Damn I hope so.
For the uninitiated, a week or so ago a game showed up on the PS4's PlayStation Store for free called PT. I had no idea what the hell it was, but I downloaded it anyways because what the hell - it's free. I didn't play it right away because I had been a little caught up in other games, but yesterday I read an article about PT. As it turns out, PT is a Playable Teaser for a new Silent Hill game, which involves contributions from Guillermo del Torro, Normon Reedus, and Hideo Kojima. This is not really a demo; it's a reveal. This mysterious playable sample is how they chose to reveal this game's existence to the world.
From here on out, there will be spoilers in this post related to my experience. Not that I think it'll ruin anything story related, because there really wasn't much on that front (shocking for a Kojima project, even in a small sample like this). Actually, the spoilers would pertain to ruining your ability to take in the game's atmosphere and presentation, which are fan-fucking-tastic. I HIGHLY recommend that you play through this 2 hour or so (if you get stuck like me) experience for yourself first before reading.
To read the spoiler section, highlight from spoiler line to spoiler line. It's white text. You're welcome.
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The game starts out in a dark, square room. You have no idea what the hell you're doing there and there's nothing furnishing the room. The door in front of you opens, and so begins your seemingly endless journey through the creepiest hallway you've ever seen. Rendered beautifully enough to be mistaken for a photograph when you stop moving, the hallway rounds a menacing corner and ends with a small staircase leading to a doorway. that leads back to where you first entered the hallway. Through the entire game you are trapped in this hallway, until you have finally seen all it has to show you.
Each trip through the end door resets your journey to a fresh one. Advancing means solving the correct puzzle by finding the correct clues before passing Go, and each advancement leads to some subtle changes to the hallway itself. Writing appears on the walls, the radio begins a broadcast, cockroaches begin making a home, etc.
Cycling through the repeating hallway quickly becomes claustrophobic, as the incredible photo-realistic graphics really help you get lost in the experience. You start to look for any way out. You try the front door and the bathroom door and even the door back to the square room just to get out of that hallway. Finally relief comes as the bathroom becomes available to explore, only to find yourself trapped within until you find the right cues to get the door open again. From desperately trying to get out of the hallway to spending 15 minutes locked in a tiny bathroom with seemingly no way out, the obvious words creep into your brain, "Be careful what you wish for". And then finally, when freedom from the bathroom arrives you find yourself yet again trapped in the hallway, and the bathroom yet again becomes off limits (not permanently).
It's this side of horror where the game truly shines: letting madness creep into our minds as our own imaginations allow us to dream of greater fears than grotesque crying fetuses abandoned in a sink ever could (although the game has that too). Similarly, the game leaves it to you to even FIND the puzzles for any given loop through the hallway, and those who don't will find themselves in a marathon between doors with no finish line to be found. The game will never tell you what to do or what needs to be done to advance. It will never explicitly tell you where to look for them either. It's up to you to pay attention to your surroundings, to notice each subtle difference in each pass through and to find your own exits. This is not a game that hold your hand, which for some is horrifying in and of itself.
I can't say I was ever truly scared during the game. I did however find myself feeling a bit mad. Not angry, but delusionally frustrated. The way you'd expect someone to feel after they spend two hours trying to find a way out of a hallway that never ends. There are a few moments where something jumps out at your for a cheap surprise scream, but to be perfectly honest I was expecting those. I knew what this was when I started having read that article, so I knew to look for that kind of stuff. What really got me hooked on this game and its potential was the subtlety the game used to get me completely engrossed.
Some puzzles are a tad frustrating because the game dangles a gigantic red herring in front of you while the actual clues are in the background. There's a few moments where you can easily get stuck thinking that one thing absolutely has to be part of the puzzle, and you get stuck for so long that by the time you decide to look around for something else you forget what the room looked like before this loop. And I didn't figure out the final puzzle. I looked up the solution for it because I was running out of time before I had to go to work, and I was both disappointed and impressed by the solutions that people had reported. The part I didn't do, which seems to be vital, is that you have to hook up a microphone to your PS4 and scream. In a truly Kojima signature moment, you have to trick the game into thinking it scared you shitless.
**Update**
I actually went back and tried to replay it this morning, and it resumed where I left off with no ability to start over until I finish the final puzzle. So I got off my lazy ass and hooked up my headset and finally got it to work. What's funny is the first couple of times the second laugh, which is the one you need a microphone for, wouldn't trigger using any of the tricks reported to IGN. I got it to work by walking back and forth through the hallway saying, "M'Kay" like Mr. Mackey from South Park over and over for about 20-30 seconds. Hilarious.
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The reward for beating the final puzzle of course was simply the revelation of that the game really was, which by now has been spoiled all over the internet. But even so, this teaser has done more to get me excited for a game than any other promo or reveal ever has. I'm not even a Silent Hill fan; never even played one before. This teaser broke down that barrier for me. It's a brilliant way to reveal your game.
See, the problem with the status quo is that trailers always get us excited up front, but we have to be reserved about it until gameplay makes its way to showroom floors. In many cases we have to wait for demos or even just reviews around release time before we really feel comfortable getting on a hype train for something we're not already fanboys or fangirls for. That's the barrier that this playable teaser broke for me, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Online games have betas somewhat close to release to give people a glimpse, but there's not much that you can do to get a real feel for a game when it's first revealed. This could do that. We're talking about teasers, so they don't have to be incredibly fleshed out experiences. Quite the contrary; playable teasers like PT would exist to raise questions and intrigue so you'll want to buy the full game to get answers. All it has to do is give us something to have a feel for what this game is supposed to be, rather than having to imagine it for months until it releases and a demo may or may not become available on the same day.
Even beyond that, teasers like this could be invaluable glimpses for developers to give their audience a taste of what's to come. If they aren't very receptive, then the developer now has a much earlier idea of what's wrong and what to do to fix it. Or if it's not worth it, then they now know that early so they can save some money by cutting their losses earlier and moving on to something else.
I think playable teasers, should they become popular, could help usher in a very exciting era in gaming. And I personally and very excited to see who the next developer is to give us a playable teaser to reveal their game. Here's hoping it's Naughty Dog for the new IP they've been working on; that would be epic.
What do you think of the concept of the playable teaser? Have you tried PT yet? If so, what did you think of it specifically, both as an experience and as a method of reveal?
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"I'm still recovering from the mind explosion that it gave me."
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Today In Music (August 15th)
Sacred Heart by Dio released on August 15th, 1985. Also released on this day:
- In Through The Out Door by Led Zeppelin (1979)
- Flick Of The Switch by ACϟDC (1983)