The Silent Hill 2 remake released this week, and while it works relatively well, there is one software lock bug that can prevent you from progressing without reloading an earlier save. The glitch occurs at the end of Brookhaven Hospital – but it can be avoided.
As he noticed Eurogamer and thanks to many helpful fans on social media, you can soft-lock the game by interacting with the porthole in the door on the third floor of Brookhaven Hospital. Here’s a relatively spoiler-free breakdown of how to avoid cushiony blocking.
After entering the third floor of Bookhaven, you will watch a miniature cutscene in which you will look out of a petite window – a porthole – in the doorway. When you return to the third floor later, be sure to save your game manually before going to the roof. Once you’re on the other side of the door, you should autosave, but be careful not to interact with the porthole on the other side. Just continue on your merry way.
Interacting with the porthole from the wrong side will teleport you to the wrong side of the door, preventing you from exploring the area you just reached and soft-locking the game with no way to progress. If you accidentally press the button and get teleported to the wrong page, you should be able to reload your autosave – but some people can’t reload it. That’s why you made this manual save before going to the roof, which should get you back on track quickly.
I was able to easily recreate the cushiony lock using notation. The Bloober Team has no word on how quickly the issue will be fixed, but since it’s easily reproducible, hopefully they’ll be able to implement this change as a patch soon.
The Silent Hill 2 remake is doing quite well, with developer Bloober Team reporting that it has sold over a million copies, and commentators praising it for staying true to the original’s vision – main character James, for example, isn’t that nippy of a guy.
“Bloober Team’s remake lives up to the high standards of the original, but occasionally stumbles,” said critic Kerry Brunskill in his review of PC Gamer’s Silent Hill 2. “When it’s good, it’s great: any game that so closely lives up to the high standards of Silent Hill 2 can rival any other modern horror game. But it relies too much on repetitive, brutal encounters.”
