A Missed Opportunity: P.T. Still Haunts My Mind

The influence lives on, clear as day.

It permeates through my PC monitor as I watch another YouTuber claim that this P.T. clone is the best of them all.

That invariably turns out to be false, because no matter what they say: it is not, and never will be, P.T.

"You need to download this immediately," my brother-in-law frantically messaged me in 2014.

His enthusiasm was unusual, frankly, suggesting that I should download it as soon as I could. "It's probably the scariest game I've ever played. It's just a demo for now, but I can't wait to jump in again."

"Good horror isn't always explicit. It's furtive. At least initially. It sows seeds of doubt and paranoia."

It was immediately apparent that this experience was... different. It felt measured and meticulous - which is unusual given the short run time. It felt designed to extract the maximum amount of fear and dread for those who dared to give it a go.

There was a mysticism about it too.

Not everything was explained to us explicitly. Something Kojima has gone on record saying, suggesting that he's a big believer in the horrors the human imagination can come up with when given just enough.

But I appreciate this all sounds like hyperbole.

I know I sound like another fanboy, just waxing about Kojima like everyone else for a game that could have been but ultimately wasn't.

In reality, I'm a fussy git.

You see, when it comes to horror I'm very particular about what I find scary. I would go so far as to say that horror as a genre is quite derivative.

I don't want to come off as pretentious. I get it's hard to innovate in the horror space.

I also completely respect other people's opinions on things they find scary, even if I don't feel the same. Art is subjective, and that's what makes it so amazing. We don't always find horror scary because of extrinsic factors, but intrinsic ones - essentially where we are at a given time in our lives.

You might find Rosemary's Baby scarier as an expectant mother, for example. Or The Exorcist as someone who's deeply religious. I'm simplifying here, but fundamentally, it's us who decides what works for us and what doesn't.

P.T. was an experience that transcended this dynamic.

"I hadn't felt this frightened of entering a new space since the loading animations of doors in Resident Evil."

But truthfully, only a handful of experiences have ever managed to get under my skin. P.T. is one such experience. One that I believe is universal. It remains an original and innovative attempt to reel us into a dimly lit home in which menace lurks in our periphery.

Good horror isn't always explicit. It's furtive. At least initially. It sows seeds of doubt and paranoia.

P.T. is the perfect demonstration of that build-up and release required to take something from moderately scary, to definitively so. For all practical purposes, P.T. surpasses much of the horror genre in terms of experience, both extrinsically and intrinsically.

Quite a feat for a Playable Teaser.

Directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro

P.T. was an interactive teaser for Silent Hills, a planned instalment in the Silent Hill series.

In a nutshell, it was a haunted house experience where the player sinks deeper into despair with each loop through the house. While the loop might seem quaint in terms of game design today, it was quite subversive when it was first released.

Players expected much of the game to be the exploration of the house, but in reality, the game forced you to walk around the house again and again while ramping up the terror in the form of audio cues, scenery changes or showing the personification of our fears - Lisa.

This game - a demo really - lasted around an hour and crammed in it a malevolence that washed over me almost immediately.

It wasn't an experience that relied on jumpscares - although there certainly are jumpscares should you enjoy those. Like any good Silent Hill experience, the atmosphere did most of the heavy lifting.

With Lisa, for instance, if she catches us, there's a random chance of triggering a jump scare when the camera is turned horizontally, causing the current loop to restart.

Dread, apprehension and anxiety are all baked into the environment. These feelings increased with each loop - with each opening of a door to reveal what's behind.

I hadn't felt this frightened of entering a new space since the loading animations of doors in Resident Evil.

The game looked wonderful too.

Kojima Productions used their Fox Engine to make P.T. Hideo Kojima wanted to scare people uniquely, offering an interactive teaser instead of just putting out trailers and screenshots for Silent Hills.

It worked.

A New Fear

"Eh, I'm not sure I want to do another loop," I'd say to my wife. "I'm not sure I want you to either," she'd respond.

There's no doubt, this was an intense attack on our senses. Our primal instincts told us to stop, while our more daring sides wanted us to stay and push on - to discover more about the gruesome murders that took place within the house.

It's a delicate balance of fear and curiosity. I didn't want to continue, but I felt compelled.

Drawn in like Ted the Caver, deeper still to depths unknown and filled with an otherworldly force that seeks to cause only suffering. The true power of P.T. is that it never feels as though it was done for the sake of it, just to lump in a bunch of cheap scares.

When making the game, Kojima avoided using graphic violence to build suspense because he felt too many horror games rely on that. He aimed to create a more "genuine, thoughtful, and lasting" type of fear.

For instance, in the short time we knew Lisa as this entity, it felt like she wanted to dismantle any sense of reality the protagonist had. She wanted to destroy him, but slowly - the loop is proof of that. The subtly with which that takes place is proof of that.

How often have you been home alone, lurking around in the shadows of your house and thought, "I don't like this"? It's a completely natural feeling that we're all exposed to at some point, and this is something that P.T. plays on.

So much of what we don't like about the dark is because it acts as a mirror for our deepest fears and insecurities. Always there, like a predator in the dark, ready to fill us with dread.

I believe the best horror we can witness always plays on this vulnerability.

The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, The Haunting of Hill House. While there's no question they have their grand moments of explosive fear when the narrative calls for it, those moments are done against a backdrop of human misery.

P.T. nailed this dynamic.

With each loop came increasingly disturbing moments which made us feel initial trepidation to full-blown alarm.

From initial noises, to subtly layout changes to the main antagonist merely watching us as we scuttle around the house - pants loaded with last night's dinner presumably.

I do believe the current state of Silent Hill is a mess.

Given the franchise’s inconsistent direction over the years, Kojima wasn’t just a notable figure who could attract new fans—he was needed to guide the series in a new direction.

We won't return to the glory days of Team Silent. And that's okay.

But, damn, we were close.