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Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
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Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut cover
Developers
Team Silent
Publishers
Konami
Release dates
Windows December 2, 2002
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut guide on StrategyWiki
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut on Wikipedia
Silent Hill
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut 2002
Silent Hill 3 2003
Silent Hill 4: The Room 2004
Silent Hill: Homecoming 2008
Silent Hill 2 2024

Key points

Can only run stably on a single core: for European Director's Cut version (superior version), use Silent Hill 2 Widescreen Fix. For North American version (inferior version), use Modern Compatibility Fix.
The PC version adds improved flashlight lighting, the ability to save at any time during the game, swap weapons without opening the menu, and a movie gallery.
Atmospheric fog and the shadowing are much simpler and less refined than the PlayStation 2 version.[1]
Audio is compressed and lacks detail in comparison to the PlayStation 2 version.[2]
FMVs suffer significantly in quality compared to the other versions.[3]
Frame rate is capped at 30 FPS. See Frame rate (FPS) to raise frame rate cap.

General information

Silent Hill Wiki - A wiki for the series
Silent Hill Memories - Informative site

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Released on 3 CDs.
Windows
There are two versions, the North American version and European Director's Cut version. If the title screen lacks "Director's Cut" on it, it's the North American version. Both versions include the extra scenario Born from a Wish along with an extra UFO ending.

Essential improvements

Silent Hill 2 running at 1920x1080
Silent Hill 2 running at 1920x1080

Silent Hill 2 Widescreen Fix

A D3D8 wrapper for the European Director's Cut version which adds some fixes and new features.

Silent Hill 2 Fog Fix

A fix that improves fog quality and allows for custom fog settings.
For Widescreen Fix compatibility, see Install Fog Fix alongside Widescreen Fix.

Silent Hill 2 FMV Enhancement Pack

A widescreen FMV enhancement pack with improved quality and upscaled resolution over the original PC version's FMVs.[1]

Silent Hill 2 Modern Compatibility Fix

A fix that allows higher resolutions (excluding 4K) and easier anti-aliasing application (at the cost of some glitches). Only use this for the North American version.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

Template:Game data/row
System Location
settings.ini stores video and audio settings, options.ini stores gameplay and volume settings, and language.ini stores language settings.

Save game data location

Template:Game data/row
System Location

Video settings

Video settings
Video settings

Template:Video settings

It is highly recommended to set the Brightness Level in-game to 3 to get the most contrast.

Windowed

Instructions

Anti-aliasing (AA)

Instructions

Frame rate (FPS)

Changing the frame rate may cause sound bugs when shooting and reloading some weapons.
Instructions

Input settings

Template:Input settings

Controller support

A fix is required for the game to recognize XInput LT/RT and D-pad when assigning controls.
Instructions

Audio settings

Template:Audio settings

May require DirectSound3D restoration software to restore hardware-accelerated 3D sound functionality on Windows Vista and later.

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Spanish
Russian

Issues fixed

The Silent Hill 2 Widescreen Fix is recommended to avoid several issues in the game.

"Maria" ending has buggy shadows and no fog

The PC versions of the game set the "Maria" ending environment settings to night, even though it takes place in the day, which both disables the fog for this scene and creates erratic, bugged character shadows.[4]
Instructions

Flashlight illuminates objects and monsters behind James

There is a minor flashlight glitch where the flashlight will illuminate objects and monsters behind James.
Instructions

Slow screen transition speeds at higher resolutions

Instructions

Graphic settings are reverted after force closing

Instructions

Windows 10 fullscreen with borders

Instructions

(Using Widescreen Fix) White textures, missing fog, black lines on models, and chunks of environments missing when a camera is fixed close to a wall

This patch fixes several issues using WineD3D for Windows.
Instructions

White textures, missing fog, slow transitions, crashes and loop sound

This patch fixes several issues using WineD3D for Windows and a new patched sh2pc.exe file that sets one core affinity automatically. Most of the widescreen fixes have a built-in feature to set the game to use one core affinity which addresses the sound issues and many of the crashing issues. If you are using a widescreen fix, please use this fix instead.
Instructions

Solid white textures

Instructions

Weird lines across the screen

Instructions

"Insert a disc" message in the ending

Instructions

Game hangs at startup

Instructions

Other information

Make James run without slowing down

Instructions
Instructions

Install Fog Fix alongside Widescreen Fix

Instructions

Add icon to executable file

Instructions

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 8
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98, 2000, ME, XP
Processor (CPU) AMD Athlon - 700 MHz
Intel Pentium - 700 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 1.8 GB
Video card (GPU) 32 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8.1 compatible

References