Silent Hill 2 Remake Protagonist James Seemingly Got a Quiet Makeover

It seems the protagonist of Konami’s Silent Hill 2 remake, currently in development at Bloober Team, has received a quiet redesign or perhaps had a face-lift. It’s unclear whether this change comes in response to fan feedback from the trailer shown during the State of Play showcase held earlier this year, the negative response to which Bloober subsequently blamed on Konami.

According to eagle-eyed observers, protagonist James Sunderland has had a quiet overhaul and, to our eye at least, seems younger and less careworn. It’s quite a subtle change and was only detected when the publisher updated the Steam backend, which left a tell-tale trail on SteamDB. Redditor Trem45 has compiled a handy comparison from a thread over on r/GamingLeaksAndRumours.

As Eurogamer rightly reminds us, we’ve seen several iterations of Sunderland since the game was first announced (even before), so it’s difficult to say whether this suggests a change of direction or simply an unseen, pre-existing asset. Whatever the case, it seems at least a small cohort prefers this new, more chiselled James.