Short answers, pulled from the story.
James Sunderland is the protagonist of the 2001 survival horror game Silent Hill 2, developed by Team Silent under Konami. He is a 29-year-old former store clerk traveling to Silent Hill, Maine, after a letter apparently from his deceased wife, Mary Shepherd-Sunderland. The game reveals through a VHS tape that James smothered his dying wife at a hospital bed with a pillow.
Guy Cihi performed both the voice acting and motion capture for James Sunderland in the original 2001 game. Cihi recalled in a 2011 interview that he and the other actors wore tight body suits fitted with nodes rather than costumes during recording. The role left him physically sore for weeks due to repeated 'dying' movements.
The reported cause was Cihi's refusal to allow Konami to reuse his recordings until he received residuals. The publication Inverse noted that fans never accepted Baker as the new voice actor and called Konami's actions 'seemingly callous with their own series.' The dispute was eventually resolved, with Cihi's original recordings reinstated in the HD Collection as an alternate selection.
Luke Roberts provided the English voice and motion capture for James Sunderland in the 2024 Silent Hill 2 remake. Chikahiro Kobayashi performed the Japanese vocals. Roberts received nominations for his performance at the British Academy Games Awards, the Golden Joystick Awards, and The Game Awards.
Critics have connected James Sunderland's state to both obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Michael Pementel of Bloody Disgusting wrote that his own OCD created a similar warped sense of reality to the world James inhabits. Robert Grosso of TechRaptor interpreted James' trauma from killing his wife as PTSD, arguing the game is about James grappling with guilt personified by the world around him.
James Sunderland makes brief cameo appearances in joke endings of Silent Hill 3, Shattered Memories, Downpour, and Book of Memories. In Silent Hill 4: The Room, his father Frank Sunderland mentions that James disappeared in Silent Hill years before the game's events. The 2024 remake also includes a joke 'UFO' ending featuring a PS2 version of James alongside an alien.