012's Silent Hill HD collection, which included an infamously terrible "upgrade" of Silent Hill 2 that didn't have any fog, among other problems.
With a proper remaster of Silent Hill 2 unlikely, one fan has taken it upon themselves to give the game a visual makeover. Bits of it, anyway. Over on r/silenthill, user Rashmunchel has been upscaling the game's CGI art.
"I wanted to preserve what's left of SH2's CGI art because the CGI models, cutscenes in high quality and the game's entire source code has been lost," Rashmunchel explained, noting that this artwork was extremely high-quality for its era. "Takayoshi Sato's work was incredible for its time!"
I'm restoring SH2's CGI renders, of which some were lost media. from r/silenthill
The restored artwork ranges from model renders to images from in-game, still from cutscenes, and animation frames, including an image of an alternate outfit for Maria. One particularly striking image is a closeup of protagonist James Sunderland, which Rashmunchel says "took forever to restore because I had to work with a very low-quality closeup."
To my eye, the restored art looks excellent. But some of the replies to the post pose a reasonable question: "Are you using AI?" Rashmunchel says that they are using a generative AI upscaler "to upscale the pictures because almost all are small and low quality" but then edits these initial upscales in Photoshop to bring them "as close to the original" as possible. "AI by itself doesn't do a good job. There are always imperfections and that 'AI' look, which I hate," Rashmunchel points out. They also say they will look into using a non-AI upscaler, as suggested by another user.
While using a non-genAI upscaler is probably more sensible here, it is a cool project nonetheless, and in the absence of an official project to preserve this media, Rashmunchel's approach is preferable to seeing these images lost to time entirely. While a full-blown remaster of Silent Hill 2 remains highly unlikely, it's nice to see someone trying to preserve a small part of this gaming classic.
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