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LttP: P.T.

Neiteio

Member
WARNING: The following contains spoilers


Ah, P.T.

So I've had this downloaded since it came out, but I didn't play it until last night. I was actually showing RE6 to my non-gamer friend, who noted a painting on the wall and thought it changed. I was like, "Nah, supernatural horror is more Silent Hill's bag." Then I thought: "Hey, I downloaded P.T., the teaser for Silent Hills. Maybe we should try that!"

What followed was one hallway and a lot of fun!

For a while we were looping through the virtual house, until I figured out you can zoom in on things with the right stick. From there we discovered that zooming in on items would show the game we noticed them. This would trigger changes in the environment that would make the next loop different from the last.


It all feels a bit like a fever dream, so it's hard for me to remember what happened when, but here are some moments I remember:

- The radio talking about a man who killed his pregnant wife by shooting her through the stomach, and who lured out his daughter and killed her as well. "Behind you!" This same person might've also been responsible for the murder of another family down the block.

- At other points, screen distortion effects (like intentional screen-tearing) and a demonic voice reading what appears to be a telephone number.

- German words flashing onscreen when we examined the teddy bear on the floor by the dresser.

- Peeking through the crack in the bathroom door, followed by the ghost lady appearing inside to slam it shut — scared the hell out of us!

- Pressing the X button to gouge out the eye of the woman in the portrait — as per the instructions on the portrait!

- The letters "HELLO" scrawled on the wall by the phone on the dresser — one letter disappearing each time you look back at it with your flashlight.

- The message "I can hear them calling to me from hell" on the wall near the front door — the word "hell" filling in one letter at a time with repeat visits.

- Another message — something about "the monster inside me" — appearing over the last door before everything loops.

- The message that appears on the picture frame near the clock, once it's broken. Can't remember what it says, however.

- Speaking of the clock, it remains at 23:59 until the bell starts chiming midnight later.

- The oddly adorable fetus in the sink, who later talked to me in a Barry White voice, with perfect lip sync. I can't remember what he told me, though. I love this lil' guy and came up with a theme song for him. "Fetus in the sink, feeeeeeeeetus in the sink!"

- The ghost lady (Lisa?) jumping me when I went through the door at the end of the hall. At first I thought she had killed me, since it started over from the first room, but I still had my flashlight I found in the bathroom.

- Scratches on the wall of the room at the start, each counting to five, and a brown paper lunch bag on the table in the corner that starts growling and shuddering if you look at it for a while.

- A chained fridge dangling from the ceiling, replacing the light in the foyer, with a hellish red glow, blood dripping from the corner of the fridge and spilling onto the floor, and the screams of a child struggling inside.


Then stuff got REALLY weird... and perhaps poorly designed from a gameplay standpoint:


- The never-ending hallway with super-fast movement, motion blur, red light, 10 dressers, three bathrooms, one clock, one foyer, and dozens of twitching eyeball portraits lining the walls: I know the exact number of dressers, bathrooms, etc, because we were stuck here for a while. After making 100 passes, I had to google "eyeball hall" to figure out what to do. Turns out you have to look through a black hole in the wall by the fallen portrait — a black hole that looks like a smudge. This allowed us to peer into the bathroom and hear a woman being killed and chopped up.

Something odd in this section is the way the bathroom mirrors work: Each of the mirrors will show your reflection until you zoom in on them, but then they'll rust over. However, once you return to that bathroom, they'll be reflective again. Huh.

- The final section, with the changing flashlight colors. We deduced that when the bell chimed, the clock changed from 23:59 to 00:00. We also deduced that the flashlight colors (white, red, blue, green, yellow) are probably meaningless — a red herring. We also deduced that whenever you hear the spooky music and heavy breathing, the ghost is somewhere in the area, in one of the following places:

- Near the door at the start
- Near the door at the end
- Outside one of the three windows
- In the reflection in the bathroom mirror

I kept expecting her to appear up on the balcony, but she never did. After a while I was no longer scared of her (although my friend was), and I started actively seeking her out. When she was outside the window, I'd go up to the window and stare at her until she stopped twitching and disappeared. Sometimes, in the hall, she'd rush forward instead of disappearing. There were also times where she dashed past me in the hall before I saw her standing there. Startling, for sure!

...but she appears harmless. It reached a point where I would just ignore her when the music started and fixate on certain objects, hoping something would change by me looking at them. I kept revisiting the fetus in the sink, which sometimes seemed to trigger a baby laughing.

One time I heard a baby laugh at the door near the start, after the ghost disappeared. Another time I looped back through the area and the light was on in the foyer; this moment also had a creepy bit where the ghost lady appeared at the second door, and instead of staying put, she slowly walked forward. Yet another time, the power was out on the digital clock, but when midnight chimed, it displayed 00:00.


At any rate, we were stuck. I did another Google search, trying to trigger the ending. On Reddit and GameFAQs, everyone has a different theory what triggers the ending. It seems the goal is to hear the baby laugh twice, then run to the phone and hear the baby laugh a third time, before it rings and tell you you're the chosen one. But after what must've been 100 passes, we couldn't get the baby to laugh that many times.

Ain't nobody got the time for that! So we watched the ending on my smartphone, lol.

But I see that it saves your checkpoint, so we're still in that last section. We agreed that the next time we hang out, we'll set aside the first 10-15 minutes to take another crack at triggering the ending!

At any rate, just wanted to share my (long-winded, rambling) thoughts on this demo. Pretty impressive what they accomplished with one hallway and a handful of funhouse tricks. Probably the scariest thing Guillermo del Toro has ever worked on (and I say this as a fan of GDT's before he was cool)!
 
PT is the most amazing and horrific experience I've ever had. And when the big Silent Hills reveal came out, I was stunned for days.

On that note, fuck Konami
 
I remember playing it late at night with headphones. One of the most terrifying games I have played and it was just a demo / teaser. It's a shame it can't be downloaded easily anymore. I better be able to transfer it to my next PlayStation system whether it's a 4.5 or a 5. Oh yeah, F Konami!
 

Neiteio

Member
Since del Toro, Reedus and Kojima keep talking about this game, I imagine they'll Kickstart a spiritual successor. Seems inevitable — probably a "Year of Dreams" reveal at E3.
 
I remember having a similar experience to you getting stuck at the same things and whatnot and yeah, it's a shame that Lisa gets less scary when you keep encountering her while your stuck.

Still, though, what a triumphant experience when you have the lights off at night, alone, with headphones. PT is a masterpiece.
 

Neiteio

Member
I remember having a similar experience to you getting stuck at the same things and whatnot and yeah, it's a shame that Lisa gets less scary when you keep encountering her while your stuck.

Still, though, what a triumphant experience when you have the lights off at night, alone, with headphones. PT is a masterpiece.
What's amazing is this game is still goddamn terrifying with another person. We had half the lights on in my apartment, we were sitting together on the same couch and talking through the whole experience, and the sound was coming off the soundbar rather than through my headphones (obviously, since I had a guest), and it still scary.

Well, until we were stuck forever at the end and realized Lisa is just a twitchy spook with respiratory issues. Then it was unsettling but mainly frustrating.
 

Eggbok

Member
PT is the most amazing and horrific experience I've ever had. And when the big Silent Hills reveal came out, I was stunned for days.

On that note, fuck Konami

Same, it's the first horror experience that made me scream lol. It freaked me so bad that I stopped playing haha.

Really looking forward to VR Horror games.
 
If it's a deal like Shenmue where other stakeholders are chipping in money, it certainly could.

While Kojima's budgets aren't out of control, I don't see how even that scenario would work because he still makes expensive games. I'm not particularly sure why people even think that Kojima would have to go to Kickstarter in the first place.
 

Neiteio

Member
I thought that was disproved?
It probably was disproven, because there were numerous people on GameFAQs and Reddit who beat the game and they never used the mic.

Problem is, each person appeared to beat the game in a different way.

I suspect the game is randomized in the final stretch. Each loop starts a timer that may or may not trigger one or two baby laughs after a random period of time.

Bad design, IMO.
 
I read this theory, and I turned on my headset to speak into it, but nothing happened.

Btw, that's bullshit if it requires you to use a mic, lol.

It's the only way I could triggered it, playing music close to the mic.
There three laughs, one is music, one is twelve? Steps, and I forgot the third one. :p
 

Neiteio

Member
While Kojima's budgets aren't out of control, I don't see how even that scenario would work because he still makes expensive games. I'm not particularly sure why people even think that Kojima would have to go to Kickstarter in the first place.
It's definitely possible they'll go the traditional route and secure funding from a company, like you say. Maybe even fund it themselves like an arthouse film. But I imagine there'll be some temptation to control costs — and create free buzz — by organizing a community-driven campaign to fund the game, in full or in part.

In other words, I see a number of possibilities here. But one way or another, I don't think they're going to abandon this game. I think they'll come back to realize their vision — just under a different name since they can't use the Silent Hill IP.
 
It probably was disproven, because there were numerous people on GameFAQs and Reddit who beat the game and they never used the mic.

Problem is, each person appeared to beat the game in a different way.

I suspect the game is randomized in the final stretch. Each loop starts a timer that may or may not trigger one or two baby laughs after a random period of time.

Bad design, IMO.

It was meant to be convoluted. Otherwise it would have gotten solved in the first few hours. The fact that there are still discussions to this day about how to solve it is awesome.
 

Neiteio

Member
It was meant to be convoluted. Otherwise it would have gotten solved in the first few hours. The fact that there are still discussions to this day about how to solve it is awesome.
I understand the reason from a viral standpoint, the whole community working together to solve it like a collaborative riddle. I appreciate that... even though the community clearly hasn't solved it, because it's probably random and can't be solved.

But looking at it from the experience of the individual, it becomes a time-waster after a while. It's no longer scary when you've run into the same harmless ghost in the same places doing the same thing for the umpteenth time. At the end there, it was an annoying loop of sound effects, to the point I'd mute the TV while googling possible solutions on my phone.

Everything was great up until the end, though. I just think it would've been more satisfying if they used subtle storytelling clues in the environment to guide you to the ending.
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
Obligatory images:

PT.jpg


latest

The game had incredible art direction. The setting on its own was enough to stress you out.
 
It's definitely possible they'll go the traditional route and secure funding from a company, like you say. Maybe even fund it themselves like an arthouse film. But I imagine there'll be some temptation to control costs — and create free buzz — by organizing a community-driven campaign to fund the game, in full or in part.

In other words, I see a number of possibilities here. But one way or another, I don't think they're going to abandon this game. I think they'll come back to realize their vision — just under a different name since they can't use the Silent Hill IP.

Well, one thing is that Kojima mentioned in his NewYorker interview that he feels he was put on this planet to make big games, and that's what he's going to do. He actually said that he was initially considering going down an indie route, but his friends talked him out of it and he realized that making big games is just what he does. And right now he has complete freedom on his project with Sony on top of having a AAA budget, marketing, and their state of the art motion capture studio and equipment. I think Sony would also be all in on funding a PSVR successor to P.T. by KojiPro.

I just don't see crowdfunding as a good fit for him.
 

Sn4ke_911

If I ever post something in Japanese which I don't understand, please BAN me.
Fun fact: I remember when Gametrailers awarded it best PS4 game of the year. :lol

A freakin demo wins PS4 game of the year.

Says a lot about this incredible experience. There was nothing like it out, now everyone tries to copy it lol but no one came close to Kojima's P.T.

Masterpiece.
 

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
PT is the most amazing and horrific experience I've ever had. And when the big Silent Hills reveal came out, I was stunned for days.

On that note, fuck Konami
I just don't get PT, it was pretty boring and I died once. Nothing scary really happened. Must have had a boring play through.
 

Neiteio

Member
I just don't get PT, it was pretty boring and I died once. Nothing scary really happened. Must have had a boring play through.
I believe that particular death is scripted and a necessary part of progression. Had you kept playing, you would've noticed you still had your flashlight -- something you didn't have when you started.
 

Aters

Member
I want to know how it plays on VR. I won't play it myself but I want to watch other people play it.
 
I want to know how it plays on VR. I won't play it myself but I want to watch other people play it.

I wonder how long before the first horror VR induced heart attack happens.

edit: And I just imagined a VR fatal frame game using something like the gamepad as the control.
Damn, now I want another thing that'll never happen.
 

WadeitOut

Member
I enjoyed playing it with friends but there would have to be a lot of different sections of the game for me to want to play an entire game like that.
 

fastmower

Member
You are wrong about getting the ending being randomized. I can get the ending everytime, using the same steps. Not random.
 
Glad you liked it OP. It's the scariest thing I've ever played.

Just a note on the balcony though. The chandelier falls iirc and at that point if you look up she is standing on the balcony looking down on you. It's really creepy
 

DoctorZMC

Neo Member
I wish i could be LTTP on P.T.

I missed out on downloading it. Im hoping del torro and kojima get to work together, though, in future.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
The freakiest shit i ever saw happen was the "black out" when your running around, and you wait until the place becomes haunted, if you look in the mirror she's literally right behind you which is just the scariest shit ever in a dark house at night
 

Jacqli

Member
I also played not long time ago with a friend: it was great. Although, as you did not mention it, the paper lunch bag also speaks when you "start over".

The scariest moment (for me) was just before that one, when the radio says "look behind you" twice. We did as it said and… nothing. Then, we want to face the corridor door again and Lisa attacked us. We screamed a bit. :)
 
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