10 Most Tragic Characters In Horror Games

The Silent Hill series deals with true psychological horror, with the shocking and lasting effects that traumatic experiences can have on our perception of the world around us. It’s these very experiences that lead to the appearance of the Pyramid Head(s) of Silent Hill 2.

The game’s protagonist, James Sunderland, is a widower searching Silent Hill for hints of wife Mary Sunderland, whom he believes he may still be able to encounter there. The town had great meaning for the pair, and James searches, carrying terrible grief and something of a lingering guilt for Mary’s death. At Silent Hill, he meets a woman named Maria, the image of his wife, only to see her "killed" by Pyramid Head (though she appears again in Toluca Prison). The trauma and the encounters have a further heavy impact on Sunderland’s psyche, particularly as Maria seems to represent the wife Sunderland pines for.

As the game goes on, our haunted protagonist is able to piece together more of his memories, until finally arriving at the realization that he himself killed Mary: He suffocated her in her bed, tormented by her long illness and his growing helplessness and frustration. 

Couple this with two of the possible endings, “Rebirth” in which a desperate James tries to revive Mary’s body at the Church of the Rebirth and “Maria” in which James ultimately hopes to leave the town with Maria only for her to start showing signs of illness, and it’s plain that Sunderland’s is a multi-faceted torment.