Earlier this August we passed the seven-year anniversary of P.T., the playable teaser for Silent Hills. It’s one of the oddest stories in the gaming industry in the past decade, and it’s a title with a legacy that continues to live on, for better and for worse. When it was first revealed as a mysterious horror game at Gamescom 2014, there was a period of time where it seemed like it was the only title people were talking about. There was a mad dash to better understand what exactly this title was, and only when you beat the demo were you met with a major revelation. As it turned out, the demo happened to be an interactive teaser for the latest entry in the Konami series Silent Hill.
The excitement surrounding P.T. was like a perfect storm. The demo itself ended with a teaser for the upcoming game, revealing the all-star cast and crew that would be working on the title and would be helmed by industry icon Hideo Kojima. The game’s tease at the end also revealed that it would star Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead, and include the involvement of director Guillermo del Toro. It would also later be revealed that famed Japanese horror manga artist Junji Ito was to collaborate on the project.
In a very public ousting, Kojima exited Konami, and with it, Silent Hills was canceled. The company took an even further step, as they removed the P.T. demo from the PlayStation Store. This essentially made any system with the game on it a hot commodity, as you’d find PS4’s with the game still on the hard drive selling for hundreds of dollars more than a normal console would.
This delisting of the demo, and subsequent cancellation of the project, led to a deluge of P.T.-inspired content. Multiple fan remakes of the demo popped up on PC over the years, as they tried to recapture what was taken by Konami. Games like Visage took clear influence from the demo, as they ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, and ultimately released in October of 2020. Others like Allison Road was later cancelled.
There’s also Layers of Fear from Bloober Team, another title that showed its P.T. influence, and an interesting case in that years later, the developers would end up capturing the attention of Konami themselves. Whether anything will come out of this “business alliance” that was announced by Konami remains to be seen, but it’s definitely interesting to see a team that was clearly inspired by one of their axed projects now having some sort of involvement with the one who canceled it.
It’s quite easy to say that P.T. has left a bigger legacy than almost any other demo ever released. Take Resident Evil 7: Biohazard for example. Though Capcom would later state that the game was in development before the release of P.T., the similarities seemed jarring at first, especially for a series that was making its first foray into first-person. This was cemented even further when audiences were given a first look at the game in a similar way to how P.T. was released. Before the title was officially unveiled, Capcom released a PSVR demo entitled Kitchen. This demo gave you an initial slice of what the game would look like, and how it would run in VR, one of the standout aspects of the final product.
This thought process would even extend to this year’s release for Resident Evil: Village. In the latest entry for the horror series, there’s one area in particular that feels directly inspired by the Kojima demo. As it turns out it’s also one of the most effective segments in the entire game and one that has garnered a lot of discussion following the game’s release.
Though Konami definitely seems to have P.T. in their rearview mirror, it’s a seemingly never-ending saga for Kojima, whether he likes it or not. Even years after its release and his very public departure from Konami, the game still follows him. Though the fervor around the demo began to wind down considerably when it was clear Death Stranding wasn’t somehow tied into P.T., the same can’t be said now that his latest title is going through pre-production.
For Kojima, it seems like P.T. is almost life imitating art at this point, at least from an outsider’s perspective. It's a ghost of a now-dead game that continues to haunt him with every move he makes in the industry. It seems as if every major press conference or awards show that has taken place in the past year has had some type of Silent Hill revival rumor tied to it. This has led to continued speculation, only leaving fans to be hurt time and time again as it never materializes.
These rumors have only continued to spiral out of control with the ongoing saga that is Abandoned. For months, online sleuths have been scouring tweets and messages sent out from BLUE BOX Game Studios, as they try and uncover the latest on the game. Between cryptic tweets, video messages, a disappointing interactive demo, and images that look vaguely like Metal Gear Solid characters, it’s been a wild ride that has led people to believe that the man behind the studio might be Kojima himself.
In an interview with NME, Abandoned’s creator, Hasan Kahraman, spoke about how his team was being labeled as scammers, and how he was having to deal with the negative attention. Whether you fall on the side of believing that the game’s marketing was playing into the rumors, or was simply trying to promote their new title, it’s clear that the continued fervor that follows P.T. is in direct relation to all of the noise surrounding the game.
Even as a new console generation loomed, P.T. still somehow ended up in the news. This was due to Sony’s announcement of their handling of backwards compatibility when going from PS4 to PS5. It left many wondering whether PS4’s that still had the demo would be able to transfer it over to their new system. As it turns out, before the console’s release last November, the game was at a time both transferable and playable. However, before the system officially launched, it was made unplayable. Polygon spoke to a Sony representative and was told that it was a publisher decision.
If anything, this is a perfect summarization of how the passion surrounding P.T. is still undeniable, as even though years after its cancellation, fans are still hoping to carry it over with them to a new generation. It’s a lasting legacy that’s fraught with disappointments, success stories, and continued inspiration. Even seven years after its release, P.T. still somehow continues to surprise.