P.T. celebrates its eighth anniversary this week. It’s been almost a decade since the playable teaser arrived on PS4 and ushered in the future of survival horror. Well, that was the plan until Konami decided to set fire to everything and leave behind video games for good.
I remember downloading the demo as it dropped, believing it to be not much more than a curious little thing that aimed to spook unsuspecting players. Everything about it was exaggerated on purpose, with the reveal trailer featuring a bunch of paid actors in a dark room screaming their lungs out at the smallest thing. Konami wanted millions to download this unusual experiment and put their all into uncovering its secrets. Most of us didn’t, and that’s so damn brilliant.
Survival horror is at its most effective when we are forced to ponder the unknown. Being placed in an environment that feels both real and alien, able to bury itself under our skin as we’re forced to entertain what potential dangers await us around the next corner. P.T. does all of those things while trapping us in a claustrophobic space that is constantly shifting and changing in response to our actions. The whole thing is one giant, morbid puzzle.
Helmed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro, the teaser’s purpose was to announce Silent Hills. The cancelled game would have seen much of Team Silent reunite to create a horror title starring The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus in a deep, personal, and utterly haunting jaunt into a cursed town hiding so much beneath the surface. We only caught disparate glimpses of what this final product might have been - including a concept trailer featuring myriad designs from manga artist Junji Ito, but the potential was staggering.
P.T. showcased much of that through its subtle machinations. Once leaving the starting room, you are greeted with the distant buzz of radio. It recalls the grizzly events of a recent murder in the community, one that the player character might have even been responsible for. Aside from the passionate announcer and the sound of hesitant footsteps, everything is silent.
We aren’t given any instructions, so the only thing pushing us forward is a curiosity to see what else this house has to offer. The surfaces are messy and the interior design is archaic, but, aside from that and a few locked doors, it seems like a normal house. That is, until we step through the open door waiting for us at the end of the corridor. Suddenly we are back where it all started, forced to trudge through this house again and again as it becomes clear that there is no escape. We’re trapped in it, forced to relive our sins for all eternity.
You aren’t given any instructions, but the mounting horror provides incentive to experiment and find a way to escape before the fear overtakes you. Soon the bathroom door begins to clatter aggressively, while the distant cry of a fetus in the sink echoes throughout the abandoned home. It’s horrifying, and we have no choice but to investigate whatever disgusting sights emerge with each new cycle. More clues eventually come to light, with the radio announcer talking directly to the player if they try to mess with the radio or fiddle with picture frames featuring people who left this realm a long time ago.
Then along comes Lucy - the spirit of a pregnant woman who was murdered by her husband with a hunting rifle, thanks to the monster apparently lurking inside him. She is bound to this home, walking its halls alongside the player as you both find yourselves stuck in this infernal loop. It seems that the closer we come to finding out the truth behind her fate, the more aggressive she becomes. One loop has what seems to be a bloodied fridge hanging above the front door, with smatterings of gore dripping onto the wooden floor as Lucy watches from the balcony above. It can be hard to catch a glimpse of her, but to know she is always there, always watching, still turns my stomach.
Lucy doesn’t seem to have a linear pattern of movement, and can vanish and appear at will depending on what you’re doing at any given moment. The final loop before the teaser trailer for Silent Hills is laughably obtuse. You must take a specific amount of steps along the corridor and wait for a sound cue, and then speak a specific word into the microphone to trigger the ending before Lucy tears your throat out from behind. It made no sense and could only be solved through brute force, and that’s what made P.T. so compelling.
It’s a mystery that was cracked by the collective audience marching through the horror in search of whatever awaited at the centre, with all of us knowing that something more was waiting to be discovered. It is too masterfully crafted to not lead somewhere, and to be rewarded with a new Silent Hill game had everyone, myself included, doing backflips as the truth finally came out. But even as a marketing tool for Silent Hills, P.T. remains one of the most accomplished examples of survival horror the medium has ever seen. It’s an all-timer.
It explains nothing, and its terror only comes to light because we’re so determined to move forward and uncover where we are, what it means, and how on earth we can stay alive. You have a torch, but aside from that, the controls are minimal, and the environment is densely packed with only a few means of interactivity. Yet, there is something about the atmosphere that I have yet to see matched since. A terrible act has been committed in this place, and the fleeting radio messages and dusty picture frames help fill in the gaps of history that we really shouldn’t want to learn about. But we keep moving, and the rewards are nothing but misery.
Kojima and del Toro recently tweeted about P.T. to mark its eighth anniversary, and I bet they’re still bitter about Silent Hills being canned long before reaching its full potential. I certainly am, and can only imagine how different the genre would be today if things played out differently. Years from now, we’ll still be talking about it with just as much reverence.