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)!
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)!
