Great Spear

Great Spear
Overview
Name:	Great Spear
Description:	"An unusually-long, grimey metal staff with sharpened edges and incredible reach."
Location:	Downloadable content
Behind The Scenes
Debut:	Silent Hill 2
Also In:	Silent Hill: Origins (painting) Silent Hill: Book of Memories

The Great Spear is an unobtainable weapon in Silent Hill 2, wielded by Pyramid Head. It later appeared as a usable weapon in Silent Hill: Book of Memories via DLC.

Silent Hill 2

Pyramid Head is first seen using the Great Spear in Brookhaven Hospital when he kills Maria. He also uses it in the Labyrinth, then again in Lakeview Hotel with the second Pyramid Head, serving as the penultimate boss encounter. After being defeated, the Pyramid Heads commit suicide together, impaling their heads on their spears.

Significance

Death by Skewering

A painting of an abstracted executioner holding a spear.

“

Offering prayers, pierce a man's chest with a copper stake. Drench the altar in the blood which spouts red from the heart, to praise and to show loyalty unto God. — An occult document (in-universe) cited in Lost Memories (Silent Hill 3)

”

The town of Silent Hill, Maine was settled as a penal colony circa 1810, serving as a place away from the cities where convicts would be transferred to be executed. The population was largely made up of executioners and families to the executioners. Death row inmates were allowed to choose the form of their execution; between hanging or skewering, the latter of which was performed with stakes or spears.

The practices of the executioners had deep ties to a local religious cult, venerating an angel of death and rebirth known as Valtiel. The white robes and red hoods worn by the executioners were based on Valtiel's likeness, and the hoods obscured their vision from witnessing the spears piercing the flesh of the convicts. They would wash their execution tools in the swamp that would become South Vale, giving it the nickname "Blood Swamp".

When James Sunderland visited the town with his wife, three years prior to the events of Silent Hill 2, he saw paintings and documents of the executioners in the museum. The memory of this imagery would later align with his feelings of guilt, manifesting as the physical look of the creature Pyramid Head, and his weapon, the Great Spear.

Behind the scenes

A commercial diorama of Pyramid Head wielding the Great Knife against Maria in Brookhaven Hospital, released in 2023.

In Silent Hill 2, Pyramid Head was originally not going to obtain the Great Spear until after the player entered the Silent Hill Historical Society and saw the paintings. However, Team Silent had to include it earlier because Pyramid Head could not swing the Great Knife in the narrow corridor of Brookhaven Hospital.

See also

• Great Knife
• Great Cleaver
• Paintings