SPOILER: I don't understand how some people can morally justify James.

tl;dr: To me, in its conclusion, Silent Hill 2 confuses explanation with justification, making it morally very unsettling. We end up practically romanticizing James' murder, as if he loved his wife so much that he killed her. The wife herself ends up excusing her own murder in the final letter. We'll see if the remake offers a less 2001-like interpretation of the subject...

As for me, I had always somewhat forbidden myself from replaying Silent Hill 2—I was afraid I had an idealized memory of it and that the game wouldn't have the same impact on me, especially after so much time. But with the remake coming, I went ahead and replayed it, finishing it last week. However, the ending hit me hard. I feel like the game, in trying to add nuance to James' character, gets lost in its conclusion and doesn't dare to condemn his actions. The writing and direction make James come across as sympathetic. But after watching the video tape, I feel that it's no longer the time to make James sympathetic—quite the opposite.
Players sometimes talk about euthanasia, but here it's also an issue. First, Mary sometimes says she wants to die, but she changes her mind several times. Then, James kills her anyway by suffocation. It's an extremely violent death. I can understand a discussion about euthanasia in the case of a peaceful death, but here we're talking about a damn pillow over the mouth. Doesn't that shock anyone?"

Then, recognizing his act is only the first step, sure, but James hasn't paid any price, and the "Leave" ending, in my opinion, is extremely disturbing. Worse, Mary's letter, rather than just explaining James' murder, seems to justify it. She even ends it by basically saying, "I was annoying, I was ugly, I get it, don’t worry." And what's troubling is that this letter is present in all the endings and it's the last thing we hear from the game. So, it feels like James' murder is morally minimized, even romanticized in some endings. And in the end, the game's message seems to align with many other works that speak of passionate love, where the lovestruck person has no choice but to kill their wife and join her in death. It's a notion I find quite dangerous—killing someone is not a way of loving them, and we hear the opposite far too often even today. Maybe these were themes we weren't as sensitive to back in 2001. We'll see if the remake does better on this front.

I'm pretty sad to feel this way about a game that really shaped my tastes, my relationship with video games, and art. It's a kind of a change my view here, so I'd be happy to discuss it with you.