P.T. Still Relevant – Camera Hack Reveals Lisa Was Behind You The Whole Time
Some days, you gotta just love the internet. Longtime denizens of gaming forums will know that finding cut content is its own art form. There are legions of modders restoring games like Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines to the promise they once held before budgets were cut/ran out. One such miner of gaming gems is Lance McDonald. Programmer, modder, hacker, and all-around gaming badass, Lance has a YouTube channel where you can check out mostly cut Dark Souls/Bloodborne content. However, he recently revealed that he’s been tinkering with the fan-favorite P.T. (Playable Teaser) to figure out just what makes it so scary.
Now, there are a few things to take from the revelation. First and foremost, Lance is a total badass for getting this done. You might think the amount of work it takes to unlock the camera is simple, but it’s not. Not only are you dealing with another programmer’s code (a nightmare in itself), but you have to rewrite the camera rules to trick the game into showing all the hidden objects. You can read the interview on how he did this over at VG247, but in a nutshell, he had to rewrite the zoom button to act as though the player were still walking while the visual space stayed stationary. Badass, Mr. Mcdonald.
The other big takeaway is that people are still talking about P.T. five years after its release. I started the article saying that this kind of modding isn’t uncommon. What is uncommon is so much attention being put to a demo. If you’re not familiar, P.T. was a released mysteriously onto the PS4 in 2014. No fanfare, just popped up on the store for free. Without exaggeration, it is one of the tensest horror experiences ever created. The puzzles were obtuse and semi-random, and players poured over the hidden clues to try and find the true ending. Those that did were rewarded with… a trailer. The whole experience was just a demo for Silent Hills, a coproduction between Hideo Kojima, Norman Redus, and Guillermo Del Torro. It’s the mix of quality and name recognition that launched the hype rockets into the stratosphere.
Then, in April of 2015, Konami announced it had canceled Silent Hills. Not content with simply smashing all of our dreams, they also would be pulling P.T. from the store on April 29th. If that wasn’t enough, owners of the game can no longer re-download it if the data was deleted. That means that only people that still have the data on their system from the time of release can still play the game.
The combination of shattered dreams, incredibly quality, and extreme scarcity have launched P.T. to the status of gaming legend. It’s a title that exists outside of itself, firmly planted into the gaming zeitgeist as a tale of a lost golden age of horror. We will never know what goes on behind closed doors, but Metal Gear Survive and countless Pachinko machines have only solidified Konami’s image as gaming’s most detestable villain. Or so the story goes.
To see people like Lance keeping P.T. alive warms the dark recesses of my heart. It gives me the kind of joy and hope of a much younger Ted. It’s like coming home to find my childhood dog alive and well, that the farm upstate was real and she really was just getting better. So thank you, Mr. McDonald. This is the kind of work worth supporting. If you want to help him unlock more hidden temples of gaming, you can support him on Patreon. I know I will.
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
