it is a really good joke, in retrospect, that james sunderland's silent hill is the easiest to deal with of any of them. even james' psychosexual torture purgatory coddles the crap out of him; at one point point in the midgame i had 11 health drinks, 14 first aid kits, and like 5 ampoules. i almost wanted to beg the game to stop giving me consumables, i felt nauseatingly overstuffed. things like that really sell this sadsack nega-wife guy shit as a grim spiritual joke rather than the heart of the narrative, which is centered in the peripheral cast. i won't say much about it because it's never worth spilling blood and tears on the page for games writing (to me) but angela is such a smartly written and well-understood character by the narrative (probably one of a handful of times mainstream games actually got "trauma" "right") and eddie's inferiority complex turned self loathing turned misanthropy turned paranoid violence hits a perfectttt balance between empathetic and uncomfortable. but enough said, there's nothing new to add here, really just another marker that i finished one of these games

edit: stray thought i wanted to write down so i don't forget it but it's funny that anyone could think downpour was trying anything new by addressing "the prison system" when this game literally has an extended sequence about prison as an occult torture maze built for exculpating authority structured by spatialized m.c. escher contortions of the logic of sin and absolution that runs laps around whatever ill-conceived green mile mike flanagan prestige tv shit was going on in that game