One of the best things about remakes – besides the fact that you can replay a classic game with current-gen fidelity – is that the developers can change, or entirely remove, certain aspects that could have been different in retrospect. Whether it's simply improving on certain animations and voicelines, or subtly adding gender neutral bathrooms to a spaceship to annoy idiots, remakes give devs a second chance to do things differently. Silent Hill 2 artist Masahiro Ito didn't pass up this opportunity.
While working on the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, Ito probably made a number of changes which he thought about over the years since the launch of the original. While we'll only see these changes when the remake is finally out, we did get to see one of them via the images released by Bloober Team. The image shows James pointing a gun at one of the game's iconic bubble-headed nurses. While the visuals looked absolutely stunning, fans spotted that the nurse was wearing black stockings which weren't present in the original.
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There seem to be relatively healthy discussions about the reason for these stalkings, and we now know the answer thanks to Ito himself. "As to the nurse pic Bloober [has] released, it's one of the concept arts," he Tweeted. "I made her wear the stockings w/ the color because I was pointed out that the original nurse in the [original] SH2 exposed her skin too much and I wanted to mean 'this is a remake'. Also coz of a game design."
Unlike the ridiculous comments about the gender neutral bathrooms in the Dead Space remake, fans suggested that this change by Ito actually works better. "Seriously, though. Sexual frustration is a HUGE part of his psyche. That's what's behind the nurses as an enemy," pointed out Morchades. It looks like James just likes stocking, I suppose.
Unfortunately, those nurses are going to torment him, just as the devs have planned. In fact, they aged James up a bit just to watch the poor guy suffer more. "We want to depict a James who is more mature and has had to suffer through more in his life, and to do that we raised his age, though only by a bit," said series producer Motoi Okamoto.